Flossmoor PD Shooting: Residents Call For Internal Investigation

FLOSSMOOR, IL — Dozens of people gathered Monday evening outside Flossmoor Village Hall, ready to air their discontent with the Village's handling of the fatal police shooting of a 64-year-old resident last week.

The crowd stood outside for an hour before the meeting, toting signs calling for justice and chanting for an investigation into police actions surrounding the death of Madeline Miller. Miller was shot three times by police July 10 at her home in the 1400 block of Joyce Drive after police responded to a report of a domestic disturbance. Miller was threatening to kill a family member and came at police armed with a knife, police said last week.

Protesters outside Village Hall Monday said that crisis intervention and de-escalation training might have prevented Miller's death, and many called for an investigation of the officers' actions from within the department in addition to the independent investigation by the Illinois State Police Integrity Task Force.

Inside, people waited for their turns to address Mayor Michelle Nelson and the trustees.

"I believe that things that happen in this community tend to be swept under the rug," said Dr. La'Shawn Littrice, Flossmoor resident and psychologist. "The problem that we’re dealing with right now is systemic."

"We demand that Flossmoor Police Department gets training on mental health intervention. We need de-escalation training. These are things that money’s in the budget for, you just have to shift it around. We don’t always shoot people just because they're Black. We manage to de-escalate other people that don’t look like us. We need to have a distinct program in place for police accountability."

Homewood native Leslie Bolser addressed the board, noting her ties to the Flossmoor community and experience with Crisis Prevention Intervention (CPI) training. Bolser said she has worked with a south suburban day program for disabled adults as a supervisor, and worked with "individuals who couldn’t express how upset they were and would instead exhibit behaviors that could potentially and sometimes did become violent."

CPI's trauma-sensitive, person-centered Nonviolent Crisis Intervention training focuses on prevention and deescalation techniques and other alternatives to the use of restraint, Bolser said. CPI techniques are designed to deescalate anxious, hostile and violent behaviors at the earliest stages.

"In my experience, if you have been effectively trained in CPI, deescalation becomes part of your initial response," Bolser said. "I am asking the Flossmoor police become trained in CPI, if they are not already, so they are well versed in prevention and deescalation techniques. If they are already trained in CPI, I am asking that they be retrained to reinforce these techniques to better protect the community.

"It is my understanding that our local police no longer are having this training. If that is correct, I am asking that the police have ongoing domestic violence training from a local domestic violence agency or the CPI institute. It is my understanding that domestic violence police calls are seen as the most dangerous, so having training to understand and deescalate these situations is absolutely imperative for the safety of our community members."

Public speakers took up the entire allotted 30-minute session, with Mayor Nelson allowing the session to trickle over some into other official business.

Last to speak was Iown Fields, an older sister of the deceased Miller. Fields is the oldest of 11 siblings; Miller was fifth in the birth order.

"That was my baby sister," Fields said. "I’m the oldest of eight daughters, two younger brothers, all I can hear my mother say, is 'what happened to Madeline?'

"I just want you to know that Mat (her nickname for Madeline) has a family. She was my baby."

After the public comment portion concluded, the group quietly got up, but exited chanting of what they want: justice.

"If we don't get it, shut it down. If we don't get it, shut it down."

Fields said that she'd never seen her sister in such extreme mental distress as she appears to have been the day of the shooting.

"Everybody has that one time that was all it took," she said. "That time she broke down the way she did.

".... we never know why things happen."