Good morning.

Today is Tuesday, June 2nd.

I call this meeting of the law and judicial to order at 10:30.

In addition to being able to attend in person, remote attendance has been made available to the public via Zoom at the link on the agenda.

This meeting is being recorded through Zoom.

I don't think anybody's requested remotely.

All right.

So we do have a physical quorum, so we can do the pledge.

Mara, would you lead us in the pledge of the allegiance to the fled of the United States of America?

And to the Republic for which it stands.

Thank you.

All right.

May I have a roll call.

Member Altenberg?

Yeah.

Chair Cunningham is absent.

Member Dan Ford.

Member Kinesnik.

Member Kyle.

Present.

Member Peterson.

And Vice Chair Roberts.

Here.

Okay, you can mark in the meetings that we have a quorum and we may begin the meeting.

There is no addenda to the agenda.

Any public comments?

No public comments.

Thank you.

Um chair remarks.

Well, I'm wishing our chair better health and hopeful she'll be back here soon.

And um, with that, we'll get started.

Uh unfinished business.

There is none.

No unfinished business.

New business.

Um consent agenda 8.1 to 8.4.

Do we need a motion and a second motion by um Altenberg second by Peterson?

All in favor.

None opposed.

Motion carries.

8.2.

Aaron Cartwright Weinstein and Jennifer.

Whoops, we'll be eight point.

Where are we at?

I'm sorry.

All right, excuse me.

8.5.

Jennifer Bannett Coroner and Steven Newton, Chief Deputy Coroner, to do a PowerPoint.

If you come on, thank you.

This is coroner's annual update.

Um corner, I'm going to give you our annual report.

Are we there?

We go.

This is my Chief Deputy Steve Newton.

Welcome.

Go ahead, we can advance.

You should have a remarkable.

Sorry, sorry.

That's okay.

All right.

So just some uh a review of the over um of the overall uh responsibilities of our office.

Um the coroner's office is uh is charged with conducting death investigations, so primarily um screening all deaths that happen within the county and uh conducting further investigation if it's determined or thought that it's possibly a preventable death.

Um administrative functions include um giving certification uh certifications of death and cremation permits, and then finally providing additional uh family support um with some of the resources and the community partners that we've established relationships with.

An overview of our staffing.

We are a team of 15 uh personnel, 13 of which are under the collective bargaining agreement with AFSME.

Um we have eight deputy coroners or investigators.

We had um two um uh we had two deputy coroner positions that were uh vacant this year, which we were able to um replace.

Um we have very low turnover, but when we do have turnover, we actually um get quite a few uh applicants, usually upwards of 60 or 70 folks interested in working in our office.

So one retirement of somebody that was uh had worked for us for 22 years, and then we had another staff member who was also a deputy coroner who transitioned over to the sheriff's office.

Otherwise, we are fully staffed.

Some statistics from our office this year, comparing uh 2025 to 2024, we see a slight uh decrease in the overall deaths reported from in 2024, 5,634 to 5,249 in 2025.

And then in 2024, 631 deaths required further investigation.

And in 2025, there were 614.

Um so no drastic changes in numbers, but a slight decline.

Um the largest preventable death that we saw actually a decrease in was suicides.

We saw a decrease of 23%.

Um what that averages out, uh the 78 per year that you see per deputy means that each of those eight deputy coroners are conducting approximately uh 78 death investigations.

Can I ask a question?

Absolutely the uh further investigation exactly what it's because for what reason?

That could be um somebody, for instance, has not seen a medical doctor for an extended period of time, but maybe they are of advanced age, so their passing isn't terribly surprising, but there is requires additional investigation because we just want to make sure that there isn't something preventable that might have happened.

So usually it involves um obtaining maybe history from the family or obtaining those um those latent medical records that might be older, but that would give us additional information surrounding the death.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So this just shows um a comparison of our uh case closures from 2018 to 2026, um, showing those trends.

So our our goal is to uh close a death investigation or complete a death investigation in no longer than 60 days.

And for 2025, 86.31% of our cases were closed in 60 days.

So you might wonder, you know, what kinds of things are happening during those 60 days.

Um the decedent would be transported to our office uh very quickly, we would actually do the autopsy and uh complete our gross, what I would say is our gross investigation.

And then the decedent would be able to be removed by the funeral home.

The sometimes the additional delay can be maybe the receipt or um obtaining medical records, but probably more significantly is there's only a couple of forensic labs that do more expansive testing than what our office is capable of doing.

And so we will send specimen or perhaps tissue, things like that off to a forensic lab that will do further testing, and that testing can take five or six weeks to come back.

And so then the forensic pathologist needs to review that information before the death investigation can be completed.

Additionally, um, some things that might require additional time would be receiving um information or reports from law enforcement, um, things like that.

Sorry about that.

I'm pushing the maybe.

Sorry, I'm going backwards.

There we go.

Okay.

Apologies.

So the status of our ongoing activities, these are categorized in the ways that our office are meeting the county's goals.

Um, so uh participation in multiple task forces.

Um Steve has uh chaired the suicide prevention task force.

Um I am also the chair of the um uh overdose task force.

Um I'm sorry, the suicide prevention test force, yes, and the um overdose task force.

I serve on a working group that um overlooks the grants that we've been disseminating within the community, lots of good work that's being uh done there.

Um every fiscal year, we have I would say approximately 35 to 40 community engagements.

Um and so that would be folks coming to our office for tours, but that would also be us interfacing with other community organizations, whether that be schools or um folks that are also looking for ways to um reduce um uh overdoses um and for instance, other like mental health prevention, things like that.

Uh Steve, do you want to go ahead and and talk a little bit about the uh reaccreditation process?

Yeah.

So last year when I was here before you giving our update, I told you we were in the process of being reaccredited, and we successfully did complete that reaccreditation in August.

Um the president of the IACME, the International Association for Corners and Medical Examiners was one of our auditors.

Um came out to Lake County, saw our facility, saw the quality of work that's being put out from our office, and uh we received 100% out of 100% for our reaccreditation in both categories.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Steve did a lot of the heavy lifting on that.

So I just want to offer my my thanks to him for doing that.

Um I should also mention um going back up to the first goal is um with in partnership with the health department.

This is the first year that we have um initiated in a la um adjacently with the Illinois Department of Public Health and overdose prevention fatality review board.

Um and so we are about halfway through our first case review.

Our goal is to do two um cases every year.

And this is like this is really um a postmortem assessment with a cross section of people throughout the county.

Uh and then the idea would be is that we would ultimately make some recommendations or share our insights with the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Um we are not the only county that's participating in that.

Um so the idea would be it would um we would be helping to inform the the state regarding um overdoses here in Lake County so that um other potential policies or interventions can be um initiated.

Um your suicide rates are down.

And do you account um account that too?

Maybe your education and going around schools, talking to schools.

Do you think I don't know if you can measure that, but we hope so.

Yeah.

I mean, we I mean these are good numbers and yeah.

I think the uh correlation and causation is difficult to it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what is helping things to decrease.

I should mention that we saw a significant decrease in our opioid fatalities.

Um that was a common trend that was seen across the country in 2025.

Um if you um if you tune in to public health officials, nobody knows exactly why what's that's attributed to.

Um in terms of our numbers.

So our numbers in 20 for overdose fatalities were in the 50s, um, which was uh just a huge decrease.

Uh however, right now we're around through April, we've seen about 31.

And so if you overdose fatalities re related to opioids, so if you multiply that out um times three, we're looking at maybe just under 100, which would still be a decrease from previous trends, but it would be up from 2025, if that makes sense.

I know that was a lot of does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

It's all really great information.

I I just want to go a little deeper for a minute because I was gonna ask the same question that Vice Chair Roberts asked.

Um, are you making a connection between the decrease in the number of suicides and the information you just shared regarding opioids?

Because that in connection is not obvious to me.

Can you explain?

I would say that we don't, I mean, I think if I don't think that we definitively know exactly if it's because of our Steve's involvement in the suicide prevention task force or if it's the opioid working group.

Um if you look at the touch points that the working group that the grants that we've been putting out into the community, um, you know, lots of Narcan distribution, lots of soft handoffs between um between groups, treatment facilities, law enforcement, and things like that.

Um I don't think that there's a definitive um, I don't think that we can definitively pinpoint that those things are um that those things are making a difference.

We hope they are, but I don't know that we know that for certain, to be honest.

Okay, so I'm sure it's a combination of many factors, but I guess I'm just you seem to have um contextual knowledge that I don't have.

Are you saying that a lot of opioid deaths you end up classifying as suicides?

Is that it?

No, no, those are not.

Um, in fact, when we were reviewing numbers for today, anything that was a suicide that we it was not included, that's not included in that number 31 that I gave you earlier.

So there were a couple that actually were suicides, but that was not included in that number.

Those two numbers are separated out.

So maybe maybe I will follow up with Steve or something for a more in-depth conversation later.

Thank you.

That 23% decrease in suicides that would include any suicide that potentially somebody took additional medication that was maybe an opioid-based.

So that 23% reduction would have been would have included those.

Um opioid fatalities would mean that somebody um consumes something and their intention was it was accidental.

Okay.

And then finally, can you just put that 23% reduction in context for me?

Like how does it compare?

Does that seem like a large decrease from your point of view and how does it compare to other parts of the country or the other counties?

It was a larger decrease than the country saw last year.

23% was a huge decrease.

There was a decrease nationwide, but not past the 10% mark.

Well, it sounds like it has a lot to do with the great collaboration that's going on between your office and other offices at the county and and community partners, both nonprofit and educational.

I mean, it sounds like a really incredible success for just sort of the the way different stakeholders work together to try to address this problem.

It's really just wonderful news to hear.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Commissioner Altiber.

Yeah, so I just wanted to mention, you know, it's volunteer voluntarily you are choosing to get involved in suicide prevention and choosing to get involved with our opioid initiative.

And we really appreciate that.

You know, it's very important that it's nice to see that our offices are out in the community really connecting with various parts of our community and really getting very positive messages out there and doing the work to help our, you know, the mental health aspect of what's happening and along with our health department.

And we really appreciate all your efforts because I know you both have been put a lot of time and effort into those areas.

So thank you.

Thanks, Member Altenberg.

Um, yes, we have a really great partner over at the health department, and they've been um they've been very helpful.

Um so just continuing on in terms of how our office is supporting the um county goals.

Um, one of the things that I'd like to highlight is um our resources and support um and expanded involvement with missing pieces, just as a reminder, missing pieces is an organization with children's lorry.

Um, and so every um family that um experiences the loss of a loved one that's 24 years of age or younger, uh we ask permission from the family if we can um if we can pass along or make a referral to missing pieces on their behalf.

Um, and then missing pieces will uh reach out to them and offer grief support services.

Um and so, you know, I I tell folks that um as somebody that conducts death investigations um for preventable death, my job is to hopefully put myself out of a job.

We don't want preventable death.

And um, you know, all of the cases are tragic.

However, when somebody loses a loved one 24 years of age or under, it's especially tragic.

So we're thankful for this opportunity.

Missing pieces um might offer um a ways that they can get financial support.

It might be counseling, it might be uh networking them with a um another group that could prefer uh could provide services.

We know that when these um tragedies happen, then on average, about a hundred people are further affected by experiencing this.

So it's helpful that we can do that.

Um the additional thing that this provides is that um, you know, you can imagine that for the folks that work in our office that this is an especially taxing job over the years.

And um, I think being able to know that we do provide support and help, and that uh it's not just a, you know, it's not just a one-stop shop at the coroner's office that we actually are doing outreach to try to provide services for the family.

That is a free service.

Um that is happening under a grant.

So that is really wonderful.

I um missing pieces is looking to expand their services because it's not just when somebody is young, that was the resources that they had at that time.

So Missing Pieces is looking to expand their services to maybe include adult aged folks, families that have lost adult aged folks.

Um I will also say that I was at an event um uh for healthcare providers that have experienced trauma.

And Rush University actually also has a free service.

We're looking to um uh they were very open to uh me giving referrals.

Um, so we're looking to potentially partner with them, which would be great.

Um we have maintained a significant reduction in our overtime expenses um in 2025.

That number was approximately $4,300, which is um quite small.

That usually happens when um, for instance, our uh forensic dentist or our forensic anthropologist needs to come in after hours and do um some additional work.

Uh just to give you some reference prior to 2020, it was about $60,000 in overtime um overtime expenses.

Um with the transition a couple years ago um to the increase in cremation expenses.

We've uh been able to transition all of our most of our expense expenditures from our general fund to um the coroner's fees revenue.

So that uh is helpful.

Um coroner, I have a question.

So on the cremation, that's when there are people who don't have families or they can't afford it or we issue cremation uh permits for anybody that is cremated.

So that money, that revenue comes back to our office.

And that was increased in 2023 to 100.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

So um we do an additional um revenue generating uh something that's additionally uh revenue generating that comes from our office is we do have a uh lab services.

We are planning on increasing our uh price for that, an additional dollar fifty uh for each test that's performed, and so that will generate a little bit more revenue.

It's also possible that there are um other treatment facilities that will uh will would need lab services.

So we're hoping to maybe expand our revenue by um seeing if there's other people that we could uh work with.

And over the course of about the past year and a half, we've really expanded our emergency medical services uh training with the different hospitals that have the paramedic class throughout the county.

Um it started off with one, we're now up to three and about to onboard a fourth paramedic program to do a rotation through the coroner's office to have that experience before they actually get out into the field and kind of know what they're looking at.

And coroner Bannock mentioned missing pieces.

I just wanted to take a second and tell you something that's about to happen in July.

Lake County likes to be the leader, right?

We like to be at the forefront.

We like to have the the latest and greatest and share that with people.

We were the pilot coroner's office for missing pieces.

And that's now expanded to all the collar counties as well as it's down in Peoria and out in Rockford.

And uh one of the directors of Missing Pieces had talked to me at a function probably about a year ago now and said, wouldn't it be great if we could take this to a national stage someday?

And of course, I just did the yeah, that'd be great.

Like thinking that no.

This July, I'll be at the International Association of Coroner and Medical Examiners Conference as a speaker presenting Lake County's framework to work with an organization like Missing Pieces, hoping to now spread that out throughout the nation.

Maybe not Missing Pieces, but maybe another organization in their community, just providing them the framework with how it started to where it's gone now.

So that'll be that'll be a great pat on the back for Lake County.

This summer you said July.

July.

Yeah.

Where is it being held?

Las Vegas.

At no cost to the county.

Missing Pieces is paying for everything.

It was close by and oh wait, somebody can show up.

But I mean, you can show up in Las Vegas at the class in July when it's 120.

No, thank you.

So uh moving on to um staff development and accountability.

I will say Steve has also done a really great job of not only ensuring that our staff has their necessary continuing education, but really looking for opportunities that are nearby and oftentimes free while we have a continuing education line item.

Oftentimes we're able to find these nearby and satisfy the requirements that the folks need to be certified by the American Board of Medical Legal Death Investigators.

We expect that we will continue to maintain our 60-day closure rate as uh close to 80%, uh preferably larger, which we've been able to achieve over the last um six years.

Uh we are also, if you remember, uh you asked um uh Chair Roberts about um what the cremations were for.

And indeed, there are sometimes uh folks that don't have family members that are able to um prepare for the final disposition of their loved ones.

And so we are hoping to do another ecumenical uh uh burial for those uh cremings.

Um we did our first one probably four years ago.

Two, two years ago.

Okay.

Uh and so we plan on doing our our uh secondary follow-up one.

And happy to answer any additional questions that you might have.

Anyone um I just wanted to say thank you for the great work that you guys do that really goes above and beyond uh what a coroner's office is really required to do.

Um I was able to attend the burial that uh that you had for the indigent persons.

I you may have just mentioned I can't remember how many people it was, but it had never been done.

Is it round between 70 and 80?

So 70 and 80 people whose remains have been cremated and were somewhere in the coroner's office.

And oh sorry.

I apologize.

No worries.

Uh and you know, you had um a religious leader there who spoke and had a blessing.

And I mean, it was a really really lovely ceremony, and I heard you say that you're gonna have another one.

And um, I I just hope I'm able to attend because it it um certainly helps you remember those who um who don't have anybody in their life and and you all took the time to to honor them and their lives.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you for this great presentation, as always, and always the good work you you do and Steve.

You're you as well, coroner banning, but your pleasure to work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is 8.6, Chief Klaus and Katie Lattice, uh contracts managers from the manager from the Lake County Sheriff's Department.

It's a joint resolution to enter into the contract in Global Tech Link Corporation, uh DBA via Via Path Technologies Falls Church, Virginia to provide inmate phone video visitation tablet and mail scanning for the Lake County jail.

I need a motion and a second motion by Kenishnik, second by Altenburg.

You're on.

Good morning, everyone.

Katie Latis with the Sheriff's Office.

I have Chief Klaus with me too, uh, to answer any questions you all may have at the end.

Uh, we're here for the Vipath contract, which would um, which is for the phones, tablets, video visitation, and mail scanning for the jail.

It only impacts the Lake County jail.

Uh so the inmates at McHenry are covered under McHenry's contract, but they are offered all of the same services that we offer at our jail to our inmates.

Uh, a few key points that I want to point out is that our current contract expires August 1st of this year, and Via Path would be our incumbent vendor.

There is no change in equipment, operations, or pricing.

So recently the FCC changed the rates for phone calls and video visitation, and we were already at that level that they reduced it to.

So there's there's no change needed in that aspect of it.

Um, the contract does include an on-site technician Monday through Friday, full time.

Um their role essentially is swapping out equipment, um, answering grievances, and what that allows for is that our staff in the jail is not necessary to take on that responsibility.

Um a question about legal mail was brought up earlier, and I just want to kind of explain that to you.

I'm sorry, mail scanning.

Uh the legal mail is handled in-house by our correctional officer staff.

It is just the normal mail that's sent out for the scanning.

It is addressed to a PO box, and once that processing CNR Center scans it in, it is sent to our correctional officers to review to make sure there's nothing inappropriate in there.

Once it's approved, it is then sent to the inmate where they can view it on their tablet for free.

Um I also want to point out the tablets are on a one-to-one ratio.

So every inmate has access to a tablet.

There's no fighting over it.

Um, does anybody have any questions?

Uh Chair Hart.

Thank you.

Um, and I appreciate you making uh telling us that every they're all one-to-one.

So nobody's waiting.

Um, I'm just assuming that the use of these uh tablets have probably gone up since people aren't allowed visitors in the um in the jail.

Is that I mean, I would just think um, yeah, that's going up quite a bit.

People are about visitors.

Uh I don't know where that uh on-site visitation.

We haven't done on-site visitation in over probably 10 years.

And when we did do on-site visiting, it was done on kiosks where the individual would come in and the inmate would go into a visiting booth and they would visit on the kiosk.

We haven't done the behind the glass visiting, and I don't have the exact date in front of me, but it's been over 10 years.

Oh, interesting.

Since we've done that.

The inmates do get one half hour free visits remotely, and then they're charged the 25 cents a minute for the general public, or it's down to 19 cents now when they go to visit.

Uh, I will say that from every all the input that I've received from the inmates and from the general public, they prefer this method than driving all the way down to Waukegan, waiting in line for 45 minutes to see the individual the way we used to do it.

And this way they can also before we had scheduled visit times where you could only visit someone maybe on a Wednesday and Thursday when we had assigned visitors in.

Now, between eight and and 10 o'clock at night, they can visit.

So the it's so convenient for the general public to visit their loved ones that we believe this is the preferred method, and that if we went back to the old method, that uh there would be more problems than what we're doing now.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I was thinking maybe both, not necessarily just one or the other.

But thank you.

I didn't realize that had been about 10 years.

I thought it's a good time.

I don't have the exact date.

And we thought it was um right around COVID.

So thank you for correcting.

We have on occasion, if someone reaches out to me or one of the deputy chiefs for someone, not everyone's as tech savvy or someone's not.

We have allowed them to come on site and use the kiosk or uh actually go behind the glass, but those are extremely rare rare cases that we would do that.

Got it.

Thank you.

And I you you uh graciously allowed me to visit uh a neighbor young man who anyway.

Uh so I appreciated that very much.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

I'm glad to see that it doesn't, it didn't go up because it's it's such a burden on the inmates and their families when they need to make or even to call their attorneys.

It's so I'm glad to see that it hasn't increased.

Um if there's no further question, I'm all in favor.

Not opposed.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you.

8.7 um is a joint resolution accepting a grant from the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and uh Standards Board of the Law Enforcement Can Grant in the amount of $54,434 for reimbursement of previous budget expenses and Jim Chammernik, business manager.

Welcome.

I need a motion and a second.

Motion by Dan Ford, second by Aldenberg.

Good morning, Jim Chairman from the Sheriff's Office.

This is a relatively new grant that was born out of part of the Safety Act where uh Illinois law enforcement uh training board, standards board, let's be uh allocates money for law enforcement uh to apply for this grant.

So there's about a thousand applicants every year.

It could be uh sheriff's office, could be police departments, some park districts.

Uh so we all compete for this money, so we always budget for the full amount of our body cameras because we're not sure what allocation uh will be allotted.

So this money's going back to the general fund.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Questions?

No questions.

Um all in favor?

Aye.

Not opposed.

Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Item 8.8 is a joint resolution authorizing a one-year agreement with the renewal options with co-file technologies of Dallas, Texas for digital solutions and record management for the lake county clerk of the circuit court and estimated annual annual amount of 400,000 for the first year and 300 for the subs um the next year.

I need a motion and a second.

Kanijnik and Kyle.

Aaron.

Good morning.

Are looking to contract with CO-File to do our um document scanning for the microfilm.

Um, it's our goal to get out of microfilm all together.

We um have struggled with finding companies that actually have the technology to be able to um fix some of the um documents that are really not legible.

They have much better technology, and so they are more expensive because of this technology, so that's why it's taking more time to be able to do the microfilm.

Um, but this is one set of our microfilm.

We have three sets.

We've done some, um, and that was when we learned that their technology was not good enough.

Um, of the duplex, we also have simplex and oracle roles.

So this would be the simplex roles.

Okay.

Any questions?

How many documents do you have?

You have this in total?

Is this it's huge, right?

It's huge.

Millions, right?

You I mean, yeah, well, we've four microfilms so far.

We have scanned 107 million, I think.

Um, but we have a lot to go to go.

Yeah, it goes back to the 1800s.

Wow.

In early 1800, yeah.

Let's go ahead.

Walter.

Can you project?

Do you have any idea like how many more years it's gonna take to do all that?

Well, with this, I joked in technology committee.

If the county wants to help finance some of it, it would go a lot faster.

Um, it's the money issue.

So we're gonna afford per year out of dock storage.

So that's the 400,000.

This is a much more expensive company, so it is taking time, but we'd rather do it right the first time and not be going backwards or have another circuit clerk in 20 years asking you to do this again, you know.

So yeah, we don't need the thank you.

No further questions.

All in favor.

Aye.

None opposed, motion carries.

Thank you.

And then I have an annual update.

Oh, yes, you're next.

8.9 is annual update.

Wonder why you're looking at me.

Like it's longer yet.

I gotta stick around for a few minutes.

Um, so I know um most of you know my office um and have heard these updates before, but you know, we have the five courthouses, we have the three traffic courts, uh, juvenile and verning hills, and then we have majority of our cases here in Waukegan.

When we are working uh daily, we are constantly having changes from the Supreme Court, from the legislators, and also um from our own judges who produce local court roles and amended rule um administrative orders that we have to follow.

So we do um comply with all of those different uh uh agencies and all of their requests um as we work through all of this.

Um so they always they always say we're the record keeper for the court system.

That's incredible.

That is true, but there's so many other things that our office does.

Um, we are really the gateway and we spend most of our time uh helping out the citizens of Lake County and working through all of the um different court processes that we have.

We do record searches, those record searches help um with immigration, they help um citizenship and you know, people who are looking for employment who need to show that cases have been um dismissed.

We also um just provide general documents for people who are going through whether it's name changes for divorces, it's uh after a divorce or something to that effect.

We also maintain all um, we have to do the forms.

Our judiciary does have their own forms committee, uh, so they do create quite a few forms that people can use um in our within our court system, but there's also the Illinois Supreme Court who provides forms.

We have to take those forms.

Uh we can't reject them, even though a lot of times we don't find that they're sufficient for uh what we need, or they don't provide the court with everything that they need um information-wise.

But uh we we have to accept those.

Uh we also have e-filing right now, we're e-filing civil documents, but within that I believe 30 to 60 days, we will be e-filing criminal documents as well.

And we have added some e-filing stations and some staff to be able to help patrons through that.

We don't have as many sole represented um patrons in criminal.

We do have quite a few in traffic, uh, but we're but hopefully we won't have as many documents there.

We'll have to see, uh, but we do have a significant um usually it's the attorneys who are working on those cases.

So we're hoping it's not going to be quite as big of a lift as the civil e-filing was when we started, but uh we will still be addressing it.

We process passports.

We're one of we're one of very few uh county circuit clerk's offices that do that, but we are still providing that service.

And we also have a finance department that handles all of the payments.

Uh they bring in all of the money that comes in through all the different schedules, and then they also disperse them all to the municipalities, counties, state agencies, or other entities, such as restitution or um the judges required a contribution to somebody for some particular purpose.

Uh the administrative office of Illinois courts or the AOIC, uh, they are the mainly the ones who take in all of our data.

They we have approximately probably 20 different reports that we do for them.

Um they actually just changed one recently.

I was just reading it while I was sitting here waiting.

Um, as to how we manage all of the data, they keep it up on the Illinois Supreme Court website so that you can see data and they keep track of all of the um performance of our judges, et cetera, so that you can see how long maybe a case is starting to finish.

Um they do we have to do read real-time reporting to ISP, um, and they have to so that they can keep track of whether or not maybe someone's driver's license has been revoked, or um, now they are actually the when there is a child support or rearage um passports can be taken.

That is a new initiative that's coming up.

Um, so if you're delinquent on your child support, get it paid up, or you'll lose your passport.

Um, and then you have to fully renew for it after that.

Um, but we can provide that service when they're ready to renew, and they've caught up on their child support.

So this gives you some performance highlights that we have.

Um so the these are civil documents that are these are full documents that have been done, not just e-file documents.

So we've taken in 1,349,104 total documents.

That's not images, that's full documents.

Um, this gives you an idea of the criminal civil um filings that we have taken in.

Uh, those um those changed, and I know I reported that to you a couple years ago that um we no longer have another case number for every single type of file that is that is brought in, but we they now come in and counts.

So this does not include this is this shows you the counts as well as shows you the actual initial documentation.

How much has that increased over last year?

Or I'd have to look for you.

I'm sorry, they only gave me that they only gave me 2025, but we're not gonna have a ton of data on that yet because it was 20 part way through 23, 24, and then 25.

It's next year.

Yeah, we will I can look and see what we have so far, but um, yeah, we've we've stayed busy.

Um, so this also gives you the number of applications passport applications we processed, and then the number of credit card payments of 7.1 million.

And last year we did 27,096 transaction financial transactions.

Um, this gives you our disbursement numbers for municipalities, the state of Illinois, the Lake County Sheriff and Victims of Crime.

So that gives you we dispersed in 2025, 20,279,070 and 14 cents uh to those particular um agencies.

So that we have 137 staff.

That is what we have had since I came in.

I'm the 138th.

So we only have three part-time positions.

Um 134 of them are the full-time positions.

So these are our revenue projections that are for next next year that you will see coming up in the budget.

Uh, they added this slide just to give you some information.

Some of it is going up, some of it's going down, but we're staying pretty we're staying really pretty neutral from last year.

Um, we have joined in with the county and added our new website.

So we are really trying to make it more accessible and easier for people to use and also comply with the new ADA rules.

We going into, yeah.

So going into this, one of the new things that we have launched is called e certify.

E certify allows people to get certified documents through our portal instead of having to come into our office to get them.

So then they can take them to Social Security Administration, DMV, um, be able to use them without driving in and parking in Waukegan and trying to find my office in the middle of a labyrinth.

So this has really been a big um issue for attorneys, especially when they're doing qualified domestic relations orders and have to send them in, you know, for the division of pensions and 401ks and other retirement assets.

And we're really this is one of our access to justice pushes that we have just done.

So we are hoping um that this will be a huge benefit for attorneys and our constituents going forward.

So there are a few things that are still ongoing with the journal technology project.

Um we have just we had some changes in our warrants after we went live.

So that is now been modified and updated.

Uh, we have also um we're starting to work um on improving the reduction in manual um data entry by our clerks.

We are working towards um, we did have an AI solution.

That AI solution unfortunately was bought out by another company and the efficiency of it slowed down.

So we decided it wasn't worth the cost um to use it anymore, and we terminated it.

We are in the process of working with another company to bring AI in to do the work between the e-filing and the documents coming in being accepted or rejected, and then the information that is not on those e-file documents being moved over to the case management system.

Um journal technologies has that process, but only if you use their own e-filing system, and we are required by the state of Illinois to use Tyler's e-filing system.

No.

Um could you maybe you have this information, maybe no, but how many individual filings do you see in a given day they come through?

I believe there's approximate, oh man.

I mean, there's a I don't know on the criminal end.

I know on the civil end, we're probably at about 68,000 a month approximately.

Um, so that would be the current e-filing scenario when the criminal gets added, that's definitely, you know, we'll have a little bit more information because we would have to go in and create a new data um log to figure out the number of criminal e-filings per month.

But with that the filings aren't necessarily new cases, you're also including say any notice of motions, potions, anything like that to come through the system.

Anything coming through the system.

Yes.

Thank you.

Yeah, sure.

So yeah, we are definitely trying to alleviate that manual data entry because then we can either repurpose staff to help in other areas where we need assistance, or um, we will reduce through attrition.

The as far as the as far as e-filing goes, or as far as the um manual data entry goes, one of the good things is that we're in the process of going live with the e-citation product, and that e-citation product is going to have a significant reduction in data entry.

The the downside for us is that the Supreme Court has given us very, very large um orders that they have to fill out in traffic court.

I know member Dampworth, you can attest to those orders.

They're like three or four pages long, and it takes a while for those orders to be entered.

And oh, yes, you do know.

Um interim chair Roberts.

Um so we um so we are in the process right now of trying to work with the courts to repurpose staff in a way that will allow to help the attorneys in the courtrooms get those get those orders completed and done and keep the efficiency of the court calls moving.

I know in Mundaline last week, I believe we had approximately 600 cases on the call, and it's incredibly difficult for in an hour and a half time frame for a village attorney to be running around to every single litigant, trying to plea those cases out, or go to trial on the cases that have to go to trial and managing all the other issues and trying to draft, you know, six pages of court orders.

So that is something that the courts and I are working on right now to produce some more efficiency in there, but that's probably um, you know, where staff will get will end up being kind of repurposed for.

Um yeah, so we have another um AI.

I talked about the e criminal e-filing, but we and the digital digitization of the microfilm already in my request for co-file.

But we're also working, we have an AI pilot program that we're doing with um with a company that is actually going through the documents and checking on quality control.

So that process is starting to happen now.

They're in the testing phase for it.

Um, but as all these documents, the courts don't want us to destroy documents until they know that we have everything in the system, which I obviously am 100% in agreement with.

So this AI pilot program is running through all of the different documents, taking a look, making sure that we don't see any sideways illegible, um, so that if there are any that we can get those rescanned and corrected before anything is destroyed uh we are also working with a new credit card processing company.

They pro their point and pay is going to be providing a better dashboard for constituents so that they um are able to use it in a more user-friendly manner, and it will add various types of you know, Apple Pay, Google Pay, all the different um all the different pay methods that we have today that we didn't have when we went with our current provider.

Question on that.

Are there will the fees be the same?

Or good.

Right.

We are we're we have actually negotiated a 2.35% on the credit cards, um, which is lower than the majority.

And then they have a $1 minimum fee.

So that is, yeah, they have stuck with that.

And we're that that's my goal to keep that because things are expensive enough in the judicial system.

And so we don't need to add to that.

Um so we talked about e citation.

Um we have we have worked with um JTI, not just on warrants, but remands and releases.

Um, we're working on notice of court dates for constituents.

Um, we do also have um we do have some legislation out there that looks like texting is gonna maybe come required.

Um that has been a discussion that's been going on with the justice partners and whether or not we whether or not attorneys want their clients to be texted by the circuit clerk's office for updated court dates, et cetera.

So that's that's been an ongoing discussion.

Um we have had discussions about texting.

Um and the public defenders office did have that grant for a while that they did.

Right, right.

And that was successful, wasn't it?

I think I I'm trying to recall, I believe it was successful.

I um stays at attorney's waist shaking his head, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I believe it was successful.

And I know um uh Mr.

Reinhardt and I have had quite a few conversations with the judiciary in our meetings talking about different texting options.

We haven't quite gotten there yet, but that is still on the radar and looks like from legislation may end up being required at some point.

I just wonder why attorney why they would not be in favor of it.

Then I mean, my goodness, the calls we have to make is reminding people to show up in court.

It would think that it would be really a benefit for everyone.

Right.

Well, they would have to opt in and so it would be up to the attorney and the litigant if they wanted that.

And that would, you know, I think sometimes it's just a contact that probably makes people nervous, but well, I think that's a great idea.

So yeah, we'll we'll we'll see, we'll see where that goes.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Uh no one.

Thank you for the update.

And it was a great presentation.

Thanks.

8.10 is a joint resolution authorizing the acceptance of execution of a renewal.

I need glasses.

Um Brian State Crisis Intervention Program, local firearm restriction order implementation support grant, which will assist the Lake County State's attorney's office with FRO implementation in the Lake County, including an emergency appropriation of $900,000 in uh grant funding.

I need a motion and a second motion by Kyle, second by Kanisnik, Joe Gravitter and State's attorney Reinhardt.

Good morning.

Morning, everyone.

Um I'm Joe Gravitter, Chief Deputy of Administrative Services for the State's Attorney's Office.

Um, this is a one-year grant that will expire April 30th of next year.

Um, and it is for the purpose of continuing to create awareness, educate petitioners and responders, and manage inquiries related to firearm uh restraining orders in Lake County.

And then additionally, excuse me, additionally our current uh fro trainer and fro navigator positions are also funded by this grant.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Oh, we're not done yet.

No, just a couple.

It's okay.

I'm sorry.

No, that's okay.

This is a really great grant.

It's $900,000.

Is that right, Joe?

Is that the total?

Correct.

Yeah.

Yes.

So $900,000.

We're handing out the, we're just handing out the brochures from this team that's been working for a while.

Frankly, I want to acknowledge Mar Altenberg and Paris Pereg specifically, who um who talked about uh originally a safe storage position.

Um and that's um that has obviously expanded through this uh skip grant, which also deals with firearm restraining orders as well as safe storage.

And we've put together a fantastic team that we call the Red Team, uh, because that's the GVI G VPI part of the of the diagram.

Um Rachel Jacoby, who's sitting behind me to my left, as well as an intern is here.

I wanted to acknowledge their work.

And there it is, great.

Only one slide for this one.

Um these firearm restraining orders being entered into leads, leads is the uh, I believe it's the law enforcement administrative data system.

Uh leads is how a police officer uh our partners out in the communities would know whether there was a firearm restraining order that needed to um uh be served or that needed to be um enforced against an individual who may be a domestic batterer or maybe uh potentially suicidal.

Uh this is because of the board's commitment to this work.

And I wanted to show this single graph today, uh, because you can see that this work exploded in 2023, 2024, and 2025 after we added a staffer.

That's what we're talking about.

We have to, if we're gonna do programs, we have to have staff.

Uh, and so adding a staffer and talking to law enforcement and health health department individual or excuse me, individuals and in healthcare schools, uh the firearm restraining order in particular is about awareness.

This is still only 100 out of the thousands of people who need potentially help uh in Lake County.

But this 101 orders puts us ahead of the state on a per capita basis.

It probably puts us ahead of the state on a total basis.

I haven't seen DuPage's numbers in 2025.

State's attorney Berlin and I have a uh uh have a sibling rivalry over this because both of us agree uh that it is a matter of awareness.

And he does, I learned from him, frankly.

Uh state's attorney Berlin has been training his law enforcement partners about firearm restraining orders uh for a number of years.

And frankly, our team learned from him that this really is about awareness, as I've said a few times.

So this is the only graph I wanted to show, uh, but it is uh really a testament to Rachel Jacoby, the red team and the GBPI uh for getting the word out in Lake County.

There's an estimate uh that uh every 10 to 20 of these uh extreme risk protection orders saves a life.

And so we think this is one of the reasons why we are seeing reduced suicides, reduced homicides in Lake County.

Um we know correlation is not causation, but my goodness, uh, this work is being done across the country, and it uh uh it is uh uh what we are also seeing here in Lake County.

I hope you enjoy the full, I hope you enjoy the folders that we prepare.

Right, these are this is really great information.

And Rachel is doing such good work and your your home.

She personally prepared those folders.

So every bun.

But I don't know if anyone has any questions.

Chair Hart.

I just want to say, I mean, this speaks volumes about the effort you all have put into this.

And if I recall correctly, in in the beginning, you know, when you were having these meetings, it felt if I maybe I just heard it through the grapevine, maybe it was more like pulling teeth about getting some of these uh froze as you call them, um, kind of up and running and getting registered.

But um, you know, each one of these just shows how um how this information sharing can potentially save lives.

Um, and the fact that it was down at four in 2019 and 101 in 2025.

And obviously, there's so many other things that have come into place are to come into play, but we've also seen a decline in violent uh violent crime.

Um, I think all of the work that you and your team are doing about um nonviolent prevention is is really working.

So um also I really want to emphasize this because it's on our Facebook right now, if anybody's watching or if this if this uh this board wants to go look on our Facebook right now, in connection with the National Ad Council, we are also running up um uh uh social media ads that come from this grant.

It does not come from it does not come from uh county county taxpayer dollars, but through this grant, we are uh seeing thousands of viewers learn about safe storage.

These are professionally produced ads frankly, the uh member Oltenberg and and and Perek really pushed us on this.

Um and that's a great example of of collaboration uh between friends and constructive advice, which was um do more in the uh in specifically in the uh in the uh in the sort of ad council space.

And so to partner with the National Ad Council, these are the ads that we've all grown up seeing uh about whether it's drugs or or guns or whatever it may be.

Uh to partner with the National Ad Council and to have thousands of late county viewers here, uh late county uh residents learning this message about either safe storage or firearms training orders uh is just uh another tool uh that we can to uh can use to help save lives.

That's I didn't know that you were involved in that.

That is great work.

Thank you so much.

And you had a question.

Yeah, Paris and I worked very diligently for over a year trying to convince Eric that we needed to get that message out in a certain way.

And I am so thrilled that you were able to find a grant to get that kind of messaging out.

It really makes a difference.

And um we feel like there's a lot of people who take for granted how they're putting their firearms away in their houses and kids are finding them.

And also it also helps the suicide rate because people are not able to get to those types of uh firearms, you know, in the end for that purpose.

Um Eric, you're doing phenomenal work.

And I I tell you all the time, I mean, these numbers are incredible.

Our crime in so many areas is going way down.

Your team is extraordinary, and your team is passionate about what they do.

And I think that really makes a difference too.

I see it all the time.

And yeah, we have even more statistics on the next annual report since my here for my annual report, there's even more.

So if there's any questions that anybody think of in this space, it overlaps with the uh it overlaps with the next presentation as well.

All right.

We're excited to hear it.

Before uh member Dan throughout the question based on the ads when I I just know that in it, I've heard from my police departments that there are a lot of cars being broken into with guns in them.

Are you including ads?

I mean, in the ads, safe storage for guns.

People can't carry guns and they leave them in their car.

Yeah.

Is there no including no?

I think this is more for we'll look into that.

I think this is more for home safe storage, but we can definitely uh we can definitely look at some content on that.

And I appreciate what uh uh what member Altenberg said.

At the end of the day, we were always looking for, frankly, a large amount of money uh to do an ad uh to do a big uh professionally produced ad.

And so it's not that we didn't ever want to do this.

It was always a question of frankly getting these skip grants and this partnership with the National Ad Council.

So um, this is one of our, frankly, one of our larger grants, and it makes sense that we would be, you know, in in this space and able to do to do something, something big.

The the um the CVI work, the community violence interruption work that the member Kanishnik has has taught us so much about, doesn't necessarily, though there are pieces of it, Mecklenburg, North Carolina has done that, or is it South Carolina Steve?

Where's Mecklenburg?

Anyway, wherever Mecklenburg, where is it?

North Carolina, thank you, Member Danforth.

Um Mecklenburg, for example, has a large social media uh build around traditional is CVI work traditional now, Sarah?

That's a good thing.

Around traditional CVI messaging.

Um this is specific social media uh uh buys around safe storage and froze.

Um, but um, you know, we always we always want to expand the whatever the channels are that people are listening, and if and if the social media changes from from Facebook to to TikTok or Instagram, we'll go wherever the we'll go where the viewers are uh in terms of this public awareness.

Member Dan Forth had a question.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, state attorney Reinhardt, and what I see the figure 101 in 2005, this is uh restraining orders or these plenary orders that were put in place.

They're both they're both types.

Okay, so the emergency that could lead to a plenary.

Yes, and I'm so the only this is how the Illinois State Police uh grades us.

And so if I make a comment about they don't really grade us, uh I'm saying that informally.

Um that the Illinois State Police gives us these these numbers back.

So if you ever see a comparison to DuPage County or Cook County, uh Cook County is massively bigger than us, and I think they have fewer froze than us.

Um, this is the number of orders entered.

Could I imagine counting this a different way?

Member Dan Forth, I could, but I would refer you to my friends at the Illinois State Police uh in terms of how they count these and compare apples to apples across the county.

Well, my follow-up question to that is this.

Um seeing this, these are civil orders, correct?

Yes.

How do they how do you differentiate that uh between say a civil order of protection in which a firearm order may be placed into that order?

And if you have the numbers on those.

Yes, sir.

So Member Dan Ford is asking a great question.

So that is a uh that is what we call the four uh paragraph 14.5 of a civil order of protection.

Uh Karina's law, which was passed uh really with a lot of support from law enforcement bipartisan in the last year or so.

Karina's law, Karina's law made sure that in a traditional civil order of protection, that 14.5 uh would be analyzed in emergency orders of protections, uh, in typical uh civil orders of protections.

I don't have a count on the number of, for lack of a better term, 14.5 orders that have been issued.

Um our um our public awareness campaigns always talk about the uh the the new Karina's law rules.

Uh Rachel does a full training just on Karina's law so that people understand the difference between a civil order of protection, paragraph 14.5 order that takes out a firearm and a firearm restraining order, which as you said, is its own civil filing.

Um, and different people can file these.

So in a firearm restraining order context, uh that can be filed by a law enforcement uh or a household member.

A uh 14.5 uh order is going to come in the context immediately of that of that domestic partner abuse.

So it's okay, but a as I understand it, a law enforcement agency couldn't intervene in that moment, they would have to go into this firearm restraining order conversation.

It's it's really a different process, though, right?

Because in an emergency order protection, you may or may not have that box checked.

Correct.

Okay.

In a plenary order, you may or may not have correct that.

I mean, oftentimes you'll see them, and sometimes there's no rhyme or reason why the box is checked and why the box isn't checked.

And I guess what I'm I'm trying to figure out is the process of what you go through in the context of getting a plenary um restraining order or firearms restraining order that you have to show in that plenary is clear and convincing evidence, right?

That's as I understand it, yes.

But on the civil order protection, it's simply just preponderance of the evidence of whether or not that order gets entered and whether that box gets checked, right?

I mean, there's two big standards.

As I under yes, as I understand it, the benefit of the civil order of protection um is that the emergency order of protection, and and and maybe member Kanishnik or Rachel can correct me on this.

Before Karina's law, the emergency civil order of protection, the standard domestic violence protection, didn't have the judge go through that process.

I didn't, they didn't automatically, I think you couldn't do a, I think maybe you would know a member of Dan Forth.

I believe that prior to Karina's law, you couldn't get a uh a firearm taken out of a house in that emergency setting.

So the good thing is that abusers are being analyzed much sooner in time uh whether or not a firearm can come out of the house.

So I agree with you that Karina's law has a lower has brought in a lower standard of evidence within the civil order of protection, and that that analysis is even lower than what the plenary would be in a firearm restraining order.

I will correct you on one thing.

I do think that there's a relatively high standard on an emergency on the emergency fro basis, which is one one we haven't talked about because you can also get an emergency, you can also get the emergency fro.

Yeah, that's just probable cause, right?

I believe so, yeah.

Yeah.

And so I think and I think that's the same standard.

I I think it's definitely probable cause for the fro.

And it's either probable cause or preponderance on the on the 14.5.

I hope I hope lawyers behind me are ferociously uh researching this so I can answer it during my next agenda item.

We need to maybe circle back on the case.

Well, member Dan Ford that it would be a question, it would be a question that every practitioner would know.

I just am not practicing myself under paragraph 14.5.

So I don't think it's unclear under the law what it is.

Yeah.

She'll answer it when she versus Sistent County will answer when she gets here.

Um but I guess I'm I'm just trying to figure out oftentimes you will see firearms, obviously, that are you know going to get removed under the civil orders protection.

I was just kind of curious to see what those figures were.

It's not it's more than 101 that we've got on the froze, right?

So I don't know.

The 14.5, I'm not sure.

Yes, can we just have yeah?

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

State attorney's office.

Um, I think I can give you a little bit of context.

We are seeing actually a lot less at the emergency stage of the civil OP for the firearm box and the search warrant being checked.

And that is primarily because the fro process and an emergency setting gives the police more control.

Um, they're the ones seeking it.

They have the information they need.

They're preparing the search warrant, they're talking to the judge, and it feels safer.

And frankly, it is, right?

Um, if you think of how that's done in the civil OP setting, it is we'll use domestic uh domestic situation.

Um, so a domestic battery happened, wife is struck, threaten there's firearms in the home.

She comes in to D 100 in the morning, asks for an or emergency order of protection, tells D 100, you know, he's threatened to kill me.

There's firearms in the home.

So they check that box.

She talks to the judge.

There's no police here.

Maybe an arrest wasn't made, or maybe she didn't call the police because she was scared to and she's seeking just the OP protection.

Um, a search warrant is thrown together and it's emailed to the police department, and they're like, Well, what am I walking into?

Are my officers going to be safe?

They have to dig up this information.

And that certainly has happened.

Um, but my last meeting with the courts, they'd seen three.

No, that was months ago.

Um, but that's a very low number.

Um, so I think when you're talking about emergency situations, whether it's domestic, whether it's a mental health crisis, whether it's, you know, alleged or potential violence, um, and police are drawn into that situation, they are taking the fro route, at least at the emergency stage.

Now, a big distinction also though is a fro does not protect con or does not prevent contact.

A fro is an emergency protection to get firearms away from somebody who could be a danger to his or herself or another.

And so sometimes and more frequently you'll see the fro in the emergency to get the gun out.

And then maybe somebody in a domestic situation also wants an OP.

So they go in for an order of protection after the fact.

So they can't intertwine a little bit.

In those cases when a plenary is issued and that box gets checked.

I don't know what the process is as far as actually for the police going in and seizing the firearms, but I know that there is a demand to turn over the FOID card in that situation.

And we can look for and we can look for numbers around that.

The state's attorney, I mean, we certainly support a safe place, which does a lot of our uh and D 100, which does a lot of our work in the traditional civil orders of protection.

Um, we certainly it is very easy, and I say this in a in a quick way.

It's very easy to train law enforcement.

There are 43 police agencies and they come to our trainings and we know where they are, and we tell everybody, please remember to use their throat, right?

Because police can trigger that.

When we think about sadly, when we think about the number of domestic violence victims and survivors, that's a different, that is a uh that is a tougher group to train.

So a lot of our return on investment is telling the 43 police agencies, hey, don't forget you can file a firearm restraining order regardless of of what a of what a resident uh or anyone else thinks if you think it is a threat to an individual in a mental health crisis or other individuals uh in a domestic violence situation.

So we put a lot of our work into training law enforcement because they themselves can trigger a fro.

They don't need to hire a municipal council, they don't need to come to us, they can they can do it.

And so we have amazing police officers in Lake County who we are um for lack of a better term, arming with this tool.

Um, when we get to the domestic violence context, um a safe place does an amazing job.

Our partners all do an amazing job of of trying to uh get people to advocate for what they want in court in terms of is there a firearm?

When we think about the cycles of domestic violence, we might be concerned about well, uh uh an individual says, I want to protect myself, but am I really ready to tell this court that my abuser has a firearm?

Maybe that's a different, maybe that's a different moment.

And so uh a lot of our work is um obviously lifting up our partners to make sure that they are uh doing everything they can to get the word out to victims and survivors.

And I will say one more thing.

It and we always forget to say this, and also in every criminal case, every criminal case, a judge has the option because criminal charges are filed to say, ma'am or sir, you no longer can have access to a firearm.

So in every sit bad situation for the thousands of criminal cases we have, a judge is already analyzing whether somebody should have a firearm.

These are pure civil matters where there is not necessarily a criminal case or there isn't a criminal case involved.

So don't forget all of those good situations where there's a formal criminal charge.

There's also that judicial analysis of who should have that.

My last quick follow-up.

But there seems to be, unless I'm wrong, a distinction between when a civil order protection is issued because the standard is preponderance of the evidence, right?

Once you go to a full hearing and get that plenary, but the judge can still check that box and say, turn it over the FOID card.

Whereas in the plenary fro, the standard is clear and convincing evidence.

I think you're right.

Yeah.

I think you're right.

I'm saying so you got a really lower standard on that domestic uh violence, i.e.

with the or civil order protection than you do on the fro.

Yeah.

And that seems to me just to be kind of like it should be one or the other, right?

But anyway.

Well, just an option.

I think because you're taking constitutional right to bear arms away without but you're doing that in a civil order protection, too, right?

When a plenary issue.

I mean, you have to prove the domestic abuse.

Well, absolutely.

Last point.

Remember though, there will be mental health, there will be a lot of mental health cases in the fro context.

Sure.

Where nobody's been hurt and a neighbor says, hey, wait a minute, I'm not sure about this guy.

That higher standard where there isn't, let's say, physical contact, that that may not be a that may not be a bad thing, right?

Because in a in a pure mental health case, it could simply be we're worried about a suicide, and three or four neighbors are saying this guy is talking about hurting himself.

You can imagine a higher standard than a than a witness who is saying, well, there's also been physical contact.

I I I think I think they also are statutes written at different times.

I understand.

If I can it can I just interrupt?

I mean, you guys can talk legal for hours.

And I I just we need to get this vote going.

I'm trying to understand what what's being presented there.

I don't mean to be rude or anything.

I just wondered if your question was answered if we could call the vote.

Uh yeah.

Okay.

That's all.

I'm sorry.

No, don't worry.

I know it's fascinating.

I could listen to you guys all day, but we have other anyway.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

All in favor?

I non opposed motion carries.

Okay.

8.11.

Joint resolution authorizing the acceptance and execution of Brian State Crisis Intervention Program, firearm restriction order, compliance and enforcement grant, which will assist the Lake County State's Attorney's Office with fro enforcement in Lake County, including an emergency appropriation of $500,000 in grant funds.

I need a motion and a second.

Motion by Kyle, second by Altenberg.

You're on again.

Thank you.

Um so this is a also a one-year grant.

Uh this one expires September 30th of this year.

Uh and it's for both operational supplies, such as uh gun safes and literature to distribute to the community, um, as well as funding law enforcement overtime for approximately 15 agencies.

Uh the agencies will be invoicing the SAO for no more than $5,000 for any uh single fro incident.

And then uh those agencies are named on a draft contract.

Um, but it's we don't have that as of yet because it's currently in review with our uh grantors legal team.

So we'll have that shortly.

All right, thank you.

Any questions?

No question.

You go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Um so besides the fro, is this is this grant also um part of your campaign to uh spread spread gun safety?

Yeah, very quickly.

This one is a more this is to I love thinking about where structural barriers are.

Uh and so this is to assist our law enforcement partners that if they have budget pressures on them because of fro needs to be issued at 2 a.m.

and they have to with and they have to pay for overtime.

We know that they're doing that anyway, but this is to assist our directly assist our law enforcement partners with a contract where obviously they receive a direct, you know, one-to-one uh compensation from the grant.

It's just administered by a centralizing uh office like ours, where if they are spending overtime on froes, they get it, they get recon they get reimbursed.

We just don't want that, we don't want any downstream disincentives in terms of overtime or anything like that.

Okay.

Any further questions?

All in favor?

Not opposed, motion carries.

Moving on to 812, uh state's attorney's office annual updates.

I've already been talking too long, so everything will be short.

Like I said, I can listen to you all day.

Vice Chair.

Yes.

Um, well, I think everybody knows uh a lot about what our office does.

We're always very happy to be here and we can come back with any other questions and you can always tell us give us an update more often.

Uh we will obviously be here very soon in our budget process in which we you know, we understand that we need to explain to you what our office does as we make budget requests.

So I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I apologize.

That's my fault.

I'm so sorry, Kevin.

Um so anyway, I'll I'll just jump into it so we don't we don't take too long.

I think the office knows that we we view our goals relatively holistically and comprehensively.

Uh my friend and colleague Jennifer Bannick uh did an amazing job of talking about the coroner's broad work in preventing preventable deaths or talking about preventable deaths.

As you might imagine, we believe that crime is preventable and that we can, whether it is through deterrence uh that we deter criminals from committing crimes, whether it is through incapacitation by sending individuals to jail or to prison, or whether it is the work before a crime occurs, uh, which is uh to educate the community and to think holistically about prevention efforts.

We think this is all our job, and that none of them are mutually exclusive.

Uh I won't I promise not to get too philosophical, except to say that too often in the United States we treat solutions as mutually exclusive, that we can't do five things at once.

We can do many things at once.

And so uh that's really the underlying philosophy of this office.

Oh wow, look at that.

Um everybody knows that our work is to work with all of our partners to drive down crime, to get justice for victims, and to think uh to think in a way that prevents crime.

Uh it is really important that we think as holistically as we can, both in stopping a single individual from committing a crime, but also thinking uh broadly about what prevents crime throughout society.

Uh we have these are 783 cases in 2025 that we were in charge of that were our cases.

So, for example, were there more DUIs filed than 266 DUIs?

Absolutely.

Um, those are the 266 DUIs that we prosecuted.

Municipal prosecutors prosecute hundreds more.

So this is not uh clerk uh a clerk cartwright's data about the number of filings.

These are the cases that we do.

So obviously we are the only we are the only office in town when it comes to felonies, uh, but we are not the only office in town when it comes to DUIs and some traffic cases.

So uh also we do not have our, I believe we had, I think we had 13,000 traffic cases that we managed also.

So those are felony DR.

Well, yes, well, actually a felony DUI, no, a felony DUI would be in the green.

It would get a CF number.

So the misdemeanor DUIs are the 266.

Also, sadly, there were more than 524 instances of domestic violence.

Those are just the misdemeanor domestic violence cases that get the DV.

If it's a felony domestic violence, it moves over to the CF uh to the CF uh portion.

Uh we have 84 attorneys, 75 non-attorneys.

Uh, we have an amazing, uh, amazing group of uh individuals uh who are working hourly uh to think about uh either managing a case that's come in uh or to think about how to help somebody help a victim after the fact uh or hopefully to prevent a crime before the fact.

We have 159 full-time employees.

Total total employees, I think.

159 total employees.

That probably doesn't have our couple part-timers.

Yeah.

159 total employees.

What I think is interesting about this is 19% of our employees are grant funded, and you can see uh that a large portion of our uh budget is also is also grant funded.

Uh several NPR, one of the questions that uh I know that was asked to focus on for the annual report was that, oh wow, okay, there we go.

Um what NPRs have been granted over the last three years?

Several smaller NPRs were granted for training and technology upgrades, but I want to talk about three really important ones that really led to headcount.

In 2023, the county funded a new financial crimes ASA.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

In 2024, the county funded a new domestic violence ASA.

Uh and in 2025, uh, thank you very much.

The county funded 50% of our G VPI.

Financial crimes, really, this is an area that I want to highlight very uh briefly, just to say um we have to stay ahead of the bad guys on this.

Whether it's AI, whether it's just people using more online banking, whether it's even more use of credit cards than it was even 10 years ago, AI, cryptocurrency.

This is a fast evolving area uh for individuals to take advantage of all of us.

Um, but in particular, we uh are making sure that we are reaching out uh to the to the elder community, to the senior communities uh who don't maybe know as much about AI or cryptocurrency.

Um we have seen individuals who have been called and they say the the caller says that they're with the FBI and that they have to walk into a bank and wire them money.

And it's just that easy.

And so this is something that we are watching very uh carefully.

So when when this board agreed that we should have a financial crimes unit, you were ahead of the times because you were saying uh that uh technology is going to make this a really important area.

Uh we do trainings for police, we do community outreach events, and we believe that over uh we have dealt with cases with over five million dollars that have been stolen or uh attempted to be stolen uh in uh in 2024 and 2025.

These trainings that we're doing are really important too.

I watched a cryptocurrency training for our judges because um one of the really great innovative things that uh our our team thought of uh Kevin Barrell, Russ Kaskin, and Don Tyre was that if we could take uh cryptocurrency and and forfeit it, uh that would assist the county.

But it would also get uh the victims their money back.

But if you want to get victims their money back because it moves into crypto, or if you want to help the county because we forfeit the, you know, we we forfeit drug money too.

That's a lot easier to understand it's a suitcase of money.

But if it's a cryptocurrency, you actually have to have the technology to convert it, whether it's to help a victim or whether it's to forfeit it.

Um, our team has already built a cryptocurrency uh wallet and protocol so that we could get money back to victims right away.

But we actually have to tell the courts how to to do that too, because they have to enter orders that allow us to do that.

And so um we do have uh a cryptocurrency protocol that would allow us to get money back to a victim uh or what that would allow us to uh that would allow us to forfeit it to assist the county, obviously all through court orders.

I mean, we don't we don't do any of this stuff on our own.

This is all through all through court orders.

And uh the courts are financial are our fantastic partners in thinking about staying ahead of the crypto bad guys.

Are you seeing a lot of that?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

I don't have a number for you.

It's it's huge.

It's huge.

Um domestic violence, as ever as uh everyone knows, uh, this is one of the core, this is one of the core uh goals of the office is to do everything we can to end domestic violence.

I've said it before, but I don't think there's one problem in our society that wouldn't be improved if we could stop child abuse, if we could stop abuse in the home, whether it's mental health, whether it's the opioid overdose crisis, uh, whether it is suicide, whether it is homicide, uh, violence begets violence.

And when people see violence inside the home, whether it's child abuse or intimate partner violence or any type of violence inside the home, uh it just flows downstream for years.

And so whatever we can do to end domestic violence uh is absolutely critical.

We have amazing partners with a safe place, uh, the human trafficking uh coalition, North Suburban Legal Aid, the Z Center.

Uh, we're proud to uh throw Rosalind Franklin into this mix because of the uh medical uh wing that we have now at the children's advocacy center.

And that's about that's about domestic abuse too.

We we have to think about the abuse of a child and the intimate partner abuse.

Um, but many times children are abused.

We've had some terrible cases this year, uh, and our medical unit at the children's advocacy center uh is uh just doing an amazing job.

But because you added a head count, we have been able to have an 18% decrease in caseload per ASA because we added a prosecutor, and this is a big deal.

This helps victims, this helps them make sure they get the attention that they need.

Still, no matter what, domestic violence uh does account for 20 to 30 percent of the murders each year in Lake County.

So it shows you the size of the problem.

In this context, I'm saying domestic violence does include the murder of uh the murder of children, um, because that's a domestic that's obviously most often uh inside the home.

Uh and so all of the all of the child murders uh that I'm referring to in 25 and 2026, as I also think about 21 and 22, I believe we're all inside the home.

They were not uh they were not strangers, uh, but we're all inside the home.

Of course, everyone knows a lot about the gun violence prevention initiative.

We talk about it a lot.

It was originally funded by ARPA dollars.

Now it has uh uh expanded into mostly uh support from our uh state legislative partners.

There will be an NPR coming uh related to this.

However, I am happy to announce, which I've told some of you privately, that we did receive 1.5 million dollars in new funding from the state legislature two nights ago, or was that one night ago?

I can't keep track.

Uh at a late hour, uh, we did receive 1.5 million dollars in state funding and also a reappropriation from last year.

So this slide was uh this slide was produced uh a while ago, but uh there will be a request, but it will be a different type of request, frankly, because we weren't sure whether we would get the money uh this year.

But um we are gonna we're gonna keep working to do everything we can to bring federal uh dollars, state dollars, and of course private dollars into this space.

21% decrease in countywide fire, countywide firearm homicides, uh 33% in Zion, Joaquin, North Chicago, which is where our peacemakers work, uh, and finally nonfatal firearm injuries also matches this.

This is the overall decrease in uh violent crime between 2022 and 2025.

We've had a 74% decrease in NFS, non-fatal shootings.

Why does that matter?

Because we will acknowledge that our medical partners are saving lives a lot.

And so what we're really looking at, we're really tracking these non-fatal shootings because when you shoot somebody, you don't know whether it's going to be fatal or not, right?

And so if you really want to monitor gun violence, obviously we care about all of these statistics.

But if you really think about it, when somebody shoots at somebody else, they don't know whether it's going to be fatal or not.

So that is a moment of gun violence, right?

And the fact that we have seen such declines in the non-fatal shootings means we don't, we're not thinking about how good is the medical care.

We care.

But if we're really tracking our programs, what you would want to see is this decrease in non-fatal shootings, right?

You would want to see a decrease, not simply a decrease in homicides, you always want to see that, but you might be able to attribute that to fantastic medical care in some towns versus other towns, or there's been some new technology, or maybe our EMSs are doing are getting to places faster.

I heard a study recently that said a really important factor is how fast does the EMS get to the scene in the shooting.

But the fact that we're seeing a 74% decrease in non-fatal shootings means we are reaching the root causes of these non-fatal shootings, which is different than what the medical intervention uh necessarily is, because a non-fatal shooting is incredibly dangerous.

Um obviously we see the decreases in homicides, firearm homicides.

So the shot spotter doesn't the shot spotter program is a fantastic computer program uh that is being done in North Chicago that is comparing the number of gunshots that it hears.

I believe it does control for the training that they engage in at the naval base, so they have figured that out.

Um, but again, a 66% decrease in gunfire in North Chicago is an amazing indicator.

Now, that doesn't have anything to do with a medical issue or whether somebody hit somebody or not.

We're just seeing a metric that is completely divorced from uh other data that is also showing this decrease.

And then finally, emergency department visit rates have also decreased according to the Illinois Department of Public Health data.

And that is for individuals, whether they were injured accidentally, maybe they were shot, but they didn't call the police.

This is a different way to capture what's going on in our county.

I'll go back real quick.

The homicide data all comes from the coroner.

I know I've said this before.

This is not our murder data.

This is not our filing data.

These could be solved, unsolved.

We are counting homicides directly from coroner bannock.

We are also including justified homicides in here.

And so when we talk about homicides versus murders, that's a big distinction because you could say, oh, well, state's office isn't filing murder charges or people aren't clearing cases.

This is the homicide data.

This comes directly from the coroner.

The blue line in uh non-fatal shootings, those come directly from Zion, Joaquin, and North Chicago.

Police data.

So again, that is not courthouse data.

That is law enforcement data.

Now we have the shot spotter data, which comes from law enforcement, and then finally the emergency rooms, which is a different uh data set, which shows that there are fewer emergency department visits for gunshots uh in Lake County uh over the last uh over the last three years.

And so this is we believe uh tied to the gun violence prevention initiative.

Again, we worry about correlation and causation, but at the end of the day, these programs are working throughout the country.

So there sure is a lot of correlation going on throughout the country.

Every one of the uh jury, you know, the jurisdictions that are seeing these declines uh have these gun violence prevention efforts, and so we have to keep doing what we're doing, in my opinion.

Yes, yeah, of course, yeah.

Yeah, which one?

So it basically say if you look at the statistical data that every time the shot spotter hears shots.

Yeah, you're going to have one non-fatal shooting.

Not at all.

No, no, no.

I mean, I mean, you look at 250, 100.

So you am I not looking at it?

No, no, you're not.

No, that's okay.

Um, so for example, in well, first of all, that's only North Chicago.

So a shot being heard, um, and they try to they try to control for whether it's fireworks or firecrackers.

Sure.

This is a shot being heard.

This doesn't mean it hit anybody.

You could shoot up an empty car and it would be heard on the shot spotter.

So the point, right?

So my no, but I your your question is great, member Danforth.

The fact is that this data all comes from different places, right?

We don't want to just be repeating the same data, right?

You don't want it to just be corner data.

But your emergency room visits are they look like they would correlate, right?

For some of them, they do that's yeah, it all correlates.

It all fits.

I didn't say it was causation.

I'm just saying there's a correlation there that's well, there's a statistical correlation that you're in the 60s and 70s for different ways to measure to measure gun violence.

Right, right.

So the emergency department visits are individuals who walk in, and I've I've worked in criminal law for a while.

Sometimes people get shot and they don't call the police.

That's true.

And so when you're seeing, and sometimes they do, of course, the emergency department visits include the cases where the police are called, but they also include the ones where individuals don't call the police.

Now the hospitals call the police after the fact.

But what you'd be looking for is all of this data to be going in the in the same direction.

And I hope everybody understood the point I meant about the fatality.

If you saw fatalities going down, but non-fatal shootings going up, you would just say, well, something's going on medically where we have more shootings, but but fewer deaths, you would say, well, we still have a problem here because we don't want any shootings, right?

So the nonfatal shootings are about bad guys doing bad things.

We also want the death to go down, but it takes out that idea of well, maybe our medicine has gotten a lot better over the last, you know, over the last few years.

Um, because when a bad guy shoots at somebody, they they don't know whether it's going to be fatal or how good the medical team will be.

So you really want to see this.

I hope I'm explaining that right.

Um, I'm a little rushed only because of time, but but I I think that this is all really um good news and um always happy to talk about this.

Um I will anticipate one question, which is how does this compare to other areas of decline?

The areas of decline that the it's we see everything across the board between 2024 and 2025.

St.

Louis had an 8% decrease in homicides.

Miami had a 0% decrease uh in homicides.

Um different areas are seeing uh different decreases.

Um Mesa, Arizona, for example, saw 12% decrease in all violent crime, but somehow a 20% increase in homicides, according to their data.

So the national average, the national average uh for declines between 24 and 25 is about 17, is about 17%.

But don't forget, New York, LA, Boston, Philadelphia, some parts of Chicago have been leading the work in gun violence prevention for years.

So when our major cities drive down gun violence because of violence prevention efforts, that drives the national average to go down.

But there it is still a matter of decisions by this county board and by decision makers in Springfield and Washington where to put their policy dollars.

The places that have these programs, these comprehensive programs are seeing decreases.

The places that don't are not seeing the decreases.

It all is leading to a great decrease uh between 24 and 25, which is what we want.

There is an article in the Atlantic Monthly that analyzes the ARPA dollars that were invested in 2022 and talks about these programs throughout the country, Baltimore, Minneapolis, other places.

When we invest the way we did in ARPA, we see large decreases in gun violence.

And our concern at the state's attorney's office is always that we would lose this investment and that we would see these things revert to the other increases.

So we keep bringing you good news that things are going down and down and down, but I don't think that means that we can stop investing in these programs.

I will skip diversion.

I talked about diversion at another meeting.

We've increased diversion over the last few years.

Um I'm really proud of our diversion.

It's an efficient way to help people up front quickly rather than waiting for the courts to take months to put somebody on probation.

We want to front-end our our treatment, our rehabilitative services, and uh hopefully decrease some docket pressures so that we can focus on bigger cases.

These are smaller cases, these are nonviolent cases.

To quote the baseball analogy, I apologize for succinct calendar.

She says I used to pay sports analogies.

Get them on, get them over, get them in.

Like, let's get the cases done.

Let's be quick about the nonviolent cases.

Let's get people the treatment they need, and let's focus on let's focus on the big cases.

You you should talk about it.

I'm just I know you're rushing there.

You go.

Um, these are our these are our three big diversion programs.

Uh we partner with the courts.

That's called the alternative prosecution program.

We have an internal diversion program, uh, which we're still building out, and then our gun diversion program, which is also internal.

We partner with our uh GRO GRO.

Uh, they have been recognized throughout the state now as working in uh Rockford, Chicago, uh obviously here in Waukegan.

And we are seeing, I think they are also one of the reasons why we may be seeing decreases in gun crime.

And so all of these partnerships uh help us treat people earlier rather than waiting for the formal court process to play out.

Obviously, if a defendant wants the formal court process, they get it.

They get their trial, they get their motions to suppress.

These are for individuals who want to take responsibility early, get some treatment early, and we're gonna drop your case.

Uh, and we just think that's a much more efficient and safer way to deal with the problem of crime rather than the traditional months and months it takes while everybody takes continuances and reads every corner of every body-worn camera uh to get to the same place, which is to help a guy at the end, but why did we take 14 months?

So it there's an incentive for defense attorneys that they don't have to plead guilty.

The incentive for us is that we treat people faster.

Uh the incentives for the courts should be uh that we move faster on dockets.

And so we want to keep working with the courts to increase these programs.

I would love your questions that you haven't already asked.

Sarah.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

Um, I just wouldn't like everyone to think back to the two slides that State's attorney Reinhardt shared with the um decrease in homicides.

Um then the slide right after that uh referred to the decrease in the number of shots um detected by shot spotter.

Um I just like to really remind everyone that that those decreases consider them in context with the decreases we've heard about in suicide.

Uh and this numbers are similar.

And the reason I want everybody to kind of zero in on that for a moment is if you can kind of imagine, you know, the we call it the puzzle piece graphic for the G VPI.

I think most of you probably know what I'm referring to.

If not, maybe show us the slide again.

But those decreases are it's not an accident that those decreases are so similar in the rates of suicide and the rates of homicide.

I just want to understand it's it's because of the intersectional collaborative approach that the state's attorney's office has built with the G VPI and its partnership with all of the organizations, um, all of the stakeholders, including the Lake County peacemakers, but also a safe place and grow.

And you know, every mental health care provider in Lake County that um collaborates with the G VPI and the CV and the Lake County peacemakers.

And so the point I want to make is even though the slides showing a reduction in homicides kind of zeroed in on the North Chicago, Joaquin, and Zion area.

The truth is no matter where you live in Lake County, you're benefiting from the work of the gun violence prevention initiative.

That 20 to 25 to 30, I think there was a 29% decrease on one of the slides.

That's everybody in Lake County is benefiting from that, not only the people that live in Joaquin, North Chicago, and Zion.

And just as we move forward, um, let's all remember how innovative and um how well this model is being executed.

And it is for the good of the entire county, not just one or two or three communities.

Thank you for that, Sarah.

Did you have a question?

Yeah, I just wanted to say.

Well, I want to echo what Sarah said, and just really let make sure that people do zero in on these problems are everywhere.

It's not just in a certain communities.

Every community has these problems, some more than others.

We all have suicide in our communities.

We all have some kind of gun violence, we have some kind of crime in every single community.

So all the programs that the state's attorney's office is putting together, even though some zero in on certain communities, they're all attacking this pervasive problem throughout the county.

And we're we are, I can't say it enough, what Sarah said, that we're all benefiting from that.

And we shouldn't be naive to think that we don't have some of those problems in our towns.

It's every town, and we've got to really, you know, be real about what we need to be how we need to be helping people.

And the state's attorney's office, they get it.

They know what we need, and we are seeing the amazing results.

May I say one last thing?

Yes, please.

I think um and cornerbank started with the correlation causation point, and we are we are humble about that.

But we are gonna be more assertive as time goes on.

Uh we might be humble about that in between 22 and 23.

We also have between 2023 and 2024.

We have between 24 and 2025.

We have between 25 and 2026, which are the numbers that First Assistant Calin and I know in our head right now that we're not putting up, but they are also showing large decreases.

And so it's not just our program, but it is the national work.

And as you think about your budget, please go look at other places.

Please don't make this just state's attorney Reinhart and their team are doing great work, but maybe it's just something great happening in Lake County, and it is something great happening in Lake County.

Please understand the other places where this has worked, because all of that data begins to count in the causation argument.

We are humble about our work.

We are public servants.

I want to thank the unbelievable people in the G VPI and the and the police officers who are on the street who are really making these differences.

But it is because of this board and the state legislature's investment in those people.

I'm just a mouthpiece.