Joliet police oversight panel dead or dormant?

Plans for a citizens committee to advise the Joliet Police Department are still on the back burner if they are simmering at all.

The department is working under its third police chief since the idea of a citizens committee to advise or oversee the police department was first proposed in August 2020. Proposals have come and gone, and nothing has been looked at since late 2021.

“It kind of got lost in the mix with the transition when Chief (William) Evans came in,” Karl Ferrell, a Joliet Township trustee who has been a leader in the effort to create the committee, said to the City Council earlier this month.

Ferrell said it was time to resurrect the proposal.

Terry Morris, who chairs the Land Use and Legislative Committee that has been weighing proposals off and on for the last two years, said it will be brought back.

“Yes,” Morris said when asked Monday if his committee will review a proposal again.

The committee meets again Friday, and a proposal for a police advisory committee is not on the agenda.

“Probably at our next meeting,” Morris said, suggesting his committee could take up the proposal again in October or November.

That would make it about one year since the Land Use and Legislative Committee last considered a proposal for the citizens’ panel in November 2021.

Evans arrived as chief in February.

Proposals have changed over the last two years.

Initially conceived as a committee that could launch its own investigations into police matters including officer conduct, the latest proposals have made the committee more of an advisory panel that could review reports and evidence from internal investigations. The committee as last conceived could make recommendations to the police chief, but would not have the authority to make its own findings.

Even the latest proposal, however, raised concern because it gave the committee authority to require that police officers appear before it.

Morris said he has heard from the public about the future of the proposed citizens advisory committee.

“Not too many people,” Morris said when asked if he has heard from the public about the stalled committee proposal. “But people have been inquiring about it.”

Assistant City Attorney Chris Regis, who has been writing up the draft proposals for a citizens proposal, said the idea is not dead.

“The draft is still being considered,” Regis said.