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.

Just uh bear with me, I have not done a PowerPoint presentation in a while.

So I'm hoping that I'll be able to share my screen and not run into any issues.

Let me know if you have no words.

Let me know if you see my screen when I share the PowerPoint.

I may not be able to see any hands raised, but if we could just save the questions for the end.

Are you able to see a slide?

Yes, we can see it.

Yes.

Thank you.

Um today we're here on behalf of Sheriff Dart and the Hogani Sheriff's Office to give you basically a full picture of our how our office is involved in the domestic violence response system, what we do, how we do it, and where we fit in within the larger system that this task force is working to strengthen.

Um I know that we have a limited amount of time, so I may fly through some of the basic information.

If you have any questions and would like to go over any of the slides again, I'm happy to switch through.

Um we'll be going through the different units involved in this work first, um, then we'll focus on civil process and the process flow to where an order of protection gets served.

Uh, we'll then talk about some of our data, uh, which I know is of interest to a lot of um the folks on this call.

Uh Karina's law as well as firearm restraining orders.

And then to end with some of the procedures that we have implemented internally to help inform this group uh on what we have done over the years to improve efficiency and to best serve the interests of the survivors and individuals involved in the system.

So that sounds great.

And I'm so sorry.

I just before we get started.

Nancy, there weren't any public speakers that signed up today, correct?

Correct.

No uh public speakers, either uh written testimony or uh verbal testimony.

Wonderful, perfect.

Okay, sorry about that.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Um in addition to overseeing the jail and corporate security across the facilities.

The Sheriff's Office operates the third largest police department in the state of Illinois with more than 500 officers covering all of unincorporated Cook County.

We also assist other law enforcement departments whenever we're called upon.

Um the police department operates as any other law enforcement agency, so enforcing local and state laws, responding to 911 calls, including domestic batteries or uh calls of domestic nature to investigating and presenting charges for prosecution.

Um, as we will discuss in a moment, they're also um involved in assisting with OPs and executing search warrants and seizure warrants under Karina's law and firearm restraining orders.

For the purposes of this meeting, um the part of the office we'll talk a lot about is the civil process unit.

Umers of protection issued by the Cook County Circuit Court come to our civil process unit for service, as you know.

We also have our victim um support services unit.

Um our office has always had a special victims unit and a domestic violence unit that um aims to serve crime victims and survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, sex crimes, etc.

Since 2022, uh we've formed this uh specialized unit called the Victim Support Services Unit, which we'll talk about in a moment.

And then when we um so my goal in this presentation is to walk through how we're involved in each stage of the domestic violence response system um and go over some of the details of the order of protection service process today.

Before I do that, um I wanted to spend a moment on some background on what our sworn officers are what standards they're held to.

Go over some of the policy and training protocols that govern everything that our sworn officers do.

We do have a comprehensive set of policies that cover every dimension of how our personnel interact with the public and with individuals involved in domestic violence.

Interact with victims and witnesses, how we protect the records of victims or survivors, how we handle orders of protection procedurally, including how our own officers are also held accountable if they are ever subject to an order themselves, etc.

In addition to these policies that are listed on the left hand side, we also have our department directives that are basically daily directives that guide our staff through the day-to-day operations, and they're handled by the specific departments themselves.

These policies are also accompanied by robust training, a layered and recurring training that starts with all the recruits at the academy.

Topics they cover in a classroom manner include gender responsiveness, domestic violence, orders of protection, crisis intervention, mental health awareness, trauma informed interviewing and investigation, etc.

That's the foundation that our recruits start with.

On top of that, every year our sworn members complete an annual in-service training, which is also classroom format.

They also get refreshed refresher trainings through our online learning management system or LMS modules.

We've specifically added recently to those modules, and we keep updating them regularly based on changes in the law, et cetera.

So we've added recently Karina's law, firearm restraining orders, protective orders, short form notifications, etc.

And then, of course, we have the 40-hour DV training through the network that has been offered to our office over the past few years.

Our behavioral specialists have this training.

All of our staff and the victim support services unit are 40-hour DV trained.

Looking forward into the future, we want to implement a pilot that we did in February of 2025, which was a truncated version of the two of the 40-hour training, which was condensed into a two-day format through the advocates.

So we're hoping to get that over to more deputies and our civil process unit and also to our supervisors.

And then last but not the least, I wanted to also address the resources that our officers have access to when they're involved in this very important and sensitive type of work.

And that's our officer wellness programs.

And we want to provide that assistance to our first responders as well and take it seriously.

So now I think we're ready to get into the details of what our civil process unit handles.

Just a broad overview first, the sheriff's office is the primary agency responsible for serving protective orders on respondents across all of the 136 plus municipalities across Cook County.

They also serve other types of civil process, but by statute, we prioritize service of protective orders.

In addition to serving orders, we enforce the specific remedies under the orders which include the Karina's Law remedies now, and we also do surrender order enforcement of firearm restraining orders.

So I'm going to take you through the process flow from when an order is issued in court to when it gets served.

I know that over the last few months, the task force has had many presenters and discussed the court side process of filing of a protective order and types and timelines of orders granted, etc.

So that point forward, this is an attempt to show you the process flow of how an order gets to the sheriff for service.

So as part of filing the petition, a petitioner fills out this form called the confidential information sheet or the sheriff's confidential information sheet as it's referred to sometimes.

This includes information that is important for our office to serve orders.

As part of the filing, the petitioner may request some specific specific remedies that the judge may grant, and those remedies are also something that our civil process unit will enforce.

And some of those specific remedies, I'm sure you guys have discussed is uh exclusive possession of residents, return of a minor, and if if relevant, the firearm remedy under Karina's law.

Once the order is entered by the judge, the circuit court clerk then transmits the order to our civil process unit and the various locations.

The orders come in at all times during the day.

I'm going to go into a little bit more in the next slide on what happens once we receive that order.

But generally, the clerk transmits the order, the sheriff's office receives the order, then we make our attempts to serve the order and enforce the remedies.

This is the confidential information sheet I just mentioned briefly.

It also allows the survivors to create a PIN number that they can use to access a survivor portal that we'll talk about in a moment.

But this is the confidential information sheet that is not part of the court file.

It's used the information entered in this form, such as the respondents' address, alternative address, any other information is used by our civil process unit to aid in service of the order.

This form is transmitted to our civil process unit along with the protective order, and it does not, like I said, it does not become part of the court file, and it does not get served to the respondent.

This is the process of what happens when the order is entered and received by our civil process unit.

So once the judge issues the order, the clerk transmits the order to us, the order arrives from the clerk's office to our civil process unit.

At that point, our leads clerks will enter the information contained within the order into the Illinois State Police Leads database, which is the law enforcement agency data systems database.

This gives essentially the information entered into leads gives the order statewide visibility, which means any law enforcement officer in Illinois who runs the respondents' name will see that they have an order entered against them.

This information also feeds into the national database, which is the National Crime Information Center, which means visibility nationwide.

After, well, simultaneously, when this order is entered into leads, there are a couple of different processes going on on our end in terms of data entry internally.

The order is entered into the sheriff's internal tracking system, which is called ISTAR.

It stands for information storage tracking and retrieval system.

And then it also goes into something called the grid, which I'll explain in a moment.

The grid was implemented just a few years ago.

This is something that the office built as a dedicated system to dispatch orders of protection.

It allows us to assign and prioritize orders and assign the orders to the nearest available deputy or car based on the address of service.

The orders then get assigned not just geographically but also in terms of current workload and availability.

So this the grid was something that was a meaningful operational improvement, which directly shortened the time between receiving an order and getting the deputy in front of a respondent to serve the order.

In 2024, the grid won a COP tech award for police technology.

It's a law enforcement agency award that honors successful implementation of innovative technologies to enhance public safety.

And I'm hoping to show you soon that the data shows the impact that it's made on the operations in our office.

So that's what happens when the order is entered into our systems.

And that's necessary for us to then move forward with the service.

The orders assigned, prioritize, dispatched, and then by the way, I should also mention that as soon as the order is entered by our staff, an automated automated notification via email goes out to the local law enforcement agency where the address of service is located for a couple of reasons.

One is deconfliction that letting them know that we're going to be in your area serving this order.

And two is if you if you see this person or run into this person, you could do a short form notification.

And moving forward, we expedite protective orders and emergency orders over summons generally, unless an emergency situation exists.

So that's another way that we serve orders.

And under the law, a sheriff, law enforcement officer, or special process server can serve using the short form notification process.

It tells the respondent you're subject to the order.

Here are the restrictions, here's the next core date, and here's where you can get your full order.

It's a fully legitimate method of service, and our office has built on that capability and meaningfully increase the speed of service using that process, especially in the suburban districts where our police department can use that method to serve orders.

I think I've covered everything in this process from the order being entered by our staff to orders being assigned to deputies to the types of service we're able to make.

We do follow through on serving orders to people who are in custody if they're in our jail or IDOC.

There's an email contact for IDOC, and we follow up with them to get the affidavit of service.

There's also a discharge process that our drill our jail uses.

So anytime somebody's getting discharged, they get a background check, which if it reveals an OP, our sworn staff is trained to serve those OPs in courts and in jail.

So beyond that, now let's go to what happens when our deputies are out on the street attempting service.

Okay.

So from the orders received to enter to assigned and then to attempts to serve.

Our goal is always to make the first attempt on the same day as the order being issued.

We then make a second attempt within 24 hours of issuance, and then we also commit to a minimum of three attempts within a 72-hour window.

After about two or three attempts, a supervisor generally reviewing these orders to see what can be done to successfully serve the order.

When our deputies are out on the street and they cannot locate the respondent at the address of service, they do inquire with neighbors, so that's the on-scene investigation, inquire with whoever's on scene to see if additional information is available.

Like if you run into respondents' mom, maybe find out if the respondent still lives there or has moved or in address of employment and things like that.

In addition to that, when we can't find someone, which is the most common reason an order does not get served after a few attempts, our intel unit or intelligence unit gets involved.

They work to develop alternative locations where we might maybe able to find the respondent.

So we just we don't just file the order away after failed attempts.

We're trying to find additional information throughout the whole process.

And through all of this, the petitioner is able to check the status of service of an order by going to the survivor portal.

So the PIN number that they create when they're filling out the confidential information form is used to access this portal on our website that allows them to see if an order has been served or not.

It does have a one-way communication capability where the petitioner can send us a message with additional information, or they may request us to contact them, which can be done through our domestic violence liaisons or any of the staff members as well.

As I said, service is attempted when they're unsuccessful, we try to find more information.

If we're able to successfully enforce or serve the order, of course, a service affidavit is completed and returned to court.

So I think I um I feel the importance to address it.

One, the service rate that was cited was slightly misleading because the figure of 25% of orders served did not include or account for approximately 11,000 orders that were served in court or by short form by other agencies.

So ISTAR has been around for a while, but currently we're already working on implementing a little bit more modernized version of iStar to try to get the capability to allow better data extraction for analysis of this type.

In any case, the sheriff's office has recognized that service rates need improvement.

And over the past few years, we've instituted a comprehensive set of procedures and reforms as a result of which I'm about to share the most recent audit of iStar that our awesome staff has worked really hard to do, which includes service rate information and shows a much better rate of service since the time of this previous reporting I was talking about.

And so this is where we stand today.

Of these, 20 uh 2,560 orders were served by the sheriff's office, and 963 served by other means, which includes the short form notifications.

Additionally, as I mentioned, the grid app, the grid app which helps us prioritize dispatching orders, that enabled us to dramatically increase same-day attempts for service.

And same-day attempts are basically the order is served the day that the order is issued.

And prior to the launch of this app, we had some fewer than 3% of orders that we were able to attempt the same day.

With the implementation of the grid app, we were able to see within months of implementation an increase in the number of attempts and same-day attempts made on orders.

Within four months, I believe we were up approximately 50% of orders had an attempt made the same day.

And today that number is routinely in the 70 to 75% range.

Going from October 2023 when we assigned additional deputies to the civil process unit to the Intel process being integrated into the service attempts, and then the grid app being launched February of 2024, which dramatically increased the service rates, to launching the survivor portal in June 2024, and most recently our office launched a chief judges portal, which is similar to the Survivor Portal, but the Chief Judges Portal allows judges to go into the portal, look up the status of NOP, and also enter any notes, any additional notes that could help us with service.

That's something that we're slowly training judicial staff in and hoping to get a little bit of buy-in on that end.

So we're constantly trying to think of ways to improve our service rates.

And as I said, the data reflects the impact of the reforms.

Just to give a picture of how much the grid app has improved service rates.

An average of 760 OPs have been served per month following the implementation of the grid, which represents a 21% increase over the average number served per month in the six months prior to implementation.

And as I said, prior to the grid app being implemented, less than 3% of the orders were receiving a first day attempt or same-day attempt.

And following implementation, the number has risen to somewhere around 73 to 75%.

And the most recent numbers, it's at 73% as of April.

And I wanted to make sure to highlight some of the barriers or challenges when it comes to service and make sure to address the not served order.

So what happens to the what's the reason for the 43.3 something percent that of the orders that are not served.

And our data has found that in 92.9% of those cases where the orders are not served for the same reporting period that I was talking about earlier.

The reason that the service was not completed is because we were unable to make contact with the respondent.

And what does that mean?

That could be either that the person was not found at the address that we had and the deputy showed up at the door, they may have moved, they may be evading service or avoiding service, or the information that we were given just did not lead us to them.

So as you can see, here we have a breakdown of what happens, what happened on the orders that were served versus the orders that were not served.

On the orders that were successfully served, you see that our office made an average of 2.55 attempts to serve that order.

And as opposed to the not served orders, as you can see, the average number of attempts made in the orders were not successfully served was 4.82, almost five times the order has been attempted to serve and could not be served.

And 57% of those not served orders received five or more attempts.

What the data, what this data tells us, I think, is that this is a locating problem.

It's not a problem of effort, it's not a problem of our deputies not making multiple attempts, or our intel unit doing a follow-up work, or our supervising supervisors reviewing every case to hit the two or three failed attempts at personal service.

The process is working.

The problem is that we cannot create contact where there's no contact possible with the respondent.

So this is just to emphasize why we need to continue to invest in tools that give us better location information and why these conversations about data sharing between agencies matter so much for this issue and the need for education and outreach and you know, reaching out to petitioners and letting them know the information they provide to us is the most important piece in locating and serving these orders.

So speaking of survivor resources, I wanted to go back and talk about the uh some of the investments in addition to the procedural and technology investments we're making, the fact that we need to invest in survivor resources.

Um, as far as our office goes, um, I mentioned the survivor portal.

Just wanted to give you a little um snapshot of what that looks like.

There's a quick escape button that you can use to get out of the portal.

Um the portals accessed using the PIN created on the confidential information sheet where you could view status of service and uh provide additional information.

And uh a little bit more information about our domestic violence, liaisons.

As I said, this unit was created in 2022.

It comprises of some staff members who are have the lived experience, their survivors themselves.

They're um 40 hour DV trained.

Um, some of these are licensed clinicians, we have bilingual staff on hand.

Um these staff members work hand in hand with civil process in helping get these orders served.

They monitor the survivor portal so if any messages come in, they will contact the petitioner, get additional information that might help in service, and uh work with our civil process deputies to get those orders served.

Um, in addition to helping our civil process unit, our DBLs or domestic violence liaisons are also able to provide some resources in case the petitioners or survivors are reaching out and they need safety planning or any linkages when they are ready.

The survivor is put in touch with advocate agencies.

Um it's all survivor and petitioner led.

Um we lead with their needs and wants in mind.

If the petitioners ready to accept services or assistance, they're connected.

Um the hotline, the domestic violence hotline is always promoted as the primary resource.

Um I should mention that the victim support services over the years has also been able to partner with a bunch of outside agencies to provide, for example, cell phones, Uber rides, and hygiene project uh products to uh petitioners we can't come in contact with.

And the one thing I wanted to mention is uh uh in the last year or so we have also been able to provide an option for petitioners to have a squad card come by for a wellness check at their address, and that's again all petitioner-led um they may refuse if they want to, if they want if they accept and um uh they want us to do a wellness check, it's uh made sure to make it to the comfort level of the survivor.

And finally, here's the contact information for our victim services unit.

They're available Monday through Saturday.

All of their outreach material and resources or resource pages are available on our website.

They all emphasize first and foremost the 911 number for emergencies and then the hotline as a 24-7 contact.

This is just a little screenshot of our website and the resources available on our website.

They all provide links to the clerk's office.

They have some how-to kind of information on how to file at different courthouses, and they all lead to the links on the clerk's website, etc.

Moving on to Karina's Law and Froes.

So this information is specific to civil orders where the petitioner initiates the petition for a surrender or seizure order.

The surrender order is basically an order of protection with the surrender remedy checked off under 14.5.

So the process of how it gets from the clerk's office to civil process is similar.

The way it gets entered into leads and is assigned to deputies, it's all pretty similar to the process flow we just discussed.

The only difference being that this is an enforceable remedy that the deputy will enforce at the time of service in addition to service of the order of protection.

When they attempt to serve the respondent, the respondent is the contact when respondent contact is made, the respondent is notified of the 14 fire remedy and requirement to surrender firearms at the location of service.

If the firearms are not located at the place of service, they're notified to surrender the firearms within 24 hours of service of OP.

When 14.5 is checked with a search warrant remedy granted, the order it depends depending on who is responsible for executing the order, the order is sent to the law enforcement agency responsible.

If it is if the Cook County Sheriff's Police Department is the law enforcement agency responsible for executing the order, our gun team gets the warrant.

And if it's an outside law enforcement agency, our civil process team will coordinate the execution of the search warrant to make sure that the OP is served simultaneously or to the extent possible.

As far as Kareena's law goes, um our office Sheriff Dart has supported Kareena's law since the beginning of the effective date of the law.

And we recognize that the time right after the survivor seeks an order is most critical in terms of getting the firearms off the hands of the abuser.

So our police department gun team and civil process recognize that and make sure that every effort is made to get the firearms off the hands of the abuser.

I would like to mention, by the way, that our staff, our operations staff is this is my opportunity to recognize them, so I'm going to take it.

Our staff has been involved right from the beginning.

And then as I mentioned, coordination with the law enforcement agencies outside law enforcement agencies for execution of search warrants was a big part of implementing Karina's law, and a shout out to Superintendent Colin Luce to for doing that every every single day.

So this is a Karina's law workflow.

Next from the date of implementation of the law.

So May 11, 2025 to May 9, 2026, having just passed the one-year anniversary date of the passage of the law.

Here's the data that we have so far specific to our office.

So the total orders, uh surrender orders received by our office was 1,526.

The total number of seizure warrants received by our police department gun team unit was three.

Of which sorry for the little editing mistake here, but 844 surrender orders were enforced by our civil process unit out of those total surrender orders received.

And two seizure warrants were executed by our police department.

And a total of 75 firearms were recovered as a result of 43 unique surrender orders.

And a little note that not every respondent served with the order may own a firearm or FOID card or concealed carry license or have a firearm at the location of service.

But during the enforcement of the order, we do notify the respondent to turn in any firearms not at the location within 24 hours.

Moving on to firearms training orders.

These are orders that can be petitioned by a civilian or law enforcement, which includes our police department.

When the civilian files for a firearm restraining order, the process flow from how the order gets transmitted from the clerk to our office is the same.

When there's no search warrant issued, service is done by civil process, which includes the surrender of firearm.

When a search warrant is issued, it's executed by our gun team.

When the law enforcement agency files uh firearm restraining order, if no search warrant is issued, uh it's the same for service of the service service of the firearm restraining order that includes surrender.

If the search warrant is issued, execution of the search warrant is done by law enforcement.

Um, and outside law enforcement agencies do sometimes request assistance from our gun team.

I should mention that for Karina's law search warrant seizure warrants as well.

Um they do reach out to us when they need information or assistance and best executing the search warrants.

And under firearm restraining orders, our office follows all of the requirements, which includes the clear and present danger reporting and notifications to ISP, and um Janelle's on the call and has been very involved in education and awareness.

We're talking to the national URL groups on how this tool can be utilized.

I think everybody in every jurisdiction agrees that uh it is kind of underutilized at this time, but we're hoping that more education and awareness will lead to uh more utilization of firearm restraining orders.

And here's the data on that.

Um May 11, 2025 to May 9, 2026.

The total number of firearm restraining orders received by our office was 11.

Um, six firearm restraining orders were enforced by our office, four search warrants were executed by our police department.

A total of 22 firearms were recovered.

Um then the one uh firearm restraining order out of the 11 turned out to be a Kane County address, uh which which was served by Kane County.

Moving on from Karina's law and firearm restraining orders and back to uh the improvements uh made by our office.

Our office uh works internally collaboratively to try to make these efforts to uh ensure efficient uh service over orders and making sure that we're doing the best we can to ensure uh the needs of survivors are met, and those some of those units include our tech ops unit, which uh is basically the Bureau of Information Technology responsible for the procedural improvements, creating different tech apps to automate processes, etc.

Then we've got the Office of Data Scientists and Analytics that Beth is part of that work hard to do a lot of manual audits to get this data to us that can inform our strategies, a lot of data-driven strategies.

And then uh we also have a quality improvement and accountability unit that regularly monitors to make sure these operational improvements are working, that they're working on time, making sure all the timelines and goals are met.

And I'm almost done.

Um, I just wanted to end with a forward-looking view of what we're looking to do in the future.

Um in terms of future improvements.

Um we're working on a short form notifications portal.

So I think uh this was discussed briefly.

Um there's some challenges with getting notifications or affidavits of short form notifications from other agencies.

They're supposed to send it to the sheriff's office.

Um, however, right now the process is kind of fragmented with you know getting um these form with these affidavits by email or you know, not getting them sometimes.

So the goal uh our office is trying to meet right now is to get law enforcement agencies to submit their short form notification affidavits either by attaching a PDF or a photo upload from a smartphone into a portal that can be electronically transmitted to the clerk's office to just speed up the process of getting those short form notifications registered so that we know that the order's been served.

And I know that's gonna help with the prosecution of violations of OPs as well.

Um then we've got uh an effort going on to make the confidential information form digital that could um basically allow the petitioner to fill out the digital form either on a smartphone or a kiosk.

Um making sure that the electronic entering of the data would uh automate the process of the information going into the grid and making service faster and more efficient and um making us able to serve those orders the same day.

Um the pilot at the Markham courthouse.

Uh, we're hoping to install some kiosks to see if that could help with the digital confidential information form.

We're gonna continue to offer those wellness checks to petitioners who are interested in squad cars coming by to do a wellness check to their comfort level.

Um, and in addition to that, we're trying to explore some alternatives uh to to when personal service fails after multiple attempts, making sure that petitioners have the uh awareness and education and outreach needed to help us best serve their needs.

Um, and finally, we have a commitment from the clerk's office to increase electronic transmission of information to speed in up the process.

So those are some of the improvements and initiatives our office is hoping to implement in the next um few months to years, and um hoping to uh get more buy-in from stakeholders and work with everyone collaboratively to implement those.

And with that, I will end the presentation with an invitation to anyone who is um interested in walking through our process to get a better idea of how the OPs get served.

I hope this presentation was helpful.

I know that Commissioner Naya had spent some time with our civil process unit getting to know the service process.

We would welcome others as well.

And we'll take any questions now.

Thank you so much.

That was such a wonderful presentation that I just had so much great information and thank you.

That was that was really great.

Um, Commissioner Miller, did you have a question you wanted to ask?

And then I'm sorry, I think I see some in the chat, but I'll look at those.

But yeah, Commissioner Miller, would you like to?

Yes, hi.

Thank you so much for this in-depth information and all of the data associated with it.

I know you've put a lot of work into that, so thank you.

Um, I just wanted to go back to the training on the judges.

Uh, you were talking about that the training portal or the portal was launched about two years ago.

And in that training, do you happen to know how many judges have been trained so far?

Um, so I know that last year, uh, I think summer of last year, we did some training for the domestic violence courthouse judicial staff.

Um that training, I believe uh included 16 to 20 staff members.

Um, and then this year in March, we did um a demo for the domestic relations judges, I believe, and don't quote me on this, please.

Um, I believe it was 22 judges from domestic relations that took part in that demo.

Um it was not so much a training, but to show uh the a demo of how the portal works and how to look for information in the portal.

Is this something mandatory for the judges to participate in or is it optional?

Totally optional.

This is just one of the ideas that we thought as an office could be helpful to gather additional information for service.

Um totally optional.

Um, like I said, they can go in, enter the uh if they're interested in looking up an OP or status of an OP, they can go in, look at the service uh attempt information and optionally provide additional information.

Okay, thanks so much.

Sorry, Amy, I think you're on mute.

I am, thank you.

Sorry about that.

I was just noticing some questions in the chat that look like are being answered.

Um Cynthia asked, how does a survivor sign up for the portal?

I think you said when they're is that when they're filling out the order of protection, it's that four-digit code.

Correct.

So when they're filling out the confidential information form, they can uh select a pin number um and then use that pin number to access the portal.

Okay, and that that sheet is part of the order of protection.

Is that right?

Correct.

When they're filling out the petition for order of protection, that confidential information sheet is part of that packet.

Okay, wonderful.

And then if you're using uh trees asked, if you're using an electronic kiosk for confidential form, uh, will your office need the case number before they use the kiosk?

That is an excellent question that we will need to address um at some point is how to connect the entering of the confidential information form with the order once it's entered and gets assigned a number.

So we're still in the process of figuring that out.

Okay, wonderful.

And then hold on, you guys.

I did sorry, this is Renata.

I just want to flag that Colin is confirming that a case number is not required.

They match it up with the petitioner and respondents' names.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Are there any other questions from people on the task force?

Is it only the names or the more identifiers?

Okay.

Because I I believe only the name would be.

Okay.

And I just wanted to clarify we don't have the kiosks yet.

We are planning to install them first at Markham as a pilot project.

Um, and we're hoping that the digital confidential information form can be filled out on the kiosk and some of these questions of how to associate the confidential information form to the order that's entered.

Um we're talking about solutions which include matching number names and information on the form to the order of protection number.

Wonderful.

Okay.

And then uh Nancy, did you have a question?

I did, but Sarah Brown um had her hand raised before I did.

Sarah, can you unmute?

I don't know if she's on any more, but I'm communicating with her, so I can ask.

So Nancy, if you want to go ahead and ask your question, go ahead.

Okay, great.

Um, I just wanted to ask the confidential information sheet.

Um, I know that's not part of the court file, but where are you the information that's on that sheet?

Where is it coming from?

From the petitioner.

So the confidential information sheet is included in the petition that the petitioner is filling out.

And it includes the respondents' name, the uh location, home address, work address, um, any information on the work schedule, anything that could help the sheriff's office serve the order.

So it is coming directly from the petitioner.

As you said, um, as you noted, it's not included in the court file.

It goes straight to the sheriff's office, and the sheriff's office uses that information to enter into our internal uh databases.

And when the order is dispatched for service, that information is used by our office.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um I also want to know go ahead.

I just want to ask, um, you said so 92% of um petitions not served, it's because of no contact with the respondent.

The other 7%, can you elaborate a little bit more on the reasons why um it was not served?

The petition wasn't served.

Um, I you know, at this time I don't have the specifics, but I can get back to you on that.

We do look at what other contributing factors uh might be contributing to no service on those.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um right.

Thank you, Renata, for sharing that.

And I think we got some here.

All right.

Well, it is um one o'clock.

I just want to be respectful of everyone's time.

Um it looks like Sarah, you asked, can sheriff um police and other uh police enforce remedies.

I don't know.

Are you able to see that question?

Uh Gentua.

Yeah, so I was just scrolling through the questions.

There's a lot.

Um, and I'm happy to answer any questions after this meeting ends.

Um, feel free to email us and Colin, thank you for answering a lot of the questions.

Um I think somebody did uh Colin did answer that question.

So Sarah Brown asked, can sheriffs police and other police enforce remedies?

And Colin responded, no.

Okay.

And then if not, um, how can deputy sheriffs help or is there a way to uh to look into that?

Uh so I think it's I I think we need to talk about what remedies we're referring to.

Um if it's exclusive possession of residence type of remedy or return of minor, those are usually done by sheriff uh sheriff's deputies.

Um but if it's a surrender of firearm, I think any police officer serving our short form notification can take surrender of the firearm and inventory it and send the receipt to the court.

And Joe might be able to add some more information.

Go ahead, Joe.

Hi, Chief.

Thank you.

Um I think there's a I think we're answering two different things here.

So uh the sheriff's office, when there's an enforceable remedy, we're assigning that to our civil process units for those return of minor exclusive possession, those types of of enforcement, because we are we basically do those day in, day out, and we're much more comfortable with it.

However, under the state statute, yes, any law enforcement officer can enforce those remedies while serving that short form.

So if that return of minor needs to be enforced at the time of a short form service, any law enforcement officer in the state can enforce that remedy.

Same thing with the exclusive possession, same thing with like uh stay away under the influence of drugs or alcohol from a residence, um, things of that nature.

So, but in general practice for the sheriff's office, we do assign those to our civil process units for enforcement because we do that on a regular basis.

Thanks, Judy.

Thank you.

So very good.

Thank you so much.

Are there any other last minute questions from any task force members or anybody?

I think that should be good.

Um okay, perfect.

Thank you, Kia.

Um, all right.

Well, thank you so much, Gent.

That was really that was such a great presentation, just all the information that was really helpful.

It definitely cleared some things up for me.

Um, if there are any other questions, please feel free to meet uh email me.

I know Colin also put his email in there.

Um, but with that, that was that was really great.

Thank you.

That was a really really extensive presentation.

That was just great, great information.

Um, if there's no other questions, uh Alderman Tabaras, would you mind adjoining the meeting?

Yes, this adjour is the meeting of the Chicago and Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force, the high priority and data and research working group.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you all so much.

All right, talk soon.