At the May 4th, 2020 meeting of the Urbana City Council, residents showed up in force once again to voice their complaints about the Urbana Police Department following a violent arrest of an unarmed woman. Rather than being met with open arms by their elected officials, Shirese Hursey and others scolded residents for not keeping an open “dialogue” with Council members.
Hursey was upset and offended that so many citizens were demanding accountability by the Urbana Police Department. For some reason, Hursey and other Council members felt that the public was not attempting to engage in a “dialogue” with the Council, even though the public had attempted to engage the Council for four consecutive Council meetings and through countless emails.
Just four days after this lesson on open dialogues, Mayor Diane Marlin assembled a meeting that was unannounced and closed to the public, to privately discuss how to handle the recent police misconduct allegations. The public only became aware of this meeting when Marlin mentioned it during the May 11th City Council meeting.
According to Marlin, the following people attended her private meeting via Zoom:
- Minnie Pearson, President of the Champaign County NAACP
- Chief Robert Moore, Police Community Relations Consultant
- Carol Spindel, President of the Champaign County ACLU
- Reverend Florence Caplow, Urbana Unitarian Universalist Church Urbana
- Tracy Parsons, City of Champaign Community Relations Manager and Compliance Officer
- Vacellia Clark, Urbana Human Relations Officer
- Bryant Seraphin, Urbana Chief of Police
- Joel Sanders, Urbana Police Lieutenant
- Diane Wolfe Marlin, Urbana Mayor
Only three of the nine attendees at the May 8th meeting reside in Urbana, and Marlin was the only elected official in attendance. Marlin has ignored inquiries from the public about minutes or recordings of the meeting.
The result of this meeting of brilliant minds, according to Marlin: pretty much the same ideas that have been put forth by Urbana residents for the past several weeks. Marlin suggested pushing for reduced criminal charges for Aleyah Lewis, and an independent review of the arrest, among other things.
Marlin may have started to regain the public’s trust when she began to adopt their proposals, but it seemed that she simply could not help herself, and, in her undying political alliance with the Urbana Police Department, Marlin fabricated some new information about the 911 call that initiated the incident in an effort to defend the violent actions of the police.
The full Zoom recording of the Urbana City Council meeting on May 11th, 2020 can be seen here:
