The City of Champaign Police Department has been struggling with declining employment numbers for years. At the 2020 March 10th Champaign City Council meeting, this issue was discussed at length during CPD’s “Police Department Update”. The Department is having trouble attracting applicants, and the primary reason cited by council members, citizens, and the Department’s own ‘top brass’ was CPD’s public image. The string of corruption and misconduct by Champaign Officers and peripheral staff has been never-ending over the past couple decades, at least.
Speaking about recruitment tactics, Lt. Tod Myers made an interesting comment to staff during the presentation. Myers recollected when he became a police officer, he was attracted to images of officers in SWAT gear. He told Council that CPD doesn’t try to attract recruits using such images these days, but a quick visit to the Champaign Police Facebook page directly contradicts this statement.
Just weeks prior, CPD ran a recruitment ad which shows half a dozen officers clad in military-style tactical gear, with the lead man carrying what appears to be an AR-15 style assault rifle. The very first comment from a citizen is one of outrage, and half a dozen more citizens felt the same.
This small instance is a perfect microcosm of the Champaign Police Department. Do one thing, tell the public and elected officials something else. In this case, the officer doing the telling, Tod Myers, has been cited repeatedly for corrupt behavior. In several instances in just the past year, Myers has filed false reports, lied to citizens, and was caught stuffing properly-filed citizen police complaints so they wouldn’t even be processed. What did Myers get for all of this corrupt behavior? A promotion.
