PEORIA, Ill. – Peoria County’s top cop says it was a smooth operation with security during the Sean Grayson murder trial.
Sheriff Chris Watkins says planning for security began as soon as the trial venue was shifted from Springfield to Peoria in April. He says many stakeholders were involved, including Peoria Police, Peoria Fire, Peoria Public Works, Sangamon County, and public information officers from Peoria and Springfield.
Watkins says the last time a high-profile trial occurred in Peoria was the Richard Speck murder trial in 1967. With that occurring so long ago, and multiple agencies and national media being involved, he says there were a lot of moving parts.
So Watkins says they even sought advice from outside of the area.
“My director of courthouse security, he even went up to Hennepin County, up in Minnesota where the George Floyd trail was, and gathered intel and data from them on what did work and what didn’t work,” Watkins said.
For the trial itself, Watkins says there were a lot of measures taken that the sheriff’s office had never done before. He says that includes having to escort the jury to a secure location each day, as well as taking Grayson to and from the Peoria County Jail. Watkins says Grayson was being held in the medical portion of the jail, due to a Stage 3 colon cancer diagnosis.
Watkins says there were no issues with the crowds of supporters that arrived during the trial’s week-and-a-half. He says there were estimates of between 600 and 1,000 people from communities across the state and Midwest coming in, but those numbers never materialized. Watkins credits Peoria Police, as well as local organizers Chama St. Louis for keeping the bad actors away.
Comments