Joe Ragusa/Eric Stock
WJBC
Excessive police force is a tough issue to deal with, but an Illinois State University professor and the local ACLU chapter are trying to help people understand the problem.
Photo by Joe Ragusa/WJBC
ISU criminal justice professor Jason Ingram says there’s no universal reporting system for instances of police force, be it excessive or deadly.
“You don’t really have a good understanding of how much force actually occurs nationally or even really at the local level,” Ingram said. “Any numbers that you hear in the media, especially in terms of the amount of deadly force, is likely going to be skewed a bit.”
Former Bloomington-Normal NAACP president Linda Foster, one of the people attending Wednesday’s forum, said there were a lot of takeaways from the program.
“My biggest takeaway is that there’s no consistency in these departments, in these cities across the nation,” Foster said.
Illinois is one of a few states to pass a comprehensive plan for police practices. The new law takes full effect in January.
Earlier in the week, Ingram told WJBC’s Scott Laughlin, police have broad powers to protect themselves and the public, which can be left for interpretation.
“What’s reasonable to some, like a police officer, isn’t necessarily going to be viewed reasonable by the public,” Ingram said. “Those are pretty permissive and intended to be so.”
Ingram said there’s no requirement officers use less-intrusive means when possible such as using a taser instead of a gun, unless a police department adopts such a policy on its own.
Ingram said he hopes new laws in Illinois regulating the use of police body cameras will prevent police brutality. He noted so far show presence of the cameras lead to more civil behavior.
“Use of force incidents and complaints of police misconduct have dropped significantly since their implementation,”
Ingram added what’s not clear is how the cameras are affecting behavior, whether officers, the public or both are less prone to confrontation with the cameras present. He said it’s also possible some misconduct claims can be proven unfounded by the cameras.
The new law will ban the police use of strangeholds when subduing a subject, but Ingram said he doubts that such force will be gone entirely.
“It will be viewed as inappropriate or excessive now but when an officer is trying to gain control of a resistant subject and it escalates, they might resort back to training,” Ingram said.
Ingram said the Community Relations Improvement Act also creates a statewide database that tracks police misconduct issues.
Below, listen to WJBC's interview with Ingram.