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Questions abound on ballots for November
CHANGE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT IN ILLINOIS
QUASHING QUOTAS
Voters to weigh in on variety of topics By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com
Photos by Sarah Nader – snader@shawmedia.com
McHenry police officer Ryan Gregorio stops a vehicle for speeding Friday while working in McHenry. State laws ban the practice of internal ticket quotas across police departments.
Local police differ on usefulness of new ticket law By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com CRYSTAL LAKE – At least one traffic stop each work day, at least one ticket every two shifts, a 30-minute patrol of residential areas and a 30-minute patrol of commercial areas. Those are the minimums the Crystal Lake Police Department expects of its officers, Chief James Black said. But one of those directives will have to change starting Jan. 1 because of a new law that received the governor’s signature earlier this summer. The law prohibits municipal, county and state law enforcement departments in Illinois from requiring officers to write a specific number of tickets within a set period of time and says that the number of tickets issued cannot be used in performance reviews.
Illinois House of Representatives, where it passed in a 1069 vote. It had previously sailed through the Senate with just one “no” vote. The bill didn’t have Black’s support though – or the support of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police. “I’m not in favor of ticket quotas nor do I think police should be concerned with revenue, but where it concerns me is in managing our departments,” Black said. “It’s like telling a computer programmer that he could come McHenry police officer Ryan Gregorio types out a warning for a speeding in and get paid but not write any violation. The McHenry Police Department uses points of contact to track computer programming.” The head of Bull Valley’s pohow effective employees are and whether they’re doing their jobs, McHenry Police Chief John Jones said – adding that issuing a warning can be just lice department, Commander Jim Page, has some concerns, as effective as writing a ticket in correcting behavior. too – even as he reversed some The idea is to prevent officers the end of the month, state Rep. previous practices that made Bull Valley notorious as a speed from being used as revenue gen- Barb Wheeler said. erators and to keep an unfair The Fox Lake Republican trap. burden off residents who might signed on as a co-sponsor of the See QUOTAS, page A9 receive a ticket just because it’s bill when it made its way to the
Fans of long, drawn-out novels will want to make sure they vote Nov. 4. The Illinois ballot will start with five questions that state lawmakers decided to put to voters. Two are proposed amendments to the Illinois Constitution, while three are advisory referendums that carry no weight of law. Put in perspective, the number of statewide questions on the ballot is more than the total of the past nine elections spanning 20 years. In Chicago, voters will face a total of 10 questions because the Cook County Board and the Chicago City Council added two and three more advisory questions, respectively. The questions top an already crowded ballot in which voters will elect the governor and all statewide offices and representatives to federal, state and county governments. And that doesn’t count two citizen-led petitions that judges have struck from the ballot. Supporters maintain that the questions are legitimate measures meant to protect equal rights and gauge public opinion. To opponents, they are nothing but gimmicks to boost Democratic voter turnout. Recent polls put Republican gubernatorial challenger Bruce Rauner ahead of Democratic incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn. The following is a summary of the questions already on the ballot. They could be joined by a sixth in the unlikely event that supporters of term limits prevail in their legal battle to get their disputed constitutional amendment added: • Victims’ rights: This proposed amendment to Section 8.1 of the Illinois Bill of Rights would augment victims’ rights language that voters first approved in 1992. If approved, courts will be required to hear and rule on crime victims’ requests for their rights to be enforced, and a victim’s safety will have to be a factor in the setting of bond, granting parole and determining conditions of a criminal’s release.
See BALLOTS, page A9
Mo. governor declares emergency, sets Ferguson curfew By DAVID A. LIEB and NIGEL DUARA
has been the site of previous clashes with police. Scores of officers, a much more visible More on the Missouri police presence than the night beshooting, page B3. For more on fore, stood watch – including police militarization, enforcement, some with shields. see page A2. Members of various black community groups were urging people to abide by the Despite heavy rainfall and curfew, which runs from lightning, hundreds of protest- midnight to 5 a.m. Sunday. A ers gathered Saturday night woman from the New Black at a busy thoroughfare that Panther Party walked the
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The Associated Press FERGUSON, Mo. – Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew Saturday in a St. Louis suburb where police and protesters have clashed in the week since a black teenager was shot to death by a white police officer.
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street with a bullhorn, telling the crowd: “Please, please be out of the area by 12 o’clock.” Some responded to her pleas by cursing at police, while others acknowledged they planned to leave before midnight. But Keyon Watkins, a 26-year-old computer science worker from St. Louis, said that if many others stay in the street, he would join them.
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“All of this is just building up – pent-up aggression by being mistreated on a daily basis,” Watkins said. In announcing the curfew, Nixon said that though many protesters were making themselves heard peacefully, the state would not allow looters to endanger the community where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot in a street. “I am committed to making
sure the forces of peace and justice prevail,” Nixon said during a press conference at a church that was interrupted repeatedly by people objecting to the curfew and demanding that the officer who shot Brown be charged with murder. “We must first have and maintain peace. This is a test.
See FERGUSON, page A9
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