Citizens Voice Concerns About Complaint and Appeal Process at Urbana Citizen Police Review Board Meeting

The Urbana Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB) met on October 23, 2019 with only four of the seven members present. Mikhail Lyubansky, Ricardo Diaz, Darrell Price, and new board member Darius White were in attendance, forming the quorum.

After council’s approval of minutes for the July 24th meeting (article here), Champaign citizen Emily Klose took to the microphone to share her experience with the civilian complaint process against police officers.

She sees similarities between problems with the complaint process in both Champaign and Urbana. Klose brought up two main problems with the complaint process. The first was that the CPRB currently only sees a complaint if the complainant submits an appeal after receiving a finding from the Urbana Chief of Police. The second problem was that the complaint process is basically the police investigating themselves.

In Urbana, when a complaint against a police officer is submitted by a citizen, an internal investigation will be conducted by the Urbana Police Department. From this investigation, an internal report will be presented to the Chief of Police for review. The Chief of Police will issue a finding letter to the complainant, who can submit an appeal to the CPRB within 30 days if the complainant is unhappy with the Chief’s findings.

Klose said, “That’s too much mystery, and secrecy, and behind closed doors. The police investigating the police, I don’t think that works.”

According to Klose, the crux of the problem is that they will never have trust with the community if the police keep investigating themselves. By the time a complaint is brought to the external review committee, it is presented by a representative of the police department who has already come to his conclusions, which is almost in favor of the police officer. The review process does not work when the review board only gets the view of the police officer.

Klose then asked how many complaints actually get to CPRB via the appeal process in a year. None of the board members present could give a definite answer. Urbana Community Relations Specialist, Preston James confirmed that since 2008, the board has seen 2 appeal cases.

“That’s absurd. That’s comical,” remarks Klose.

Board member Ricardo Diaz defended the small number of cases, saying that it is a value judgement of what a good number is and that there is not a good answer as to how many appeals should come up.

“It’s telling me that either people don’t want to go through the process or that there are not complaints and we have a decent police department,” says Diaz.

Klose strongly disagreed and explained that such numbers were an indication that citizens had no trust in the appeal process. In her opinion, most people give up when they get the Chief’s findings, even if they are unhappy with the resolution as it is just too much work and hassle. If the community had trust in the police department and the complaint/appeal process, people would feel free to come forward and engage with the police, file complaints, and challenge the results.

Klose also pointed out discrepancies that she had faced while trying to submit complaints at the Urbana Police Department. She was told that there was no time limit to filing a complaint whereas the City of Urbana’s online FAQ on police complaints states that individuals who are physically able must file complaints within 45 working days.

Diaz once again gets defensive, remarking, “We can’t speak to a situation that isn’t… that is hypothetical” to which Klose replies that she is just sharing her experience.

The next citizen to speak was Christopher Hansen from Urbana. He remarked that “this board is ridiculously out of touch” and having 2 complaints in 10 years that resulted in appeals is not an indication that the police department is perfect.

Hansen laid out some numbers, pointing out that of the estimated 300,000 police-civilian interactions in 10 years, it was not even a reasonable consideration that only 2 resulted in citizens that were unhappy with the outcome. Even if he were a magnitude off, in terms of interactions, there are probably hundreds or thousands of people a year who are relatively unhappy but don’t want to go through the complaint process.

Why don’t people submit complaints?

Hansen proceeded to speak about several problems with the complaint process that discourage citizens from submitting complaints.

The first problem is the time limit of 45 days to file a complaint. This time limit is unreasonable especially when the Urbana Police Department refuses to fill FOIA requests by the complainant in a timely manner. This not only puts the Urbana Police Department in violation of state law and committing a state crime, but this results in the complainant not having the data they need to submit an intelligent complaint until way past the time limit. If the citizen waits until they have received the documents needed, which is often past 45 days, the complaint is then denied.

The Illinois Freedom of Information Act states that each public body shall, promptly, either comply with or deny a request for public records within 5 business days after its receipt of the request, unless the time for response is properly extended. This means that even without extensions, it could be a full week before the request is filled. More than half the time, the city will request an extension of another 5 business days, so it ends up being 2 full weeks before the request is filled. If the request is improperly filled or denied at the end of two weeks, the next step would be to appeal to the Illinois Attorney General Public Access Counselor. This process could take weeks, months, and even years. Given this dragged out process to obtain the relevant documents for a complaint, the 45-day time limit on police complaints seems like another mechanism to keep citizens out of the complaint process.

Hansen personally has had complaints denied, which ironically were complaints about the police department not filling FOIA requests. In addition, the police department has denied entire complaints even though parts of the complaint were within the 45-day time limit.

Unfortunately, CPRB will never get a chance to see the denied complaints so it is unknown how many such denials have happened. We do know that there is at least one complaint that the board will never see or hear.

Even when documents are provided via FOIA request, the documents are heavily redacted resulting in the complainant not having enough information to submit a complaint or appeal a finding.

After receiving an unsatisfactory complaint finding from Urbana Chief of Police Bryant Seraphin, Hansen considered filing an appeal but he could not obtain the complete findings from the Urbana Police Department. Hansen had to ask for documents related to the complaint, including the findings, from Chief Seraphin more than once and through a FOIA request. The provided documents had paragraphs and sentences redacted, so he could not see what the findings were. As of now, it has been months and Hansen is still trying to obtain the complete document from Urbana Human Resources Director Todd Edmund Rent after filing an appeal with the Illinois Attorney General Public Access Counselor.

“When I got it, it was incomplete, so I wouldn’t even know what exactly it is I am appealing, so how am I supposed to go through the process if I don’t have what I need. The process is broken right there,” says Hansen.

Remarks Hansen about Urbana’s FOIA practices, “You’ll give things about citizens, but you won’t give anything about city staff or elected officials. You protect yourself like crazy and it just stinks of corruption. It’s really bad.”

When the police receive a complaint, a common tactic used is to try to reframe the complaint in a way that makes the police officers in question look best and complainant look bad. It is framed in the best way for the officers involved for both internal presentation to the Chief and for external eyes if it ends up in an external review. It is not surprising that a citizen would not want to participate in a process where decisions are made about the complainant’s character.

Hansen also described how the process of submitting a complaint at the police department was intimidating, especially when meeting and talking to a police officer and knowing that the police officer is going to reframe the complaint to make the complainant look like the bad guy. He also shared how he was turned away from submitting a complaint because he did not have his driver’s license with him even though he was recorded by police department security cameras and had other means of confirming his identity.

None of the board members present said they have submitted a complaint when asked if they have submitted FOIA request or complaint.

Hansen has reached out to Urbana Human Relations Officer, Vacellia Clark half a dozen times, only to be ignored. He has also emailed his concerns to the CPRB, but has not received any meaningful response.

Says Hansen, “I don’t know who else I’m supposed to go to. The board (CPRB) isn’t answering me, Vacellia Clark isn’t answering me, Todd Rent is just blowing my FOIA requests out of the water, I can’t get anything from this city. You are the least open entity in Champaign County. I thought the county was bad, I thought City of Champaign was bad, I thought UIUC was bad … when I started submitting FOIA requests to the City of Urbana, you guys are terrible. You won’t give anything.”

Board member Ricardo Diaz commented this was good feedback from Klose and Hansen that should be discussed. He suggested that the board look at time limits, examine the complaint and appeal process, and discuss problems that make this process harder than it should be. He adds whenever there is feedback for the police department, it is well-intended and they should be discussing how to make the process better for citizens and police.

Meanwhile, Rent was on the defense, saying “There were sort of a mix of facts and statements that were made. I think it may be helpful to try and set forth our understanding of what occurred in reference to those statements that were made.”

Diaz did not think it is fair that someone cannot file a complaint because their FOIA request is not filled in a timely manner and if this is a problem, it needs to be remedied by the board. “If there is a time at which information is missing and the clock is ticking, that would cause a problem for any complainant,” says Diaz.

Hansen warned that the police will probably respond by saying that the complainant does not need to know the facts, and that only the person investigating needs to know the facts. But that is not true, the facts are needed to make an intelligent complaint. Hansen also wanted to know what citizens should do next when the process fails. Where to citizens go next? Should they litigate? Should they reach out to the press?

Diaz would like the CPRB to examine the City of Urbana Ordinance to see if there is any fault in the ordinance that makes it so that cases are not reaching the CPRB.

“What motivates a person to come all the way here to a meeting is frustration with cases, and in that circumstance we should find out more. There is no but about that, that’s why we are here, right?” says Diaz.

CPRB Vice chair, Mikhail Lyubansky’s response was that he was not sure if the CPRB was authorized to make recommendations and if there was any benefit for the board to review the procedures through which complaints are filed and appeals are made.

Diaz responded, ““If not us, who?”

Rent clarified that since 2011, CPRB could review the complaints and appeal process, as well as make recommendations to city council.

James confirmed that to date, 8 complaints were filed in 2019. Out of the eight, the police department’s internal investigation found two complaints unfounded. One case was denied based on the 45-day time limit, and five cases were still pending. None of the unfounded complaints had submitted appeals.

Following up with the complaints report, Diaz wanted to know if CPRB had access to look at the complaints submitted, as they were allowed to do so in the past. Rent clarified that board members could see the complaints, but only after the expiration of the appeal deadline.

Meanwhile, board member Darius White would like the board to have more information included in the complaint reports. For example, having police officers identified with a number (not associated with their actual ID) could help identify red flags if there are particular officers that have repeat complaints against them.

Moving forward, it was decided that in preparation for the board’s next meeting, city staff will prepare a report to give an overview on the complaint/appeal process and the FOIA request process. CPRB would start reviewing the procedures, and eventually invite the public to provide input and suggestions. Diaz also suggested that board members familiarize themselves with the complaint process, starting with personally going to the police department to file a complaint.

In the past year, the City of Champaign has received much feedback from concerned citizens regarding the police complaint and appeals process. This resulted in Champaign Human Relations Commission and Citizen Review Subcommittee voting unanimously to eliminate all time limits for complaints, to involve citizens (citizens can come in and speak to the panel), and to make it more accessible to citizens (more locations other than the police station to file a complaint).

Time will tell if the City of Urbana will step up and address the myriad of problems brought up by concerned citizens.