Republican state lawmakers are pushing Illinois State Police for a more detailed account of how the agency handled a report from local police about the man who would allegedly go on to commit a deadly mass shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade.
In the days after the shooting, state police issued two news releases providing information on how the agency handled a clear and present danger report from Highland Park police nearly three years before Robert Crimo III allegedly opened fire on the parade, killing seven people and wounding dozens more.
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Police went to Crimo’s home in September 2019 and confiscated several knives after receiving a report that he had threatened to “kill everyone” in his household. Officers didn’t make an arrest, but they did send a clear and present danger report to state police, a step law enforcement agencies can take if they believe someone would pose an imminent threat if granted access to firearms.
What’s clear is that at the time, Crimo did not have a state firearm owner’s identification card or a pending application, so the state police did not retain the Highland Park report. When he successfully applied for a FOID card with the help of his father about three months later, there was nothing on file to raise a red flag.
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According to state Sen. John Curran, what’s unclear, based on public statements by state police, is whether the agency, which is charged with overseeing firearm licensing, reviewed the Highland Park report or just discarded it when it was determined Crimo didn’t have a FOID card or pending application.
Curran, a Downers Grove Republican, raised the issue with state police officials Wednesday in his role as a member of the legislature’s bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.
The panel was reviewing an emergency rule change state police announced in the wake of the Highland Park shooting that seeks to clarify the agency’s ability to retain such reports even if the subject doesn’t have a FOID card or a pending application. The agency would be able to use the reports in evaluating future applications.
State police also are drafting a permanent rule to address the issue, but Curran said lawmakers can’t consider whether such a change is adequate unless they fully understand what happened in the Highland Park case.
“We’re reviewing your rule. I want to be helpful,” Curran told an attorney for the state police at Wednesday’s hearing in Springfield. “I just want to make sure I understand what we’re addressing to make sure that we have a totality of a response that’s going to ensure public safety.”
To underscore the discrepancy, Curran pointed to a pair of news releases issued in the two days after the shooting.
On July 5, state police said: “At that time of the September 2019 incident, the subject did not have a FOID card to revoke or a pending FOID application to deny. Once this determination was made, Illinois State Police involvement with the matter was concluded.”
The next day, the agency said, “Upon review of the report (from Highland Park police) at that time, the reviewing officer concluded there was insufficient information for a Clear and Present Danger determination.”
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“I’m asking: Which is it?” Curran asked Kelly Griffith, an attorney for the state police.
During her testimony, Griffith told the panel the agency followed “statutory law and the rules … that were in effect at the time.”
She declined to go into the specifics of Crimo’s case, citing the ongoing criminal investigation of the July Fourth shooting.
Given the statements state police provided to the press, Curran called the response “disingenuous.”
Curran argued that if state police never made a determination about whether Crimo posed an imminent threat in September 2019, there was nothing that prohibited the agency from holding on to the Highland Park report.
Curran said after the hearing that state police should have erred on the side of public safety in determining whether Crimo presented a clear and present danger and let him “come in and prove by preponderance (of the evidence) that he was fit for a FOID card” during the appeals process laid out in state law.
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State police have previously said that under the rules that were in effect at the time, the agency was required to discard the report.
Late Wednesday, a state police spokeswoman confirmed the account provided in the July 6 news release.
“The ISP officer received the report and processed it, and determined there was insufficient information to establish a clear and present danger under the FOID Act,” spokeswoman Melany Arnold said in a statement. “Part of processing the report involved identifying if the individual had a FOID card or a pending application.”
State Rep. Tom Demmer, a Dixon Republican and the party’s nominee for state treasurer, asked during the hearing whether under the emergency rule that’s been in effect since mid-July state police are making clear and present danger determinations regardless of whether the subject of a report has a FOID card or pending application.
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“On ones that we don’t have a FOID application or FOID card, I believe that information is being kept,” Griffith said. “I don’t know that we’re actually making a determination.”
State police Lt. Col. Michael Gillock said the agency is working to determine the best way to handle those reports.
“That’s what we’re here to try to establish a process for,” Gillock said.
Continued questions about how state police handled the 2019 Highland Park report come amid a broader effort by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly to strengthen gun laws in the wake of the shooting.
There had been some discussion of taking up gun safety measures as part of a yet-to-be scheduled special session to further protecting abortion rights in state law after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
But Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently sought to lower expectations for how soon lawmakers might return to the Capitol, pointing to legislative working groups that are putting together proposals on both issues.
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