DEFINING RACIAL GROUPS, USE OF FORCE, AND STANDARD CATEGORIES
Defining racial groups: CPE uses “racial group” to refer to groups described in departmental records by racial category (e.g., Hispanic or Latinx, Asian, Black, Native, White). When we compare departmental records of incidents to local demographic data, these racial groups are mapped onto Census data for the following groups: Hispanic (referred to as “Latinx” in this assessment), non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic Native American, and non-Hispanic White. The “Other” category, if used, combines racial groups making up less than 2% of incidents.
Our use of “racial” as a shorthand for these groups does not represent a claim that any person belongs to any monolithic “race,” or indeed that the category of “race” has any objective or biological meaning, apart from its social and political context. We acknowledge the historic and deliberate use of racial categories in crime statistics to link criminality to Black people, a bias that continues to affect marginalized communities and people in the criminal justice system today. We also recognize that the terms we use to describe racial groups are not universally accepted or preferred by members of the groups they describe. We aim to use terms which are inclusive, widely understood, and unlikely to offend.
Defining use of force: Elgin PD SOP 1.3.7 defines physical force as “Any force involving the use of holds or defensive tactics outside of that force needed to effect normal arrestee handcuffing or escorting.”
According to Elgin PD SOP 1.3.7, Officers “shall notify their supervisor or on-duty supervisor, when practical, anytime force was used.”
According to Elgin PD SOP 1.3.7, officers “shall complete a written report and a response to resistance report form whenever any of the following activities have occurred, except during department authorized training activities:
- 1. Take action that results in or is alleged to have resulted in injury or death of another person.
- 2. Apply force [to a person] through the use of lethal or less lethal weapons...
- 3. Apply physical force [defined as force that involves the use of holds or defensive tactics outside of that force needed to effect normal arrestee handcuffing or escorting]
- 4. Point a firearm or pepperball launcher at any person or occupied vehicle.
- 5. Send a canine with specific instructions for the purpose of apprehending a suspect or anytime a canine bites a suspect.
- 6. Draw a baton, TASER or firearm to gain the compliance of the resisting person and other show of force situations as specified on the response to resistance form.
- 7. Discharge of a firearm; however, the officer discharging the firearm shall not complete the response to resistance report form.”
Standardizing categories: Each law enforcement agency collects stop, search, use of force, and racial data in its own way. In order to interpret data consistently across departments, we sort the data received from departments into standardized categories. The following tables show the categories used by the department and how we translate them into CPE categories. The “LEA-Provided Value” column contains the categories that the department provided to CPE, and the “CPE Standardized” column shows the corresponding category CPE used in this assessment.
For more information about why certain results were not displayed, a detailed list of data requirements for each analysis is available under “More information,” beneath the relevant chart.