Chicago and Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force Working Group Meeting - June 22, 2026
Chicago and Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force High Priority Data and Research Working Group Meeting - June 22, 2026
This working group meeting, held on June 22, 2026, featured a comprehensive presentation from the Cook County Sheriff's Office on its role in domestic violence response, including order of protection service, Karina's Law enforcement, and firearm restraining orders. The presentation covered process flows, data on service rates, recent technological improvements, and future initiatives. The meeting included a question-and-answer session with task force members.
Presentation: Cook County Sheriff's Office Domestic Violence Response
- Deputy Chief of Staff Gitu Nayek, joined by senior policy and operations staff, presented an overview of the Sheriff's Office involvement in domestic violence response. The Sheriff's Office operates the third largest police department in Illinois with over 500 officers covering unincorporated Cook County. Key units include the Civil Process Unit, Victim Support Services Unit, and specialized domestic violence liaisons.
- The presentation detailed the order of protection (OP) service process: after a judge issues an order, the clerk transmits it to the Sheriff's Civil Process Unit. Orders are entered into the Illinois State Police LEADS database (statewide visibility) and the National Crime Information Center (nationwide visibility). The Sheriff's internal system (ISTAR) and the newer "grid" app, which won a COP tech award in 2024, are used for dispatching orders to the nearest available deputy based on address, workload, and prioritization.
- Service goals: first attempt same day as issuance, second attempt within 24 hours, minimum three attempts within 72 hours. If unsuccessful, the intel unit develops alternative locations. The grid app increased same-day attempts from fewer than 3% to routinely 70–75% (73% as of April 2026).
- Data from a recent ISTAR audit: 2,560 orders were served by the Sheriff's Office and 963 served by other means (including short-form notifications). Average monthly orders served increased 21% after grid app implementation (from 760 per month). For orders not served, 92.9% were due to inability to contact the respondent; 57% of those received five or more attempts (average 4.82 attempts).
- Karina's Law (effective May 11, 2025 to May 9, 2026): 1,526 surrender orders received, 844 enforced by civil process; 75 firearms recovered from 43 unique surrender orders. Three seizure warrants received, two executed. Firearm restraining orders: 11 received, six enforced by the office, four search warrants executed, 22 firearms recovered.
- Future improvements: short-form notification portal, digital confidential information form (pilot kiosks at Markham courthouse), wellness checks for petitioners, expanded electronic transmission from the clerk's office, and continued data sharing efforts.
Discussion and Q&A
- Commissioner Miller asked about training of judges on the chief judges portal. Gitu Nayek reported that 16–20 judicial staff from the domestic violence courthouse were trained in summer 2025, and 22 domestic relations judges attended a demo in March 2026. Training is optional.
- Cynthia asked how survivors sign up for the survivor portal; Nayek explained that the PIN is created on the confidential information form (part of the petition packet).
- Trees asked about the digital kiosk requiring a case number; Colin (from the Sheriff's Office) noted that the case number is not required—names are matched. Nayek added that the pilot is still in the planning stage.
- Nancy asked about the source of information on the confidential information sheet; Nayek confirmed it comes directly from the petitioner. Nancy also asked about the 7% of not-served orders not due to contact failure; Nayek said she would follow up with specifics.
- Sarah Brown asked whether sheriff's police and other police can enforce remedies; Joe Belletier clarified that under state statute, any law enforcement officer can enforce remedies (e.g., return of minor, exclusive possession, firearm surrender) while serving a short-form notification, but the Sheriff's Office typically assigns enforcement to its civil process unit for consistency.
Key Outcomes
- The working group received a detailed update on Sheriff's Office operations, data, and improvements. No votes or formal actions were taken.
- The Sheriff's Office invited task force members to visit its civil process unit for a walk-through, similar to a previous visit by Commissioner Naya.
- Questions from the task force were answered during the meeting; additional follow-up questions were to be directed to the Sheriff's Office via email.
- The meeting was adjourned at 1:00 PM by Alderman Tabaras.
Meeting Transcript
All right. I think we can get started. Um thank you all so much for coming to our high priority and data and research group. Uh Alderman Tabaras, would you mind calling the meeting to order? Yes, thank you, Amy. Calling the meeting, the working group today here is Mar May 27th at uh 12 noon. We are calling the working group today on the high priority in data research. So just want to welcome everybody. Thank you and wanna kick it off back to Amy. Yes. Thank you so much. So yeah, we're um I know we had some last minute changes with the other working groups, but uh we're gonna have those scheduled for the end of June and then have our last executive meeting um next Thursday on June 4th. So that's just a quick update. Um, but today we're very lucky we have people from the sheriff's department to give us uh a presentation. We have uh Juntou and Sarah Smith. Would you both like to introduce yourself and just tell us your background and uh your roles and everything before we get started? Good morning everyone. My name is Gitu Nayek, uh Deputy Chief of Staff here at the Cook County Sheriff's Office. We actually have a bunch of um people from the sheriff's office here on the call. If I could just give a shout out to Sarah Smith who has been attending all the task force meetings and representing our office. Um, she's the senior public policy manager um in the department of public policy and legislative affairs. We also have on the call Katie Danko, who's the director of public policy and legislative um affairs. We also have our operational team, our amazing uh courts team on the call. Uh it looks like the entire team showed up to support me in my presentation, so thank you. Uh Joe Belletier, you might um know him, uh executive director of court services. We've got Kia McCray, Assistant Executive Director, uh Court Services, we've got Superintendent Collins on the call, civil process, and so is Superintendent David Russin. Um we also have joining us Beth Grazevich, uh, who is a senior research analyst in our office of data and uh analytics. And last but not the least, we have Janelle Rivera who is a newer member of our team. She is a project and data manager and she's working on froze. So I think I've got everybody covered from our office. Just a little bit about myself. I've been with the sheriff's office for a few years now. I serve as the deputy chief of staff. I oversee a bunch of units. Uh, right now I oversee the office of policy. I've been uh super involved with civil process in my previous role. Um working with Joe and Kia and Colin and uh Dave Griffin. And I think I have a little bit of uh prosecutor background that helps me understand some of these D V and OP issues. And I see I think Jason Hernandez may be on the call, but I don't see him. He's um he's our intergovernmental affairs person that you guys are all very familiar with. But happy to be here today. Thank you for inviting us. We're hoping to go over our operations and let you guys know what we do. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you so much for joining and giving this presentation. So whenever you're ready, if you'd like to start, this is our um only presentation. So floor is yours. And we'll do the presentation, and then if people have questions after, we should have some time for that. But yeah, you want to. Sounds good.
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