OFVP Firearm Violence Research Group Meeting Minutes, March 21, 2023

Date: Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Time: 9:30am - 11:00AM

MEETING MINUTES

  1. Welcome/Roll Call/Approval of Minutes:
    • Meeting Called to order @9:31am
    • Assistant Secretary Patterson welcomed FVRG members to the meeting.
    • Facilitator Joe Hoereth welcomed the following guests from IDHS - Jonathan Hoyt (OFVP) and James Pagano, Senior Policy Advisor
    • FVRG Members present: Joe Hoereth, Tammy Kochel, Darryl Kroner, Timothy Lavery, Dave Olson, Jon Patterson, Eric Reinhart, Kimberly Smith, Soledad McGrath
    • FVRG Members absent: Andrew Papachristos, Lance Williams
    • Other attendees: Christopher Patterson, Ana Genkova, Jaqueline Carrillo, Latanya Law, Patricia Holling, Jonathan Hoyt, James Pagano
    • Notetaker: Jessica Cortez
    • January 17, 2023 meeting minutes were approved by consensus with one amendment.
      • Change Northwestern Neighborhood Initiative to Neighborhood Engage Research in Science CORNERS
  2. Public comment - No public comments received
  3. Discussion
    1. Office of Firearm Violence and Prevention Update - Latanya Law provided a numbers-based update on OFVP.
      •  As of today 19, NOFO have been released. Currently there are 5 open NOFOs. 
        1. Chicago - Youth Development
        2. Greater Illinois
          1. Trauma informed behavioral health.
          2. Violence Prevention
          3. Violence prevention council coordinator
          4. Youth Intervention
      • Currently working with 106 organizations.
      • A total of 143 million dollars was committed to date.
      • FLIP NOFO will be released in April and expect the person who is awarded the grant to be contacted by July 1st.
    2. Assistant Secretary Christopher Patterson provided an update on OFVP; shared a PowerPoint presentation that was presented to the Governor's office.
      • Overview of Violence Prevention Strategy
      • Status of Firearm Violence Statewide
      • 2022 Highlights
        • $143M in ARPA Funding has been committed through June 30, 2024. Over $10M has been paid.
        • 14 NOFOs Released
        • 397 Total Applications Received
        • 184 Grant Awards
        • 106 Grantees
      • 2023 Focus and Strategy
      • Vision for the Future
    3. Facilitator Hoereth We have been tracking work OFVP has been doing. One of the needs we identified that would be helpful for the office is to have a framework of an anchor, a composite set of measures that OFVP uses to track or follow a baseline for comparison for evaluation work or other activities but essentially to assess gun violence in Illinois. There isn't a single source of data that is out there that gives a complete picture. A group of us here have been working on doing an inventory of the sources that are out there.
  4. Presentation and Discussion on "State of Firearms Violence in Illinois" Report
    • FVRG member Olson shared a PowerPoint presentation that shares thinking to date on how to structure but also points out some key issues wanting to discuss with FVRG and think about the best way to do this. Member Olson also shared in the chat (link below in links shared) a report that the Illinois State Police just issued that discusses the data that is available specifically that the State Police are required to generate and report out. First glance at the report, they missed a lot of data sources and ways to look at the extent of firearm violence. The report talks about the availability data that's there to answer the specific questions they are required to report on.
      • National Crime Victimization Survey state-level estimates (Bureau of Justice Statistics)
      • NIBRS data from Illinois State Police (victim characteristics) (largest volume of offenses)
      • Trauma Center Admissions due to firearm assault (IDPH) (victim characteristics)
      • Firearm homicide deaths (IDPH) (victim characteristics) (smallest volume of offenses)
      • Firearms submitted to Illinois State Police Labs
      • Arrests for firearm violence offenses and firearms possession offenses (defendant characteristics)
    • FVRG member Olson presented a chart showing Non-Fatal Firearm Crime Victimization (NCVS) vs. Firearm Homicides (CDC) to FVRG group.
      • Assistant Secretary Patterson: While suicide rates and the numbers are relevant to the current Reimagine Public Safety Act itself, we will at some point understand the total firearm violence dynamics across the board.
      • Facilitator Hoereth: When we look at different sources of data some basic stuff that continues to challenge us are the lag of different sources.
      • Many sources, especially when they rely on local jurisdictions to report to national or state, there's a lag that can be as much as 2 years before some of that data is available. We might be able to get it faster by going directly to the sources that are reporting it and that's one issue.
      • The second is geography. The way OFVP works, we have eligible communities and are trying to help align the data with communities that OFVP is supporting is challenging for a lot of these data sets for geography. If we go to local jurisdictions or figure out a way to get access to the sources, we might be able to address that issue.
      • Another one is the suppression of numbers in a lot of data sets. So many of the agencies are required to not include or not report a specific number.
    • FVRG Member Reinhart: The trauma center data, is that only looking at admissions? Somebody who walks in has a gun shot through the hand and is treated and then discharged from the emergency department. Would that be entered in the data?
      • FVRG Member Olson responds: That is a good question that we will verify.
    • FVRG Member Olson: All of us here are for the most part researchers who are interested in studying the issues of firearm violence. One of our goals is to have this become a learning community where people from IDPH can explain this is where the trauma registry data comes from, and this is what happens if you're treated in a non-trauma center.
    • FVRG Member Kochel: One of the things that comes out of comparing what you said and what you presented and relative to what we did when we were identifying places, I was looking at the report that you sent for ISP one thing we didn't have access to firearm seized and firearm related arrests which could be an outcome of police activity. Where these things are clustering geographically are somewhat different from the image Secretary Patterson presented when showing where funding through the initiatives. If we are seizing a lot of firearms, it would be important to have a sense of why we are seizing them. ? What kind of firearms are they?
      • What are the conditions under which they are seized?
      • We may be overlooking communities that are having issues with firearm violence because we have ignored this piece of data. F
    • FVRG Member Olson: You really must dig in to look at what is the actual measure. Some of the maps that you are thinking of are the State Police patrol responsibilities in specific urban areas, so you see a large concentration near East St. Louis and Chicago and maybe not in other areas. Part of that is the agreement that the State Police have with patrol responsibilities on highways in certain communities. It's another indicator if they all align all these different sources say this is where the concentration of the problem is and that is a good triangulation method. If they reveal different patterns then we should be figuring out the reason for that. What's the different aspect of the firearm issue that we were measuring with those different sources?
    • FVRG Member Kochel: If it shows us things that are happening in more rural areas where state police might take a greater role in law enforcement and it's harder to get access to firearm information about those places. To some extent that's why you're seeing Southern Illinois in some places popping up in red with higher concentrations because you're going to have Illinois State Police being responsible for primary law enforcement services in some of those places might be worth considering.
    • Assistant Secretary Patterson: When someone is shot, are they receiving the services? The victim services that we're trying to make sure that it's implemented. An example that we had recently in South Shore where someone was shot was a graze wound and instead of going to the University of Chicago where there is victim services, they went to Jackson Park Hospital where we don't have any presence. This is an incident where someone who is likely to be a shooter or involved in that level of street activity was grazed. We couldn't provide victim services nor any interruption with the outreach teams.
    • FVRG Member Olson: If the opportunity to access services is in an emergency room, then there's nothing available for the person who has the gun pointer to their head and is threatened never shows up to an emergency room their entire interaction because of that victimization may be with the justice system.
    • FVRG Member Reinhart: Are we looking at when law enforcement officers discharge a weapon?
      • FVRG Member Olson responds: No, that data is captured. Local department may or may not.
      • FVRG Member Lavery responds: Pursuant to the safety at ISP is required to administer the state's participation in the Federal use of force data collection, which is a DOJ initiative. Legislators are saying the state is going to participate in this and collect statewide use of force data.
    • Facilitator Hoereth: Shared chart Sources of Firearms Victimization and Related Data for Illinois. Something we were working on called the Social Vulnerability Index that has gun violence as part of the factors. It's intended to measure the resilience of communities like disaster planning.
    • Links Shared:
  5. Next Steps
    • Facilitator Hoereth will send a draft between this meeting and the next meeting. Watch for help and information requests from us in the time being.
    • Proposed Next Meeting Date/ Time
      • Tuesday, May 16th 9:30am
  6. Meeting Adjourned @ 11:01am