Riverside Police Chief: Fund Human Services to Prevent Crime

Submitted by Chief Tom Weitzel.

Riverside, IL - At a hearing of the Illinois House of Representatives on Wednesday, April 27, Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel urged lawmakers to come to move past the stalemate and agree on a state budget that would fund key human services programs that prevent crime.

“Law enforcement leaders rely on Illinois’ human services programs as an essential component of public safety,” said Chief Weitzel to the Human Services Appropriations Committee, which deals with the Illinois Department of Human Services budget.

The lack of a state budget has forced dozens of non-profit agencies across Illinois to cut back significantly on staffing and important services, and many have already gone out of business. Included are many programs for kids and youth – programs that law enforcement leaders consider key to protecting public safety:

• Redeploy Illinois – which provides cheaper and more effective alternatives to prison for juvenile offenders. More than half of participating counties have already left the program, representing 295 youths no longer receiving services – and representing the equivalent of a 65 percent spike in our juvenile-prison population.

• Comprehensive Community-Based Youth Services – which provides crisis-intervention and family-reunification help for about 7,000 youths, including runaways, kids deemed beyond parents’ control, and those in immediate physical danger. Surveys indicate more than half of programs have cut staff and/or access to services, with more planning to follow suit – leaving hundreds of youths more likely to be incarcerated or referred to the Department of Children and Family Services.

• Teen REACH – after-school programs representing safe and educational alternatives to the streets during“prime time for juvenile crime.” More than 1,800 youths already have lost access due to the closure of programs from Chicago to Danville and Rockford to Franklin County – about one out of every eight youths who recently were helped by Teen REACH. This is especially troubling when another key out-of-school-time effort – child care help for low-income, working families –has yet to recover from deep cuts in the opening months of FY16.

• “Parent-coaching” programs – help for the new parents of at-risk infants and toddlers, reducing child abuse and neglect, among other positive results. These home-visiting programs are shutting down statewide – risking the loss of $40 million in federal funding for services helping 6,000 Illinois families.

“If we’re serious about ending the crime in our neighborhoods and communities, we cannot afford to continue without funding programs that put children and youth on the right path,” said Chief Weitzel.

Chief Weitzel is on the Executive Committee of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Illinois, an anti-crime organization of more than 350 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, leaders of police officer organizations, and crime survivors.