Urbana Staff Attempt to Hamper Efforts of Civilian Police Review Board

After more than two months of public criticism of the Urbana Police Department at weekly City Council meetings, another recipient of significant criticism, the Urbana Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB), finally hosted its first meeting in five months. On June 24^th, 2020, the CPRB held a special meeting to discuss the past failures of the board, and focus on suggestions from the community to improve the police complaint and review process.

The meeting was conducted by the new CPRB Chair, Mikhail Lyubansky, and also attended by board members Darrel Price, Megan McGinty, Ricardo Diaz, Scott Dossett, and newly appointed member Patrice Pelmore. Curiously, City Administrator Carol Mitten, who had never previously even attended a CPRB meeting, assigned herself a significant role in this particular meeting.

Though Mitten’s presence was sold as City support for the board, it slowly became apparent that her true goal was to slow down and hamper progress. The most remarkable assertion by Mitten was that the board members could not legally make motions or vote on any items, since they had not all completed the required training. This was an interesting claim, since the CPRB had already existed for 13 years, conducted dozens of meetings, and undoubtedly handled hundreds of motions and votes in that time.

Mitten’s argument seems to stem from a line in the CPRB Ordinance that had been ignored since the founding of the board: “Completion of the orientation program is required before a member is seated.” The “orientation” that this line refers to is a written document which is supposed to have been generated by the Human Relations Office, but HRO Vacellia Clark has never completed this work in the 13 years since the founding of the CPRB. The problem with arguing that the board cannot make motions or vote now is that it would seem to indicate that all motions and votes made in the past 13 years are invalid.

Mitten’s first reveal was a new CPRB complaint form. The new form finally removes the previously invented (not in the Ordinance) requirement that the complaint be notarized. However, Mitten’s form appears to invent a new rule for submitting complaints that is also not written in the CPRB Ordinance: “In order to file a complaint, you need to have been physically present when and where the alleged misconduct occurred.” Mitten’s form also directly violates specific language in the CPRB Ordinance about retaliation. Section 19-39(f) of the City Code says:

All materials distributed to the public under subsections (c) and (d) of this section shall contain, in a prominent typeface, the following statement: “Harassment, retaliation, or retribution for filing a complaint or testifying on behalf of a complainant will not be tolerated. If you believe that you are the subject of harassment, retaliation or retribution as a result of the complaint process, please contact the human relations officer for appropriate investigation and follow-up.”

Mitten’s form fails to include this specific language, which makes the form itself illegal given the existing City Code. It would seem that Mitten must not have read the CPRB Ordinance before she decided to include herself in the process.

Perhaps the boldest move by Mitten was to suggest that the CPRB needs to add an “administrative step” into the existing complaint process. Mitten presented a series of slides which showed her idea.

For at least four years, the CPRB had not been receiving copies of civilian police complaints submitted to the Urbana Police Department. This is a clear violation of the CPRB Ordinance, which indicates that the CPRB must be given a copy of every complaint within seven days of filing. According to Chair Lyubansky, the board just recently regained access to civilian complaints after numerous Urbana residents raised the issue at City Council meetings

Mitten’s plan is to immediately strip away the board’s access to complaints again, in favor of having City staff determine which complaints are allowed to move forward. Mitten then assigns herself as the arbitrator. Such a gatekeeping system would seem to be exactly the opposite of what citizens have been demanding and entirely contrary to the purpose and intent of the CPRB. In fact, a primary grievance issued by complainants is that their complaint was never processed because City staff, namely Human Relations Officer Vacellia Clark and/or City Administrator Carol Mitten, decided to ignore or deny the complaint.

Then Mitten contradicted her earlier assertion that the CPRB could not vote on any changes and suggested that the board could immediately adopt her alterations to the complaint handling process. Strangely, most board members seemed to be agreeable to Mitten’s changes, until founding CPRB member Scott Dossett tore Mitten’s ideas apart:

“I don’t see any precedent, rationale, or anything for the administrative review. The Ordinance just doesn’t support it, and our current policy and procedures manual does not support it. I would remind members of the public and some of the members that have been on this board for a while that CPRB has never really always been an appeals-only board. I reviewed every complaint for years before the bottom dropped out of staff support…As we move forward in an environment where we are being challenged about our transparency, and we are about to enact a procedure would erase complaints, or could be shown to erase complaints by members of the community, I think we ought to have an evidence-based system to go on…I think we gotta really be careful about how we move forward here because some of these things that are getting classified kind of as ‘administrative’ or in  a lower classification, I think have brought us to this point. It’s been feedback from the community, through that complaint process, which is the only way they had to kinda rattle our cage, that is why we are here today, and I want to honor that…It should be a surprise to no one that complaints have ramped up, because this is the era of George Floyd and all those other names we could spin out…If we’re gonna be square with our community, we need to be really careful about how we route these.”

In general, Mitten’s presence at the meeting seemed very out of place and inappropriate. She was the only panelist who insisted on frequently interrupting speakers whereas the CPRB members committed to raising their hands to be called on by the Chair before speaking. Mitten became so creative that she even suggested that the CPRB consider redefining “misconduct” to mean something much more selective than “any violation of police department policy by a sworn officer”.

The full June 24 Urbana Civilian Police Review Board video can be seen here: