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News :: Civil & Human Rights |
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Police review advocates meet with Urbana Mayor |
Current rating: 0 |
by Ricky Baldwin
Email: baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (verified)
Phone: 217-328-3037
Address: 801 E California Ave, Urbana IL 61801 |
23 Jun 2005
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Advocates of a citizen police review board in Urbana met with newly elected Mayor Laurel Prussing June 22. Next they plan to meet with City Council members and police representatives before beginning the legislative process. Now is the time to get involved! |
(Urbana) A delegation from the Champaign County Coalition for Citizen Police Review met yesterday with a very supportive and thoughtful Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing to discuss establishing a police review board in the city. The Coalition presented the Mayor with a number of documents, which are also available on their website (below), and the Mayor asked questions and made suggestions for next steps.
The subject of a police review board in Urbana came up in the recent municipal elections, first as a question at a candidates’ forum with the police and firefighters unions and then at a public forum organized by the Coalition. The City of Urbana recently decided to add three police officers to its long understaffed police force, a move that some believed should be made before addressing the review board issue.
Mayor Prussing had been one of the founding members of the Coalition in 2001, following a series of incidents of seeming police misconduct in the twin cities. At least one of these incidents, a death in Urbana police custody in 2000, eventually led to a settlement of over $300,000 in damages.
According to Coalition, however, the most important reasons to establish a review board are basic principles of democracy: government of the people, by the people and for the people should be accountable to the people.
The Coalition is proposing that the Mayor establish a taskforce of community stakeholders to compile data on the topic and report to the Urbana City Council. According to the Coalition’s proposal, this taskforce might consist of representatives of the police administration and union, NAACP, Urban League, ACLU and other groups.
Coalition representatives agreed that they had a good discussion with the Mayor and will now begin meeting with Urbana City Council members and representatives of the Urbana Police Department.
The Coalition meets every first and third Tuesday at 8pm in the Illinois Disciples Foundation (IDF). All are welcome. For more, please see the CPRB website below, or see one of the other websites listed on their site:
http://NACOLE.org/models_of_civilian_oversight.htm
http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles1/nij/184430.txt
http://mediafilter.org/caq/Caq55.CopsVscr.html
http://www.ci.mpls.mn.us/citywork/other/cpra.html
http://www.rdrop.com/~pjw/proposal/contents.html
http://www.nyclu.org/fiveyears.html
http://www.pressdemo.com/polandpub/polandpubgate.html
http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/prc/
http://www.cjjohns.com/c_law/police_civil.html |
See also:
http://www.prairienet.org/cprb/
http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles1/nij/184430.txt
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This work is in the public domain. |
