Kane County Reporter

In its Feb. 20 meeting, the Batavia City Council was presented with the police department’s “Ten Shared Principles” they wanted to adopt into their department and City code.

In 2018, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police came together to write and adopt the ten shared principles. This was an effort to build trust and relationships between people of color and law enforcement.

“These are principles that I believe are already, you know, ingrained and interwoven within what we're already doing,” Batavia Police Chief Shawn Mazza said in the meeting. “There’s always room for improvement and things that we need to get better at. And I think as I read through these ten shared principles, it's again something that we need to be as police intentional about and don't want these to be just words on paper.”

The principles are as follows: 

1. We value the life of every person and consider life to be of the highest value. 
2. All persons should be treated with dignity and respect. This is another foundational value. 
3. We reject discrimination toward any person that is based on race, ethnicity, religion, color, nationality, immigrant status, sexual orientation, gender, disability, or familial status. 
4. We endorse the six pillars and the report of the president's task force on 21st Century policing. The first pillar is to build and rebuild trust through procedural justice, transparency, accountability and honest recognition of past and present obstacles. 
5. We endorse the four pillars of procedural justice, which are fairness, voice and opportunity for citizens and police to believe that they are heard. Transparency and Impartiality. 
6. We endorse the values inherent in community policing, which includes community partnerships involving law enforcement, engagement of police officers with residents outside of interactions specific to enforcement of laws, and problem solving that is collaborative and not one-sided. 
7. We believe that developing strong, ongoing relationships between law enforcement and communities of color at the leadership level and street level will be the keys to diminishing and eliminating racial tensions. 
8. We believe that law enforcement and community leaders have a mutual responsibility to encourage all citizens to gain a better understanding and knowledge of the law to assist them in their interactions with law enforcement officers. 
9. We support diversity in police departments and in the law enforcement profession. Law enforcement and communities have a mutual responsibility and should work together to make a concerted effort to recruit diverse police departments. 
10. We believe de-escalation training should be required to ensure the safety of community members and officers. We endorse using de-escalation tactics to reduce the potential for confrontations that endanger law enforcement officers and community members, and the principle that human life should be taken only as a last resort.

The council ultimately approved the principles.

The police department also asked that the council waive the typical bidding requirements for purchases for their car camera systems so they could buy 11 new cameras from a vendor that already supplies body camera- and data systems. The request was granted, which approved 11 cameras that would supplement footage from the body cameras and be used for transparency, evidence in prosecuting, and training footage for recruits and officers.