MONDAY
September 22, 2014 • $1.00
Alshon Jeffery
GAME PREVIEW Jets bracing for Bears’ big wide receivers / B1
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NWHerald.com
THE ONLY DAILY NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED IN McHENRY COUNTY
SHERIFF TO BEGIN TESTING TECHNOLOGY IN McHENRY COUNTY
Focus on body cameras
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Committee says no to board’s downsizing After Census, county can change number of district By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com
Photos by H. Rick Bamman – hbamman@shawmedia.com
McHenry County Sheriff deputy Eric Woods wears an on-body Taser Flex camera system attached to a pair of glasses during a recent demonstration. Correctional officers at the sheriff’s office have used body cameras for years while working in the jail. Patrol deputies will soon begin wearing the camera equipment for a 45-day trial. BELOW: The Taser Flex camera clips onto a shirt or pocket.
“If you see a video of what the officer actually saw and heard, it makes more sense to why the officer reacted the way they did. It captures the absolute essence of the circumstances.” Cmdr. Dan Dziewior Crystal Lake Police Department
Other area police departments waiting on state legislature to clarify privacy issues By STEPHEN Di BENEDETTO sdibenedetto@shawmedia.com The McHenry County Sheriff’s Office will be the first agency in the county to experiment with body-worn cameras, a trendy police tool sweeping the nation in the wake of the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri. The Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson and the racially charged protests in the St. Louis suburb that followed have raised questions about police tactics and the police relationship with the public. Agencies across the country are beginning to test whether body cameras
See CAMERAS, page A4
Voice your opinion: Do you think law enforcement officers should be required to wear body cameras? Vote online at NWHerald.com.
WOODSTOCK – A committee sees no need to recommend altering the number of McHenry County Board members and districts after the next U.S. Census. The second meeting of the Reorganization Committee will be its last, as members concluded that the County Board’s structure is adequate, and that talk of changing it is at the very least premature, with the next opportunity to do so seven years and four elections away. Thursday’s meeting comprised just under half of the board. “The majority of members felt that we are in pretty good shape as to where they are ... we’re not hearing an outcry from the public as to, ‘There’s too many board members,’ ” said committee Chairwoman Carolyn Schofield, R-Crystal Lake. The opinion of the committee, shared since its inaugural July meeting, was that the entire debate has been politically driven by state Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, who in recent years has taken aim at the body’s size and structure. The McHenry County Board is made up of 24 members representing six four-member districts. The last major change came after the 1990 U.S. Census, when board members went from three districts of eight members each to its current configuration. Illinois governments are
“The majority of members felt that we are in pretty good shape as to where they are ... we’re not hearing an outcry from the public as to, ‘There’s too many board members.’ ”
Carolyn Schofield McHenry County Board’s Reorganization Committee chairwoman
See COUNTY, page A4
Supporters seek extension, expansion of civil rights death law By JAY REEVES The Associated Press BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – There has only been one prosecution under the Emmett Till Act, even though the law was passed with the promise of $135 million for police work and an army of federal agents to investigate unsolved killings from the civil rights era. Some deaths aren’t even under
review because of a quirk in the law. Still, proponents are laying the groundwork to extend and expand the act in hopes it’s not too late for some families to get justice. In nearly six years since the signing of the law, named for a black Chicago teenager killed after flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, only one person has been
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prosecuted: A former Alabama trooper who pleaded guilty in 2010 to killing a black protester in 1965. The government has closed the books on all but 20 of the 126 deaths it investigated under the law, finding many were too old to prosecute because suspects and witnesses had died and memories had faded. And Congress hasn’t appropriated millions of dol-
lars in grant money that was meant to help states fund their own investigations. Perhaps most frustrating, an unknown number of slayings haven’t even gotten a look because the law doesn’t cover any killings after 1969. That saddens people like Gloria Green-McCray, whose brother James Earl Green was shot to death on May 14, 1970 by police during a student demonstra-
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Music director Sherri Dees brings global sounds to Crystal Lake church / A3
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tion at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. The family never learned the name of the shooter, and no one was ever prosecuted. “We’ve never really got any closure because of the investigation not being thorough and everything just being kicked out,” Green-McCray said. “It was like, ‘Just another black person dead. I mean, so what?’” In a January report to Con-
See LAW, page A4
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gress, the Justice Department said prosecutors are still continuing their work. Hoping to spur more action, the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have passed resolutions asking the federal government for more thorough reviews and to spend the money that was authorized in 2007.
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Week 3
People’s Climate March
Aaron Rodgers falls short against Detroit, who put away the Packers in 19-7 win / B1
Hundreds of thousands in New York and elsewhere around the world urge action / A5
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