Illinois State Police to move district headquarters to East St. Louis, officials say
The state is building a new, $55 million district headquarters for the Illinois State Police in East St. Louis, Gov. J. B. Pritzker announced at a press conference at the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center on Tuesday.
The current District 11 headquarters is in Collinsville. The new facility will be built next to the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center, which is located on Argonne Drive. District 11 serves Bond, Clinton, Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties.
“This is a giant leap forward in ensuring the safety of East St. Louis residents and the entire metro-east,” Pritzker said. “It reflects what this region and all of Illinois deserves: Communities where public safety works so all of our families can thrive.”
The new facility will feature two buildings: a headquarters that’s about 62,500 square feet and a roughly 21,000 square-foot warehouse. Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly told the BND last week that the project will take at least three years to complete.
Roughly $5.5. million in state money was made immediately available for the design and engineering phase.
Officials did not say when the process will officially start.
“The initial funds will go into the design and architecture and engineering process,” Kelly said in an interview with the BND. “As part of that process, we’ll be getting the various needs and perspectives of our investigators, our troopers, etc., but also reaching out to the community to make sure our presence there in terms of how the building is designed will contribute to an overall positive presence, so we’ll be including community stakeholders as that design process moves forward.”
Kelly said that a main impetus for the decision to move is the current facility is too crowded for the district’s growing activities. District 11 has to share the Collinsville facility with the Illinois Department of Transportation and other state agencies. The Collinsville location has been District 11’s home since 1987.
The $55 million will solely be dedicated for the police headquarters project. The funds are part of Pritzker’s Rebuild Illinois Capital Plan, which he signed into law in 2019. Grants from the $45 billion program are intended to make infrastructure improvements across the state. Rebuild Illinois is the state’s largest capital plan in nearly a decade.
The headquarters is one of two Illinois State Police projects that were awarded funding from the Rebuild Illinois program. The other is a combined forensic, investigative and patrol facility in Joliet.
“The new multi-mission facility will not only increase safety for residents, but will be an anchor for new residential and business investment,” Pritzker said about the metro-east site.
During the press conference, Mayor Robert Eastern III said the news will cause a shift in economic development and public safety in East St. Louis.
“We’re the City of Champions,and champions always find a way to get it done, so we’re here today to change our narrative and have a new signal call,” Eastern said. “Our new signal call will be East Safe Louis.”
Kelly said moving the location to East St. Louis is the result of a collaborative effort between the community and local officials.
“If you can reduce crime, that makes it more attractive for investment in a community that’s showing an investment in public safety, so it has a cumulative effect that can build over time to really improve (the) community,” Kelly told the BND. “All these things are coming together at once. The state police are honored to be a part of this broader effort, and I think the partnership and the positive relationship that we have with stakeholders like JJK (Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center) will also be a benefit and, (with) the access that the location will have for the entire region, public safety will also be a benefit.”
“We’ll have our criminal investigation headquartered there, patrol, special operations like SWAT may have some space there and our communications. This will be an investment not just in public safety, but an investment in the entire region.”
Kelly said public forums will be held to involve the community in the design process for the new headquarters.
“It can take several years to collect that information and design a building and put it out for bid through the capital development board,” he said. “This is a multi-year, several year process, but the most important step is getting the location and moving forward with the design.”
Plans to prioritize community engagement
The land that will be the new home for the Illinois State Police District 11 was donated to the agency by Lansdowne Up, a new East St. Louis nonprofit that aims to revitalize the community, especially in the Lansdowne neighborhood that’s located in the city’s northeast end. With routine cleanups and rehabbing abandoned properties, the group plans to transform the neighborhood into a thriving area.
Earlier this year, the faith-based organization announced plans to develop a 20-home subdivision at the intersection of 25th Street and Gross Avenue—a two-minute drive from where the Illinois State Police District 11 headquarters will be.
Kevin Green, the nonprofit’s director of administration, said the new Illinois State Police facility brings the organization one step closer to achieving its mission.
“Together, we can rebuild and transform this neighborhood. I just think of an analogy of a plant. If you take a plant and put it in a pot, for that plant to flourish, it has to be a pot of a certain size, a certain amount of fertilizer, a certain amount of water, a certain amount of light, a certain type of soil. It takes all of these things to create this plant for this plant to thrive and flourish, and that’s what we see here in the Lansdowne community.”
He touted the nonprofit’s partnership with the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center as a crucial stride in solidifying the plans for the new headquarters.
“We know that we all want the same things,” four-time Olympian Jackie Jorner-Kersee said. “We all want the best for our community and our family, and this is just one inch closer to bringing people who never want to come to East St. Louis back into East St. Louis and also live in East St. Louis.”
Director Kelly commended the group’s passion for uplifting the city. He said its donation of land, which was submitted in 2020, met all the requirements that the agency was looking for in a new location. The Illinois State Police selected the property for the new headquarters in June of 2020.
“We were looking for a minimum of four acres,” Kelly said. “It needed to be within two miles of the interstate system and needed to be within walking distance of public transportation. It would have to accommodate the square footage we were looking for, including parking. It needed the right environmental assessments and proper zoning and utilities, etc… JJK is right there on MetroLink.”
“Obviously, the interstate is our main area of focus for the Illinois State Police, but we also want to be able to access the interstate to get around the region to be able to respond to public safety emergencies around the region and this location right on I-64 connects with(Interstates) 55, 255, 70, 64 is an ideal location next to public transportation and also having a very positive impact on the overall community there.”
Bridging the gap?
Kelly cited the agency’s growing relationship with East St. Louis as another reason why the state agency chose the location. The Illinois State Police launched its Public Safety Enforcement Group (PSEG) in 2020 to help the East St. Louis Police Department handle investigations for homicides, non-fatal shootings, aggravated assault, sexual assault, robbery and other violent crimes in the city. In December, the group touted a 55% clearance rate for homicides last year.
The unit will be housed in the new headquarters.
The agency also assists East St. Louis School District 189’s Wraparound Wellness Center by offering trauma-informed resources to children who’ve experienced violent crimes in the area. Kelly perceives the new headquarters as a necessary extension of the close connection the agency already has with the city and its residents. He said the plans follow the agency’s statewide model in having a community-based approach in policing.
“The partnership with District 189, the partnership that we have with various faith-based organizations is only bound to grow stronger over this period, and this model, which is a holistic model, definitely has its benefits,” Kelly said. “That creates more community engagement and reinforces the trust between law enforcement and the people that need protecting to create a safe space for other things to grow.”
Attempting to build trust between police and predominantly Black communities, like East St. Louis, is a challenge, especially given the history of police brutality against Black people in the United States.
In East St. Louis, two allegations of police brutality surfaced in 2022. This spring, two Black men filed complaints alleging that an East St. Louis police officer beat them during a March arrest. One of them said in a complaint that he was beaten so badly that he needed stitches on his eyebrow and nose. In June, East St. Louis Police Department said an outside agency is investigating a 2019 video that showed an officer entering an East St Louis jail cell and apparently spraying a substance on a teen who was lying down.
An increased police presence in the city doesn’t guarantee that those circumstances won’t happen. However, Kelly said that the community wanting that presence is proof of the trust that people have in the agency to fairly serve East St. Louis residents.
“The way the Illinois State Police approaches policing (is that) we have a high degree of integrity, and that I think that’s why the local community is not just welcoming but wants us there more to help create the space for safety for them to build new neighborhoods, to build churches and other places of worship and to build businesses in a location (that) by all counts should be an ideal location for economic activity, but it is the public safety issues that have made it more challenging,” Kelly said. “This is just a piece of the puzzle for the community and we’re very honored to be part of that for them.”
Rep. LaToya Greenwood (D-East St. Louis) said after Tuesday’s press conference that the new facility is the beginning of a “turnaround for East St. Louis.” She cited the presence of the Illinois State Police as essential for moving the city forward.
“I was born and raised here, and our police force is really homegrown, and we have a police force that’s really into community policing because you know them, you’ve went to school with them, and they’ve never left the community, they come back to serve the community,” Greenwood said. “The issue of police brutality and those type of issues, I really don’t hear much (about) in our community and I would venture to say that the same will be in place once we get the ISP here.”
This story was originally published September 6, 2022 at 10:00 AM.
