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News :: Civil & Human Rights |
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Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ricky Baldwin
Email: baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (verified)
Phone: 328-3037
Address: 801 E California, Urbana |
26 Jul 2006
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Supporters of a citizens panel to oversee police affairs filled the City Council chambers Monday night.
The Champaign County Coalition for Citizen Police Review is meeting Wed. July 26 at 7pm in the PRC Meeting Room of the IDF, corner of Wright and Springfield. All are welcome. |
(Urbana) Supporters of a citizens panel to oversee police affairs filled the City Council chambers Monday night, clearly demonstarting the depth and breadth of support for citizen oversight in Urbana. According to the News-Gazette there were about 50 supporters, who spoke for nearly three hours.
The outpouring of support was partly in response to a small group of opponents who turned out the week before at a previous public hearing on the subject. Most sang the praises of the police but had no specific objections to citizen oversight. The police union is entering contract negotiations with the city, and this sudden appearance of opposition to citizen oversight is being seen as chest-pounding in preparation for horse-trading.
Only two opponents spoke this Monday, neither of whom had read the proposal. "I'm opposed to anything that would make the job of the police harder," said one, without saying how citizen oversight would do this. Several supporters, on the other hand, spoke at length about how citizen review would also benefit the police: by increasing trust in the fairness of the system, building confidence in the police and improving police-community realtions. The meeting was clearly a resounding success in every
way for supporters of oversight.
Years of work, months of public discussion
The Champaign County Coalition for Citizen Police Review formed in 2001, after the NAACP, Urbana League and other groups failed to secure a civilian oversight panel in Champaign. A number of incidents including one death in police custody at that time had sparked the demand.
A few years ago activists turned their attention to Urbana, where many of them lived. At that time a majority on the Urbana City Council favored such a board, but the mayor did not. But with the last election, all that changed. The new mayor, Laurel Prussing, was a founding member of the Coalition, and after an almost complete turnover, the new city council was every bit as favorable - if not moreso.
The Mayor first led the City Council to fund three new positions on the police force, filling a long standing gap, then she established a Taskforce to study the details. The Coalition had a draft ordinance, but three years had intervened, and it was important for community leaders - and the police - to be part of writing the groundbreaking legislation.
The Taskforce met from October to June in open, public sessions, some of them reported on local TV news, all carried on UPTV. The current chief of police Mike Bily participate, as well as the then-president of the police union, Anthony Cobb.
It is the draft produced by that Taskforce that is currently undergoing public scrutiny and will hopefully be voted on within the next few weeks.
Next steps
There has been no announcement of a concrete time table for passage. What is know is that the City Council will discuss any ordinance at least twice before voting. Citizen input will be vital to that process - and to the ultimate effectiveness (based on credibility) of Urbana's citizen police review board.
The next meeting of the Coalition for Citizen Police Review will be at 7pm on Wednesday July 26 in the PRC Meeting Room, downstairs at the Illinois Disciples Foundation (IDF), corner of Wright and Springfield, Champaign. |
See also:
http://www.prairienet.org/cprb
http://www.city.urbana.il.us
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This work is in the public domain. |
Comments
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by GreenGuy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jul 2006
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Mr. Baldwin:
I must say, after my initial reaction of "dear lord, here they go again," I'm actually extremely impressed with the strategic concept of the board, its purpose, and the clear and professional intent at impartiality.
Before reading the draft, I expected partisan rhetoric, but I was sorely mistaken.
In fact, this initiative looks to be so incredibly productive for the city, the police, and the community, I am willing to offer my services in technical administrative support.
No decisions or recommendations should be made (for everyone, not just this board) without thorough, detailed and accurate data on which to base trend and occurance analysis.
One extremely useful means to that end at the city level is the use of a GIS, Geographic Information System. GIS is the combination of software, hardware, user and end user that collects, processes, stores and analyses geospatial and non-geospatial data for use by non-GIS-trained decision makers. The end products can be speicalized maps (say, arrests by a particular or group of officers, crimes by ward, etc), or tabular data (say, number of compaints against particular officers within a given time period and area over drug arrests, by race of complainant).
A GIS can obviously do a lot more for the board than what I've listed here, but you get the idea.
I'm proficient in GIS analysis, and would be willing to work (paid, of course) for what appears to be an initiative toward an impartial community-building project, if our objectives mesh.
Are you (the CCCCPR) interested, and if so, do you have contact info? |
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by wayward
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jul 2006
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Hmmm ... GIS could indeed be useful. I'm a programmer who's done some work with GIS and would also be willing to help. You can contact me at mrscake (at) gmail.com, I guess. |
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by boomerang
boomerang (nospam) backatcha.edu (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jul 2006
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SO green is for dollar signs$$$
Always money to make from pimping poverty. |
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by wayward
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jul 2006
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SO green is for dollar signs$$$
Always money to make from pimping poverty.
I doubt that you usually let facts get in the way of your comments. But as it happens, there are a number of free open-source GIS products readily available. |
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by GreenGuy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jul 2006
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Wrong again on the name.
But I see no hipocrisy in devoting my energy full-time to a good cause to better the community and also make a living from it. I'm willing to quit what I'm doing now - and probably take a big pay cut - in order to help establish objective facts where there is currently only speculation and accusation.
GIS is a high-demand, highly technical field, which requires hours and hours of painstaking pouring over what would appear to be mundane and irrelivent details to the untrained eye.
That's the art of GIS: During collection and processing, I often have to think of what someone I don't know might want to know about something I don't know in an unrelated field that I know little about at some unknown time in the future. Retrieving data from vast, multiple databases and filtering in a format that's useful is also quite the challenge at times.
Combine all that with the general chaos that is the networked computer world, and find someone who can produce. It's not exactly word processing, my friend.
That's why GIS is worth the big bucks - providing accurate, useful, plentiful data about anything and everything at a moment's notice in a format that is useful for a decision maker. |
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by wayward
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Jul 2006
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That's why GIS is worth the big bucks - providing accurate, useful, plentiful data about anything and everything at a moment's notice in a format that is useful for a decision maker.
Actually, if there was a database available of crimes, arrests, and locations (e.g., addresses), it shouldn't be too hard to create a simple online map (e.g., Google, ESRI ArcExplorer, etc). This really doesn't need to be a major operation. If you'd like to combine GIS and statistics, there's also free software available to analyze that. So there's probably no need for you to quit your day job. |
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by GreenGuy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Jul 2006
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That's kind of the key though - do those databases already exist, in a format readable by a GIS; are they readily available and networkable; is the data current and being updated; is there complaint data already compiled.
It's not that one can't make 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, it's that one has to go find 1, create 2, and change the format of 3, and then link them all together in one or more outputs in a useful, understandable format. |
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Re: Public Hearing a success for police oversight supporters |
by Aaron Ammons
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Jul 2006
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BE Peace. We are excited that it looks as though we will have a CPRB in Urbana and we are optimistic that those willing to support it are sincere. This will be very beneficial to everyone involved. This is a positive step in the right directrion. Be Just! |
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