The Woodford County sheriff office has lost 14 deputies since the proposal of the SAFE-T Act. The county had 50 officers to begin with before the legislation came out of Springfield.
Dennis Tipsword the county Deputy said that the larger police departments like Aurora have been offering higher sign-on bonuses to incentive officers to go there instead. Tipsword said this is leading to smaller departments closing down.
“We have lost 14 deputies in 18 weeks,” said Tipsword. “In the beginning with the first few we lost, these were folks that saw they SAFE-T Act coming. Our first wave of people were people who said, ‘Hey, I’m young and I’m going to go start a new career.’ Our second wave were people on the verge of retiring. Maybe not planning on retiring but said, ‘Why the heck would I stay in this environment?’ Then we got to the last few guys and then the bigger departments started dangling cash out there and said, ‘Hey come with us we will give you this much money to sign on.'”
Aurora was offering over $20,000 sign on bonuses.
“They’re doing that because they can’t get money either,” said Tipsword, who is also running for State Representative in the 105th District. 
According to Injustice Watch, the bill, known as the SAFE-T Act, changed a controversial rule that let prosecutors charge people with murder when their accomplices were killed by a third party while committing a forcible felony; established a new process to decertify abusive cops; required body cameras for all Illinois cops; and limited when police can use deadly force, among other changes.
A change the SAFE-T Act was body cams, which Tipsword said could be a great tool but for some odd reason the state won’t allow officers to use the footage to write up the reports. This change isn’t coming until 2023.
“I’m for them because it backs up what our deputies do, right. There’s an audio and video recording of everything that happened, so there is no way that there is any misrepresentation of the truth. It’s all right there on camera. I’m for them, our department is for them. Technically, under the SAFE-T Act. It’s based on the size or population of your county. We don’t technically have to have body cameras until 2023. We made the decision 6 or 8 months ago that we were gonna get into them sooner than later,” said Tipsword. “For a couple reasons. One reason, part of the SAFE-T Act has a provision where an anonymous person can file a complaint on a police officer with the Illinois Training and Standards Board.
So Tipsword gave a hypothetical… you could call down to the Illinois Training and Standards Board and say ‘I had an interaction with Dennis Tipsword the other day and he’s an unprofessional deputy and he did this, this, and this and you can do all that without ever giving your name.
“Now there is an anonymous complaint against me and how I did my job. How can I defend myself one, if I don’t know if you complained on me? I don’t know who you are so I can go back to that incident in my mind and think about what happened and what was there. So how can I defend myself? It takes away the right for us to know our accuser. The sheriff led the way on this. He said, ‘no we’re not gonna go that route we’re gonna get body cameras early,’” said Tipsword.
Sheriff Matt Smith told his officers during the pandemic lock down Executive Order time period that his officers have not, and will not, take any enforcement action regarding the Governor’s executive orders.
“He said we’re not gonna do this, we are not going to allow anonymous complaints to be filed against our deputies without being able to back ourselves up. We got with a vendor. We started a pilot program, we’ve done some testing. Ran some tests for about five months with some body cameras,” said Tipsword. “We got four assigned to four deputies and it went great. Those deputies loved them. At first you’ve got that learning curve of ‘this is going to be weird I’m on camera all the time’, but once you get over that hurdle they loved them. Guys and gals are ready for body cameras in the department, we’ve got them ordered, but they are way out. Hopefully by the end of summer we get them.”
No there has been concern about these cameras invading the privacy of citizens, but there are provisions in the SAFE-T Act that allow a victim to ask for the body camera to be turned off.
“We can turn them off, yes there is a provision for that. It all goes back to a reasonable expectation of your privacy if you and I interact out on the street and I have my body camera going you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy on the street. Anybody driving by can see you, anybody driving by can video you with their phone. In those generic kinds of situations not really much you can do,” said Tipsword. “That changes if you’re the victim and you call and I respond and I come to your house. If I come to your house you can say to me deputy can you turn off your body camera while were in my house or while were talking and yes there is a provision in the law for that.”
In all of the SAFE-T Act and legislation coming out of Springfield Tipsword said there is on thing that is particularly frustrating…that’s the lack of listening from Springfield legislators.
“The body camera act as it was written in the beginning, now there have been trailer bills that the Sheriffs Association, the Chief of Police Association has worked really hard on, working some of this stuff out. But as the bill was originally written it said ‘you will wear a body camera and you will record everything you do, however you as the deputy are not allowed to review that footage before you write your report.’ In the same breath it says, ‘but if your report is not accurate you can be in violation of a Class 2 felony.’ From the outside looking in that looks to me like that someone trying to set me up with a body camera, not allowing me to watch my own footage to write my report and looking for an error in the report somewhere. I understand what our deputies were scared of in the beginning of all this and said what is going on. I mean the video and audio is the best representation of exactly what happened. Why can’t I review that? Just to write my report, when we write our report we want the most accurate document we can make. Eyewitness testimony is probably the worst there is,” said Tipsword.
Tipsword said the officer are trained to really take notes.
“We can take good notes and really remember everything that is going on, but at the end of the day we can’t remember it verbatim,” said Tipsword. “If we’ve got the video, why can’t we watch the video then to write our report? Thankfully, some of that has been adjusted and we can now review most things, there is still a few things they don’t want us to watch our video for before we write our report, which astounds me. I have no idea why that would be written that way.”
The SAFE-T Act…is it a done deal? Well, every July 1 and every Jan. 1 new provision roll out in the bill. It’s really about a four year bill, start to finish. We’re in the first year of it right now. So far there have been some trailer bills.
Trailer bills make the statutory changes needed to implement the budget. It is the same as any other bill, but it takes effect immediately with a majority vote if it contains an appropriation related to the budget bill and is listed as a “trailer bill” in the budget bill.
Dennis Tipsword, 105th State House candidate, interviews on Conservative Cat.
“Our lobbying partners the Sheriffs Association, the Chief of Police Association started lobbying with conservative members of the general assembly. Right, because that’s who’s going to help us in this not the Left. So far we’ve had two trailer bills and they cleaned up a few things,” said Tipsword. “Yes, this is going to continue until this bill reaches its full implantation date. Every year there is going to be issues that are about to roll out that year that need to be clarified. Every year I see a trailer bill coming, because there’s some things that are out so far now that we don’t really have our eye on yet, because there are more important things coming out this year that we need to talk about and get clarified. Absolutely I will have the chance when elected to be a part of that and point to these specific facts why it won’t work.”
