Chief Bryant Seraphin will serve his last day as a police officer just five days from now. On March 9th, at a Champaign County Community Coalition meeting, the Chief took a moment to discuss his views on law enforcement and accountability.
City of Champaign Community Relations Manager Tracy Parsons began the conversation by talking about increasing scrutiny and his perceived lack of appreciation for law enforcement and the resulting reduced enrollment in the profession.
Chief Seraphin described how support and criticism for policing comes in waves, noting that right before he began his career in 1994, the Rodney King incident marked an uptick toward criticism.
Chief Seraphin said policing “is still a good and noble profession; we need people to treat others with grace and respect”.
When asked about some of the most difficult issues he has dealt with as Police Chief, Seraphin mentioned the Aleyah Lewis arrest and the issues raised after the George Floyd incident. He said that the pandemic made it nearly impossible to have a real conversation on the issues since in-person meetings became difficult.
Parson’s last question for Chief Seraphin: “What do you think about police accountability today?”
Seraphin: “First of all, it’s necessary. No police officer I know wants an abusive police officer standing next to them. Sometimes I think it feels like, or sometimes there’s a sense of well, the cops always want to protect their own and whatnot.”
Seraphin described the mob mentality that follows high profile police incidents: “there’s one segment that runs over to this corner, ‘the cop did it wrong’, and another group of people run over to that corner, and ‘the cops always did it right’. And none of them have investigated anything. It is automatically ‘I got this’ and what do we do? We jump on social media. I intentionally do not have a Facebook page and I don’t think I ever need one. So everybody’s temperature goes up through the roof...
“I think there needs to be accountability. I think it needs to be thoughtful, I think it needs to be proportional…Just like, when a citizen makes a misstep, they don’t immediately go to prison forever. If we have an officer who makes a mistake in a situation, accountability is one thing, but I think it does need to be proportional. I think if there’s understanding and education from both sides on these issues, I think it’s super helpful.”
Seraphin closed by saying that everyone needs to stay involved: “I don’t care what it is that you do, what it is that you like to do, when it gets down to all of these different issues I absolutely positively think that everybody should be involved.”
The full March 9th, 2022 discussion with Chief Bryant Seraphin can be viewed here: