An Urbana Police Listening session revealed some disturbing behavior from Urbana’s new Community Engagement Coordinator. This is a newly created position in Urbana, and it was filled only 6 weeks ago by Champaign resident Sherman Lemond Peppers.
After setting out some heavy-handed rules on speech for the “listening session”, Peppers later muted a speaker for uttering the name of Chief Seraphin and one of his Lieutenants, Jason Norton. Urbana resident Tracy Chong was describing the violent arrest of Aleyah Lewis, when Peppers first interrupted her for calling an officer’s decision to engage in misconduct with his rifle “stupid”. Chong then went on to describe more of the violent arrest and when she began to describe the biased public presentation of the arrest by Lieutenant Jason Norton and Chief Bryant Seraphin, Peppers permanently muted her.
Then, very strangely, Peppers thanked Chong for her comments. He then thanked each of the police officers on the panel by name, along with the Mayor, and said that they were all “working feverishly to take notes”, though none of them appeared to be taking any notes.
Neither Mayor Diane Marlin nor Police Chief Bryant Seraphin indicated that they wanted to hear what Ms. Chong had to say. This is consistent with Marlin’s recent Open Meetings Act violations wherein she has also muted residents numerous times for uttering content which she doesn’t like.
Several speakers after Ms. Chong said that they thought Peppers’s behavior was inappropriate and not conducive to a production discussion. One speaker read from the Community Engagement Coordinator job description, which cites as the top essential duty as “Builds and maintains relationships with members of the community”.
Peppers refused to apologize for his behavior or invite Ms. Chong back to finish her comments. It seems it will now be impossible for Mayor Marlin or Chief Seraphin to honestly claim that they conducted a fully open listening session. Multiple residents indicated that these “listening sessions” are more likely just a poorly-planned public relations effort.
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana
You can view the video of Community Engagement Coordinator Lemond Peppers interrupting and muting an Urbana resident here: