The Urbana City Council once again unanimously voted to move discussions of Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) contracts into a secretive closed session room. Some members of the public who attended tonight’s Council meeting, many of whom attended specifically to speak about the failures of the police contract negotiation process, did not find it worth their time to stick around after their Council members filed out of the chambers.
Check CU is not aware of any instance in the past ten years where the Urbana City Council voted to keep police contract discussions in an open meeting rather than to shut out the public. Closed sessions can last anywhere from ten minutes to over two hours. Without any way of knowing how long a session will last, the initiation of a closed session typically marks the departure of the public from the rest of the meeting.
As is typical, no Council member explained tonight why they thought the public should be shut out from the discussion.
The July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2026 Urbana FOP Contract is a repeat of prior negotiations: increased police pay and no increases for performance expectations. The new contract increases police pay at an even faster rate than previous contracts: pay will go up 3.25%, 3.25%, and 3.6% from 2023 to 2025.
For years, members of the public have asked for greater police accountability and requirements to use de-escalation. The new contract, which the City Council has had just four days to review before tonight’s vote, does not appear to address those concerns.
Even if meaningful changes were made to the FOP contract, it won’t matter if the new requirements are ignored.
Urbana Police Department (UPD) compliance with past contracts and with Illinois State law has been extremely poor. UPD and associated City staff have unlawfully destroyed police complaints, refused to perform TASER reviews, distributed unlawful police complaint forms, violated Urbana’s laws against discrimination, and flagrantly violated their past agreements on the handling of police complaints.
The Urbana City Council, most of whom campaigned heavily on police reform, has repeatedly been made aware of these violations. Despite being fully aware of ongoing police misconduct, the Council seems happy to grant more and more money to the Police Department, such as the additional $1.34 million in police bonuses approved last month.
More details on past and ongoing violations can be seen in the articles provided below. At this time, the UPD is still actively violating their FOP contract and state law in regards to police complaints, and they still refuse to follow Urbana City ordinance in regards to TASER reviews. The felony destruction of 40 years of police complaints has gone completely unexplained and the UPD still openly violates Urbana’s Human Rights laws. City staff and the City Council have thus far refused to address any of these issues.