At the April 23rd, 2018 Urbana City Council meeting, Urbana Police Officer Preston James revealed a project he had been working on for some time. James presented to the Council a video titled “Perspective: Insights of a Traffic Stop”, which shows two different outcomes of an identical traffic stop, based on how politely the suspects interact with police officers.
The video presentation appears to have the sole purpose of informing residents of the sensitive egos of Urbana Police officers, and warning of the negative consequences one will suffer if they fail to be exceedingly polite to an officer.
Preston James employed some local youth boys to help produce his video. Urbana Officer Joseph Cassidy played the role of the officer who stops the boys for allegedly failing to stop at a stop sign. In the first scenario, the boys communicate clearly and Cassidy simply issues the driver a citation.
In the second scenario, the boys chuckle at Cassidy a few times, and speak to Cassidy with less perfect grammar. Officer Cassidy then appears to take issue with the grammar of the driver, repeating it back to him, “You weren’t reaching for nothing?”
Neither scenario introduced any additional evidence for Officer Cassidy, but because he felt disrespected in the second scenario, Cassidy had the boys exit the vehicle. The boys were then handcuffed and searched by another officer, while Cassidy searched the interior of their vehicle for reasons to issue further citations.
CU-Underground could not locate any Urbana Police Department policy statement, or departmental statement of intent that would appear to support punished a suspect for chuckling or using improper grammar.
Mayor Diane Marlin and the City Council members were very pleased with the video’s message, with Marlin enthusiastically saying, ““You’ve done a great community service here.” Dennis Roberts, alderman for Ward 5, said:
“I could see that this could be the beginning of maybe a series…When you say the wrong thing you end up having a search in your car. If you know how to be civil, if you know what words to say, you can avoid that.”
Bill Brown and Eric Jakobsson also praised the video. Jakobsson ended the discussion by saying, ““I hate to move on to the next item because everyone feels so good about this one.”
The full April 23rd, 2018 Urbana City Council meeting video can be seen here:
