The September 22^nd Urbana Civilian Police Review Board (CPRB) meeting continued a theme that has been present at virtually every CPRB meeting in the past three years: City staff using creative and often dishonest or unlawful methods to prevent any meaningful police oversight from taking place.

FFor example, the CPRB Ordinance very explicitly directs the Board to review every single TASER usage, and TASER gun cameras were made a requirement when the UPD wanted to buy TASER guns.  However, in July of 2019 Lieutenant (now Deputy Chief) Richards Surles told the CPRB that Urbana Police TASERs would no longer have cameras.  Then in September of 2019, the CPRB, guided by Surles, determined that they would stop reviewing every TASER usage, even though their ordinance requires them to do so.  The CPRB would only review a small percentage of TASER usages – those incidents hand-picked by Surles.  The decision to stop following the CPRB ordinance was never approved by the City Council.

Complaints of the CPRB and UPD failing to follow their TASER review directive have been raised by residents at City Council meetings repeatedly over the past two years, but there does not appear to be any interest within the City staff or elected officials to pay the matter any attention.

UPD’s new tactic of cherry-picking TASER usages did not go as planned by the Urbana Police Department (UPD).  On April 28^th of this year, for the first time ever, the CPRB determined that there was improper TASER usage in a particular TASER incident.  Video of that incident showed an Urbana Police officer chasing a resident through a parking lot – a person who was entirely innocent.  Urbana Police officers targeted that particular civilian because he was a black male, though none of the subject’s clothing matched the description given to UPD of a suspicious person.  During the chase, the officer sprinted, swinging his arms with a TASER gun in one hand and a pistol in the other hand, all in the presence of bystanders including children.

Since January of 2020, the CPRB has been attempting to schedule a review of a different TASER incident.  It was discovered that Deputy Chief Surles did not originally provide highly relevant video of that incident, and residents pressed the CPRB meeting after meeting to revisit the incident.  Check CU posted an article and video of that incident in November of 2020:

Urbana Police TASER Video Shows Blatant Misconduct, Circumstances Similar to the Aleyah Lewis Arrest

City Administrator Carol Mitten, charged with keeping the CPRB running and on-track, has kept the new review of this incident on delay for over twelve months.  The review appeared on last month’s CPRB meeting agenda, but Mitten and UPD leadership snubbed the Board again.

CPRB members were disturbed and displeased that a representative of the Police Department didn’t even bother to show up for the scheduled review.  Board member Tony Allegretti noted that the UPD had at least one month of notice.  In the past, Deputy Chief Richard Surles had always presented TASER incident videos.

When the Board members issued protest about the repeated failures of UPD to comply with their end of the TASER review, City Administrator Carol Mitten took things even further.  Mitten pushed an interpretation of the CPRB’s TASER directive which would seem to make the entire TASER review effort pointless.  Mitten claimed that the CPRB has no authority to consider if a TASER gun was used improperly by a police officer.  Instead, she argued, the Board could only make suggestions about modifying TASER use policy.

Mitten’s argument would indicate that the past several years of TASER reviews were being performed improperly by both the CPRB and Deputy Chief Richard Surles, who always asked the Board to vote on proper or improper TASER usage after each review.  It seems the moment that Surles became unsuccessful in cajoling the CPRB to concede to his stance that every TASER usage is proper, Mitten and Surles decided to eliminate possible misconduct considerations altogether.

Video of the September 22^nd 2021 CPRB discussion described above can be viewed here: