On February 22, 2021, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 3653 into law as Public Act 101-0652. This has been dubbed the “SAFE-T Act” and is commonly referred to as the “New Justice Reform Bill”.
Like most legislation, this bill that has now become law is several hundred pages long. In order to provide useful information that is of interest to our clients, our firm has posted several blogs to explain different provisions of the law.
The “New Justice Reform Bill” amends the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act to require all law enforcement agencies to use officer-worn body cameras. In order to provide adequate time for this change, this will be phased in between January 1, 2022 and January 1, 2025 based on population size of the municipality or county.
Law enforcement agencies in compliance with the requirements will receive preference by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training Standards Board in awarding grant funding under the Law Enforcement Camera Grant Act. This new law also revises some of the guidelines and requirements for use of body cameras, including allowing only supervisors and not the recording officer to review recordings prior to completing incident reports.
It also requires all law enforcement agencies to provide an annual report on the use of officer-worn body cameras to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training Standards Board.
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