Oak Park's Police Improvement Plan is 26% complete

The Oak Park Police Department has implemented just over a quarter of the recommendations that a study released in 2022 found would help move police toward just, fair and impartial policing.

The BerryDunn Community Safety study came amid national discussions about the 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by white officer Derek Chauvin. The case prompted police departments across the country, including Oak Park’s, to investigate the practices.

The study listed 42 recommendations, roughly divided into six subject areas:

Recruitment (recruitment, hiring and retention)
Personal development
Policies and Procedures
Impartial policing and transparency
Technology use
Training

At the May 7 meeting, Police Chief Shatonya Johnson told the village board that the police department had implemented 26% of BerryDunn’s recommendations so far.

Michele Weinzetl, senior manager and law enforcement consultant at BerryDunn, said the consulting firm has also already conducted on-site training for police and village leaders that included information on implementing these recommendations, change management, critical thinking and problem solving.

Since the study was published in November 2022, there has been a gap between that point and this second phase of implementation. Johnson said police have met with Weinzetl every two weeks for about a year to discuss the recommendations.

“During this time, you have to give the police credit for not standing still,” said Weinzetl. “They’ve already looked at various recommendations and worked on them.”

In this second phase of implementation, the village will continue to be supported by BerryDunn, who will help provide leadership training for police and village leadership staff and develop a five-year strategic plan.

At this stage, the six themes of the original report were consolidated into four themes to initially focus on:

Community safety
Staffing, training and staff development
Operations and service requests
Community engagement, impartial policing and transparency

Following this five-year strategic plan, Johnson said the police department aims to create a new one about every three years. The plans include short, medium and long term goals for the department.

“Strategic plans should be a guiding document,” Weinzetl said at the board meeting. “They are considered fluid, something that is really expected to be reviewed and adjusted over time.”

Johnson said the department expects to implement 35% of the BerryDunn recommendations in 2024. One reason they won’t be able to achieve more this year is the lack of an RMS, or records management system, needed to meet some of the technology recommendations in the BerryDunn report. The department expects to hear proposals from vendors for a new RMS in June and hopes to implement it by the end of 2024.

Among the goals the department is working on is developing strategies that emphasize constitutional policing. This includes researching best practices in policing and developing a new department policy on proactive policing.

“We monitor constitutionally,” Johnson said. “We’re definitely doing this from a procedural justice perspective, which means fairness by giving our community the opportunity to have a voice and actually police the way the community wants to be policed.”

Another goal focuses on staffing, training and workforce development and includes creating a plan to recruit, hire and retain staff.

This is crucial as almost 30% of the budgeted civil service positions are currently vacant and more could soon disappear.

The Oak Park Police Department has now lost 35 officers, Johnson said, three more than in early February. She hopes the department will have around 95 officers by the end of 2024. The OPPD is budgeted for 118 officers.

“We have a few officers preparing to transfer to other police departments and a few who will be retiring in the next few months,” she said. “I expect a decline before we actually see an increase.”

Another goal is to study how to implement an alternative response plan for calls that may be handled by non-sworn officers. Sworn officers have a weapon and the authority to make arrests. Non-sworn officers have neither, such as a community service officer, a crime analyst, or other non-sworn police department personnel.

Village staff presented a model for an alternative response to calls for service pilot program to the village board at the April 30 board meeting. However, trustees sent the plans back for review to evaluate concerns about splitting the response to mental health cries and low-level 911 calls between mental health professionals employed by the village and the Thrive Counseling Center.

A goal associated with community engagement, impartial policing and transparency is to establish a practice for information sharing. Goals include determining what information police share with stakeholders and the public and developing a citizen dashboard for impartial police data to increase transparency.

The full strategic plan can be viewed on the village’s website.

“We are working on many of these recommendations at the same time, and some of them overlap,” Johnson said.

According to Village Manager Kevin Jackson, the village board will be regularly updated on the implementation of the plan.

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