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Technology, more police helping to reduce Chicago expressway shootings

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Published  August 21, 2023 5:07pm CDT
Crime and Public Safety
FOX 32 Chicago

Technology, more police helping to reduce Chicago expressway shootings

While violent crime is up in some parts of Chicago, shootings and violent crime are actually down this year on Chicago-area expressways.

CHICAGO - While violent crime is up in some parts of Chicago, shootings and violent crime are actually down this year on Chicago-area expressways.

Even so, Illinois State Police are ramping up their technology to handle all the new digital evidence at their disposal.

There have been 86 shootings on Chicago area expressways so far this year. Nearly half have occurred on the Dan Ryan and Eisenhower Expressways.

Now, the Illinois State Police is developing new technology to crack down on expressway crime.

"What the intent is, is to process the digital evidence efficiently and as quickly as possible," said Illinois State Police Major Kevin Garcia.

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Garcia said within the past couple of weeks, they've opened two new technology centers. One is in Des Plaines, the other in Lockport. Both are modeled after the area technology centers that have proven successful for Chicago Police.

"We just have blanket coverage on the expressways and it leads to identifying a lot of witnesses and offenders," Garcia said.

There are hundreds of high-definition surveillance cameras and license plate readers watching the Chicago area expressway system. That's a good thing. The problem is they produce thousands of gigabytes of digital data.

Garcia said the new forensic workstations will give investigators the computing power to process all that information more quickly and efficiently.

"The quicker we're able to get to that, the more we're able to identify additional evidence, the quicker we can identify potential firsthand witnesses and ultimately offenders in these crimes."

The 86 expressway shootings so far this year are down sharply from the 189 shootings reported last year, and the spike of 310 expressway shootings in 2021.

Garcia said technology and teamwork have been the keys to reducing that number.

"Some of those measures were increased patrols, the development of our statewide anti-violence enforcement teams. Using data to strategically plan violence crime reduction missions with our patrols."