Smart Chicago Documenter Work on the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force Community Forums

The Smart Chicago Collaborative has been documenting the four community forums hosted by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force and held across the city in the month of February.

The purpose of the meetings is to provide residents the opportunity to speak or submit written comments on improving the accountability, oversight and training of Chicago’s police officers.

We care about justice and we care about accountability, so we have sent text documenters, videographers (Community TV Network), and a photographer (me) to these convenings under our Documenters program, which “an essential tool for us to add new thinkers, generate ideas, and expand the field for civic tech.”

We show up at public meetings and document the proceedings because we’re interested in paying as much attention as we can to what others are saying, what their concerns are, and how they interact with official government structures. These community forums give us a great opportunity for this. We have a number of goals for this series:

  • Document the actual proceedings, with special attention, in this instance, to the speakers from the public— exactly what questions were asked, what documents were referenced, and what answers were offered by the task force
  • Research the questions and answers to the greatest degree possible. This includes learning more about the speakers, many of whom have decades of experience in their communities. Research and link to their organizations, their work, and the external documents, cases, and other matters that they reference
  • Aggregate the information and draw some rudimentary conclusions. This means simple things like counting attendees and speakers as well as some more sophisticated analysis like grouping comment types and themes

Toward that end, here’s our documentation for meeting #1, held at on Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church JLM Life Center, 2622 W. Jackson Blvd.

The meeting notes:

The video (as taken by the Task Force and placed on their youtube channel), and this one, taken by Community TV Network, posted on the Smart Chicago youtube channel):

And photographs taken by me (download them all here in hi res) under Creative Commons 4.0 license).

Lastly, we want to document the format of the meetings— the exact mode of engagement. This includes things like location type, timing, room setup, speaker format, microphone placement, comment rules— all the things that make up the meeting so that we can help build an overall typology for public meetings. That’s next.

For now, please consider attending one or both of the last two meetings

Meeting 2: Notes from Police Accountability Forum at South Shore Cultural Center

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is documenting the four community forums hosted by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force and held across the city in the month of February.

The purpose of the meetings were to provide residents the opportunity to speak or submit written comments on improving the accountability, oversight and training of Chicago’s police officers.

We sent a number of people to this second meeting, hosted by the Chicago Urban League at South Shore Cultural Center at  2622 W. Jackson Blvd.

One text documenters: see the notes here. These meeting notes are incomplete. If you would like to participate in Smart Chicago’s Documenter program and get paid to complete them, contact us.

Screenshot 2016-04-13 07.59.46

 Two videographers (Community TV Network, video here)

One photographer (Daniel X. O’Neil, images here, download them all here in hi res). The meeting was conducted by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force, and they used the video we created to prepare and post on their Youtube page as well. 

All of this material is posted under Creative Commons 4.0 license. You are free to use it for any purpose, with attribution.

On location:

One of the joys of attending community meetings in our deeply segregated city is that one gets to all sorts of new places. The South Shore Cultural Center is a brilliant place. It was built as a private club that was later made public for all. Here’s what it looks like when a former country club for the rich is pressed into service as a meeting room for all.

A winter meeting at 6PM means nighttime in Chicago:

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The location is on the lakefront. When it was built in 1905, it was a “country setting” of unimproved south lakefront property, often used for fishing and duck hunting. The Nature Sanctuary remains.

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We covered the meeting with videographers from CTVN, and news organizations covered it as well.

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Here’s a CTVN apprentice taping from the media dais in the back of the room.

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The task force members sat on a stage in the front of the ballroom.

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The tile floor has been trod by many.

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And people stepped to the lectern to speak in two-minute stints about their experiences.

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Many were dismissive of the work of the task force.

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And everything’s quiet outside.

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A Twitter-Based Review Crime & Punishment in Chicago

Introduction

This is the raw content for a set of tweets we published today about our Crime & Punishment in Chicago project.

Our April 2014 Crime & Punishment in Chicago project is an index of criminal justice data: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/

Crime and Punishment in Chicago

We partnered with @CJPJustProj and Supreme Chi-Town Coding Crew from @freegeekchicago. The code is on Github, but the research is what matters.

This was a classic ecosystem project— we provided revenue, tech, and training for important journalists, researchers, and developers.

The intrepid @CivicWhitaker served as project manager for Crime & Punishment in Chicago: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/

We tracked data sources into 8 stages, from commission of a crime all the way to prison. We aggregate sources & discuss collection of data.

Then we categorize the data as “Open”, “FOIA”, or inaccessible. We cover status in Chicago, and highlight the best practice nationally.

Sections

Victimization: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/ victimization.html. Many crimes go unreported. @TheJusticeDept made the NCVS to estimate the #s: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Victimization

Calls for service: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/callforservice.html. The @ChicagoOEMC1 publishes no bulk data about calls for service.

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Calls For Service

The @CJPJustProj has Chicago calls for service data from 2008-2012: http://chicagojustice.org/foi/data-sets-available-for-download/calls-for-police-service

Chicago Justice Project calls For Service Data

The @DallasPD releases comprehensive call for service data: http://www.dallaspolice.net/MediaAccess/Default.aspx. Includes units responding, link to map, and status

Dallas Police Calls For Service
Incidents: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/incidents.html. The @Chicago_Police crime incident data is exemplary cc/ @chicagocdo @CityChicagoCIO

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Incidents

Arrests: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/arrest.html. No info about arrestees is published in Chicago.

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Arrest

Henrico County @henriconews makes arrest data available online: http://randolph.co.henrico.va.us/public-data-access/searcharrest.aspx

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Henrico County, VA

Prosecute: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/prosecute.html. State’s Attorney publishes no data online and we do not know what data they collect.

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: State's Attorney's Office

The State’s Attorney’s Office has been ruled to be exempt from FOIA cc/ @KimFoxxforSA @DonnaMore + @SAAnitaAlvarez: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/prosecute.html

Jail: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/jail.html. Info on the 8,900 inmates in Cook County Jail cc/ @TomDart

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Jail

Cook County Inmate Locator (http://www2.cookcountysheriff.org/search2/). Some of this data is used by the 26th and California Project (http://26thycalifornia.recoveredfactory.net/)

Raw Cook County Jail API via Supreme Chi-Town Coding Crew: https://github.com/sc3/cookcountyjail/wiki/API-guide. Huge, important work.

Courts: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/court.html. The @CJPJustProj obtained 5 years of conviction data: http://www.chicagojustice.org/foi/data-sets-available-for-download/cook-county-court-data

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Courts

This @CJPJustProj data was used in our Convicted in Cook project: http://convictions.smartchicagoapps.org/, again on concert with @freegeekchicago

Convicted in Cook

Prison: http://crime-punishment.smartchicagoapps.org/prison.html. The IL Dep. of Corrections provides inmate search: http://www.illinois.gov/idoc/offender/pages/inmatesearch.aspx.

Crime & Punishment in Chicago: Prison

No bulk prison data is available in Illinois.

Oregon publishes prison data here: https://data.oregon.gov/browse?q=Prison%20&sortBy=relevance&utf8=%E2%9C%93. Includes forecasts & census of prison populations and admissions.

More work needed

If you are inspired by this project, or have any updates, please contact us.

A Fresh Look at Crime & Punishment in Chicago, our April 2014 website with Chicago Justice Project and FreeGeek Chicago

Tomorrow is the first public meeting of the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force. According to their website, their primary mission is “to lay the foundation for the rejuvenation of trust between the police and the communities that they serve by facing hard truths and creating a roadmap for real and lasting transparency, respectful engagement, accountability and change.” In light of the launch of the taskforce, we’re bringing attention to our comprehensive website exploring the criminal justice system in Chicago— Crime and Punishment in Chicago, an index of criminal justice data in the region.

In April 2014, the Smart Chicago Collaborative launched Crime & Punishment in Chicago as part of our Civic Works Project, a program funded by the Knight Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust to spur and support civic innovation in Chicago.

Our essential partners were Chicago Justice Project, a nonprofit research organization, and FreeGeek Chicago‘s Supreme Chi-Town Coding Crew (SC3).

The core belief undergirding this project is that crime incident reports— the ubiquitous dots on many maps we’ve seen in this city going back decades— were not enough to create communion between the police and the people they serve.

We believe that access, skills, and data are key elements in a just society. In light of tomorrow’s meeting, and the three other meetings to be held this month, we are calling new attention to Crime & Punishment in Chicago and we will be tweeting about it here.

Crime and Punishment in Chicago

First Public Forum of the Police Accountability Task Force at JLM Life Center

Throughout the month of February, the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force is hosting four community forums across the city to provide residents the opportunity to speak or submit written comments on improving the accountability, oversight and training of Chicago’s police officers.

The first of these forums is this Tuesday, February 2, 2016: @ 5:30 pm – 9:00 pm at JLM Life Center, 2622 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60612. More info, from the Task Force website:

5:30 PM Doors open/Registration
6:00 PM Overview of Task Force and Working Groups
7:00 PM Public testimony
9:00 PM Forum concludes

The Task Force looks forward to hearing directly from members of the public regarding the issues of police oversight and accountability.

Details:

People wishing to comment at the forum can sign up in person at the event.
Those who wish to submit written comments may do so at the forum.
In order to accommodate as many speakers as possible, comments will be limited to two minutes.
Signs and other large objects will not be allowed in the meeting room.
Video will be available on this website as soon, etc.
If you are unable to attend the forum, you can submit your comment or question via our online form.

If you need any help submitting comments, you can get help at a nearby Chicago Public Library or other public computer center.

Police Accountability Task Force Screenshot

New Expunge.io Video

We recently worked with the Mikva Challenge Juvenile Justice Council to create a video about Expunge.io and why expungement matters. 

 

We did this as part of our Expunge.io work, which is to increase public awareness, support the work of institutions, and document the juvenile expungement application process.

This is a youth-led project, and it was important that our outreach, and this video, is also youth-led. Therefore, this the JJC’s direction that they created from the prompt: “If you had only a minute to tell someone about Expunge.io and why expungement matters, what would you say? What would you tell them to get them to visit Expunge.io and kick off the process of getting their records expunged.”

Here are a couple of quotes from the video:

There’s no reason you or any of your friends should be struggling to get a job or go to school.

Really bright and ambitious kids get into trouble in their youth and that says nothing about who they are as a person.

Expunge.io is important to me because it gives children who have been in the juvenile system a second chance, without letting other people know that this is their second chance making it.

The youth from this video all are part of the Mikva Challenge JJC.

This video was created by Kamal Williams (a Youth-led tech instructors from last summer!).

We are members of Literacenter, and filmed this video in their space.