Latino caucus held in Rosemont

ROSEMONT (WLS) -- Combating guns and violence was a major issue Thursday at the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus.

Law enforcement officials from Chicago and the suburbs were there to help confront increasing violence in some Latino communities.

Nearly 1,000 attended the legislative Latino caucus foundation conference in Rosemont. It addressed issues facing Latino communities.

"Both house and senate members that have districts in the areas come together to try to work on common policy in areas that most impact their community," said State Sen. William Delgado, (D) Chicago.

There were workshops on the economy, health care, housing, education, family and societal issues.

The highlight was the luncheon speaker, newly elected Cook County state's attorney Anita Alvarez. Attendees questioned who would vote for a person by the name of Alvarez.

"I'm not going to name the person, I hope he looked at the numbers and saw that 1.3 million people voted for Alvarez," she said.

Chief William Biang, Waukegan police, talked about dealing with crime.

"No matter where you are from, we want and need the same thing. We want our families to be safe," he said.

Law enforcement officials made up the panel of experts addressing violence in the Latino community.

"Our crime rate as far as gang violence, shootings has gone down for the last five years in a row," said Biang said.

"We want to have a community based panel with police chiefs of certain areas to try to develop a system where we could have a better relationship between the community and the police," Alvarez said.

On Thursday evening, the conference planned to give out education scholarships at its dinner.

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