Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for your patience.
It's a little crowded in this room, and the chamber actually is open now.
So to accommodate comfort for everybody, I'm going to ask everybody to move into
the chamber. If you are here to be in the gallery, please exit to the right and go
around. If you are a speaker on the panel, you can stay in this room, and we will
lead you to the speakers box. Thank you, everybody.
My apologies, but it's going to be much more comfortable this way.
One. Oh, yeah. One, two, test, test. One, two, three, four.
Test, test. One, two, one, two.
Sound is good.
The meeting for Committee on Police and Fire is called to order.
We will now have a roll call to establish quorum. Chairman Christopher Taliaferro.
Vice Chair Robinson here. Alderman Hall.
Alderman Gregory Mitchell. Alderman Nicole Lee. Alderman Derek Curtis.
Aldermoman Jeanette Taylor.
Alderman Ronnie Mosley. Alderman Silvana Tabares. Alderman Jason Irvin.
Alderman Felix Cardona. Alderman Nicholas Sposato.
Alderman Samantha Nugent.
Alderman Anthony Napolitano.
Mr. Broth is present.
Alderman Timmy Knudson.
Aldermoman Angela Clay. Aldermoman Deborah Silverstein.
How many members do we have? We have nine members currently.
There are nine members present. We have quorum.
Aldermoman Gardner.
Aldermoman Cruz.
We have 15 members present.
Aldermoman Mitz, non-member,
and Aldermoman Waguespack.
Pursuant to Rule 59, the following aldermen have requested to appear by video
conference.
Alderman Yancy. Can I get a motion for the approval of Alderman Yancy to
appear by remote means? So moved by Aldermoman Clay.
Okay.
We have 10 speakers today. We will start with George Blakemore.
The police committee, the police department,
and fire department.
Who and the money, finance. Now, we've had
several police chiefs. This time I think they should make a national
look from
the United States just on in-house, the policemen and the fire
department. What do you know about those two departments, Mr. Blakemore?
I remember when the fire department
had a lawsuit
because of racism in the fire department.
And what do you know about the police department?
Our police departments today, if you call 911, and you live in the ghetto,
a Hispanic policeman will come.
There's something inherently wrong with this system.
But these illegals coming in getting these jobs.
Now, our policemen make, to start, $88,000
of tuition paid, and overtime, they can get $100 and something thousand
a year.
But when I call 911, I'm wanting to see Black
police, police in our community.
Our community. Now, they say the black ones don't want to be policemen.
Well, these old black people, you got to make them.
You got to make them. You got to program them.
So I'm particularly interested in the black community.
Something inherent is wrong with us.
And all of you say you're going to flip it red or flip it blue.
I'm telling you, you better tend to your business.
You can hate like that all you want, you better tend to your business.
Open up some business in your community. You can't call 911.
You call 911, and the black policemen are gone.
And they say the blacks, they don't want to be policemen.
Oh, you got to make them want to fly. You got to make them want to fly.
Now, I'm going to leave with this. The Hispanics seem like to me they got more
control of their community. They tending their business.
No food deserts. They work together, and I'm tired of seeing black folks getting up
in front and beating up on other black people.
You don't see Mexicans getting up here doing this. "I can't. Uh-huh.
And oh, alderman this, and oh, mayor is no good." Well, they do theirs
behind closed doors, and they come out united. United.
Thank you, Mr. Blakemore.
We'll next have Kashina Harris.
Hey, good afternoon, everyone, today. So I just want to talk about victim services.
It's unnecessary health costs for the city.
We're just really throwing money around all around the border.
It is important, don't get me wrong.
It's very much so important, but we need to evaluate these officers and things like
that before we put them in a position of protecting and serving.
It's okay to do a psychiatric evaluation on an officer if
people seem to believe that they have issues and things like that.
So if they have speculations that they are using drugs or something like, it's okay
to give them a surprise drug test. It's okay to put a person in the car to follow
these officers around to ensure that they're doing their job.
Probationary periods are okay for police officers. It's necessary.
Suspension is necessary. These things are necessary, and just getting it more,
because we have to, the good sometimes can tend to outweigh the bad, especially in
circumstances like this. But let's have it.
Children and the youths that we have looking up to us, we want them to grow up to
want to be officers and not think all officers are bad.
So if we can just get someone to really start evaluating these officers, then we
can potentially cut down on the cost of victim services because there's no way that
people coming out to protect and serve, now they're individuals are being
victimized by these same individuals who they call for help.
It's just all around the border unnecessary.
So we just put the right services in play that need to be
in the positions, then we'll have it better for the citizens, if you get what I'm
saying. I'm trying to say it's the best way for the citizens.
So I'm pushing forward for us to get these officers evaluated, psychiatric
evaluations, surprise drug testing. We are surprised. An element of surprise.
And if you so happen to come back with
dirty urine or whatever, you're terminated, your probationary period,
whatever the case may be. But we have to ensure some efficiency for the citizens.
Protection. They took an oath. So it's sad that we have so many victims coming out
of the city of Chicago going through police brutality because, as a city, we have
to look at our part too, that we failed the citizens because we haven't fully
evaluated these individuals. So thank you, guys.
I just wanted to share a little bit of that out there for everyone.
That we are here, we are human, we do hear the people.
So I'm trying to be advocate for the people because I understand both standpoints.
So to all the victims, my prayer goes out to everyone in their family.
That's all we can do is pray. So thank you.
Thank you, Ms.
Harris. We'll next have Sherry Carter.
We'll next have Carmen
Jerome.
Good afternoon, members of the committee. My name is Carmen Navarro Jerkone.
I am a proud mother and grandmother who has raised her family in Chicago, with my
children and now my grandchildren attending Chicago Public Schools, and a law
enforcement professional with over 30 years of public service.
Over the past three decades, from running the second largest department in the
sheriff's office and working inside our domestic violence courts, to training the
Chicago Police Department leaders and law enforcement executives nationwide on the
service and enforcement of orders of protection through the FBI National Academy.
I have seen the devastating life-altering impact of domestic violence up close.
That perspective has also shown me how our laws and policies play out right here at
home, and how they can either help or hinder the officers on the ground who respond
to these calls and try to keep victims safe.
We are here today discussing critical funding for domestic violence intervention
and prevention. I strongly urge this council to prioritize dedicated, sustained
funding to protect survivors and their children.
Specifically, we must invest in the smaller grassroots community organizations that
are on the ground every day meeting victims and their families right where they
live. Large systems play an important role, but it is often those
neighborhood-based organizations that build the immediate trust required for a
survivor to reach out for help. They understand the specific cultural, linguistic,
and everyday realities of our residents, and they provide a vital lifeline in
moments of crisis. When we fund these smaller providers directly, we remove
barriers and ensure that life-saving support is accessible in every corner of the
city. At the same time, as a law enforcement professional and a former executive
who managed hundreds of sworn and civilian personnel, I want to be entirely clear.
Survivor resources cannot and should not be funded by defunding the police.
Public safety and victim support are two sides of the same coin.
We cannot protect families by stripping resources from the officers on the front
lines who respond to emergency calls in the dead of night.
True safety happens when law enforcement and specialized community providers work
hand in hand. I know this model works because I implemented it firsthand, deploying
social workers alongside our eviction teams and order protection teams to connect
families with critical information and resources right at the time of service.
I learned long ago that your neighborhood is simply where you live and lay your
head at night, but your community is much larger than that.
It is where you work, where your kids go to school, and where your friends build
their lives, and where families attend a game or a concert.
Because our community is interconnected, we all have a duty to do more for every
neighborhood across every zip code.
Let's direct this funding toward protecting the vulnerable, empowering the
neighborhood organizations that meet families where they are, and supporting both
our survivors and the officers sworn to protect them. Thank you.
Thank you, Carmen. We'll next have Adrienne Alexander.
Good afternoon. My name is Adrienne Alexander, and I'm the Director of
Intergovernmental Affairs for AFSCME Council 31.
Our union represents several thousand city workers, including the 50 civilian
domestic violence victim specialists in the Chicago Police Department.
Unfortunately, there's plenty of work in this realm to go around.
Domestic violence calls are the most frequent 911 call.
It touches every single corner of our city, and there is much more work to be done
to ensure that victims are protected.
Our members play a very specific and critical role in the ecosystem that serves
victims of domestic violence. Because they are located within the Chicago Police
Department, they can access police reports and proactively follow up directly with
victims in each domestic incident.
A member described their work as being a second responder.
The victim has already interacted with CPD.
In a few districts, a sworn officer may walk them through a basic assessment for
referral to Family Rescue, but most of the time victims do not consent for referral
to the agency at that point. As a result, CPD's victim specialists follow up later
and offer to help connect people to an array of services such as therapy, help
obtaining an order of protection or housing.
I want to be clear, our members are at an early point of intervention.
An overwhelming majority of their work comes directly from the police reports.
Depending on the district, members are fielding 200 to 400 cases per month, and
they very rarely have a caseload where they have longer-term interactions with
victims. The goal is to connect the victims to direct services.
But for confidentiality reasons, there is often not a warm handoff.
If one of our members refers someone to an advocacy group, they are not calling
ahead to give them a heads-up that someone is coming or telling the person to say,
"CPD sent you." In most instances, the only direct coordination is with Family
Rescue in a few specific police districts.
There are undoubtedly things that could be done better.
Our members would welcome more training as they are onboarded since that has
decreased over time. We think both our members and victims would benefit from
clarity in writing around how information can or cannot be shared and used.
There could be improved communication between the department and the nonprofits
victim specialists are referring people to.
But most of all, we need a more robust system, because the thing we heard most from
members across districts was that referrals were limited by provider capacity and
wait lists. Thank you for your time.
We look forward to continuing to be a part of the conversation about how best to
serve Chicago's most vulnerable residents. Thank you.
Adrienne, thank you. We'll next have Peter Lara.
To all of the victims of any type of crime, my
heart pours out to those.
The people that you have to blame for allowing such horrendous actions is
Governor Pritzker. By signing in the Safe-T Bill, repeat offenders can be walking
right back on the street the same day,
and then they just commit another crime.
And the
countless ordinances that have been put in place by the City of Chicago over recent
years have led to the catastrophe that all of us are in right now.
A couple examples of innocent victims, Sheridan Gorman,
Bethany McGee, that CTA worker that got stabbed in the neck last
month, and these are just some out of many examples where justice
has still been unheard of. From this city,
an innocent college student
that got brutally killed,
and the mayor and the governor refused to condemn those actions.
It's tyranny. It's disgraceful at so many levels.
And in a recent report that has been proposed by the Community Commission for
Public Safety and Accountability in this city, they want a net change to remove
150 police officer positions, which is roughly around the amount of
officers that this mayor has under his watch. Don't you think that's ridiculous?
No mayor in the history of this city has had so much protection on him.
Why does he need so many squad cars outside his house?
What do you call that?
It's only for their own personal interests.
Believe me, it's for their own
benefit.
And to top it all off,
we need to give respect to our officers.
I'm not saying that they're all good, but there's a great majority, 99% of them,
they want to do their job. They want to help the citizens.
But when there's no protection from the city and there's a chance that they could
get injured or end up being another statistic because of a repeat offender, that's
disgraceful.
And people are afraid to call out these public officials.
Come on, I'm going to call it out. If nobody else is going to, I will.
I'm 19 years old, and I can't stand seeing what's happening in this city. I can't.
I look at what 20 years ago was. It was a totally different environment.
Come on, speak up, people. Please. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter. We'll next have Calumet City Alderwoman Monet Wilson.
Welcome.
Hello.
For the record, I just want to make sure that it is corrected that I am opposing
defunding the police. I was in a rush when I was filling that out.
That should not even ever be an option.
So I am Alderwoman Dr. Monet S. Wilson from the City of Calumet City.
I serve as the alderwoman of the Second Ward.
I'm also the founding sponsor of Calumet City's Domestic Violence Task Force.
It is the only task force in the south suburbs.
I worked with the City of Chicago as well as Cook County to develop those task
forces. So I'm just going to read what I have.
And again, in full opposition of defunding the police.
Domestic violence is no longer simply something that happens behind closed
doors. It is an emergency. It's a public emergency.
We have to create a space where our men and women in blue are trained well and have
the resources to go out and support victims of domestic violence.
They must know how to recognize domestic violence.
A lot of times, even in my own police department, it is simply called a domestic
disturbance. And so I started requesting that they categorize it appropriately
because those domestic disturbance end up with battery and arrest.
And that affects how our children are raised and when they want to take over a town
or a city.
We cannot protect survivors by forcing them to choose between police protection and
survivor services. They need both.
When a victim calls 911 because someone is threatening their life, they need
trained officers who understand domestic violence, recognizes escalating danger,
and enforces the law, and responds before the threat becomes homicide.
I think we are too
nice with words. Homicide. Domestic violence is
equal to murder.
We are finding women in garbage cans.
There was a woman run down by foot on the expressway
outside of my city and murdered on the expressway.
This is a crisis.
We also have to figure out a way to fund organizations
the transparent way. There are multimillion-dollar organizations that are
continuing to get funding, and the small organizations doing the work are
overlooked. And those organizations, because I also represent--
I apologize. Can I just say this last sentence?
Okay. He's saying no. You saying no?
Okay.
Thank you, Alderwoman Wilson. Jessica Jackson.
Well, you have up there Victim Services.
Now, you often hear people say things like,
that lady that was talking that said she a grandmother and a mother, where she
said, "The system," and you hear people say, "They. That's the way they do.
That's what they do." See, talking in abstract.
The system that you speak of is these people right here.
That's the large system.
The victim services that you're talking about, they're the perpetrators of the
abuse.
You didn't see that election?
How much crime-- See, you cannot deal with violent crime and street crime without
dealing with white-collar crime. It's impossible.
White-collar crime manufactures street crime.
And when you have a body that won't uphold the law at the very core of it,
then this is a symptom of it.
If judges are not made to be competent, but they can be on the bench because of who
they know, JB Prisco can keep on saying, "Don't give police the money.
Don't give police money," and put a bunch of bogus CVI workers out here,
and then pay them to put the signs out and lead everybody to the poll.
You going to keep on letting JB Prisco pay Kwame Raoul not to investigate
corrupt judges, not to investigate corrupt police officers?
You going to keep letting a mayor talk this pseudo-confederate Black
talk while our communities are flooded with crime and poverty?
You're just going to keep on letting that go, and then when somebody say something,
do something about it, then it's what?
"Oh, why you beating up on that Black man?" The Black man beating up on us.
When it's time to take somebody down, you don't care about what color they are, you
care about they're your enemy.
Thank you, Ms. Jackson. Beautifully Scarred.
Scarred, I apologize. Beautifully Scarred.
Good evening, good afternoon. My name is Yolanda Carter, and I am the founder of
Beautifully Scarred, and this is my board of director, Yvette Hunter.
Now, the thing is that we really need support with our
nonprofit organizations. I'm not a stranger to media or anything,
but if you can remember, around COVID-19, I did one of the segments with one of the
newscasters about domestic violence and how there was no rooms, there was no
support. The people are, survivors are afraid of being at
home with their abusers and going outside. We really didn't know what to do.
So we get calls from different people trying to figure out how
to help our
survivors. But if we don't have the funds, a lot of things that we do, we out of
our own pockets. So we need the support.
So I'm going to let her just give you a little idea of the things that we do as
well. Oh, she gone?
Oh, okay.
All right. Well, so the thing is,
when we get calls, we've tried to figure out, well, we know
that we need to get people to get safety, right?
But there are some times when if you don't have the resources, the money
to do it, what can they do? They got to go back to their abusers, or they have to
stay in different situations that can be really harmful.
But we asking you all, do you all understand? I am a survivor myself.
A lot of you all may have seen my story on the news.
I was a young lady that was beat with a hammer, left in a pool of blood to die.
But I am here today to tell my story.
And because of my story, that's why I do what I do in my organization.
So all we want to do is just, we just want you all to really look at how important
it is, because domestic violence is not just a slap on the wrist.
It's not just something that you go through, and you can rebuil-- It is something
that you have to learn how to cope with. You have to learn how to heal.
Healing is a journey. So thank you all. We just need you all's support.
Thank you. Next, we'll have Trenda Ally.
Okay. Hello everybody, I am with Trenda Ally.
Today I am speaking because I support the funding that needs to be right here where
it is, but I just encourage you all to redirect that funding.
I serve on the board of a nonprofit organization, and what I know is that
funding is kind of hard for us to get.
Sometimes we may get a little $5,000 here, but we definitely have to produce an
impact report when we're done with that $5,000.
So it is really common sense. I know we're up here with the Cook County system, and
they're so nuanced and so many different responsibilities, but I think you guys
can take the time now, I think this is the time, to reallocate those
funds. And I would encourage you to look at these nonprofit organizations that are
actually out here providing impact every year.
Our organization has been around for eight years now, providing resources to the
youth, and then that extends to the family.
So understand, we have to partner with these nonprofit organizations like for
domestic violence. And then CPD, I want to give a shout-out to the 11th District
because what they're doing over there, the CAPS team and that crew, they handling
business over there. The 15th District too, you just see...
And when I hear that they have no funding for the resources that they're providing
to the community, but when they provide the resources.
11th District did 100 house for the community.
When I tell you they had to play it back three days just because how the community
showed out. Resources are needed. We need to fund these.
Keep the funds here. Reallocate them responsibly.
You guys really need to talk to a financial advisor or something, I believe,
because it's not making sense that the monies are just going wherever, but no
product, no impact.
Guys, I'm a mother, I'm a victim, and I'm a survivor of domestic violence.
I am a mother dealing with a court case with an individual who has over nine
different domestic relation cases on him right now.
But you guys are, the way the system is, you're looking at each case separately.
Your systems are not communicating.
So yes, I'm stuck here dealing with this individual who has these cases, and my
particular case has about four different restraining orders.
Two of them reached the preliminary status.
Preliminary, that's the max you can get, but it took me two years to even get to
that. So if that was the proof in the product, and even with my child being
involved, I mean, seriously, you guys suggested, the judge that you give so much
respect to, suggested supervised visitation for one hour a week for my child.
It gets serious, and I have to come and be vulnerable with you all.
But now, 16 years later, because my docket number started in 2010, and now I'm
still in court now, I'm having to retell this story and it's landing on deaf ears.
I have all the proof, and I didn't know how to put it on the record.
No court reporter's in the room. You guys, there's a big problem.
It is a huge problem. And thank you
At this time, public comment is concluded.
The Committee for Police and Fire is in receipt of one written comment prior to
today's meeting, which was sent to all committee members this morning.
Each of you should have received by email on September 22nd, 2026, a copy
of Rule 45 report for the meeting held on September 22nd,
2026. Are there any questions or comments on that report?
There being no questions or comments, can I get a motion for the passage of the
Rule 49 report for the affirmative vote of all members present at the roll
call used to establish a quorum?
So moved by Alderman Taylor. All those in favor, A. All those opposed, no.
In the opinion of the chair, the A's have it, and the motion carries.
I would like to have two survivors that are here with us today to give opening
remarks.
If you will allow me to have Katina Watkins and Sarah Brown to begin.
Thank you, ladies.
Yes.
Good afternoon.
Bear with me one second.
Nancy was approved. Okay, go ahead. Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Katina Watkins Lloyd.
To the members of the Committee on Police and Fire,
I stand before you today wearing many titles.
I'm a Chicago police officer with over 23 years of service.
I'm a mother, a daughter, and a sister, and an advocate.
But today, most importantly, I stand before you as a survivor of domestic violence.
For more than two decades, I have worn a uniform dedicated to protecting and
serving others, but nothing in my training prepared me for the day when I
became the person who needed protection, support, and someone to stand beside me.
Because domestic violence, it doesn't discriminate.
It does not care about your profession, your education, your financial
independence, and how strong others believe you are.
And sometimes the person who spends her career protecting others finds
herself fighting to be protected.
My experience with domestic violence, it didn't just end when my marriage ended.
In many ways, the battle continued in another arena.
It continued in a courtroom.
I have experienced firsthand how exhausting and financially devastating
and emotionally overwhelming it can be to navigate domestic relations court
while also trying to heal from abuse.
I continue to advocate not just for myself, but for my child while facing ongoing
litigation involving the very person who I sought freedom from.
Most recently, I found myself defending myself against a petition for an order of
protection that was filed against me from my abuser.
There's another layer to my experience.
My former husband, who has connections politically, judiciary,
and unfortunately also in law enforcement.
While these professional relationships that he has, it doesn't establish any
wrongdoing, but it can create an imbalance in power for a
survivor seeking protection.
Justice should never depend on who you know.
This is why we
have to recognize post-separation abuse, coercive control, and the potential
misuse of our legal system. Because sometimes having a relationship, it doesn't
just mean the abuse ends. It just simply changes forms.
And that's where the Chicago Police Department Office of Victim Services has made a
meaningful difference in my life. When I needed someone to listen, they listened.
When I needed support, they stood beside me.
Through my domestic relations proceeding, my recent order protection hearing.
They reminded me I was not facing these challenges alone.
They told me that I deserve to be heard,
that I deserve dignity, and I deserve support.
Even when my journey towards safety became complicated,
the Office of Victim Services has shown me that advocacy is not simply about
providing just resources and referrals.
It's about showing up, and that's what they did.
It's about recognizing that survivors need support long after the initial
incident, long after the police report, and long after the relationship has ended.
Sometimes having someone stand beside you makes a big difference between feeling
defeated and finding the strength to continue and move on.
As a police officer, I understand accountability, and as a survivor, I understand
compassion, and as an advocate, I understand we cannot truly protect victims
because if we fail to recognize how an abuser can continue well after the
separation. And we have to bridge the gaps between the criminal justice system,
civil court, domestic relations court, and victim advocacy service.
And as a survivor, we should not have to repeatedly live in the trauma in the
courtrooms. A survivor should not have to choose between financial stability and
protecting herself. And a survivor should never feel that her voice doesn't matter
less just because the abuse has moved from behind the closed doors into legal
proceedings. We need trauma-informed practice, better coordination,
meaningful accountability, and victim services that understand the complexity of
domestic violence. That's why the Office of Victim Service is not optional.
It's essential.
The work matters. Chicago residents, families, children, and even police officers
who become victims themselves. Because when my uniform comes off, I'm still a
human. We still experience trauma. We still deserve protection.
And today I'm standing here because my journey is over.
It's not over. I'm standing here because I'm still navigating the court system,
still advocating for my child, and I'm still working toward healing and
accountability and peace. But I refuse to allow my experience to silence me.
I choose my voice for survivors who may not yet feel strong to use theirs.
And I want our city to understand that investing in victim services means investing
in safety, dignity, and ability of survivors to rebuild their lives.
To the Chicago Police Department Office of Victim Services, to my advocate, Nancy
and Mariano, I thank you so much for standing behind me and for
standing in this difficult space for me.
I'm a police officer by profession, a survivor by experience, and I will continue
to use my voice until survivors are heard, protected, respected, and
supported. Thank you.
Good afternoon, members of the City Council, community leaders, advocates, and
fellow Chicago residents. My name is Sarah Brown.
I am a survivor of domestic violence, a mother in a domestic violence, I
advocate for
victims and survivors. I share a child with my abuser, and I have been involved
in domestic relations court for more than 10 years now.
For more than nine years, I've had to continue navigating court hearings, parenting
issues, safety concerns, legal decisions, and the emotional impacts of
remaining connected to someone who has caused me harm.
My experience has told me that domestic violence does not always end when a
survivor leaves the relationship.
For many survivors, the trauma continues through custody disputes, visitation
arrangements, financial struggles, and repeated court involvement.
I've also worked with the Chicago Cook County Violence Against Women task force.
Through my advocacy work and personal experience, I've seen how difficult it can be
for victims to find safety, understand their rights, and navigate systems that are
often complicated and overwhelming.
This is why the Chicago Police Department Office of Victim Services is so
important. When a person experiences domestic violence, gender-based violence, or
a non-fatal shooting, they may be afraid, isolated, financially vulnerable,
or unsure where to turn. CPD's Office of Victim Services provides a critical
connection between victims and the systems designed to protect them.
Victim specialists are civilian professionals,
not police officers, who provide free trauma-informed assistance.
A victim does not need to file a police report to receive services.
This matters because every survivor is in a different place.
Some are ready to report immediately.
Others need time,
safety planning, information, and support before deciding what steps to take.
The Office of Victim Services provide crisis support, safety planning, referrals,
and advocacies with detectives, prosecutors, court probation, parole, and other
justice system agencies. Victim specialists help survivors understand what is
happening, communicate their needs, and navigate the criminal justice process.
For survivors like me, that support can be the difference between feeling
completely alone and knowing that someone understands how to help.
My experience in domestic relations court has shown me that survivors who share
children with their abusers face unique and ongoing challenges.
They may have to communicate with the person who harmed them, attend the same
hearings, respond to court orders, manage parenting exchanges, and make
decisions involving their children while still dealing with fear and trauma.
A survivor should not have to choose between protecting their child and complying
with a complicated legal process.
Survivors need informed advocates who understand the connection between domestic
violence, family courts, safety planning, and the best interest of children.
Community-based advocates throughout Illinois provide essential services such as
confidential hotlines, emergency shelters, counsel, legal advocacy,
housing assistance, food, transportation, childcare, and long-term support.
These services are necessary and should be protected.
At the same time, community organizations generally cannot perform the same direct
law enforcement liaison role that the CPD Victim Services
provides. They cannot connect victims with CPD detectives, prosecutors, police
procedures, and court processes in the same way.
This is not a competition between agencies. It is a partnership.
Victims need community advocates, law enforcement, victim specialists, prosecutors,
courts, healthcare providers, and social service agencies working all together.
Chicago is facing a serious budget crisis, but budget shortfalls should not force
cuts to services that protect victims and children.
Victim services are not an extra expense.
They are public safety necessity.
These are responsible ways to protect these services.
First, the city should treat victim services as essential infrastructure.
Essential. Funding for crisis response, safety planning, and court advocacy and
survivor support should be protected during big budget decisions.
Second, Chicago should aggressively pursue federal, state, county, and private
grants. Grant funding should be used to support domestic violence advocacy,
gender-based violence and prevention, gun violence on the federal level.
Third, the city should improve coordination between CPD, community organizations,
courts, hospitals, schools, and social service agencies.
Survivors should not have to repeat their trauma to multiple agencies simply to
receive help. A coordinated referral system can reduce duplication, save
resources, and improve safety. Fourth, the city should invest in
prevention and early intervention.
Helping a victim create a safety plan, find emergency housing, obtain counseling,
or understand a court order may prevent repeated emergency calls, hospital visits,
homelessness, and further violence.
Finally, the city should listen to survivors when creating policy.
Yes.
Survivors understand where systems fail, where services are missing, and what
support is needed. Our experiences should not be treated as
background information.
They should help shape the solutions.
After nine years in domestic relations court, I know that survivors need more than
a single phone call or one referral. They need constant support.
They need professionals who understand trauma.
They need systems that communicate with one another.
They need services that remain available even when the process becomes long and
difficult. Victims should not have to fight for help while they're already fighting
to survive. Thank you.
Thank you, Officer Watkins and Ms.
Brown,
for your testimony today and opening remarks.
I would like to acknowledge Alderman Greg Mitchell for quorum.
There is one item before the committee today, and there will be no votes taken.
The first and only item to be heard today is item number
R2026-0026326,
a call for hearings on addressing concerns about investing in our Office of Victim
Services, rather than increasing funds for emergency housing and legal aid
programs. The following witnesses are joining us today.
Mike Milstein, deputy director, Office of Equality and Engagement, Office
of Victim Services, Chicago Police Department.
Emmy Fox, executive director of the Lifespan, and Sarah Layden, chief operating
officer of Resilience. We also have Madeline Barr from Network
Advocating Against Domestic Violence.
I would like to give the floor to my colleague, Alderman Nicole Lee.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to everyone who's present today for today's subject
matter hearing.
We're here today to have an honest and frank conversation among advocates and law
enforcement to ensure that we as a city are using resources as impactfully as
possible to address the persistent problem of gender-based violence.
Let me be clear. This is not an exercise of stealing someone else's lunch money.
There's not enough to go around. I think we all agree on that.
Today's conversation really is about
how this new office is doing and working in the ecosystem to provide
services to victims. I'll keep going with my statement now.
Sorry, just had to jump in with that.
Specifically, like I said, we're here to examine the CPD Office of Victim Services
to ensure that we're serving the needs of the survivor community effectively.
As you know, I was hoping to have this meeting earlier, but we were unable to
convene a quorum at the last effort, so I'm grateful to all of my colleagues today
for making their way here today for this very important conversation.
I'm also, in a way, glad that it got delayed, as it makes perfect sense to have
this hearing in the midst of budget season.
And again, not
to take money from anybody or reallocate whatever.
During this time, especially when we are in a budget deficit, we have to make sure
that money is being spent as effectively as possible.
And I am glad to report that during the budget hearings, we did get a commitment
from the Department of Family Support Services that the $400,000 that was going to
gender-based and domestic violence from ARPA funding would be replaced.
So, that is being kept whole The cap hole shouldn't be the floor.
We know that the need is great, and it continues to grow.
My resolution calling for this hearing was sparked by reporting by Mina Bloom at
Block Club Chicago, and
the work of the gender-based violent advocacy organization, the Network, and other
groups. I will, of course, let them make their own case in the room today.
But overarchingly, these groups, which are on the front line serving survivors,
have stated that the funding would be better invested in such programs as emergency
housing and legal support rather than the Office of Victim Services.
That was what the basis of the article was.
And again, my contention here is that we need to have an open conversation about
what is actually happening with victim services, what's working and what's not, and
what we can do better.
So I'll just call out a couple of things.
According to the Block Club report, a few results have been documentable by the
Office of Victim Services. Last year, victim specialists attempted to reach 18,052
victims of violent crimes and make contact with 6,383 of them, mostly domestic
violence survivors. But the department doesn't track what happens next, so it
doesn't know how many of those survivors made contact with community service
providers and received help. To learn more about program results, Block Club
reached out to all 56 community service providers in the programs list and
interviewed leaders of more than 40 of them.
Only four organizations said they received any referrals.
Importantly, the report notes, quote, "City officials didn't consult survivor
advocates before the expansion of funding for the Office of Victim Services." I
hear everybody, and the calls from public comment and from our survivors who
made statements, that this is a topic that requires all of us being at the
table and all voices being heard. So I want you to know that we hear you on that.
We know that there are many dedicated and hardworking individuals who work in the
Office of Victim Services, and we appreciate the work of OVS Deputy Director Mike--
excuse me, you're not Mike, you're Matt. Matt Milstein, who's here with us today.
The goal is to address some of these questions, determine where there
are opportunities to improve services and support, and to make sure that the funding
that we do have is being deployed in a way that makes the most sense and is
effective, especially as we build a budget for next year.
We owe it to the many survivors in the city to have an honest dialogue.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. We will go ahead and start with our witnesses.
Please go right ahead,
Mr. Milstein.
Good afternoon.
First if I can just take a quick moment.
Many folks may be aware we lost an officer earlier this week.
So I just want to express our condolences to the family and send our thoughts and
prayers to the family as they go through this difficult time.
My name is Mike Milstein. I serve as a deputy director of the Office of Equity and
Engagement for the Chicago Police Department.
My office oversees the department's Office of Victim Services and Domestic Violence
Program. First, I just want to thank Alderman Lee and all the co-sponsors of this
subject matter hearing today and for calling for this important conversation.
I also want to acknowledge the members of the community who are here today, and
especially those who spoke during public comment and shared your experiences.
We all come from this work from different paths.
And many of the people in this room have personal experiences with domestic and
sexual violence. And I just want to thank them for their courage and their strength
to be here today.
I also want to recognize Alderman Tabares for the work that you've been doing to
launch the Chicago and Cook County Violence Scam Task Force.
The task force just serves as a reminder that the work of improving the systems
that should support victims and survivors is not on the City of Chicago alone.
It requires really a cross-government approach.
Additionally, I want to recognize Amy Fox from Lifespan and Sarah Layden from
Resilience. I've had the opportunity to work with both over the last however many
years now, and have seen firsthand the passion and the dedication that they have
for helping survivors. And CPD is grateful for the work that Lifespan and
Resilience do, for what they do, and we are grateful for the entire advocacy
community, which is vitally important in this conversation.
And finally, I want to recognize my team.
The people who we have on our team are not simply just employees of the City of
Chicago. They are hardworking, dedicated, and passionate advocates who spend every
single day working with people during some of the most difficult and vulnerable
moments of their lives. The work that they do is incredible, and they deserve
recognition for what they do.
So I just want to begin by sharing a little bit of history about CPD's efforts in
victim services, because what we're talking about today did not start in 2025.
It actually goes back nearly 30 years.
In 1996, the department launched a domestic violence unit that included two
non-sworn, these are non-police advocates, whose primary focus was to provide
services to the public and victims of officers who had been suspected of domestic
violence. The following year, the CAPS program began incorporating domestic
violence outreach and awareness into every district's functions.
1999, CPD hired its first domestic violence coordinator.
This was the first time there was a dedicated role within CPD that specifically
focused on domestic violence. They were responsible for overseeing a
department-wide plan for addressing and responding to domestic violence and
supporting victims and survivors.
In 2000, CPD added what's called the Domestic Violence Liaison Officer, commonly
known in many cases as DVLO. This was a role in each district's CAPS office, which
was responsible for conducting outreach directly to victims and survivors of recent
domestic violence incidents and supporting ongoing community engagement around
domestic violence in their districts.
When we talk about victim services within CPD, this is not something that happened
overnight. It's actually been happening for quite some time.
It's been part of our work for decades. In 2021, CPD was awarded a grant.
This was a federal Department of Justice grant that allowed us to hire three
additional victim advocates to support victims of non-fatal gun crimes.
This marked the first time in CPD history that we had a dedicated staff
specifically supporting victims of non-domestic violence-related incidents.
So these were particular victims of non-fatal shootings.
In 2025, just based on the identified additional need for support, CPD began to
expand our victim services program to provide citywide coverage for victims of
domestic violence and non-fatal violent incidents across the entire city.
And because of that expansion, we now have that dedicated program that does provide
those supports in every single district across the entire city.
Now, victim services within the police department is not new, and it is not unique.
When we began exploring how to expand our program, we did extensive research around
the country, including looking at different academic studies and speaking with
similar programs in other jurisdictions.
We met with members from the Houston Police Department and the Salt Lake City
Police Department, both at the time had been credited by the Department of Justice
as having some of the strongest and well-intentioned victim services programs of
any law enforcement agency across the country.
We also met with members from the Baltimore Police Department, who, like CPD, is
also a consent decree agency. And we did this because we wanted to understand what
other departments were doing, what was working, and how a police department could
best provide victim services effectively while also connecting victims and
survivors to the community-based organizations that provide long-term support.
I want to make sure it's important to talk about the scale of domestic violence in
Chicago.
On a normal day, domestic violence calls are the number one call for service that
our officers respond to every single day.
In 2025 alone, CPD responded to 183,696
domestic-related calls for service.
That is approximately 503 domestic-related calls every single day.
Additionally, in 2025, from those reports, CPD documented 49,939
victims of domestic violence. Now, this number does include individuals with
multiple incidents where they may be a victim of domestic violence.
But I also want to recognize DV is still underreported in Chicago, and so this
number could be significantly higher.
Speaking specifically about the budget, and this is looking at CPD's 2026 budget
our budget for victim services, and this is the entire Office of Victim Services,
is currently allocated at $4 million.
Of that $4 million, about $2.5 million is specific to domestic violence services.
A little over half of our budget for victim services is domestic violence related.
This represents about 0.12% of CPD's total budget.
Similarly, looking at victims of violent incidents, and this is victims of
aggravated battery and aggravated assault.
In 2025, CPD documented 7,779 victims of an aggravated battery.
These are going to be individuals who are victims of-- It could be a shooting, it
could be a stabbing, a blunt force trauma, more violent incidents that impact the
body. And
of that 7,779, 1,854 were actually victims of a shooting.
We also documented 7,263 victims of an aggravated assault.
Again, looking at the budget of CPD's $4 million for victim services, about $1.5
right now is allocated for the non-fatal violent incidents, representing about a
0.07% of CPD's budget.
To support the work that we're doing, CPD's Office of Victim Services is divided
into two operational units within the department.
Unit 226 focuses specifically on non-fatal violent incidents, which provide support
to victims and survivors of aggravated battery and aggravated assaults.
This team also does now include victim services for victims of hate crimes and
support for families and friends of loved ones who have been reported missing.
Under Unit 227, which is CPD's Domestic Violence Program, they support specifically
victims and survivors of domestic violence.
Now, one important point I want to note is that CPD's Domestic Violence Program was
designed to specifically meet the Illinois Domestic Violence Acts definition of a
domestic violence program. This allows staff within this unit who are 40-hour
trained in domestic violence to maintain confidential communications between
themselves and the victims and survivors that they work with.
And we require that all staff assigned to the Unit 227, the Domestic Violence
Program, receive the 40-hour domestic violence training before they begin working
with a victim or survivor.
As I shared earlier, our team has been expanding significantly since 2025, when our
budget gave us the ability to do so.
At the beginning of 2024, our team had a total of six victim specialists.
This included four specialists who were specific for domestic violence and two
specialists specifically for non-fatal violence.
By the end of 2024 and beginning in January 2025, we had expanded to a total of 14
victim specialists.
In August 2025, we increased our staffing to 32 total victim specialists, and in
June of 2026 of this year, we completed our last round of hiring, which brought us
to a total of 50 victim specialists.
This includes 31 specialists who are focused on domestic violence and 19
specialists who are focused on non-fatal violence.
Throughout this process, we work closely with the Department of Human Resources to
hire as many qualified individuals as possible.
We have posted the application for the victim specialist position three times in
the last two years and have conducted over 200 interviews.
Today, we have five victim specialist positions that remain vacant, and we are
continuing to work with the Department of Human Resources to repost the position
and fill remaining vacancies as quickly as we can.
I also want to mention that as part of the decision to increase victim specialists,
the department made the decision to scale back the domestic violence liaison
officer role. And we believe that the work of reaching out and supporting victims
and survivors is best done by a non-sworn, a non-police member who has more
advanced training in domestic violence and can maintain more confidential
communications. Now, many districts have chosen to maintain a domestic violence
liaison officer in their CAPS office, and those folks are still supporting
community engagement and awareness in their districts, and we work closely with
them. Additionally, we also have several officers within our Office of Victim
Services that can support various cases as needed or as requested.
To help better explain the work that our team does, we've created a simplified
response pathway that our victim specialists follow.
One of the unique benefits, as was shared earlier, of our program is that our
victim specialists have access to police reports quickly after they are created.
We also have access to any prior case reports that might also be related to a
particular domestic situation. This means that our staff are able to get some
initial insight into a particular situation before even reaching out to a victim or
survivor, and in some cases, can help our team identify potential resources that
may be more beneficial for the victim before we even connect with them.
Now, victim specialists begin each workday by reviewing all cases within their
purview since their last workday.
So, for example, since today's Thursday, all of our staff will start their day
today looking at cases that occurred in their assigned areas since they ended their
day yesterday. Once they have their full list of incidents, they'll begin reaching
out to victims and survivors that have identified in their case reports.
When we are able to make contact with a victim or survivor, our number one goal is
to make sure that they know what their rights are, what options that they have,
assess their immediate needs, and try to connect them with a community-based agency
that can best support them. When a victim or survivor is willing to be connected
with an agency, we either ask them to sign a release of information form, which
allows our staff to share their information directly with a community partner, or
we provide that victim or survivor with information on how to contact an agency
themselves.
Because of the difficulty in getting a victim or survivor to provide a signature, a
physical signature, on a release of information form, the majority of our referrals
right now are made by our victim specialists sharing information to a victim or
survivor on agencies that they can reach out to on their own.
Now, in many cases, victims or survivors tell us that they're not ready at this
point or interested in being connected to a community-based provider.
When this happens, our team will offer whatever services that we are able to
provide to that individual, and if a victim or survivor is willing to work with us,
we will do our best to provide as much support as we can.
However, we are always transparent with victims and survivors about what we are
able to do and help them with and what we are not able to help them with.
And our ultimate goal is to help get that victim or survivor comfortable with a
warm handoff to a community provider that we know can do more long-term support.
And of course, we have many victims and survivors who tell us that at this point
they're not interested or in need of any services. We will always respect that.
However, we will continue to follow up with that victim if more incidents occur
following our initial contact.
Now our team is fully equipped and trained to provide a range of services and
support for victims of survivors.
The number one service we always want to provide every victim and survivor with is
simply information. Our goal is to make sure as many victims as possible are
informed about what their rights are and what options they have available to them.
We believe empowering victims and survivors with knowledge and information is a key
step for anyone looking to change or shift their situation.
As I shared before, we always prioritize referring victims to community-based
agencies as much as possible. We know community providers can provide more in-depth
and long-term support. They want to get as many people connected with those
services as possible. Our team also helps facilitate communication between a victim
and a detective assigned to their case when requested by the victim.
And I want to emphasize here that we never require or encourage a victim to meet
with, talk to, or cooperate with a detective.
It is not a requirement for getting services from CPD, but if a victim is willing
to or is interested in it, we will facilitate that communication.
Our team can assist in navigating the justice system, which includes filing a
police report if a victim is afraid to come directly to a police district or call
911, or can include assisting with paperwork to obtain universal protections.
We also assist victims in applying for financial support through Crime Victim
Compensation, Flex Funds, and Emergency Supplemental Victim Funds.
We can work directly with the victim to develop a safety plan tailored to their
unique situation and their needs. We can provide crisis support.
And finally, our main question to every victim is: what do you need and how can we
help? We will do our best to provide as much as we can for everyone.
However, we are always going to be clear and transparent about that we cannot
provide everything, and when we cannot provide something directly, we work with a
victim to identify a community provider to see who can help them.
I want to shift now to discuss a little bit more of the data that we have from
2025. And before diving in, I just want to remind the committee that the team, when
looking at the data from 2025, at that point, the team was still minimally staffed
for the majority of that year. So the data that's on the screen here does not
reflect the program at full capacity.
We began 2025 with only 14 of 55 victim specialist positions filled and did not add
18 more specialists until August of 2025.
So this data reflects a program that, again, is still minimally staffed for the
majority of the year. Specifically with domestic violence in 2025, our team
documented attempting to contact 17,225 victims of domestic violence.
Of those, our team documented being able to provide some sort of service to 7,196
victims, or about 41.8% of victims that we attempted to contact.
Our team was unable to make contact with 6,115 victims, or about
35.5%. And about 3,000 victims that were contacted told us
that at that point they did not need or have any desire for any services at that
point.
Diving deeper into some specific services our team documented providing, the most
common service, as I always mentioned, is information and resource sharing.
This represents every time a victim specialist was able to talk with a victim or
survivor about what their rights are as a victim and what options and resources are
available to them. We provided just under 3,000 victims with referrals to
community-based providers. We assisted 2,400 victims with safety plans, helped
1,355 victims navigate the justice system, and we helped 492 victims seek any
housing or shelter support.
One of the critiques that we've heard was a lack of referrals from CPD.
To better understand this, we took a deeper look at some of the community-provided
data around referrals. Earlier this year, the Network Advocating Against Domestic
Violence released volume one of its Measuring Safety Illinois Domestic Violence
Hotline report. And in that report, they shared data from victims and survivors
about how they were referred to the Domestic Violence Hotline.
In the report, they report that less than half of individuals who contacted the
Domestic Violence Hotline shared how they were referred to the hotline.
Of the victims and survivors who did identify a referral source, 10% said that they
were referred to the hotline by the Chicago Police Department.
When we compared the data from 2025 in the network's Measuring Safety report back
to 2023, our review saw that in 2023, the network also reported that less than half
of victims and survivors who contacted the hotline indicated their referral source.
Of those who did, only 7% said that it was Chicago Police.
Referrals from CPD were even lower in 2025 at about 5% before increasing to 10%
last year. I also want to recognize that I'm sure it will be discussed more today
that the overall numbers of the Domestic Violence Hotline have significantly
increased since 2023. But based on our review of the data that was shared, while
overall calls to the hotline have increased, so has the number of victims and
survivors who indicated that they were referred to the hotline by Chicago Police.
Now, this data alone is not enough to confidently say that the increase in
referrals from CPD is a direct result of CPD's Victim Services program.
But I do believe it highlights a broader effort from CPD to connect victims and
survivors with helping services, both during field interactions and during our
follow-up conversations.
I also want to take a brief moment to highlight two partnerships that CPD is a part
of, and alongside community partners and other justice partners.
The Domestic Violence Multidisciplinary Team is a partnership between CPD, Cook
County State's Attorney's Office, Lifespan, Family Rescue, and Connections for
Abused Women and Children. And the Sexual Assault Multidisciplinary Team is a
partnership between CPD, Cook County State's Attorney's Office, Resilience,
Lifespan, and Endeavor Health. With both programs, MDT partners are able to connect
victims and survivors of both types of crimes with community-based services
quickly. These allow for a victim-centered approach to supporting individuals by
getting them support quickly and connected to the justice system easily.
Both programs are incredibly impactful and ones that CPD sees a ton of value in and
would always encourage more investment into.
I want to provide a quick snapshot as well on some of the data that we have so far
in 2026. The data on this slide represents our team's attempted outreach and the
victims we've served through the end of October.
Now, because of the increased staffing that we had beginning of this year, along
with additional members who were hired a few months ago, our program has already
met or significantly exceeded our totals of all of 2025.
In particular, we have already increased our total outreach attempts to victims of
domestic violence by 38.8%. We have also increased our outreach attempts to victims
of non-fatal violence by 890%. Of victims of domestic violence we've connected
with, we have provided some service to 9,190 of them,
which is an increase of 27.7% compared to 2025.
And of victims of non-fatal violence that we connected with this year, we have
provided some service to 2,823 of them, which is a
553% increase compared to all of 2025.
And these numbers will continue to grow between now and the end of the year.
And we feel good about the work that we're doing, but I also want to offer an
important reminder that this data still reflects a program that has only been fully
staffed for less than half of this year.
And so we have not yet had the opportunity to capture a full year's worth of data
with the program more fully staffed.
Now, I want to take a moment to address some of the broader questions that have
been raised about CPD's Victim Services program.
There's certainly room for scrutiny and questions and accountability when it comes
to any public program, and we absolutely will welcome that.
But those conversations should be grounded in facts and informed by the experiences
of the people who actually use these services.
If we are going to have a serious conversation about whether victim services are
meeting the needs of survivors, then we need to make sure that we are listening to
survivors. We should not make assumptions about what victims and survivors want or
need without hearing from them directly.
Their experiences should be at the center of how we evaluate and how we improve
these services. And our responsibility is to keep listening, to keep improving, and
keep making sure that victims and survivors remain at the center of our work.
As CPD's Victim Services program continues to grow, we know we have a lot more work
to do, and we are committed to doing this.
We are actively working on systems that allow victims and survivors to sign and
release information forms more easily and accessibly, hopefully allowing us to make
more direct referrals to community-based providers.
And we are working to increase awareness about our program to provide greater
access to victims and survivors to engage with us.
As I close, I just want to leave the committee with this.
Supporting victims and survivors requires a whole of government and a whole of
community approach. There is not a one size fits all response.
What one victim wants may be very different from what another victim wants.
Some victims may want to work directly with a community-based organization.
Some victims may want support from a CPD victim specialist, and some may not be
ready for services at all. Our responsibility is to make sure that they have
options and that those options are safe and accessible when they are ready.
The question, in my view, should not be whether CPD or a community-based
organization should provide victim services.
The question should be: How do we make sure that victims and survivors can access
effective support when they need it?
CPD's Victim Services has an important role to play in this effort.
At the same time, community-based organizations have an equally important role in
providing specialized and long-term support.
And I believe two things can be true at the same time.
CPD's Victim Services program needs to be adequately funded, and so do the many
community-based organizations that advocate for and support victims and survivors
every day, which at this moment they are not adequately funded.
And in order for CPD's programs to work effectively, the community also needs to be
funded to help victims when we refer to them.
We know the work that community providers do, and we are grateful for it, and we
will continue to advocate for more funding for community-based providers and
agencies to do this work. But that should not come at the expense of CPD's Victim
Services program, and we should not be creating a false choice between a police
department providing immediate support and a community organization providing
in-depth services. We need both, and we need CPD to effectively identify and
support victims when they enter the system, and we need a strong network of
community-based organizations that can provide a specialized ongoing support for
CPD that CPD cannot provide on its own.
That is how we build a system that gives victims and survivors meaningful choices,
and that is how we make sure that someone who experiences violence is not left to
navigate the system alone. And that is how we build a victim services system that
is responsive to what victims and survivors actually need.
At the end of the day, that's what this work is all about.
It's about making sure that when someone experiences violence, they know where they
can turn to, they understand their options, and they can get the support that they
need. And we can and we should continue to work together to make that system
stronger. Thank you.
Mike, thank you very much. We'll now have Amy Fox.
Amy?
Hello. Oh, no. I have a cold. I'm dedicated, so I'm here.
So if you can't hear me in the back, you have to let me know, okay?
So my name is Amy Fox, I'm the executive director of Lifespan, and I want to thank
all of you for the opportunity to be here today.
I want to thank all the community members and the survivors especially for their
courage to speak out today.
I was asked to be here today to really sort of paint the landscape of domestic
violence services that are available in Chicago.
So I'm really proud of Lifespan's unique approach to providing services to
survivors. We integrate three really core services: counseling for adult
survivors and their children, legal services and immigration in domestic relations,
and advocacy, largely criminal court advocacy.
As Mike said, we're also proud members of two MDT, multidisciplinary teams, in
conjunction with CBD and with Resilience.
And I'm really proud of those because they really demonstrate the value of public
and private partnership in addressing the needs of survivors.
So Mike gave a pretty good overview of calls to CBD
regarding domestic violence. And as he said, the over 183 calls are really just
the bare minimum of domestic violence instances.
Really, the data shows that the amount of domestic violence is probably easily
double that.
But what you see in contrast is that in 2025,
there weren't even 9,500 DV clients from Chicago received services.
So 183 calls contrasted by 9,579
survivors who received services. And then you look at, thank you.
Then you look at the calls to the domestic violence hotline.
There were 23,520 contacts to the hotline.
There's a big disparity there.
So we cannot talk about, thank you. See, Mike and I are good partners.
We cannot talk about domestic violence services in Chicago without first looking at
the Illinois Domestic Violence Act.
The Illinois Domestic Violence Act turned 50 this year, and it really was
groundbreaking, both in the scope and the acknowledgement of the systemic
failures that survivors have faced for generations.
It really set the foundation for how services are to be
provided to survivors.
So the Illinois Domestic Violence Act really highlights that a fundamental
protection and provision of the act is confidentiality.
It provided a framework in which counselors and advocates shall not
disclose confidential information,
really with very limited mandated reporting
obligations.
Note, in the Illinois Domestic Violence Act, should a domestic violence advocate
violate this, it is actually a misdemeanor.
I'll let you read these cases at your leisure, but there is limited case law
regarding confidentiality and what it means in Illinois.
But the two really dominant cases have demonstrated that it is an absolute
privilege.
Now, the reason why it is absolute
is, I will get to that in one moment.
And as Mike said, the act even then defines what is privileged communication
between domestic violence advocates and victims.
Now, in defining that, again, it is very
structured so that survivors are protected at all costs.
This provision actually is even more important in
systems-based advocacy as they have to navigate
certain constitutional Brady Rule discovery disclosures, especially
when it comes to exculpatory evidence.
So it is very important that system-based
advocacy programs correctly set up and abide by
DV program restrictions. And if they're unable to do so, then it's equally
important that then they disclose those limitations to survivors so that survivors
can access services in an informed manner.
All right. Confidentiality, confidentiality, confidentiality.
Why is it so important?
Confidentiality encourages help-seeking.
Victims and survivors of domestic violence face fear and shame and
overwhelming systemic barriers.
If survivors cannot be honest with their advocate regarding their
needs and their challenges, then they will not be able to work effectively
with an advocate when it comes to safety planning, when it comes to victims' rights
explanations.
Confidentiality also gives power to survivors and restores
their autonomy.
As we know, power and control is a tool and a main tenet of domestic violence.
When our systems,
private and public, are set up in a manner that
does not empower survivors to choose who, when, and what information that they can
release and share, then really we are no different than the abuse that they are
leaving.
Confidentiality is vital to avoid societal and personal repercussions.
If confidential information becomes divulged, it could impact a survivor within
their own communities, religious, ethnic, as well as other legal matters they may
have. It may impact their custody and visitation case.
It also prevents retaliation and physical harm.
When a survivor leaves their abuser, it is the most dangerous time in their
relationship with that abuser.
And confidentiality is key to help maintain not only the fact that a survivor is
seeking services,
but where they may, if they're able to relocate.
All right. So what does confidentiality look like in practice?
So at Lifespan, we have 45 employees, and they have to abide by our
82-page confidentiality policies and procedures manual.
It is that important.
So we talked a bit about domestic violence advocates.
And once again, the Illinois Domestic Violence Act sets a framework for what a
domestic violence advocate can do and what it means.
I'll talk a little bit more about what domestic violence advocates do at Lifespan.
Advocates at an independent agency, their sole focus is to be survivor-led
and survivor-focused. It is their job to empower survivors through an
explanation of rights and remedies.
So these are rights and remedies through the Illinois Domestic Violence Act, the
Illinois Dissolution of Marriage Act, Safe Homes Act, the Crime Victim Bill of
Rights, and many, many other rights and remedies, including immigration law.
They inform them of the criminal and civil court process.
I don't know if any of you have had to go to criminal court, and despite the very
best efforts of our Cook County state's attorneys, it is run as a machine, and
survivors often feel as though they are the least important person in the room.
Advocates assist survivors with safety planning, resources, and referrals.
I do want to note, because I did not highlight it earlier, housing is the number
one requested need of our survivors.
There is not enough affordable housing, shelters, or transitional housing in
Chicago.
So another aspect is-
Lifespan's advocates and other criminal court advocates and systems advocates, they
also advocate with CPD and victim services.
They can help facilitate communication, especially if the survivor does not speak
English.
They can provide accompaniment to the police station to assist a
survivor in making a report should they wish to do so.
They can act as a bridge and a safe place to report
survivors' experiences. And this is especially vital right now when
our immigrant survivors are facing the realities of ICE
and the extra vulnerability that that involves.
They help survivors enforce rights, help them speak up and advocate for themselves
so that police reports can be made and that charges can be filed.
Then we also provide prioritized safety and consent.
I will say that also said accept referrals.
One of our number one referral sources is CPD.
So we can't talk about advocacy for survivors and services without talking about
legal aid.
Legal aid, when it comes to representing survivors in immigration or domestic
relations, really helps create to help a survivor move from
crisis to long-term safety and stability for themselves and their children.
Legal aid through work in domestic relations, we're not talking just in the
emergency orders of protection, but long-term resolutions so they can break
financial dependency and secure stability.
So that means we can assist survivors in domestic relations in obtaining child
support or maintenance, allocation of debt,
and resources. We can help establish permanent safety and boundaries, meaning we
can help structure visitation and custody arrangements with survivor safety in
mind.
One of the key things that we can do is that we can attempt to prevent, if not
prevent, support survivors in a system where abusers legally
bully and traumatize survivors.
The average divorce in Cook County takes two years.
That is not the average divorce length for survivors of domestic violence.
Abusers often use the system to further abuse, and that
given the power dynamic shift, they often have the resources to do so.
We also help with legal aid in navigating the intersection between immigration and
criminal vulnerabilities.
So those were all the things we want to do, and we want to do for all survivors.
But the reality is
there is a frightening
lack of legal services. In Illinois, there's an average of one legal aid attorney
per 10,000 lower income residents.
In Chicago, there are more than 500,000 people who qualify for legal aid who have a
legal need per year.
But due to pro bono and legal aid shortages, fewer than
half of them actually get legal assistance.
And those are above and beyond even just domestic relations cases.
To sort of put that in context, so Lifespan in our capacity,
we have worked hard over the years, the decades that we've been around,
to build a domestic relations legal program.
Despite having five full-time attorneys,
a director, and a supervisor with small caseloads, and even an executive director
who, because she has a bleeding heart, will take two to three cases per year, we
still have to turn away 60% of the people who are accessing our services.
Despite that, we managed to serve over 1,300 people last year.
Another devastating reality is the federal funding landscape at the moment.
Lifespan, for over 20 years, has been receiving an Office of Violence Against Women
legal aid for victims grant from the feds.
It's $250,000 a year, and it really supports the
salary of three attorneys and a paralegal.
Because the federal government is not releasing grant funds, that grant ended for
the first time in 20 years on September 30th.
And despite us having applied for that funding, we have not heard
whether we will receive that funding in the coming year.
The government has not even issued any awards for that program.
So when you look at the reality as it is right now and our inability to serve
survivors, it's only going to get worse.
So what do survivors need? Survivors today have told you what they needed,
and they were courageous enough to do here.
And survivors are experts in their lives.
They know what they are talking about.
Listen to domestic violence organizations.
We are in the trenches every day trying to navigate systems that are not set up for
survivors. We need systems accountability.
We need a multifaceted, multidisciplinary approach.
We need more MDTs, which means we need more funding for MDTs.
When it comes to funding, we need a sustained commitment.
Organizations, as community members said today, especially startup organizations,
cannot realistically build a program with a $10,000 grant
one time only.
My voice is done. Thank you so much.
Amy, thank you so very much. We'll next have Sarah Langdon.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Alder Lee, and this committee, for your interest and
commitment to learning more about this issue.
I want to thank also the survivors who spoke. Thank you.
I also want to thank the volunteers, interns, and staff from Resilience
who have showed up this afternoon. Thank you.
Many of which are the very people who are in the trenches I'm going to talk about
today. And, like me, survivors themselves. Thank you.
I agree with absolutely everything that was shared here today, that there are not
enough resources available to survivors of gender-based violence in the city
of Chicago. As shared, I am the chief program officer and interim
executive director at Resilience.
Resilience was called Rape Victim Advocates, lovingly
referred to as RVA for decades before we rebranded in 2017
as Resilience. I often give that history because there were many individuals that
were familiar with our organization when it was under that previous name to make
that connection. Now, for over two decades, I have dedicated my career to
advocating on behalf of survivors of sexual violence in Chicago, beginning my
career proudly on Chicago's West Side in the Austin community.
I am a Juris Doctor graduate from DePaul University College of Law, and during my
legal education, I worked with the Confidentiality Institute, providing national
expertise and technical support on survivor privacy matters, mandated reporting
laws, and multidisciplinary criminal legal response.
Since the passage of Illinois' landmark 2010 Sexual Assault Evidence Submission
Act, I have regularly consulted on state legislation, statutory compliance,
law enforcement training, and policy reform.
My focus in this area is on forensic evidence submission, trauma-informed
investigations and medical response, and of course, expanding and enforcing
survivor rights. This included advising on the implementation of the
2016 Illinois Sexual Assault Incident Procedure Act, which governs the law
enforcement response to victims of sexual assault in Illinois.
In addition to all of this, I have overseen Chicago's only, I repeat that again,
only standalone rape crisis center in the city.
Today, I bring that dual lens, both legal and operational, on behalf of Resilience,
an organization with 52 years of survivor-centered experience in Chicago.
Resilience was founded in 1974 by a medical provider who noticed that survivors
were leaving the emergency room much more traumatized
afterwards than when they first arrived.
They realized that police response, medical response at that point in time just
were not equipped to tend to the emotional needs of sexual assault survivors, as
you can imagine, when many of these conversations were happening and Resilience
started in the 1970s. For nearly 20 years, we have collaborated with the
Chicago Police Department on sexual assault response.
I have personally served as an active member of the Cook County Sexual Assault MDT
that was mentioned since 2016. I have also served on the Cook County Sexual Assault
Advisory Board of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office for decades.
It is essential to understand this operational framework, and specifically the
framework of rape crisis centers across the state like Resilience.
As it was mentioned, we exist solely for survivors.
We are completely independent from police departments, hospitals, and state
institutions. We are also a member center of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual
Assault, which is a statewide network of 31 rape crisis centers.
All of these 31 rape crisis centers have core service pillars that they are
required to have in order to be considered a comprehensive rape crisis
center. These four pillars are both immediate response related and
prolonged services. The first of which is hotlines.
Now, while Resilience does not personally oversee the city of Chicago's rape crisis
hotline, our sister organization, the YWCA, does provide that service to the
city of Chicago.
We also offer, and this is unique to rape crisis services,
24/7 in-person support to hospitals across the city of
Chicago to provide support during medical forensic examinations.
This includes information about reporting options, the evidence collection process,
often referred to as a sexual assault evidence collection kit or a rape kit, as
well as STIs and pregnancy information, making sure they have access to
prophylactic treatment, and of course, linkages to follow-up care.
Those linkages to those prolonged follow-up services include legal advocacy, as
you've learned a lot about today, which looks very similar to what has already been
shared, except specific to sexual assault and abuse.
Our legal advocates offer reporting options, guidance, safety planning, police and
court accompaniment and liaisoning, and information on victims' rights and systems
advocacy. Resilience is very unique, we've heard a lot of comments about domestic
relations, in that we have had a specialized children's advocate dedicated to child
sex abuse cases for over 20 years. She has been the only one in the
city of Chicago and across the state, she's here today, specifically serving
childhood survivors of sexual assault and sexual abuse.
Now, I mention that because I agree with you.
The response in family relations court to domestic violence and sexual assault, and
specifically child sexual abuse, is abysmal.
We also offer trauma therapy, which includes specialized individual support groups,
and education and training, which is community education, professional training.
We do prevention education in grades K through 12, all the way up through college.
Now, to deliver these services safely, confidentially, and effectively, we maintain
rigorous workforce training and documentation standards.
Every advocate completes a mandatory 40-hour sexual assault training baseline to
understand trauma, neurobiology, and complex legal and medical rights and
system navigations. Everyone in this room should feel proud that we live in one of
the most progressive states nationally with the laws that are available for
domestic violence and sexual assault survivors.
The problem is, no one knows they exist.
To couple the baseline training, we also provide onboarding, including
mandatory advanced training on the legal rights and options of survivors, ongoing
continuing education, weekly supervision, and intense case consultation
due to the multidimensional complexity of sexual assault and abuse cases.
We have standardized intake procedures, consent procedures, client-facing forms,
all approved at the highest levels of the state, which for us is the Illinois
Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
And once somebody is in that role, our service delivery is tracked across
20 federally defined categories with insurance style provision.
So each of our FTEs get projections that are tied specifically to their role
that we have to report out to, to make sure that that FTE
is producing enough work to fund.
Let me... Thank you. Now, to understand how survivor advocacy operates legally
in Illinois, again, we have to examine our confidentiality statute, which
is different than the domestic violence one.
Specifically, our statute is rape crisis privilege.
Now, as a quick review, legal privilege is different from confidentiality, which is
an ethical or a professional mandate.
A legal privilege is an enforceable legal right to protect information shared with
a specific person or entity. So what that means is if we get a request for
records in a contested domestic relations case, sexual assault case, whether
it be civil or criminal, we have the ability to go in and fight that subpoena
legally to safeguard those records.
Now the basis of that is, of course, that 40-hour training, but it fits together
like a puzzle piece
with the sort of focus of the organization, as well as the training and the
supervision of the supervisors that oversee the people conducting direct services.
Even when all these basic competencies are met, so you have the 40-hour training,
you meet the definition of a rape crisis organization, your supervisor has been
trained, and you are getting the required supervision and continuing education
requirements. There are ongoing best practices and legal standards to ensure the
protected confidentiality of clients' intakes forms, their therapy notes, their
group therapy notes, the documented phone calls, and so on.
Now, understanding statutory privilege matters because, as Amy shared, privacy is a
primary concern in the acute aftermath of trauma.
Many survivor questions immediately focus on confidentiality and control over their
personal information in the immediate aftermath of sexual assault.
When absolute privilege is absent, key barriers prevent survivors from seeking
support. They fear blame. They fear being questioned, scrutinized, or held
responsible. They fear the public disclosure or judicial exposure to stigma tied to
sexual assault. They have ongoing fear and anxiety regarding retaliation, personal
safety risks, or losing control over their legal narrative.
Now, I want to note as well that many survivors often assume services are
confidential or told that they are without a true understanding
of whether or not they are actually a legally enforceable protected
privilege.
In addition to this, I wanted to contextualize the legal realities within Chicago's
official crime data. Annually, the Chicago Police Department receives between
1,800 and 2,200 criminal sexual assault reports.
This comes from UCR reports that they have to file with the state each year.
This is an average based off me looking at this data for the last two decades.
In looking at that, that averages approximately 150 to 180 reports
a month.
What we know and what we have learned about here today is that many
survivors don't go to police. In fact, one in three sexual
assaults are reported to law enforcement. One in three.
Keep that data point in mind because the majority of rape is not
being reported to police.
It's also important to know who sexual violence impacts.
85% to 90% report being female.
Over 80% know their offender. So typically in these cases, it's not an issue of
whodunit.
They know the person who sexually assaulted them.
They have shared the name, but systemic barriers, myths, and disbelief keep
these cases from being arrested and prosecuted.
Now, crucially, Black women represent 16% of Chicago's population, yet account
for 40% of all reported sexual assault victims annually.
These specific populations are deeply reluctant to interact with law enforcement
and are inherently less likely to report due to distrust, safety risks, knowing the
person that harmed them, or actual harm and experiences with law enforcement
themselves. We know this. We have evolved as a society to understand
the many reasons someone may be hesitant to report to the police.
No office will overcome that personal decision for each and every survivor.
Now, when reports do occur, cases face heavy systemic attrition.
This is why MDTs exist, to increase arrest and prosecution for victims who
seek criminal legal remedy.
Chicago sees an approximate 10% arrest rate for reported
sexual assaults, compared to the national average of 20% to
26% in FBI UCR data. In fact, that means
roughly 90% of CPD victim services outreach involves cases that will likely not
end up in an arrest, where survivors seek answers from a system structurally
unequipped to meet the healing needs without law enforcement accountability.
Our agency provides undeniable lifesaving support.
Yet for decades, these services have remained Chicago's best-kept
secret. Discovering care only at the moment of crisis is a systemic
failure, not innovation. We must ensure every community knows where to turn
before harm happens, with an aim towards preventing it
altogether.
I want to encourage everybody to take down the 24-hour rape
crisis hotline number that is on this slide.
These hotline numbers have existed for decades.
They have not changed, and they remain the entryway to these community-based
services. We also build warm relationships with community partners,
law enforcement, the court system, the state's attorney's office, who also refer
survivors directly to us. In fact, as part of the sexual assault multidisciplinary
team efforts, there is a specific liaison for sexual assault under CPD's victim
services that refers those cases from the area detective division to
Resilience to make sure they have gotten our information.
We also have a co-located office there with two full-time advocates.
Now, advocates are critical on sexual assault cases because they move through the
system differently, if they move through it at all.
There are different legal rights. There are different legal options.
In my experience, the number one thing survivors want from the criminal legal
system when they engage with it is not counseling. It is not support.
It is to hold the person who harmed them accountable and arrest them.
These are survivors who have chosen to make the report to CPD I am talking about.
They are going to that system because they want accountability for the harm they
have experienced.
We know these services work, not just because we measure the thousands of people
that we reach each year, but because we rigorously measure real transformative
outcomes for survivors and their communities.
Yet behind every positive metric lies a sobering reality.
Even with these results, we are still only reaching a small fraction of those
enduring sexual violence in our city.
Our work is grounded in evidence-based approaches to increase access to protective
factors that prevent sexual violence and help survivors heal.
This includes 24-hour, 365-day-a-year support in hospitals,
courthouses, police stations, medical institutions, as well as services in schools,
colleges, park district locations across the city.
This transformative work, this is, yes, intervention and support, but again, it is
also systems improvement and prevention.
This number about that youth learning growth is actually the
outcome measures of the prevention education that we provided in K through 12
schools.
When you look at that number, these are future college students. Cue Cornell.
Cue U of C.
Cue CPS high schools, because it doesn't only happen in college.
We also, again, talk to preschoolers, and again, this education is age-appropriate
ways to understand boundaries and learn how to identify safe adults in their lives.
There is an entire ecosystem in today's day and age of services designed to combat
old and new threats, but not enough of us around, as you have heard.
Community rape crisis centers have faced chronic underinvestment, yet work
every day addressing the root causes of sexual violence and the effects thereof.
To give you perspective, the metrics I have put up here are effectuated
by 43 full-time and part-time staff at Resilience, and
our budget is around 3 million.
Oops.
Oh, I'm sorry. I wanted to also mention that right now Chicago's rape crisis
centers are facing a breaking point.
Since 2021, there has been a 25% reduction in sexual assault
crisis services available at hospitals across the city of Chicago.
Out of 26 hospitals that have emergency rooms that provide services 24 hours
a day, only 17 currently have partnerships with rape
crisis centers. That is because we have had to cut these life-saving
services due to funding. On my way here, I read about a
case where there was a woman attacked during a home invasion that had to wait four
hours for police response after being raped in her home.
Do you know that woman, based on where that area is, has not only a
41% chance of stepping into a hospital that doesn't have an advocate or an
established medical forensic exam program, but in that particular neighborhood
community, I know that percentage is even higher because I know there are no nearby
hospitals that are offering those services.
Now, when rape crisis centers lose a quarter of its capacity, these aren't
abstract budget cuts. These are life and death failures in our city's
safety net. This is the drug college student who wakes up after a night out with
friends to the horrified realization that she was raped.
She'll have no access to an advocate when she goes to the emergency room.
No one to meet at the hospital to explain her rights, to walk her through the
forensic exam, or support her as she receives the backlash from
reporting it in the first place. It's the 67-year-old survivor who has carried the
secret of what her father did to her for decades and finally finds the courage to
speak up and seek help. She will reach out only to find there are wait lists
months and months long for these services.
It is the teenager being relentlessly sexually harassed and extorted online with
nowhere to turn for specialized crisis intervention, who turns to suicide.
The demand for these services compared to the capacity is that dire.
And let us be clear about the infrastructure we're discussing today.
The Office of Victim Services was never intended and is not equipped to handle all
of this alone. Government offices inside the justice system cannot
replace independent, confidential, 24/7 community-based advocates.
And by design,
it actually increases the need for them even more.
Mike said it himself.
So in terms of services for rape victims, the rape crisis centers have the
training, we have the confidentiality, we have the vetted service standards, we
have the metrics, the outcome measures, the oversight, the case law, the staff, the
volunteers, and the expertise to provide the services.
We just don't have the funding to provide enough of it.
Despite clear data-driven tracking across 20 service categories per FTE
and proven high-impact results, organizations like Resilience are facing not only
cutting 24-hour services to hospital, but again, persistent wait lists for therapy,
advocacy services, and sadly, even prevention education in our schools.
These are not operational failures of these community-based agencies.
They are a direct result of decades of systemic underfunding and a lack of
prioritization of GBV, which still only today receives
1% of the city's municipal budget.
That is the entire GBV portfolio funding bucket.
Specifically, we need to also focus on sexual assault, an often
overlooked and under-discussed topic with regard to gender-based violence.
And specifically look at the niche specialization of rape crisis services, who are
struggling and becoming fewer and fewer every day.
This crisis is deepening by the very design, again, of the office, and the
reality of the shortfall will be life-threatening.
Thank you.
We'll next have Madeline Baer. Madeline?
No? Okay.
I'm here to answer any kind of available questions, if that'd be helpful.
Any questions from the committee members?
Alderman Taylor?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
While we have a
budget problem, we have a working together problem.
I am not here to judge whether CPD does their job
when it comes to this or not.
What I am frustrated with
is that we don't work together. And where is the county in this
conversation? Where is CDPH?
People get left behind because we do silo work.
And so I've appreciated the presentation from all of you.
What are you all going to do to work together?
Because
young people know these numbers. This number I saw up here, I ain't seen that
number in years or decades, and even in different spaces, even in our city offices,
this information is not
given to us. It is not unless I call and say, "Hey, can you give me that poster?"
These posters should be posted everywhere. And so that's issue number one.
Number two,
how long have we had this funding issue?
I'm sure it's longer than
this office has been in place. You all have been open.
You all have been doing the work. What are we doing to work together to go advocate
and get this federal funding for this service?
Because I'll take you through a call that I got when I first got into office.
A young lady called my office, said she wanted to leave, and when I turned her over
to CPD, there was nothing for her. And so she stayed with her
abuser because, to your point, the number one need is housing.
And I think we should have started off each presentation with that.
There are really no homes for members of domestic violence, and we have no
housing to move them out of space. I know none of you all have discussed
it, but
one of the highest times-- I heard something, and I just want to hear from you all,
and I want it to be said publicly. One of the highest times for domestic violence
to happen, and what I heard was Valentine's Day and Super Bowl Sunday.
Feel free to answer.
I can go ahead and quickly answer the question about what we're doing to work
together. This is not our first time in a space together.
Mike and I communicate frequently.
We have each other's phone numbers, and so there absolutely is collaboration there.
I think what is very challenging, though, to your other point, is centers who are
struggling to survive and keep their doors open being placed in a position where we
have to fight like this over resources, right? I agree.
There is not a one size fits all on this issue.
I am one for expanding options for survivors.
There's, again, no unique one option that is going to fix this for everybody.
Now, on the issue of federal funding, which you spoke about, Resilience has been
surviving on federal funding primarily for nearly its entire
existence. We did work together to
lobby the State of Illinois to increase the general revenue line item in the state
budget for sexual assault services, which we did successfully receive in
2024. Now, because of the systemic, I think, disinvestment
in this, we're playing catch-up. How do you get an influx
of money that actually matches today's inflation rates and allows you to pay your
staff competitive wages and have good benefits and all the things that
really honestly do equate to quality services for survivors?
You got to have happy staff, happy workers, in order to effectuate meaningful
trauma-informed services. So I do think that at least for
Resilience, it's not a federal funding issue.
It certainly got exacerbated by the federal funding cuts.
But I will tell you, in our years of existence, we have received money from the
City of Chicago for only two fiscal years.
We are slated in this current budget to not receive a dime.
So currently as I sit here today, we do not receive a dime of city funding.
And this is not unique to Resilience as a rape crisis center.
Our sister organizations, Mujeres Latinas en Acción and the YWCA,
also are not slated to receive city funding in this current budget
because it's flat, and we are grateful for that.
We do not want these services to be cut any more, but we're up against
decades and decades of not talking about it, not investing in these services,
budget cuts. So it is, I think, an issue at all levels.
But to your other point, county as well.
We would get county funding, the rape crisis centers, and it disappeared a couple
of years ago. So the Cook County sexual assault organizations or the organizations
in the city of Chicago also don't get Cook County money.
So for the YWCA, they have this hotline, to your point, that's been around for
decades. The number hasn't changed. I agree with you.
The sign should be plastered everywhere in the city.
There's no funding to pay for that.
Sarah, if I may.
Alderwoman Taylor, can you share what funding you receive from the county?
Dollar amount.
In the past, when we did receive the funding, it was split, and this was a few
years ago. It was exclusively, I believe, for the centers that were in Cook County,
so it was a lump sum. Resilience's portion of that, I believe, was between 70 and
$90,000
annually.
Do you know the amount of the entire funding that Cook County set-
I do not offhand, but I can find out.
And regarding, I just want to make sure that I'm clear, you receive no city
funding, correct?
That is correct. No city funding currently or with this current budget, an
opportunity for next year.
If you did, what amount are we looking at?
I got my staff back there looking at me now.
I believe in equity. I'm not here to preach a defund campaign.
I'm here to preach a fund campaign.
So if the Office of Victim Services has been increased by 1.4
million-
Mm-hmm
... whatever that is because of, rising personnel expenses, reallocation of
officers, that's their budget to make those decisions on.
I think equitably, that should be allocated to rape crisis services in the city of
Chicago. Why just law enforcement response?
Yeah. I don't disagree with you.
My question to you is, the percentage that you all receive, is that already a part
of that 40% that CPD receives from the city budget?
Was this something additional outside of that money?
Yeah. The funding that we have for our program is already in the CPD corporate
budget. It's already in that 40%?
Yeah.
Okay. Have you all had conversations with philanthropy?
Because there are a lot of philanthropy dollars that kind of roll around, and I've
seen organizations cut off the city and state and go right to philanthropy and have
come out better. And not to say, I hope that you all are sending us a nice, long,
nasty letter about funding for this, because this is how people are able to take
care of their families when they have the support they need.
Yeah. We do, and Amy, go ahead.
We get several grants from foundations in the city of Chicago, but they really vary
in their ability to make multi-year commitments that allow you to increase your
staffing. Normally, if they are, they're not enough to actually increase your FTEs
or you get, I think somebody referenced a $10,000 grant, or Amy did, that is one
time. You can't increase your FTEs with that.
I also want to point out that, yes, I think we all look for philanthropy.
We look for individual donors.
But our government systems have created these problems, and
they have an obligation to fund the solution.
So I think we need, as we diversify our funding streams, we continue to
seek government support.
Yeah.
I would say one thing you had mentioned earlier about funding and how we could work
together. Our multidisciplinary team funding that we have is
federal dollars, and it has stayed stagnant.
So we, as an organization every year, have to fill that void in order to stay
committed to the projects that we know are working.
So to have those projects fully funded, but then also, as Mike is seeking, an
increase on an annual basis is really what it needs.
It goes back to that sustained commitment, but also a realistic commitment.
Because oftentimes we are on these projects, and as the years go by, the money does
not. So I fund a full-time attorney. That becomes 60% of an attorney.
It becomes 30% of an attorney.
Oh, I'm clear we're the problem. I'm clear.
I am. Because the thought that you could have somebody who wants to report and
cannot be taken out of that situation because there's no housing close, and
thinking about their job and their children, we are the problem.
And so I don't disagree. My question is,
what was happening before this office was actually made?
It seems like we took money that was supposed to be for the organizations that kind
of do the work, and we created an office.
And sometimes,
most of the times, I think we need to mind our own business and let the experts do
the work. And so my question to you is, you
said you have 50 specialists. How many cases is that per person?
Because if I go back and think about the chart that you put up, that's like 70,000
people, and is that divided by 50? And my question is, and this is
Alderwoman Taylor does not want people to lose their job.
Is this a smart investment for the city of Chicago to continue this office, instead
of giving it to the people who've been doing it for decades and actually do this
work a little bit better than what we do? And that's my question.
Sure. I appreciate the question. I think in terms of caseload, our specialists have
between 100 to 200 cases a month. I want to emphasize, our staff are not doing the
in-depth cases that Resilience or Lifespan are doing.
They're really more so there to try to provide initial outreach and just
information and support and referrals where we can to agencies.
I think what's unique about CPD and why I would always advocate for this program is
because we have 50,000-plus victims and survivors of DV and sex assault every
single year, and most folks don't know how to get that connected to resources.
A unique benefit of our program is that we can call someone within several days,
within a day after they've been a victim or a survivor, and let them know, "Here's
what's available for you. If you are looking for a safety plan to get into a safer
environment, here's how we can help support, facilitate that journey and start that
process for you and get you connected to an agency." Like I said, I think this is a
not one-size-shoe-fits-all. I think this program can exist, and if it works well,
there are more folks coming to Resilience and to Lifespan, but they also need that
funding in addition to support the increase in referrals that are coming from CPD.
So as an organization that gets 40% of our city budget, it's
scary to me that people don't call you all when these type of things happen.
And so-
Absolutely
... how do we account for that? Because I'm going to be honest, as a victim of
domestic violence, I'm not calling the police because, A, we don't think about what
we say to victims. We don't handle them in the right way.
And this ain't what I think. I'm telling you what I know. It's, "What did I do?
Why am I still there? Why didn't I leave?" That's not going to get me to leave.
And so
we got to do some better work, and I don't know that giving money to you
all versus giving it to the organizations is the answer.
And it's only because I
know of these organizations. I've heard all of them.
There's not a list that we get. We just sometimes look up on...
I know these names, so that's easy for me.
I want to see the city of Chicago
send people to these organizations more. They seem to be the experts.
They seem-- Because I'm also, and this question is to all you all, how are you
taking care of the people who take in these calls and do this work?
Because we talk about mental health all day long.
I can't imagine answering a call trying to save a woman, and she doesn't take the
services, what that would do to me.
And so how are you all taking care of the people who are actually doing this
service? And that question is to everybody.
Obviously with CPD, we have access to counselors, employee assistance
program. We always refer our folks, help support, bring our EAP staff in to meet
with our staff when they need it.
Is it mandatory?
It's not mandatory. I don't know that we can mandate it legally.
But we obviously heavily encourage it.
When we have staff meetings, we always remind staff that it's a resource for them.
I know many of our staff take up on it because of our city employees, they have
access to the city wellness days as well.
And we always let staff know, anytime if they ever become overwhelmed, if they need
just to step away because they've gone through a really traumatic case that they've
worked on that may have re-triggered something within themselves, we understand
that, and we support them, and we will do what we can to ease their caseload or
give them a break. Whatever that they need, we always have that line of
communication and open doors.
Thank you.
While Resilience has trauma-informed supervision, benefits,
EAP programming, weekly supervision, amazing apparel,
unfortunately, the number one reason that we hear from our staff that they're
leaving rape crisis work is because it doesn't pay a livable wage.
Mm-hmm.
So when you ask this question, I know we're thinking about vicarious trauma and
burnout,
and we do have programs and systems in place and wellness committees and workbooks
and resources and support groups for volunteers, and all of that, but that doesn't
matter when you're figuring out how to pay for parking on your way to work, or
you're nervous that your car doesn't have enough gas to get to the hospital at 3:00
a.m. to even respond to the call.
I understand that this hearing kind of in some ways sets us up against one another,
and again, this is a collaboration.
I share very intentionally the decades that I have spent collaborating with the
Chicago Police Department. One of the things as a leader of an organization that
does this work, that writes our budgets, that writes our job descriptions, that has
to advocate for increased wages, that was telling to me and alarming, and it really
ticked me off on this subject. Your average rape crisis worker makes maybe,
on the high end, 50 grand a year.
These positions were posted, I think, at about 70.
You're 66, 70. So again, that's amazing.
Way to go. We want our advocates to be able to receive that type of salary, too.
And so when I think about self-care and what we're doing to take care of the
caretakers, not enough if they can't pay their bills.
I
co-sign everything that Sarah said.
I just want to add one thing, in that Lifespan is set up in many different facets
in order to address vicarious trauma.
I've been there since 1998, so I have my own personal experience
with that. But our collaborative integrated approach really is designed not just
for survivors so that they remove barriers in accessing services and retelling
their story, but it is also so that our staff is not carrying the burden alone.
When all of your clients are survivors of trauma, it does take a toll.
But if you have a coworker who's also working with that survivor, then you can
support each other as you support the survivor.
What role does CDPH play in this? Are they at the table?
Do they give-- Because I know CDPH gives out funding.
So does DFSS. None of you, of course not you, but do you all receive
funding from either one of those departments?
We receive funding and have for years from CDFSS.
We have never had--
They've never come to the table with-- I'm sorry, I'm bad with acronyms.
My cold medicine is hitting me.
It's okay.
CDPH.
Mm-hmm. It's okay.
Never.
I want to give Madeline an opportunity to answer a question.
She's over there and signaled.
Yes. Can you repeat your question? Although one about the
DFSS. I wanted to know if you all receive, because we know that CDPH and DFSS gets
different grants from what the city might get.
Are you all funded or receive funding or even have worked with CDPH and
DFSS around some of the need of the people who are actually carrying out the work?
Sure. No, I'm happy to answer that.
I'm Madeline Baron, the Director of Policy and Systems Advocacy for the Network.
We are a collaborative partnership organization representing 40 plus different
service providers, including two of our members here today.
You testified at the county.
Yes.
I remember. I came to that hearing.
Okay. Yes, I was there. So in the proposed budget for FY27, there's
$23.5 million that are proposed for the gender-based violence services line item.
That is a slight uptick from the FY26 budget, which was 23.2 million.
That almost exclusively comes out of the Department of Family and Support Services,
or DFSS. I know we do have kind of some relationship with CDPH, but in terms of
grant making for delegate agencies, that is largely within DFSS.
And if I can also take an additional second to your earlier question about kind of
the desire for partnership and collaboration between community-based advocates and
victim specialists within CPD. I just want to name, most law enforcement agencies,
right, have some level of a victim services office.
This is not new, to Mike's earlier point.
I think what is distinct here is those offices do not say that they have
confidentiality privilege under state law. They liaise with victims.
They notify them of their rights, notify them of court hearings or other dates.
That is standard practice, and we have good relationships with many of those law
enforcement agencies that do that work.
But like I said, they are not arguing that they have confidentiality under the law,
and they are not providing additional services to survivors beyond kind of the
liaising, the notifying in the way that Katina articulated today in her story, that
a victim specialist went with her to civil domestic relations court.
We have law enforcement agencies that support, right, that liaising notifying
within criminal court. That makes sense from our perspective, and we are very
interested in seeing that work continue.
What we are not as interested in seeing is what feels like a duplication of the
work of what community-based advocates and legal aid attorneys do.
So I just wanted to take a point of clarification for that.
We do desire partnerships, and we have them in many ways.
But what we are deeply concerned about is the duplication and the concern around
confidentiality, as Amy and Sarah so articulately said.
We take that really seriously. We value survivor privacy and information, and other
law enforcement agencies' victim witness staff do not believe that they have that
privilege.
Are you all working with CPD on legislation to make sure that
that's something that that office actually does? Because I hear what you're saying.
You actually said it on the county.
And what I was baffled about, CPD are sworn officers, and so how is this level of
confidentiality
not taken serious or not done?
To be frank, that is, I think, our deepest concern, as Sarah articulated around, I
think Amy did as well, around subpoenas.
When we have victim information, for example, in previous work that I've done, I
have seen victim's diary subpoenaed by defense attorneys and turned over as part of
Brady obligations because a sworn officer mentioned in their police report that the
survivor had recorded details of their assault in the diary.
That entire diary was turned over to law enforcement as part of their evidentiary
obligations under Brady. We are confident as community-based advocates that if a
defense attorney subpoenaed one of our organizations for therapy records, for
counseling records, for other items, we would fight that subpoena.
It is what we have done for years, and we do it-
With a certain amount of regularity, that it is something that we talk about and
anticipate and use practices to avoid that from happening to keep survivors'
information protected. We would love more clarity from the Chicago Police
Department around how they would anticipate that, because that is of utmost concern
to us.
My last question is, you all talked about problems with contact.
What does contact look like? So in every one of you all's presentation, you all
said that you tried to contact. What is that? Is that going to the house?
What does that look like, and how do we help make sure that we're actually reaching
back to people who are impacted and need the services?
So for Resilience specifically, I would say our number one referral source is from
our hospital partners. So we actually currently have 12 partner hospitals in the
city of Chicago out of that 17 total I mentioned, where we provide that 24-hour
in-person crisis support. We average 50 plus calls a month just
from those 12 hospitals to provide that service.
Second to that, I think because of the
sort of historic
placement Resilience has had, and RVA before that as the only standalone rape
crisis center, we get a lot of word of mouth and call-ins.
The police are not a primary referral source for us.
While Mike and I have worked to increase the referrals happening at Area 3 as part
of the MDT project, it remains our hospitals and that
the laws and obligations to partner with a rape crisis center, that is that
immediate touch point. By and large, survivors in the hospital want the advocate to
stay. I would say 60% to 70% of the time upwards of that,
they request a follow-up call. So we follow pro consent the entire time and make
sure that they want us to actually give them a follow-up call, or that they want
the legal and trauma therapy services.
After that, they'll get put in touch with a case management specialist on our team.
That is one person that talks to kind of anybody that comes through our doors to
make sure that they
have a brief needs assessment and placed with an advocate or on our trauma therapy
wait list, or given different resources and options.
Sometimes it might be something that really Resilience can't handle or might not
have capacity to, or somebody else might be better.
Those touch points then turn into in-person meetings, telephone conversations,
court accompaniment. Our advocates also do systems liaisoning and Title IX
cases, and we'll go to a survivor to their school offices to accompany them, or
maybe they'll go with them to get their medical records that somebody needs for
something. So it is really sort of determined by the needs of that survivor, but
that's at least what the kind of flow of those services look like.
Our touch points with survivors can last for years.
So I was a direct service advocate carrying a caseload.
I started 2007, 2008. I still have survivors that call
me from that time period when they need help.
So these cases, if they do go through the criminal legal system, take minimally
four years
to pass through. That's your uncomplicated case with an adult
survivor and maybe not a whole lot of evidentiary issues.
So it takes a really long time. These are relationships that last months,
years, and sometimes even longer with the rape crisis centers.
Through the chair, can you all give us, all 50 aldermen, your contact information
and things that we could actually use?
I would be interested in us having some citywide conversations, and I would want to
see you all bring in the county and the state to have the conversation.
What she did at the county was amazing because I got to see it on a county level,
so I was waiting for us to have this conversation.
But I want to figure out how to, because I like what you said, let's make the
funding equitable for people who actually do the work. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.
Any other questions? Yes, sir. Please.
First I want to thank everybody that's here, that's still here,
and the people that stayed. I wish more of my colleagues were here now because I
think this is a very important issue.
I saw the pain on so many faces. I feel the pain.
I do love the collaboration that you have.
I do understand
the police standpoint, where you are, how much you can do before you pass it on to
the professionals. I've done that many times when I was in law enforcement
also.
I do love the collaboration.
But
Alderman Taylor,
I had it written down already about,
we were thinking the same thing about the caseloads.
It has to be crazy to have only 50
specialists, and the caseload's got to be nuts, especially if
that victim wants you right there by their side to guide them everywhere that they
go. "I want you to go to the hospital with me.
I want you to go see a therapist with me.
I want you to help me talk with my children." I mean, it's incredible, and that's
why I'm still here right now today.
I would definitely love a copy, or you could do all 50 aldermen.
I would like for all 50 aldermen, because I'm sure they have things to do
also today, and they had to leave or whatever.
But to have a copy of the slides, I think that's important so they can, on their
downtime, they can look at this and study it.
You could definitely count on me as being an advocate to help
bring and help fund money for both CPD
receiving four million, but only spending two
basically on the services, where you're only getting three million.
So yours really need to be way more than theirs because they're passing it on
to the specialists.
So I do like the collaboration, and I do want to see more.
I saw this before where if we don't hurry up and get help
for a lot of these survivors,
a lot of times I've seen where it passed on to the children, where
they take on this role thinking it's okay to even hit
another person.
So a lot of this come on your side. So I would
definitely
like to see a lot of funding come your way, and it's a shame that it's
not in our 2027 budget, but it should be.
So look for me to help advocate for that also. And that's it.
Look for me to be definitely an advocate for it all. Thank you.
Chairman Lee?
I've got questions.
Please.
Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And thank you all for really...
I felt like I was back in college for a minute.
It was a lot of really great information and a lot of stuff that I think I continue
to learn so much about this space, having worked on the philanthropic side at one,
well, for most of my career.
It's just one more example of there is just an infinite need for
funding, and the funding is always limited.
Let me get to a couple of my questions here.
And I thank you all for the time and for coming back a second time.
I want to acknowledge that again. Mike, can you talk about the family
rescue partnership or pilot that exists in a couple of districts?
I've heard lots of really great things about that, so if you can tell us a little
bit about what's happening in those police districts.
Yeah. And, Amy, please jump in if I miss anything, because you're-
Have a voice
That's right. Okay. Excuse me. So, this is part of the MDT partnership, the
Domestic Violence Multidisciplinary Team, that is funded by the federal dollars
through the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.
That's a partnership between
the State's Attorney's office, CPD, Family Rescue, Lifespan, and Connections for
Abused Women and Children. As a part of the MDT, I don't know what year it was,
long ago,
when we piloted the program, we created what's called the Domestic Violence
Assessment Form. Essentially another document or form that officers are going to
ask a victim or a survivor on the scene of a domestic to fill out.
That's basically, if you've ever heard of a lethality assessment from other states,
it's like a lethality assessment.
It's going to ask a series of questions that are intended to identify any higher
levels of risk for that individual.
A victim can fill out that form, identify whatever responsive they have, and
through that document, right on scene, that victim can actually sign a waiver that
allows CPD to share that document, that domestic violence assessment form,
directly with one of the community-based partners in whatever district it's
assigned to. So, for example, the third, fourth, and fifth districts, Family Rescue
is embedded in, and in the 14th District, Connections for Abused Women and Children
is embedded in. And so, in those four districts, our officers are completing or
asking a victim to complete a domestic violence assessment form.
If they sign it, then that immediately goes to those community-based organizations,
Lifespan gets it as well, as well as the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, and
then those agencies can just do immediate outreach on their own.
CPD does not provide any outreach to those victims who sign the DVAs.
They go directly to the community-based organizations for them to do their own
outreach and support for services on.
Tell me how you guys feel about what's happening with Family Rescue.
What's your opinion of how it's working?
It must be successful in that it's continued to
operate beyond a pilot. I guess the core of my question is what's being done in
this program versus-- And how
did it, if it did at all, influence CPD's decision to stand up the
Office of Crime Victim Services with the domestic violence piece of it?
Obviously, you all support- Yeah
... victims of different crimes. This in particular with Family Rescues is
specifically about DV. So I'm trying to glean how do they complement each other,
how do you think that it did, but
did that play into the formation or standing up the work that you all are doing?
I think we definitely looked at it, and I think a challenge is it's been a pilot
for 15 years, and there's been-
There should be an expiration. You should not be able to call something a pilot
after 15 years.
I think, to be honest, I think there has been-
It's called a pilot because we were piloting certain districts-
Oh, okay. I see
... in Chicago, and we never had the funding to expand it across Chicago.
Yeah.
So it stayed in the pilot phase, but really it's just a limited project at this
point.
Okay. I appreciate the clarification there.
So I'll let you finish the answer, but what I'm going to come back and ask you is
how much does this program cost, if you know. So again, Mike.
I think from CPD's perspective, I think we see a ton of value in it.
Mm-hmm.
I think we would love to see it expanded citywide.
I think to Amy's point, that's a funding limitation that I think has been promised
at times in previous administrations. It just has not been fulfilled.
But I think we would always advocate for more funding to expand that program
citywide. And that would impact, obviously, how our victim services team approaches
the work. I would say where in those four districts where we are having the
partnership in place, our specialists are only doing outreach to any victim who did
not sign that domestic violence assessment form.
So the case lower number of victims that they're doing outreach to is significantly
lower. We're still making sure that we try to identify and reach out to every
victim in that district, but it's about 70% in a good month that are
victims are signing those DVAs, and it's going to those agency partners, and our
staff are only doing outreach to the victims who did not sign that DVA on scene.
Okay. Got it. I have so many more questions, but go ahead.
Did you have-
Can I add one more wrinkle?
Please.
State law was recently passed that in 2028, domestic violence assessment forms or
lethality assessments will have to go statewide.
So in 2028, every law enforcement agency in the entire state is going to have to
implement a lethality assessment or, for us, a domestic violence assessment.
So while right now we are only using the form in a handful of districts, in 2028,
CPD was required by state law to expand that form to all 22 districts.
I think the larger concern, I'll let Amy speak more about it, and Madeline as well,
what happens if there is no provider on the other end?
Yep.
I think one thing we haven't mentioned regarding the MDT, but it lends itself to
collaboration, is that there are standard meetings of all partners
that our service providers are limited in what we can release to the other
partners, but they're really case reviews and sort of case process assessment so
that we can work through if there are any challenges faced by the survivor,
so that we can really educate each other in that process.
You asked about the budget. I will tell you, I do not know because I'm not the--
The State's Attorney's Office is the lead entity.
Oh, I see.
But I could give you this if I could get it for you.
Yeah.
But because I am part of the MDT-
Mm-hmm
... if you would like, and I think Madeline can provide sort of a non-biased
version of the efficacy of that project.
I mean, I don't know about that because I do like the MDT.
But I think that that is a little bit of our struggle has been is we have kind of a
proven model with Family Rescue doing that work right in districts three, four, and
five with CPD. Sworn officers are doing those assessments, handing them off to
survivors who are interested in getting further services.
Family Rescue is making those callbacks.
I think they get about 200 or so contacts a month as part of that program.
So from our perspective, that has kind of been a proven model of sworn officers
kind of doing that initial work, liaising, and handing off to community-based
advocates who have the protected confidentiality protections in statute to do that
work. So from our perspective, that model has worked and is effective, not
necessarily standing up a larger Office of Victim Services from CPD.
Understood. Thank you for that. I just, outside looking in,
there's plenty of room for people and resources to get on
board.
It seems to me that there is this coordination issue.
And Mike, as we've talked throughout this process, and as I asked during the budget
hearings, just what are the general sort of touch points that a victim services
specialist would have with a victim?
And it seemed like a rather short window, and there seemed to be a gap, right?
Because someone might not be-- By the time they picked up the phone and called 911
because their abuser has done something now that they finally reached that point,
they've probably had at least seven to 10 conversations with friends about what's
going on.
They have to deal with the trauma of that piece of it and having a lot of
information just sort of thrown at them and really still probably deciding what it
is they want to do, aside from just being safe in that moment.
It seems to me that there needs to be a longer continuum of care that we create
as an ecosystem, or I'm not even going to say as a government, because I don't know
that the City of Chicago alone can do that.
Clearly, the more agencies and levels that are involved,
I'm not trying to create unnecessary bureaucracy. Let me just rephrase that.
It is about bringing the needed resources to the table from wherever we can get
those.
And we're not going to get to-
... keeping violent crime numbers down if we can't address violence in the home.
So, I look at the amount of money we're also spending on CDI, not to say that it's
not a worthwhile cause at all, but I look at what's being spent there versus what's
being spent here, and I would argue this is one of the root causes of violence on
the street, is when you have violence in the home.
That's not the debate for today, and there's not enough of my colleagues in the
room for that piece of it, but I wanted to just get that on the record and just
speak that, so that the people that are listening or the people that will rewind
the tape and watch this later
understand it's a really complicated issue.
And I think at the core of it, and this is what I heard in the room today,
I know what it was like being a funder and asking for people who were asking for
funding from us to prove their worth for that $5,000 grant.
It seems really crazy to me
that we don't do the same sort of diligence
on the government side. I think that's part of the reason why a lot of people don't
trust government. That's not to say that people aren't doing their jobs, because I
think there are many people overwhelmingly who work for the city and do these jobs
that have a love for city and the passion for their work.
But we have an obligation also to make sure that we're
using the funds that we are stewards of responsibly.
So I would love to see
us have an ongoing conversation together and really work on
accountabilities where we're actually taking a look at what does it look like for
victim services in those districts?
And what can we glean from that? Where are there redundancies?
I think it's a totally natural position to take to see one department getting what
amounts to a 33% increase in their budget, and not see that commensurately on the
other side.
I wish it were just that simple.
And we're going to continue. I think, the Women's Caucus, I'm going to go out on
a limb. I'm going to look at Jeanette real quick and go out on a limb and say that
we are very committed to ensuring that you've got the resources that you need, and
we're ever watchful for any suggested cuts in these areas.
You need a more reliable funding source. We know that.
This problem doesn't get better without doing that.
Actually, I'll get off my soapbox, and I will ask the last two or three questions
that I have.
Mike, do we do any follow-up surveys, just a customer service, like what could we
have done better? Or
what other resources do you need a month out?
I'm just looking for how do we learn as we go?
And we can't do that unless we ask, right?
So we heard over and over again today, ask the survivors, ask the victims.
Yeah. We don't do specific surveys.
Obviously, we always try to be mindful about how to reach out-
Sure
... a survivor in a safe way, and sometimes doing a survey is not safe or can also
re-traumatize someone.
Mm-hmm.
So we're always mindful about how do we do follow-up.
In many cases, when we have capacity to do so, we will provide a reach-out via
phone or however we maybe have made an initial conversation or connection prior.
We will try our best to do a follow-up after a month or so, just to check in and
see how things are going. It's very limited and only going to be in cases where
we've been able to establish a connection or communication with a victim or
survivor,
and kind of see
what they need at that point.
Yep. Ladies, do you do anything like that in terms of just I'm trying to
establish sort of what the continuum of care sort of-- I'm going to keep using that
term because that's really what I feel like we need to focus on.
How do you know you're
accomplishing your goals, I guess?
Thank you. Great question. So this slide here is what I like to call the
impact, not the reach of our work, which is over there.
But those are from survivors. Those are from students in classrooms.
Those are from recipients in our training that are scoring the quality of
services. How helpful was the interaction with your advocate?
Do they explain to you your legal rights and options in a way that you could easily
understand? They're not long surveys.
The ones that we use for advocacy services are relatively short.
The ones that we use for our trauma therapy services are a little bit more
in-depth because of the nature of the services themselves.
But-
I assume they're all anonymous because you're not-
Yes, exactly. We're not collecting names.
We do, on the professional training surveys and the youth surveys, collect some
demographic information when we did receive funding from DFSS, who I do want to
mention someone asked about CDPH and DFSS.
We more so partner with DFSS and have been interacting with them more regularly.
But they wanted demographic information on some of the outcome reports, and we left
those in. I thought it was good information because-
Useful information, yeah
... it reaches disparities. So yes, we do.
I do want to, very similar to what Sarah said, I want to point out the Department
of Family Support Services, they have a mandatory client survey that you have to
give out. It is a short survey, and I agree with Mike that it is very challenging
to
survey clients. But they already have a method and a process in that department.
Okay.
Thank you.
They actually even have a virtual.
You can give clients a-
Oh, it's a little QR code for that
... online or paper in multiple languages.
That's totally what I want to hear.
I just think it behooves us to make sure that we are, I'm going to use a corporate
term, but continuously improving, right?
I think that the one thing that really unites everybody that's in this room is the
desire to serve victims and survivors and to do right by them.
Back to just the question of
privacy or confidentiality and privilege.
Mike, I think we could probably use some just clarity on the subject on the part of
CPD. We heard Adrian Alexander, who represents a lot of the folks that
work in the department, and it seems that there isn't--
I guess the questions that I would ask is, is there a written policy about
confidentiality versus privilege? Have you been subpoenaed?
And in the cases where you have been, what did the department do?
Sure. So
to answer a couple of questions I think I've heard throughout.
I know, I think Alderwoman Taylor, you talked about confidentiality with police
officers. I want to make sure it's separated that, yes, what a police officer
creates on a case report absolutely can be subpoenaed and is not considered
confidential communication. The folks we have in victim services, within our
domestic violence program specifically, those are non-police officers.
They are not police officers. They are civilian staff within CPD, who do not have
police powers and are not subject to police
protocols. And so in those staff, based on the city's interpretation, and that's
not just CPD's legal team, it's also the Department of Law, those staff are covered
under the IDBA's definition of
confidential communications. It's based on how we've identified what the program is
as a domestic violence program, the definition there, and the work that our staff
do. So, the city takes the position that any staff within the domestic violence
program can maintain confidential communications between themselves and victims and
survivors. That's only going to be those communications.
It's not going to be if an officer has a conversation with a victim or survivor.
That's not confidential communication.
It's only communication between a victim specialist and a survivor.
So do the victim specialists have access to the actual police reports?
They do, yes.
So if I read, using Madeline's example, if I'm a victim specialist and I read the
report, and I'm aware that the victim reported to the
police that she wrote about
what happened to her in her diary in that case,
could the victim specialist then be at risk of not-- I'm no lawyer, so I'm
asking for someone to help just walk me through where the peril is here-
Yeah
... in terms of, again, the privilege versus the confidentiality.
If it's in the case reports, then that
can be subject to a subpoena. So whatever's written in a case report is not-
... generally kept confidential. Obviously, if there was ever a FOIA that was done, CPD
would redact identifying information on the individual.
But if it came to court proceedings or it was a subpoena, the case report itself
could be produced as part of a subpoena.
But any following conversations between a victim and a survivor,
even if the content is related to what's in the case report, any conversations
between a victim and survivor after the case report is done, that is what we
believe is considered confidential.
So I'm going to just keep going down this rabbit hole for a second.
If I'm still the specialist here, and I've written in my case report something that
I probably shouldn't have. Let's just say I accidentally put in there, I'm trying
to be very detail-oriented, and I put-
Case notes?
Well, you just said that the case report is public, right?
Okay. Or is subpoena-able, or?
Maybe give-- I'll give some definition to a case report.
I'm talking about an official police report.
Okay. I didn't know what that was referring-- I thought you meant-
Yeah, sorry. I'm talking about an official police report is not confidential.
Uh-huh. Any case notes that a victim specialist is taking with a specialist or a survivor- Is
... that is confidential. Yes.
And not subject to a subpoena. You want to say something? Go ahead.
Because you're on--
You could still have someone write something in a case note that
opens up the door to access to those records.
Right. And that's what I'm trying to get at, right?
So how do you train your specialists on this
particular very nuanced but very important point?
Yeah. We do have written policy, to your point.
We'd be happy to share the policy that we have.
When we drafted the policy, we made sure it was consistent with both state law as
well as how the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, their service guide
defines and guides on confidentiality as well.
So we do have a written policy that we walk through in depth with our staff,
especially during onboarding, and provide continuous follow-up and refresher
training with our staff. And we maintain that if any time any of our staff ever
have questions on confidentiality or are afraid that they may be at risk of
breaking it, to report it to one of our supervisors so that we can take a more
immediate approach and look to address it.
I'll also just add, I know Madeline had brought it up, the city's position is that
if the city was ever subpoenaed for records from a victim and a
survivor, the city would also fight that subpoena.
Okay.
I hope today's more of a jumping-off point for a more robust ongoing conversation,
because I think that's what it's going to take.
In the course of my serving as the women's caucus chair, we tried to do something
on orders of protection about a year or two ago.
I learned about the landscape and again, outsider looking in,
we're out here trying to get people to communicate and work together, and I know
that there's dynamics at play that are just the
reality, right? So if what we can do ultimately is to provide a space, a
safe space to have these conversations to not make it so binary,
because I think that begins to just sort of erode at whose job is more important
than I.
We don't ever want to have those conversations. We really don't.
I don't personally want to, because I know what everybody here is dedicated to at
the end of the day. It's just how do we best do it together?
How do we build the strongest foundation and make sure that we have the ability to
serve everybody the way that we want to? That's all I've got, Chairman. Thank you.
Alderman Taylor?
For your information, the 50 specialists are not officers, correct?
Correct. They are not officers.
Follow up on something Alderwoman Lee said.
Notes are different than what the actual police report-
Correct
... so whatever is in those case notes, those are confident-
Correct.
Okay. I wanted to make sure. Even
if they're problematic?
Correct.
Yeah.
Because ain't nobody going to say it.
We watch a lot of "SVU," and it doesn't seem like that this is the--
It's not the same, because in 45 minutes, Olivia Benson can solve a case,
and she gets the help that people need. Does it really carry out like that?
I would say for us, if a victim or survivor ever gave information to a victim
specialist that could potentially solve a case or
be beneficial for a detective, our staff will not share that information with a
detective unless that victim gives us consent to do so.
So it is completely confidential.
No sworn officers have access to our system.
It's a separate system that is not CPD created.
It's an outside system that we required to keep all records and communication.
And you all's budget is advertisement part of, is
that a line item?
It is not. No. Our budget right now is only staff. There's no additional funding.
May I add something?
Sure. Regarding the-- Sorry.
Okay.
I think one of the challenges with the confidentiality privilege, it's really
nuanced, and I think that there are a number of factors that maybe we don't have
enough information about.
And I think there's a difference between confidentiality and what is required by
the Brady rule to be turned over. It's just nuanced.
So the Brady rule requires exculpatory evidence to be turned over.
So I think there's-- And
I made a point earlier, there's not a lot of case law, and this model has not
been tested yet. So I would advocate for a more conservative protective
model because the stakes are so high.
I think, like I said, I don't have enough information, but some, what I have found
in my research, a number of these factors are taken into consideration.
Any firewalls that are put into place.
Whose payroll are the advocates on?
Is the victim specialist
supervision structure? So there are a number of things I think we could look into
just to ensure and safeguard it.
I don't want to discount you all's work.
Of course, I wouldn't. You all are asked to do a
lot, and you
don't got 45 minutes to help a victim with. That's not how it works.
I think if you all did more of this, and we had more conversation because--
Tell me your name again.
Madeline. When Madeline was at the county,
she left me--
I feel like I was more informed. I really saw what we actually do, and it's not
what used to happen back in the day. We've gotten a lot better.
What has not changed on any level is us advertising the support that we give
people, and so on every level, I want to see you all, especially with CPD, that we
do a better job at, because people don't know who to call.
They don't know who to talk to. We're finding now people 20 and 30 years ago are
now talking about something that happened to them, and they need that support.
We got families who cannot move, who live with their abusers.
I never really heard, other than at the county, you all talk about what happened
during COVID, and that's a conversation we still need to unpack.
We also need to look at it and see what we can do different.
And so I really thank y'all for this conversation today.
We got to have this a little more. And what I challenge you all to do is to meet
with your elders, the wards that you work with.
Meet with all 50 of us so that we know what we're telling to victims because we do
say call 911. That doesn't always get folks what they need.
It depends on who is answering that call, that they will actually get the right
service. And what I'll say is my question to you is, I know you're like, "Lady, you
got another question?" I do. You all are direct service or y'all just referral?
I know you all are direct services, but is this office direct service or is it
referral?
I would say we are primarily referral, but can provide some very minimal
services to help jumpstart someone's journey.
But again, we always are up front with victims and survivors.
For anyone who needs more in-depth support, like legal support or long-term crisis
support or mental health support, that is not CPD.
That is whatever agency we can help identify for them and refer them to.
So to the folks who do this work, y'all need to send that nice little letter To all
50 of us and the people on the fifth floor to say, because while referral is
important, that direct support is what's needed in a lot of our communities.
And I appreciate you all doing that work, but y'all know we don't know the
difference, right?
We don't. And so y'all going to have to articulate that to all of us so that we
make sure we're making the right decision.
While I'm not against you getting that funding, it should not be on the cost of the
organizations who've been doing this work for decades. Thank you, Chair.
Chair, if I can just comment on one thing.
Your mention of SVU and wrapping
sexual assault cases up in 45 minutes resonated with me, and I thought you might be
interested to know that absolutely that does not happen in real life.
In fact, in the state of Illinois, it takes four and a half months to even get your
evidence collection kit back to understand whether or not there was DNA identified.
So these cases take months and years sometimes to investigate
and get to a place where I think Olivia Benson would be proud and willing to
present it to a prosecutor. So just wanted to share that with you.
Please, go right ahead.
Through the Chair, can you provide the policy to the committee?
I think that would be useful for people to just have as a point of reference.
And I know that we're going to be sharing the slides with everybody as well.
But I'll just
assume that you guys are going to be more than willing to continue the
conversation. I'd love to see maybe the Women's Caucus convene just more ongoing
conversations. They don't always have to be done out in the open like this.
I think my
biggest goals for the meeting was just to open a door to having a different kind of
conversation. But there's nothing to hide here. It really is. We're all focused.
And
none of the people that are in this room necessarily control who makes the budget
at the end of the day.
So again, I want to just resist this whole notion of binary conversations because
it's not helpful in the budget process.
But we have to look across all of the needs of the city.
And then we have to look at the way that we're budgeting for everything at the end
of the day. And so, in as much as this conversation is happening right in the
middle of budget, I will maintain that this is not about an exercise of picking one
group's pockets to go to the other. That's just not a productive conversation.
We need to find sustained funding.
And we need to make sure that we're using all yours and our taxpayer dollars in
the most effective way. So thank you all. Thank you, Chair.
I would just like to make one comment specifically to
Alderman Lee. And that is if we can huddle with OAMC and our
advocates here and make sure that when someone does call 911, that that information
is being transferred correctly. So I would be willing to work with you on that.
Maybe if we can, again, have a meeting with OAMC and our folks that are here and
make sure that that information is being transferred, I would appreciate it.
I also want to echo
my colleague Alderwoman Taylor's comments regarding the letter.
I think that letter
should go to all 50 of us. The last question I have for you is the state funding.
What funding do you receive from the state?
So Resilience receives state funding through general revenue dollars.
There's a specific line item in the state budget for rape crisis services.
That is $25 million split between the 31 centers across the state.
Resilience's portion of that this year, because it is something that we have to
competitively apply for against one another, even in that setup,
I think it is about 1.7, 1.6 million that we're getting in general
revenue dollars. So definitely helpful, unfortunately, still not enough.
Thank you very much. I would like you all to, again, make sure that you are
keeping
the families of Officer Martin, Chairman Talaferro, in
your prayers as they have lost loved ones in both
families, the Talaferro and the Martin family.
I want to thank again Officer Watkins and Ms.
Brown for offering their opening remarks this evening.
I want to thank Alderwoman Lee for convening us
this evening, and I want to thank the folks that are here with us sharing the very
much so important information.
There being no further questions and comments and business for this committee,
Alderwoman Taylor motions to adjourn by affirmative vote.
All members present, a roll call established. I apologize.
It's been a long day. It's the wrong note. Oh, okay. Thank you.
Motion to adjourn. Thank you.
There's an