[CPRB] Letter in N-G from John Wason
Jan & Durl Kruse
jandurl at insightbb.com
Mon Aug 13 13:20:05 CDT 2007
Vote ignores review board consensus
Monday August 13, 2007
It was a Champaign City Council meeting that will live in infamy.
There was a bit of humor, though: the joke played by Mayor Schweighart
on certain citizens of Champaign.
The Champaign City Council, by a vote of 5-4, recently rejected both
the recommendation of its own Champaign Police Complaint Procedures
Subcommittee to establish a citizen review board and any further
discussion of the matter.
The Champaign Police Complaint Procedures Subcommittee, a subcommittee
of the Champaign Police Community Relations Committee, consisted of
representatives from the police department, the city staff and the
community. It met once a month for 12 months, and is final
recommendation reflected a consensus among the representatives of the
three constituencies.
But it wasn't the consensus that retired police officer Schweighart
wanted. So he invalidated the hard work of his subcommittee. Following
almost three hours of public input, with all but two speakers in favor
of some form of citizen police review, he made a motion to ignore the
subcommittee's recommendation and maintain the status quo without
further discussion or public input. His own vote was the tie-breaker.
This marks at least the third time in the past nine years that the
Champaign City Council has disregarded the recommendation of one of its
own governmental bodies for some form of citizen police review. At this
point, one has to wonder why any citizen would ever serve in a
volunteer capacity on a city board or commission.
At least three of the council members who voted with the mayor asserted
that they, as elected officials, are the citizen police review board.
Perhaps we should put their word to the test.
JOHN WASON
Champaign
Find this article at:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/opinions/letters/2007/08/13/
vote_ignores_review_board_consensus
JAN Kruse
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