Controversial Radio Ad Loses Steam as Rockford City Council Passes Budget

ROCKFORD - "It's February and the Rockford city alderman have yet to pass a budget..." that's the way a local radio spot reads.  The advertisement put out by the Rockford Police union brings the city's lack of passing a budget center-stage amid the controversy of geo-policing.  But the ad lost some steam Monday night after the city council finally passed its 2013 budget 11 - 2. 

Even though the ad targets the city's budget, its real aim is opposing the idea of geo-policing.  Terry Peterson, president of Rockford's Police Benevolent & Protective Association, says the ad calls out the mayor for calling out aldermen.

"The ad was in response to all this criticism of the alderman by the mayor," said Peterson. 

Peterson claims that criticism from the mayor was in regard to the city council's inability to pass a budget, and that inability stems from geo-policing.

"It's smoke and mirrors to me," said Peterson.  "We have geographically policed for the 31 years that I've been there and it was being done before me."

"We have assigned patrol areas.  The deployment has always been out of a centralized location and into those patrol areas.  Those patrolmen go out and they do meet the people and learn the areas and the people in the areas, otherwise we would never solve crime," said Peterson.

But Alderman Venita Hervey (D-Ward 5) claims it's the police union that's putting up smoke and mirrors.

"The idea that Rockford can continue to fight crime the same way that we've been doing it and get a different result is insane," said Hervey.

Hervey says her ward experiences a lot of the crime to be had in Rockford.  She claims that because of that, there's strong support for the new policing concept.

"Citizens in Rockford want geo-policing," said Hervey.  "I can tell you that the 5^th ward is excited about it.  I think I can speak for a large swath of the city where crime is rampant."

But people like Alderman Carl Wasco was one of the city council members holding up passage of the city's budget.  He called geo-policing funding into question, even though he supports the concept, he says he just wanted to see the figures first.

"It was simply a question of asking a lot of questions and not getting the answers yet," said Wasco.

"I had been through that once with the Metro Center and I wasn't going to go through it with the police department."

The city plans to perform a financial analysis on geo-policing to get a better idea of costs the program would bring upon the city.  The city had $300,000 set aside to create a geo-policing pilot program, when and if the program is actually created.  However the budget passed Monday night was amended to put that $300,000 back into the city's general fund.  After the geo-policing financial analysis is completed, aldermen can bring geo-policing back up for a vote to utilize that $300,000.  That $300,000 was supposed to be used to create the District 2 substation.