At the January 8th, 2020 Champaign Citizen Review Subcommittee (CRS) meeting, board members spent some time discussing the suggested changes to the police complaint process, a discussion that has been simmering for at least the past year. The ordinance which created the CRS in 2017 specifically tasks the 5 member board with making policy recommendations, and last year, the CRS did exactly that. After waiting 8 months, board members and citizens were happy to finally receive any meaningful response from Police Chief Anthony Cobb, but they were not too pleased with what he had to say.
The CRS made their list of recommendations to Chief Cobb in May of 2019. At the next CRS meeting in August, the one and only agenda item was for Cobb to review and respond to board’s recommendations, but he came completely unprepared to discuss the proposed changes which he had received months earlier. At the August 19th meeting, Cobb could not comment on the board’s recommendations with any meaningful level of specificity, and frequently dodged even the simplest questions. Cobb acted as though the issue of police complaints was out of his purview, and citizens attending the meeting were obviously frustrated with Cobb’s lackadaisical and slippery performance. Cobb showed how out of touch he is with his own officers when he admitted that he had no idea how they would respond to the suggested changes. After the meeting, Cobb even antagonized reporters and citizens for audio and video recording the meeting. In the days that followed, Cobb, who is the highest-paid public official in all of Champaign County, received criticism from citizens and local news for his blunder. One citizen who attended the meeting remarked that “Cobb is not qualified to be the Chief of Police.”
The number one recommendation from the CRS which was unanimously accept by all CRS members, and also unanimously accepted by all members of the Champaign Human Rights Commission (HRC), was that there should be no time constraint for submitting a police complaint. Over the past year, multiple citizens have argued the absurdity of the existing 30 day time limit for submitting a complaint, citing issues ranging from personal trauma, legal concerns, and public records violations that can stretch out for years. CRS Chairwoman Emily Rodriguez researched the issue of time limits and found no nearby locality of a similar size that had any such time limit on their police complaint process. At no point during the 8 month process did any citizen, board member, employee, or official, indicate a desire to keep the time constraint.
Chief Cobb’s long-awaited response to the 5 members of the CRS, the 9 members of the HRC, and the citizens: The Champaign Police Department is changing the time limit to submit a complaint from 30 days to 60 days, BUT, they’re quadrupling the amount of time the CPD will wait before responding to a complaint, from 45 day to 180 days. Citizens watching the meeting took this as a flagrant attack to their efforts. One citizen characterized the change in response time to half a year as “Chief Cobb giving the middle finger to the Citizen Review Board.”
In response to Cobb’s proposed changes, CRS board member Alexandra Harmon-Threatt said “It seems disrespectful to me”, pointing out the absurd increase in the amount of time the Champaign Police Department has given themselves to respond to complaints. Regarding Cobb’s refusal to remove the strict time-limit on police complaints, Harmon-Threatt noted, “Many of the people complaining have experienced some sort of trauma.” Previous discussions focused on the fact that many citizens are negatively affected for years after an incident with the Champaign Police, and the expectation that they should be fit and ready to jump through the various procedural hoops of submitting a police complaint is unrealistic. The other board members agreed with Harmon-Threatt.
CRS board member Demario Turner, who also serves on the Champaign Human Rights Commission, echoed Harmon-Threatts comments, and encouraged more citizens to attend board meetings and speak about the failures of the Champaign Police Department.
Cobb did seem to agree to including a, so-far undefined, mediation option in the complaint process, but has been quick to point out that his officers will likely refuse to participate.