Meetings of the Urbana Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB) often have more interesting revelations about the board members themselves than of the content of their review process. At the July 24th, 2019 CPRB Meeting, 10-year board member and founding member Scott Dossett made the bizarre claim that the CPRB is not tasked with community outreach.
The conversation began after some board members suggested that the community should have a chance to learn more about police Taser utilization. Scott Dossett spoke up:
“We literally do not have an outreach obligation as members of the board. There isn’t a thing like that in the ordinance – take a look…I really have to ask whether we don’t need to go back to the ordinance, back to the City Council, and and try to get an ordinance amendment that will essentially force us, and perhaps give us resources, to do community outreach.”
The CPRB Ordinance does have a 7 point section titled “Sec. 19-39.- Community outreach” which tasks the CPRB with exactly the type of outreach activities that the board members were discussing.
It seems that what Dossett should have been pointing out was that the CPRB has been failing to do its job for the past 10 years.
Perhaps what is more disappointing and revealing is the “Community Relations Specialist” Preston James (an Urbana Police Officer), Chief Bryant Seraphin, Lt. Richard Surles, and “Executive Department Administrative Assistant” Monique James (wife of Preston James) were all in attendance at this meeting. Every one of them should be intimately familiar with the CPRB Ordinance, and could have corrected Dossett, but none chose to. This is what happens when a “civilian” police review board is co-opted by the police department.