Sam Stecklow, Maheen Khan, and Isra Rahman, Invisible Institute team members of our recently launched champaign.cpdp.co project, in conversation with Maira Khwaja on the launch of this tool and what’s next for Citizen’s Police Data Project.
Maira : When did you start making FOIA requests in Champaign?
Sam: In 2018 I started making requests there because there was a lot of coverage of police misconduct issues there, and I wanted to see where else in Illinois we could use the Kalven v. Chicago (2014) decision. I was curious to see what it looked like somewhere else, in a smaller city context outside of Copa [the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, oversight agency in Chicago] and the Chicago Police Board.
Isra: And I also made some FOIA requests when I was a student [at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign].
Maira: In our early data collection about Champaign-Urbana, was there anything that stood out to you in your initial impression of how different or similar it felt to your work in Chicago?
Isra: Policing is different in Champaign, and the data we got back reflected that.
Maheen: When you have the bigger police departments, like Chicago, the data is way more in-depth and just a lot more thorough. With Champaign-Urbana you have way less data. For instance with Urbana a lot of the data is pretty incomplete or officer rosters don't have all the information we want.
Maira: How is this data useful in a place like Champaign?
Sam: It is useful on an individual level, whether that's someone who gets pulled over, or someone who witnesses a use of force, or someone who experiences police misconduct in some way and is able to get the name of the officer.
We know that criminal defense attorneys and public defenders use CPDP.co a lot, not only in civil rights cases where you would be suing over an act of police misconduct, but also for Brady material: in the 1960s, the Supreme Court ruled that any exculpatory evidence has to be given to the defense attorney. There is a lot of debate as to what that actually includes, but it definitely can include records about misconduct committed by the police officers involved in that case, especially if it involves perjury or lying on official records; essentially anything that can affect that officer and his credibility on the stand would be Brady material. A lot of times prosecutors and police departments won't turn over everything that might be considered Brady material. So, this tool can tell defense attorneys about the officers who are involved in something as minor as a traffic stop.
And then obviously, it’s helpful for students, researchers, and journalists, even with minor stories that involve a police officer. For example, if you can say, this officer had X uses of force in the last year and wasn't disciplined for any of them, that makes your story more credible because you're not only citing the police department which is the interested party in that story, you're also centering the person who use of force was used against, in a way showing that this is a pattern for this officer.
Maira: Thank you. Isra, can you speak a little bit about who we needed to be in relationship with to best understand how to do this work most effectively considering that we are not from Champaign-Urbana?
Isra: A lot of older folks in Champaign-Urbana know the history of the jail construction and the mental health resources that have been drained from the community, and so we immediately turned to leaders at First Followers and WIN Recovery on our first visit to learn about their organizing. Then there are people who don't have capacity to be in movement work but are definitely still impacted by the police and criminal justice system in Champaign. So we try to find a way to pull them in while also not giving them extra work to do. It's been helpful to talk to people who work with young people in Champaign or provide direct services through trauma and resilience spaces. We learned a lot about how much domestic violence is a problem in the community, how people think about community violence, and the spatial relationship of the University’s campus and police.
Maira: This is something we're always trying to figure out - how to be in relationship to people who do not necessarily have the capacity to be involved in movement work organizations, but are still deeply affected. And so I appreciate you mentioning that. You mentioned jails and mental health, and those seem to be recurring themes and issues people were bringing up.
Isra: People in Champaign-Urbana know that mental health resources have been drained. People know that when someone is admitted to the jail for a mental health crisis, they'll usually not receive adequate treatment. Once our reporting came out, it was a lot easier to talk about the connection between policing and mental health.
Sam: Yeah. The mental health resources that are local there are ultimately tied to the criminal justice system. Whether they really want to be or not, it’s kind of just how it's been set up and it’s how policymakers see the responsibility of response to mental health. The police departments are always still involved.
Maira: Thank you. Maheen - what kinds of data have you noticed people wanting or have we identified that we want to add to the site in the next few months?
Maheen: One thing we've talked a lot about — and this is already on the Chicago side, so we know how helpful it's been — is the underlying documents for complaint and use of force records. With underlying narratives, you're not just staring at data, you're seeing actual stories. Lawsuit data is another big feature that we want to add. Another thing we’ve learned from in-person conversations with early users is that a lot of times people don't know the name of the police officer that they interacted with. So, we would like to add ways for people to filter or sort based on some of the officers’ features. For instance, I want to look at all the female police officers or all the male officers or I want to look at complaints from this period of time because I know that's when I filed it. So we want to help people be able to filter the data more, because not everyone's going to know a badge number or an officer’s first and last name.
Maira: What are you most excited about in terms of the next stages of our work in Champaign-Urbana, or Illinois, in general?
Maheen: Just having this data be accessible in really small places. A lot of smaller towns go undiscussed and we're not really interrogating how people are viewing police there, or what kind of data even exists in these places. Maybe even us just trying to look for this data can help set some sort of precedent that smaller police departments should have this data because there are so many places that just don't even keep track of a lot of data that would be useful. But I feel like because people aren't necessarily focusing on rural policing, a lot of that's going unchecked or unquestioned.
Sam: This is a really cool and powerful opportunity to encourage the same kind of work that we've seen be really impactful in Chicago and elsewhere in places that just don't get the same resources for the reporting that is well within the capabilities of local journalists to do. But there are just so many roadblocks to actually doing it. It just makes a little bit easier if the data is accessible for them.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Learn more about our expansion of CPDP here.