At tonight’s Urbana City Council meeting, Mayor Diane Marlin will be seeking approval from the Council for the appointment of a handful of positions, such as Deputy Fire Chief and City Attorney. Notably, Marlin wishes to appoint Sgt. James Cory Koker to the position of Lieutenant.
Marlin had already made department head appointments on June 8, 2020, including Police Chief, Deputy Chief, and four Lieutenants. However, Lt. Joel Sanders will be resigning his position on March 15th this year, so it seems Marlin desires to quickly replace him (though there is no particular reason that Urbana needs four Lieutenants).
When the intended appointment of Bryant Seraphin as Police Chief came to light in June, there was substantial push-back from many members of the community who felt that Seraphin did not properly handle the widely criticized arrest of Urbana resident Aleyah Lewis which occurred two months prior.
Lewis, who was not suspected of having committed any crimes at the time, was arrested and beaten by Urbana Police Officers on April 10, 2020. The arrest, and the accompanying punch to the head and knee-kick to the ribs by UPD officer Eric Ruff, was captured on video by civilian bystanders. The video prompted an explosive response from the community about the arrest, and police accountability in general.
James Cory Koker, the most senior supervisor on scene and one of the three officers who pinned Lewis to the pavement while they fumbled for handcuffs, is now up for a promotion. During the same incident, Koker was also criticized for making another Urbana resident lay on the pavement while being handcuffed (video here) – besides being black, that individual in no way matched the reported subject description.
Marlin’s memo on her Mayoral Staff Appointments says that Koker is an instructor in “Advanced Verbal Defense & Influence” at the University of Illinois Police Training Institute, but during the arrest of Aleyah Lewis, Koker can be heard making comments such as:
“You don’t approach us, we got guns and stuff.” And “You need to act like a lady”
Check CU just posted a different video wherein Koker can be heard joking about how he should have told a concerned bystander that he would “come by to see what the fuck you’re doing” at his place of work as retribution for the bystander trying to observe the police.
The March 8th, 2021 Mayoral staff appointment for James Cory Koker can be seen below (click for full 2-page PDF showing all appointments).
I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears when viewing the UPD body camera footage! Did he just tell her she needed to act like a lady?
Now, of the three UPD heads silhouetted in the picture, does one belong as the reluctant police chief’s employee supervisor delegate who purportedly delivered remedial gun safety training to one of the two others? How the initial training failed so miserably is much more pressing than the police chief’s perceived need to advance the rank of any of the three.