"You need to sell a squad car."

CHRISMAN—During the Monday, Feb. 3, Chrisman City meeting, Police Chief Tom Dolan presented the board with the need for a new police data management system. The council displayed a troubling level of resistance to the system, disregarding the growing need for modernization and improved public safety.

“This has been something I've been looking at over the years I've been here. I didn't advocate for it the first two years because we had other things we needed to focus on, but I found out that we have to report our activity through an automated data system to the state of Illinois, and that ends up going to the FBI. This is a fairly new procedure,” Dolan explained. 

“We're not compliant with the (Uniform Crime Reporting Act) reporting because we don't have the capacity to export that data,” Dolan said. “We don't have a data management system at all. What we do have for reports is an old Adobe Acrobat file. There's no database associated with it. It's just a document.”

The current operating system has been described as slow, unreliable and prone to complications. It hinders the police department’s ability to track crime patterns, coordinate responses and maintain essential records. 

Per the Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting Act, ( Section 5-20 of 50 ILCS 709/5-20) “The Illinois State Police shall annually report to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training Standards Board and the Department of Revenue any law enforcement agency not in compliance with the reporting requirements under this Act. A law enforcement agency's compliance with the reporting requirements under this Act shall be a factor considered by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training Standards Board in awarding grant funding under the Law Enforcement Camera Grant Act, with preference to law enforcement agencies which are in compliance with reporting requirements under this Act”

The new system Dolan requested would cost $3,040 ($2,500 one-time fee and $540 yearly) and significantly improve these issues. 

All other local departments, including the Edgar County Sheriff, Paris, Ridge Farm, Georgetown and Kansas, already use the same system.

“It's called Village Police…You get three devices, which we happen to have … We can actually access it from the vehicle, wherever we have internet access,” Dolan said. “We'd get a cloud-based storage system to start entering data into. We can share it with the other departments. There are a lot of benefits. The state's attorney has access to it, which, right now, we have no communication with them, other than me personally taking stuff up, which I'm happy to do. But in this modern society, everybody linking together has been just really effective.”

According to Dolan, one of the biggest failures of the current system is the department's lack of compliance with state and federal regulations, which blocks potential funding.

“We're missing the ability to meet our obligation to report to the state and the feds, and if we aren't reporting, it's an automatic disqualifier for state and federal grants. I can't apply for the grants unless we're compliant. It's an automatic disqualification,” Dolan said. “I want to be able to apply for these grants and get some things we need.” 

Debate between Dolan and city council members quickly escalated, with one board member demanding to see all of the police department's current policies and another claiming the police department should be bringing monetary contributions to the city.

“What do you got for your policies? Show me your policies. What all kind of policies you got wrote for everything in your department? Where's all your policies? So you've got a stack of policies the mayor goes through and looks at?” Commissioner Rodney Wolfe questioned.

“Do we have $3,000 in the police budget? No? Then you need to sell a squad car,” Commissioner Bryan Haddix argued. “I’m concerned about your interest in reporting data when we don’t get a report here at the meetings as we should. We don’t get a report of arrests or how many stops have been made. We don’t get a report of what kind of revenue your department’s generating.”

Dolan agreed to bring the requested paperwork to future meetings and explained to Haddix that the Chrisman Police Department is not a “revenue-generating agency.” Haddix was resolute in his position and remained unwavering in his opposition to approving the funds for a new cloud-based reporting system.

“You better find some money because we can’t spend it,” Haddix said.

Dolan reiterated the department would not qualify for grant funding without the new system. He also noted the department’s body cameras as examples of where grant funding would be beneficial, explaining the camera he currently wears is 10 years old and no longer supported by several software systems. 

“We've had multiple problems. I can get parts, but I'm very concerned now that the law changed on Jan. 1. We have to have this thing on when interacting with the public on a call. If we have a problem, there's liability…I don't want to wait until these cameras are useless. We need to make a move,” Dolan said.

Additionally, Dolan shared multiple opportunities for grant funding have been lost because of a lack of updates and compliance with current reporting acts.

“We missed a grant for Tasers. We're out of compliance with our Taser policy and they won't train us on the new Taser. We don't have it and can't get certified in the old Tasers,” Dolan added. “We could have had plenty of Tasers provided to us at no charge, but we don't qualify for grants because we're not meeting the new reporting standard. That's what I'm trying to solve, is the reporting problem, so that we can then start getting some money in.”

“It's not revenue, but you know, if that's the only thing that's standing in the way of us getting a grant, and we can solve it by solving another problem for a fairly (low price) to me, that's not that much money to solve a long term problem,” Dolan added. “It could generate us 1,000s and 1,000s of dollars. It will pay for itself the very first time.”

Despite the police chief’s appeal to the council, his concerns for public safety and national compliance fell short and the council remained steadfast in their decisions.

After additional commentary, Mayor Dan Moore and the commissioners agreed to meet at a later date to review the suggested changes further with Dolan.