Crime & Traffic
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Starting in 2023, officers in counties and municipalities with populations of 100,000 to 500,000 will need to wear on-duty body cameras. Those counties include:
- Cook County
- Dupage County
- Lake County
- Will County
- Kane County
- McHenry County
- Winnebago County
- Madison County
- St. Clair County
- Champaign County
- Sangamon County
- Peoria County
- McLean County
- Rock Island County
- Kendall County
- Tazewell County
- LaSalle County
- Kankakee County
- Macon County
- DeKalb County
Officers in counties and municipalities with over 500,000 people are already required to wear body cameras as of January 1, 2022. Starting in 2024, officers in counties and municipalities with populations of 50,000 to 100,000 will need to wear on-duty body cameras. And starting in 2025, officers in counties and municipalities with populations under 50,000 will need to wear body cameras.
The only time an Illinois state police officer can turn off their body camera will be if they are inside a prison or jail that has a camera system, or if they are involved in community caretaking functions. Community caretaking functions include:
- Participating in town halls or other community outreach,
- Helping a child find their parents,
- Providing death notifications,
- Performing in-home or hospital well-being checks on the sick, elderly, or persons presumed missing.
Otherwise, if the police officer suspects they are investigating a crime, they must keep the body camera on and do not have the authority to delete the body camera recordings. Once the officer turns on their camera, they must tell you they are recording.
If you are a victim or witness of a crime, you can ask the police officer to turn off their body camera. Starting in March 2025, the officer must tell you that a camera in the police car will still be recording.
If you believe an Illinois state police officer has acted incorrectly with their body camera, like turned it off or covered it when they should not have, you can file an anonymous complaint against the officer. Misusing a body camera is misconduct, and it is a crime.
