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Legislator presses forward with facial recognition ban even after it helped solve Loyola student murder case in her district

March 27, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

Rep. Kelly Cassidy and Jose Medina (Facebook, Dept. of Homeland Security)

By Tim Hecke | CWB Chicago

A bill that would bar Illinois law enforcement agencies from using facial recognition databases to help identify crime suspects is scheduled for a second day of legislative hearings, days after the technology helped Chicago police identify the man accused of murdering a Loyola University freshman in the bill’s sponsor’s own district.

House Bill 5521 is sponsored by Rep. Kelly Cassidy, who represents the 14th District, which includes Rogers Park. Cassidy introduced the measure last Wednesday, hours before 18-year-old Sheridan Gorman was shot and killed at the Loyola Beach pier. Chicago police have since charged Jose Gregoria Medina Medina, a 25-year-old Venezuelan citizen, with Gorman’s murder.

An arrest report obtained by CWB Chicago describes how detectives worked to identify Medina as the shooter. Among the investigative steps, an officer wrote that video images of the gunman were sent to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which “returned matching candidate Jose Gregoria Medina Medina.”

If passed, HB5521 would prohibit Illinois law enforcement agencies from obtaining, retaining, possessing, accessing, requesting, using, or entering into agreements with third parties, state or local government agencies, or federal agencies to use certain biometric identification systems, including facial recognition.

It also bars the Secretary of State from providing facial recognition search services except when issuing a mobile driver’s license or identification card. That facial recognition database is the most commonly used within CPD.

On Sunday, CWB Chicago published a report detailing dozens of violent crimes — including murders, robberies, and sex offenses — that Chicago Police Department detectives have solved with the assistance of facial recognition. The technology has proven particularly useful in cases involving the CTA, where offenders are often anonymous, crimes can be random, and the transit system’s high-definition cameras provide broad coverage.

Article continues here.

Related: “Facial recognition helps cops solve some of Chicago’s most heinous crimes. This state legislator wants to shut it down,” “Hundreds of police departments use camera company (seen below) accused of breaking state law”

Automated license plate readers such as this one are installed throughout Barrington Hills.

Posted in Crime, CWB Chicago, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Dumb Bunny, Politics, Springfield, Who Cuts Your Hair?, WTF | Leave a Comment »

U.S. Route 14 Underpass Update | March 26, 2026

March 27, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

When the weather conditions permitted, construction activity continued through the winter months. Between January and March, crews completed the following work:

Preparation for permanent sheeting installations
Permanent sheeting installation is required along the Route 14 corridor to support excavation and construction of the lowered roadway. Following excavation work, concrete formwork will cover the sheets, completing the final retaining wall structure. The contractor has completed pavement removal and surface preparation, positioning the start of this permanent sheet work this spring.

Ongoing construction of the storm sewer pump station
Following substantial completion of the pump pit structure last year, work on the pump station has continued through the winter. Activities included installing stairs and handrails, placing drains, removing concrete formwork and backfilling, applying waterproofing, retaining wall work, installing electrical conduit, and structure preparation and construction of masonry walls. For more information on the pump station, please refer to the December 2025 update.

Water Main and Storm Sewer Installation
Elevation changes associated with the lowering of Route 14 necessitate the rerouting of some existing Village utilities and installation of new facilities. Earlier this year, crews completed storm sewer and water main relocation work on Route 14 near Drury Lane. They also began installing additional storm sewer infrastructure to drain the future underpass, which will connect to the pump station structure.

Route 14 Culvert Construction
As part of the project, Flint Creek will be relocated to maintain gravity flow. Currently crossing under Route 14 just west of the railroad tracks, the creek will be shifted farther west toward Route 59, where it will flow beneath Route 14 through a new storm sewer culvert. Construction of this culvert is underway, with excavation work completed and forming and rebar placement work underway. The culvert’s bottom slab will be formed and poured first, followed by the walls and top of the structure. After completion of this work, a similar structure will be constructed to carry the creek under Route 59.

Continued relocating utilities
Utility relocation work has continued throughout the winter and will progress alongside upcoming construction activities.

Weather and material availability permitting, the contractor plans to begin sheeting and excavation work necessary to begin construction of the railroad bridge this month. As this work progresses, the contractor will refine plans for the remainder of this year.

To stay informed and receive project updates, please visit the dedicated project website us14underpass.com or watch for email notifications.

Posted in Aunt Blabby, IDOT, Privacy, Public Safety, Road construction, Taxes, Traffic, U.S. Route 14 Underpass, Unions | Leave a Comment »

4 hospitalized after dump truck causes multiple-vehicle crash, rolls over and spills gravel in Barrington Hills

March 26, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

A three-vehicle crash resulted in two cars colliding head-on and a dump truck rolling over onto its side, spilling gravel and causing an over four-hour-long road closure, at Route 62 and Old Sutton Road in Barrington Hills Thursday morning. | Photo: Nick Rusin

By Sam Borcia | Lake & McHenry County Scanner

Four people were transported to the hospital after police say a dump truck caused a crash and rolled over, spilling gravel, while sending two cars colliding head-on into each other in Barrington Hills Thursday morning.

The Barrington Hills Police Department and Barrington Countryside Fire Protection District responded around 11:03 a.m. Thursday to the intersection of Route 62 and Old Sutton Road in Barrington Hills for a multiple-vehicle crash with injuries.

Barrington Hills Police Department Public Information Officer William Walsh said officers arrived and found a 2000 Peterbilt semi-dump truck, a 2010 Ford work truck and a 2011 Honda Pilot involved.

A three-vehicle crash resulted in two cars colliding head-on and a dump truck rolling over onto its side, spilling gravel and causing an over four-hour-long road closure, at Route 62 and Old Sutton Road in Barrington Hills Thursday morning. | Photo: Nick Rusin

The dump truck was rolled over onto its side and had spilled its load of gravel.

Walsh said a preliminary investigation shows the Peterbilt was traveling northbound on Old Sutton Road.

Traffic for northbound and southbound Old Sutton Road has stop signs, while traveling eastbound and westbound on Route 62, also known as Algonquin Road, does not have a traffic control device.

A three-vehicle crash resulted in two cars colliding head-on and a dump truck rolling over onto its side, spilling gravel and causing an over four-hour-long road closure, at Route 62 and Old Sutton Road in Barrington Hills Thursday morning. | Photo: Nick Rusin

Article continues here.

Posted in Lake & McHenry County Scanner | Leave a Comment »

The Academy Is… releases first new album in 18 years, gears up for Warped Tour

March 26, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

Out March 27, “Almost There” is the Barrington pop-punk band’s first album in 18 years, and a lot of the tracks memorialize the moments when the city felt like the band’s oyster.

By  Selena Fragassi | Chicago Sun*Times

The Academy Is… has a new album, “Almost There,” coming out March 27 on indie label I Surrender Records. | Jonathan Weber

As William Beckett took the stage at Madison Square Garden in 2024, it all came rushing back.

The lead vocalist of The Academy Is… was there to join old pals Fall Out Boy for a special cover of the Barrington pop-punk band’s song “Slow Down.” But despite playing the holy grail of concert venues, Beckett was thinking about the small suburban Chicago basements, VFW halls and Fireside Bowl where the two groups spent many nights during a time when the emo/pop-punk scene felt like the actual soundtrack of the city.

“It was just so cool to reconnect with them and to see how much hasn’t changed from the VFW Hall days,” Beckett recently said during a Zoom call from his home in Barrington, where the band is getting ready to release its new album “Almost There.” Out March 27, it’s the band’s first album in 18 years, and a lot of the tracks memorialize the moments when the city felt like the band’s oyster.

He’s not far from Barrington High School, where The Academy Is… was founded in 2003 and soon wound up on a roller coaster of MTV and Warped Tour loops with aughts hits like “About a Girl” and “We’ve Got A Big Mess On Our Hands.” In fact, a lot of it is thanks to Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz, who championed The Academy Is… early on and helped to get the band signed to tastemaker label Fueled By Ramen. The two acts have been closely associated ever since. But for Beckett, that scene still feels as raw as day one. “It still exists in this way that is almost untouchable, like it exists beyond time.”

It’s a feeling that he and his The Academy Is… bandmates (bassist Adam Siska, guitarist Mike Carden and drummer Andy Mrotek) bottle up in their daydreamy new single “2005.” The lyrics throw it back to that summer, with Beckett singing about driving downtown while listening to Saves The Day’s 2001 opus “Stay What You Are.” At the same time, he wonders about bringing “TAI back from the dead,” which they effectively do with “Almost There.”

The seeds for the album were planted during a series of recent reunion shows, including Riot Fest 2022 and the elder millennial gathering When We Were Young in 2023 — the band’s first since calling it quits in 2015. And the band members found themselves looking back at the good ol’ days and wondering if they ever really appreciated it all.

Article continues here.

Posted in Barrington High School, Chicago Sun*Times, Entertainment | Leave a Comment »

Illinois school cell phone ban progresses as many districts already enforce policies

March 26, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

 

A person writes mathematical equations on a whiteboard in a classroom or research setting. Photo: ThisIsEngineering / Pexels.

By Sean Reed | The Center Square

A bill banning students from using cell phones during the school day was unanimously recommended to be adopted by an Illinois House committee Wednesday. The bill, which was introduced in the state Senate during the last legislative session, has bipartisan support and has been a focus of Gov. J.B. Pritzker in recent months.

Senate Bill 2427 and its associated amendments were heard by the House Education Policy Committee early Wednesday.

The bill, which was also passed unanimously by the Senate last April, would require school boards across the state implement a policy prohibiting the use of cell phones and other personal communication devices from the beginning to the end of each school day, with some exceptions.

Rep. Laura Faver Dias, D-Grayslake, questioned Lindsey Volz, a legislative advisor with the Governor’s Office, on how the bill would address students’ access to phones in the event of an emergency at school.

“Schools are able to allow exceptions if they choose to in the case of an emergency, and it’s up to the school districts on how the phone is stored as well. So, it might be as simple as reaching into their backpack or going to their locker,” Vols said.

How to securely store devices is left to the discretion of school boards, with public input on the new policies being required, according to the bill’s text.

Article continues here.

Editorial note: CUSD 220 refers to cell phones as a “non-academic device” for the benefit of readers wishing to view policies.

Posted in 220, 300, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, School Districts, Springfield, The Center Square | 1 Comment »

JB Pritzker Blames Trump For Student Allegedly Murdered By Illegal Alien — But Suspect Released Under Biden

March 25, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

By Jason Cohen | Daily Caller

Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Tuesday blamed President Donald Trump for the murder of female college freshman Sheridan Gorman, allegedly at the hands of a criminal illegal alien.

Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan national released twice under former President Joe Biden in 2023, allegedly shot and killed Gorman on Thursday near the Loyola University campus as she tried to flee, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Despite the suspect’s history, Pritzker placed the blame on “national failures” and the Trump administration when speaking to reporters.

“This has been a terrible tragedy. And I know that the Gorman family has suffered mightily … there have been real failures. Those failures, of course, extend beyond the borders of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “They’re national failures, a failure to have comprehensive immigration reform, a failure of the president to follow his own edict to go after the worst of the worst.”

“And in my view, we have a lot of work that we need to continue to do,” Pritzker also said, according to the Chicago Tribune. “But it is the job of the federal government to go after immigration enforcement, and it is the job of our local and state law enforcement to prosecute or catch violent criminals and prosecute them, and we should continue to do that both on the state level and the national level.”

Pritzker attempted repeatedly to portray Chicago as safe just months before the killing, despite the city suffering from a lengthy violent crime crisis. The governor has in recent months feuded with Trump over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and backed a January lawsuit brought by his state against Trump’s DHS.

Article continues here.

Related: “Sheridan Gorman’s Murder—and Chicago’s Silence,” “Gov. JB Pritzker acknowledges ‘real failures’ in immigration system after Loyola student’s killing”

 

Posted in Chicago Tribune, Crime, Daily Caller, Deception, Ethics, OP/Ed, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, RealClear Politics, The Chicago Way | 1 Comment »

New IRS Migration Numbers: Illinois Taxpayers Continue to Flee With Their Income

March 24, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

By Mark Glennon and John Klingner* | Wirepoints

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday released its annual numbers on taxpayer interstate migration, which are for changes from 2022 to 2023. In several ways, these numbers are more important than census numbers because they measure income taxpayers and are precise — the IRS knows and reports how many taxpayers changed their residence from one state to another.

Here are the key takeaways for Illinois:

  • For the year, Illinois lost 54,000 people (tax filers and their dependents), to net domestic out migration. That’s the 3rd most in the nation, behind only California and New York.
  • The annual incomes of people moving out of Illinois are far bigger than for those moving in — $104,000 vs. $79,000.
  • From 2000 through 2023, Illinois lost 780,000 net taxpayers (filers) to out-migration.
  • Adding in those taxpayers’ dependents, Illinois lost 1.6 million net residents to out-migration from 2000 through 2023.
  • Most importantly, since 2000, $94 billion of  Adjusted Gross Income left with departing taxpayers. That’s just for the first year after departure. Assuming they continued to work, the true aggregate total is far higher.

Details are in the charts shown.

On the surface, it may appear that Illinois’ rate of loss declined in that the number of taxpayer leaving with their income was less than recent years, as you can see in the charts. However, that reduction is likely attributable to the sharp decline in moves of any kind — to a record low. 2023 saw the fewest amount of moves nationwide since the U.S government began tracking the data in the 1940s. That reduction in moves resulted mostly from the sale sclerosis that set in as mortgage interest rates spiked from 2022 to 2023. That left many homeowners reluctant to sell because they did not want to give up the low-rate mortgages they obtained earlier.

Among other states, the biggest winners of taxpayers and income gained were Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Arizona, in that order.

(Click on image to enlarge)

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*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints and John Klingner was earlier its Research Director.

Editorial note: Those living in Illinois illegally, such as the 25-year-old Venezuelan migrant Jose Medina of the 6800 block of North Sheridan Road in the Rogers Park neighborhood who assassinated an 18-year-old Loyola University freshman recently, are likely not counted in the IRS figures.

Posted in Blame Canada, Cost of Living, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Fat Bastard, Immigration, Politics, Property Taxes, Unions, Wirepoints | 1 Comment »

Facial recognition helps cops solve some of Chicago’s most heinous crimes. This state legislator wants to shut it down.

March 23, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

Illinois Rep. Kelly Cassidy, center, and images of some of the people who have been charged with violent crimes following investigations that involved the use of facial recognition. (Facebook, Chicago Police Department)

By Tim Hecke | CWB Chicago

An Illinois state legislator wants to strip law enforcement of a tool that has helped detectives solve murders, robberies, kidnappings, and sexual assaults — including some of the most violent crimes to hit the CTA in recent years: facial recognition.

When Chicago police detectives needed to figure out who stabbed 37-year-old Dominique Pollion to death and left his body on a Blue Line train in the Loop in January, facial recognition helped them get the investigation on the right track.

By feeding high-quality CTA video images into the Illinois Secretary of State’s database of state ID and driver’s license photos, detectives narrowed their focus to possible matches, including 21-year-old Demetrius Thurman. As their investigation continued, investigators allegedly found video on Thurman’s phone that shows him committing the crime.

Powerful stuff. But if a North Side state legislator gets her way, Illinois police will soon be barred from using any facial recognition database, including the Secretary of State’s, to do their work ever again.

The bill is called the Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act, and it’s being pushed by Rep. Kelly Cassidy, who represents most of Rogers Park and Edgewater in Springfield. Cassidy’s office did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.

Her proposed law would ban the use of facial recognition and other biometric identifiers by law enforcement statewide. No agency could use the technology or enter into an agreement with a state or federal agency to use it. The bill would still allow “fingerprinting pursuant to an arrest or conviction, or to collect forensic evidence at a crime scene.” The bill does not include the ultimate biometric, DNA, among its “biometric identifiers.”

To be clear about how the tool works: a potential facial recognition match alone is not enough to file charges. Detectives use it to help generate leads and identify potential suspects.

Article continues here.

Posted in Crime, CWB Chicago, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Dumb Bunny, Politics, Springfield, Who Cuts Your Hair? | Leave a Comment »

In Cook County, 75% of police, fire property taxes go to pensions

March 23, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

Outside Chicago, only a fourth of municipal property taxes collected this year for police and fire are going to services.

By LyLena Estabine | Illinois Policy Institute

The vast majority of the police and fire levies in last year’s Cook County property tax bills funded pensions, not protection.

The 2024 police and fire levies for cities outside Chicago total $599 million. Just over $450 million of that is for pensions, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.

First-installment bills are due April 1. Many in the county may still be recovering from the delayed property tax bills that were due Dec. 15. Some of those bills grew by record-setting amounts.

Since 1996, the amount Cook County municipalities outside Chicago have levied to keep up with police and fire pensions has grown by 416%, while the amount levied for services hasn’t even doubled.

The amount going to fund protection increased by about $2 million in 2024 levies over 2023. The amount for pensions rose $27 million.

Police and firemen deserve generous pensions given the risk in their work. But when those benefits become too generous — as they are in Illinois — they undermine retirement security and reduce the amount of money available for service.

Article continues here.

Posted in Cook, County, Illinois Policy Institute, Jewel-Osco, Overhead, Pension Funding, Politics, Property Taxes, Taxes, Unions | Leave a Comment »

I-90 ramp connecting to Route 31 to be closed for months for construction upgrades

March 22, 2026 by Barrington Hills Observer

By Michelle Meyer | Shaw Local

A ramp connecting the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway to Route 31 in Elgin will be closed for toll plaza improvements starting Sunday and is expected to last through the summer.

Beginning at midnight Sunday, the ramp connecting westbound Interstate 90 to southbound Route 31 will be closed, according to an Illinois Tollway news release. A posted detour will direct traffic on the interstate to the Randall Road interchange, bringing cars back onto eastbound I-90 to access Route 31.

“Tolls will be waived at the Elgin Toll Plaza for traffic following the detour,” officials said in the release.

Crews will be removing the existing barrier walls and equipment and installing new infrastructure. Ramp pavement and shoulder work, along with improvements to electrical, lighting and signage, also are planned, according to the release. All work is weather-dependent.

The construction is part of Illinois Tollway’s 16-year, $15 billion capital program called Move Illinois and its seven-year, $2 billion Bridging the Future capital plan. Improvements are planned for all toll plazas systemwide.

Signs warning about the upcoming closure will be posted this weekend. Updated information will be posted on the Illinois Tollway website’s daily construction alerts.

Maps and construction information are available in the “projects” section on the tollway website.

Article continues here.

Posted in Aunt Blabby, IDOT, Illinois Tollway, Shaw Local, Taxes, Traffic | Leave a Comment »

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