As temperatures rise and the summer months get closer, there’s a lot happening at the Peoria Police Department.
Chief Eric Echevarria said the department is continuing to push directed patrols and hosting events in the city’s parks for local families to have some fun.
“So we're just going to keep working hard to keep these numbers down and find outlets for our community,” he said.
The numbers show the continuation of a trend started in 2022: a slight decrease in violent crime. Echevarria said rounds fired at this time last year totaled more than 1,700, compared with just over 1,500 this year. Gunshot victims are down by four compared to this time last year, homicides by gunfire are down by one and homicides overall are down by two.
There’s a number of programs and task forces currently in development at the department to help lower these numbers further.
“We have been awarded $3 million to create a program that we're still determining on what we're going to call the name of it,” said Echevarria. “It's technically a victim services unit that we will be creating with the money that we have.”
He said the name is still undecided because of negative connotations associated with the word “victim.”
The funding from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority will help create a separate unit based out of a building owned by the department on North Wisconsin Avenue. Echevarria said the partnership with Carle Health will hire eight licensed clinical social workers, a director, an analyst and interns.
“We'll be meeting to go over there to look at how we're going to lay out the offices, we have cars that we need to buy, computers that need to be purchased, office equipment,” he said. “We need to have the job descriptions and get ready to do some hiring.”
The initial plan is for the social workers to be involved in any case with a victim, Echevarria cites shootings and domestic violence cases as examples. He hopes to have their assistance on all such cases, but particularly those with juveniles involved. Eventually, co-response with officers will be part of the program, but Echevarria said they want to schedule chunks of time where officers only participate in mental and behavioral calls and there’s no specific plan for that in place yet.
“That element will be there,” he said. “But we’re kind of piecing it out as we go.”
Another initiative still in its infancy at the department is an auto crimes task force. Echevarria said the task force, announced in early April, is currently in the stage of applying for funding and looking for office space.
Shospotter contract renewed
The Peoria City Council unanimously approved a three-year extension to a contract with gunfire locator technology ShotSpotterlast month. Echevarria said the acoustic sensors placed on telephone poles and buildings across Peoria are a tool, like a squad car, and the department has policies governing their use.
“For example, when we respond to a ShotSpotter, every single ShotSpotter that we respond to, and this year, we've responded to 379 of them. There's 379 written police reports,” he said. “We write a report for every single one.”
Additionally, Echevarria said a report on all overnight incidents comes to him and members of the city council every morning. Though officers write a report for every ShotSpotter response, it doesn’t mean they found evidence of a crime. There’s a number of reasons for this.
“We've had situations where people collect the shell casings after they shoot,” said Echevarria. “If you're shooting from inside a vehicle with, you know, obviously with the window open, shell casings may fall inside the vehicle. If you're shooting from inside a building with the door open or a window open and ShotSpotter happens to get the sound, well, those shell casings may not be outside.”
Still, Echevarria said, even at scenes with no immediately visible evidence, ShotSpotter provides officers with guidance.
“It just shows us where to go, how to get there more efficiently, effectively, quickly, and start canvassing an area to hopefully, if we have to, save a life, collect evidence and find witnesses. That's what it does,” he said. “It doesn't govern us, we govern the technology.”
Echevarria added that being at the scene of a ShotSpotter alert isn’t probable cause. Officers don’t respond to ShotSpotter alerts with guns drawn, or immediately arrest anyone present at a scene. In situations where there’s a discrepancy, Echevarria said ShotSpotter’s parent company Sound Thinking has been communicative and helpful in re-tuning the devices.
Doubling down on recruitment
Recruitment is another priority for the Peoria Police Department. Chief Echevarria said the department swore in a class of 10 officers in May, up from five in April.
“Half are men, half are women, half are minorities, half are white,” he said. “So we're really seeing the numbers improve.”
The department also has two officers concentrating full time on recruitment, a new decorated squad car specifically for recruitment events and an upcoming series of recruitment videos. At the same time, Echevarria said they’re working to streamline the hiring process and offer more options.
“We have a national test that we're using. We have an app called Interview Now,” he said. “So we connect with our potential candidates electronically through this application. And this generation wants to have that contact.”
The department currently employs around 200 sworn officers.
