Meeting Recap 2/9

There were 24 members present and one guest—Marya Lundstedt from Charles Schwab in Wilmette (host was Randy Reeves). Patti started with the “thought of the day”.  She also announced that the Winnetka Historical Society Annual Luncheon will be held at noon at the WCH on February 22^nd.    The guest speaker will be Richard Cahan discussing the career of Richard Nickel and why this architectural photographer is considered to be the father of Chicago’s historic preservation movement. Randy Reeves announced that the two Wilmette Rotary Clubs, the Glencoe Club and our Club will hold a joint meeting April 5^th in the evening and that this will replace our April 6^th regular noon meeting. Everyone was reminded of the Kids Against Hunger event scheduled for March 11^th and that there are sponsorships still available. Rotary’s “random act of kindness day” is scheduled for February 17^th and Patti passed out cards to be presented by our members to those for whom they perform such random acts and  inviting them to a  free Rotary lunch at one of our regular Thursday meetings.  As part of the “random act” program, Patti  and Rich Lalley will be taking and giving several boxes of new books to the grade school classroom of Julie Ahern in Waukegan—Julie is not only a teacher but a Rotarian. Any member who wants to accompany Patti and Rich to Julie’s school the afternoon of February 17^th, please let Patti know by next Thursday’s Rotary meeting.

 

SPEAKER PAT KREIS (Winnetka Police Chief): Chief Kreis explained the extensive training programs the Winnetka police officers undergo as part of their employment. When hired, they all spend three months training at the University of Illinois and then they do on-the-job training with other experienced officers for at least another three months. Their training is very structured. They are expected to follow the Department’s procedure manual which contains approximately 150 Department policies. There is training on how to handle people of different cultures and those with mental and physical disabilities. Special emphasis is on officers de-escalating every event—physical force is used only as last resort. Information is recorded during all arrests and traffic stops, including a racial profile of the potential offender. Then these statistics are compared to the racial makeup of the total population of drivers that use Winnetka streets.  The percentage of minority drivers stopped/arrested by the Winnetka police is usually lower than for other drivers. Winnetka usually has around 2000 traffic stops a year and all are recorded on a video recorder on the police car’s dashboard.  The Chief said that most small police departments (including Winnetka) do not use body cameras on their officers because of the prohibitive cost of same.

    Chief Kreis mentioned three high profile cases involving police-induced fatalities in Ferguson and Baltimore and the Sandra Bland suicide. He opined that the policemen involved were rightfully exonerated from murder, but each one of those situations could have been handled better by law enforcement. There are approximately 1000 incidents of police killing citizens  per year in the U.S. and usually only 5% raise questions as to the appropriateness of the action. There is the misconception that our penal system in Illinois incarcerates  a lot of people  for petty crimes. He said that 16% of our State prisoners are serving time for drug related crimes, with only ¼ of those being held for mere possession of drugs. In Federal prisons, about 15% of the prisoners are serving time due to drug related crimes.

    Other points made by the Chief were that the union contract covering Chicago policemen make it very difficult to discipline policemen in a timely manner—usually it takes 2-3 year to get a final decision from an arbitrator on the appropriateness of the discipline and usually it is a “compromise” decision. Most small towns do nothing regarding the arrest of illegal immigrants in the community—in fact, the Winnetka officers are trained not to ask any questions pertaining to citizenship status. He said that we should have a universal gun registry to keep track of all gun sales; that people with a concealed weapon license are not the problem with gun violence—most gun crime is done with illegally obtained weapons; and hand guns are usually involved in most  gun violence, as opposed to rifles, shotguns etc.

    The Chief emphasized the importance of getting to know and establish good relationships with the residents of a community.  Several people in the audience mentioned that they thought the Winnetka police department has done a great job in policing the Village and that the police deserve the respect they have from the residents and vice versa. In a recent report 98% of the residents who initiated contact with the Winnetka police rated the exchange “positive”.