Kane County Reporter

At a recent House Public Safety and Violence Prevention Task Force hearing on the subject of law enforcement, state Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva) encouraged the attending police chiefs to let him know what needs to change.

"if you have a list of bills and changes ... and send it to us, I think that would be very helpful to us as we continue these talks and continue to try and figure out how to best address public safety for the people in the state of Illinois," Ugaste told the law enforcement officials who spoke as witnesses at the hearing.

Republican lawmakers have taken issue with the passage of House Bill 3653, the criminal justice reform SAFE-T Act, arguing that it ties the hands of officers just trying to do their jobs, while favoring suspects. As part of their pushback, House Republicans have filed HB 4499, which seeks to fully repeal the SAFE-T Act.

“This is one step Illinois can take to restore law and order and stem the tide of spiraling crime,” Rep. Patrick Windhorst (R-Metropolis) said in a statement.

The SAFE-T Act makes Illinois just one of seven states now requiring officers to wear body cameras while on duty or engaged in “any law enforcement-related encounter or activity.”

For municipalities topping 500,000 residents, the law went into effect on Jan. 1, with plans calling for it to be extended to smaller cities in the next three years. The bill further stipulates that all recordings must be kept for 90 days, after which they will be destroyed.

While the supervisor of the recording officer will be able to access the recording to complete incident reports, officers will not have access to their own body camera footage.

Illinois Association of Police Chiefs executive director Ed Wojcicki said costs compute as one of the biggest drawbacks of the cameras, with fees for the cameras themselves, storage of footage and the personnel time to review footage and Freedom of Information Act requests all add up over time in a major way.