It seems the country-wide movement for police reform failed to inspire Urbana, Illinois City Officials. After an 18 month negotiation process, the City Council, most of whom campaigned with platforms heavily focused on police reform, approved a contract which only made the bare minimum number of changes to comply with state law, and even that low a bar appears to be too high for the Urbana Police Department (UPD).
The Council approved higher hourly pay, which represents a six percent total increase over three years. Since the City Council voted for a contract that was back-dated by 14 months (to begin on July 1st, 2020), most of those pay increases have already taken place. Financial director Elizabeth Hannan estimated the total cost due to the pay increases, along with some increased allowances for stand-by pay and replacement uniforms, would be about $485,000.
The new contract removes a provision which required the City to destroy warnings and reprimands from an officer’s personnel file within 6-24 months. However, this change simply represents UPD’s delayed compliance with Illinois statute:
(50 ILCS 205/25)
Sec. 25. Police misconduct records. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, all public records and nonpublic records related to complaints, investigations, and adjudications of police misconduct shall be permanently retained and may not be destroyed.
(Source: P.A. 101-652, eff. 7-1-21.)
Though the requirement to destroy disciplinary records was removed from Urbana’s new FOP contract, it still says that warnings and reprimands “shall not be admissible in future disciplinary proceedings if five (5) years have passed from the date of issuance.” This appears to be a back-end attempt to subvert the purpose of the state law.
The new contract also removes a requirement that “Complaints against an officer must be signed and sworn by a person with personal knowledge of the incident and language will be included in the CPRB Ordinance that false complaints shall be subject to prosecution.”
As Check CU has already described in a recent article, the sworn affidavit requirement was made unlawful after Governor Pritzker signed the Police Reform Bill in February of 2021. Urbana is simply late to comply, and it appears to be the case that the Urbana Police Department will likely never comply. More than halfway through the three year FOP contract, the UPD is still including the sworn statement and personal knowledge requirements, as well as the threat of prosecution language, in their police complaint forms.
It is not clear if the Urbana Police Department is also ignoring the law which requires police departments to stop destroying complaints and disciplinary records.
The Urbana City Council discussed the new FOP contract in a closed session meeting on September 7th, 2021. A copy of the proposed contract was not provided to the public, so there was no opportunity for the Council members to hear input from their constituents. Ward 2 Alderman Christopher Evans said that Council received a copy of the contract just days before the closed session meeting, and that the Council was told that there was no opportunity to make any changes. Six days later, at their regular meeting, the Council voted for final approval.
At the September 13th, 2021 meeting, Council members Chaundra Bishop and Christopher Evans voted against approval of the FOP contract, and Jaya Kolisetty, Maryalice Wu, James Quisenberry, Shirese Hursey, and Grace Wilken voted to approve (Wilken voted “present”, which Mayor Diane Marlin said counts as a “yes” vote).
Ward 1 Alderperson Maryalice Wu spoke in favor of the contract. She said that FOP negotiators “typically stick with the status quo”, and described Urbana’s effort as more progressive. However, Check CU conducted a side-by-side comparison to the previous (2017) FOP contract and they are virtually identical.
Aside from the dates and hourly pay tables, the contract changes can be measured in a matter of sentences. The most substantial change in the new contract is a section describing how officers can request paid time off.
Wu heralded the some changes as wins for the people of Urbana, apparently unaware that those changes were simply Urbana’s past-due compliance with state law.
Maryalice Wu: “We’re not going to get everything that we want…..the records retention…removing the impediments in the CPRB, is a big step forward for us.”
Ward 4 Alderperson Jaya Kolisetty also applauded the negotiating team for acquiring several wins for the residents of Urbana, but she cited the same state-mandated changes that Wu had mentioned.
Ward 3 Alderperson Shirese Hursey appeared unhappy that the “subject to prosecution” language was supposed to be removed from police complaint forms. She spoke in favor of favor of keeping some mechanisms to allow for punishing residents who submit “false” police complaints.
Ward 7 Alderperson James Quisenberry said that the Council is “having good discussions” (referring to the closed session days prior), and Ward 5 Alderperson Chaundra Bishop said that “change doesn’t happen overnight”, and noted that the Council has four years to work on the issues.
Check CU notes that the “change doesn’t happen overnight” claim has been given by other Urbana City Council members in regards to police reform, stretching back on a scale of years.
Ward 6 Alderperson Grace Wilken questioned the inclusion of discriminatory language in the FOP contract which prevents any individual with a prior felony conviction from serving on the CPRB. Attorney Ben Gehrt, hired by the Mayor’s office to run the bargaining process, responded with a “bona fide occupational qualification” argument that did not make any sense, since CPRB members are not employees.
Christopher Evans expressed great frustration with the FOP negotiating process, arguing that the FOP has been the cause for minimized police accountability, and that the Council was not given any opportunity for input. “For the entire summer, the Council was told nothing. The contract was never discussed. Even after a contract was approved by the negotiators, and given to the rank and file members of the Union to approve on August 12th, Council was kept ignorant as to what was going on.”
The Urbana City Council discussed the new FOP contract in a closed session meeting on September 7th, 2021. A copy of the proposed contract was not provided to the public, so there was no opportunity for the Council members to hear input from their constituents. Ward 2 Alderman Christopher Evans said that Council received a copy of the contract just days before the closed session meeting, and that the Council was told that there was no opportunity to make any changes. Six days after the closed session, at their regular meeting on September 13th, the Council voted for final approval.
The new FOP contract, being nearly identical to the prior one, does not make any mention of use of force, policing alternatives, de-escalation, de-escalation training, or any heightened standards for accountability which weren’t already mandated by state law.
The new Urbana Police FOP contract begins on July 1st, 2020, and is in full force until June 30th, 2023 after which time it is automatically renewed annually. A table showing the negotiating teams for the 2020-2023 FOP contract, as well as direct links to the 2020-2023 FOP contract and the prior 2017-2020 contract are provided below (click on each image for full PDF).
