The bulk of the Human Relations Commission meeting focused on possible changes with the local police review board, including some Q&A with the chair of that board and the police department, as well as public input from the community including some critics of the department. The Champaign Police Department presented an overview of complaints and commendations. Emily Rodriguez, the Chair of the Citizens Review Subcommittee had a presentation and proposals for the Citizen Review Subcommittee that allows citizen review of complaints against the police department. The meeting video is available here on CGTV. News-Gazette coverage here.
Before all that, there was short reception congratulating student commission Walker on graduating from Centennial High School and moving on to U of I. Starting at the 5:50 mark in the video, there was an update on the Bristol Place Development by the City's Neighborhood Services Department. They covered the current status, an overview of the project itself, and collaborations between agencies: IL WorkNet, First Followers, the City of Champaign, and the Housing Authority of Champaign County.
Police Complaints:
Lt. Ramseyer of the Champaign Police Department gave a brief presentation of the 2018 summary of police complaints and how they were addressed (at the 13:40 mark). It included a contrast with 39 compliments along with an explanation of the possible complaint outcomes:
There were 5 former complaints which included 9 overall allegations. 5 allegations were over policy issues and 4 were over unreasonable use of force. Here's a breakdown of the findings:
The corrective actions taken for the two policy violations sustained included verbal counseling for one officer and a letter of reprimand for another.
The Citizens Review Subcommittee report began at the 17:38 mark. The Chair posted a copy of the recommendations on Google Docs here. The four key reforms listed were:
- Eliminate time limitations on citizen complaints.
- Fold opportunities for mediation into the complaint hearing process.
- Humanize the complaint filing process.
- Invite complainant participation and feedback.
The presentation itself had an overview of the review board itself and how it has been developing, community feedback, and taking a hard look at the current situation. Rodriguez noted the absence of feedback from people of color in spite of national trends and other communities experiences. This was tied to issues of access and problems with the process to be remedied.
Some of the ideas floated included removing the time limit on complaints (currently 30 days) completely, humanizing the complaint process and providing access points in the community. Including people as part of the process was a recurring theme, not just with feedback, but with people currently feeling frozen out of the process. Audience comments later attested to that.
Alissia Young, the chair of the Human Relations Commission suggested and Rodriguez agreed to quarterly updates as opposed to annual for the review board being a good idea for the future. The Q&A session included the Chief and Lt. Ramseyer. They had also just heard these recommendations for the first time so their answers reflected a desire not to get ahead of themselves.
The board's questions and comments seemed overall positive and though the Chief wanted to temper expectations until some of these ideas were hashed out a bit more thoroughly there appeared to be a willingness to collaborate towards a reformed process.
The second audience participation opportunity had the bulk of the community input from activists and critics of the Champaign Police Department beginning at the 56:15 mark. Some explained their negative experiences in great detail and expressed deep frustration with almost everyone they interacted with at both the Police Department and the City Government itself. One speaker, Christopher Hansen, noted that he gets more complaints through his CorruptCU website than were listed for all of 2018 by the department. He claimed there were more complaints on the department's own facebook page.
Many of the criticisms included difficulties with getting documents and the Freedom of Information Act process for gaining materials as well as the amount of resources and time involved in their pursuit of justice.
There were concerns about proposed mediation options being used to "stuff complaints" as opposed to providing satisfactory resolutions.
The commissioners comments afterward were generally sympathetic and looking towards next steps on reforms and solutions. A few of the commissioners reiterated that they heard those in the community that spoke today and contacted them by e-mail.
The commission adjourned at 7:22pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment