With two fatal expressway shootings in less than a week, Illinois State Police, along with city and state transportation agencies, is poised this week to begin installing license plate-reading cameras on Chicago-area expressways — in hopes of deterring crime and catching criminals.
The project, undertaken along with the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Chicago Department of Transportation, comes at a time when shootings on expressways have outpaced all of 2020 in the first 81/2 months of 2021, according to agency data.
Brendan Kelly, director of state police, called the project an important step toward expanding force-multiplying technology, long needed to protect travelers on Chicago expressways.
“These cameras will be an increasingly important tool for the ISP to collect the evidence we need to detect and deter crime on our interstates,” Kelly wrote in a statement.
Two years ago, a 55-year-old woman named Tamara Clayton was shot and killed while driving on Interstate 57 near Cicero Avenue while on her way to work. In the wake of Clayton’s death, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, state representatives, including Sen. Jacqueline Collins, and gun violence activist Andrew Holmes argued for newer cameras to help reduce crime. That July, the Tamara Clayton Expressway Act was signed to instruct state police to install the updated cameras on highways that could help police identify shooters.
In 2019, the same year Tamara Clayton was killed, there were 52 expressway shootings. In 2020, that number more than doubled with 128 expressway shootings including an attack that wounded a 10-month-old. Just 12 arrests were made, according to agency data.
As of Monday, there were 158 shootings so far this year. The number includes last week’s fatal shooting of a 67-year-old retired teacher from Orland Park and a 29-year-old man who was one of two people who died on the Eisenhower Expressway in Lawndale this weekend, when the driver was fatally shot and his vehicle crashed, killing a 30-year-old back seat passenger.
In a written statement, Pritzker said the investment in expressway cameras will further strengthen the ability of state police to hold violent offenders accountable.
“Our roadways should be connections between communities, not crime scenes, and the ISP will offer the additional support necessary to local law enforcement in Chicago to protect traveling residents.”
Sen. Napoleon Harris III wrote in a news release that the state has seen an increase throughout Chicagoland expressways and he is glad to have the access to technology that will aid in the investigation of expressway shootings.
“With these innovations, I hope many crimes are solved and brought to justice, so that the victim’s ‘families may know peace.’ “
State police received a $12.5 million grant earlier this year for the specialized cameras that can read the license plates of moving vehicles in traffic. Motorola was selected as the vendor for the camera system. Along with the cameras, the installations will include a system to send information to a central location where, with additional software, it can be checked against license plate and vehicle databases.
The captured images will not be used for lesser offenses, such as speeding, officials said.
State police will continue to collaborate with IDOT and CDOT to help install more than 200 license plate-reading cameras over the next year.
