On Wednesday, June 25 the Urbana City Council approved a city budget for the 2026 fiscal year that creates three new patrol officer positions for the Urbana Police Department at the cost of $391,877 per year, and institutes a 1% grocery tax. This decision came after weeks of public outcry against increasing the police budget and skepticism over instituting a grocery tax. So, why did this happen?
The budget approval comes just months after DeShawn Williams was elected as the first Black mayor of Urbana. During the campaign, many saw Williams as a breath of fresh air; someone that would take seriously the implementation of alternative response models and who would think more critically regarding policing in Urbana. The public would be forgiven for thinking this, as Williams’s campaign website states that “[w]e cannot over-police or arrest our way to a safer Urbana.” Additionally, Williams’s opponent Annie Adams received the endorsement of the Urbana Police Department, something Adams proudly proclaimed on her campaign website. But just months into his tenure as mayor, Williams voted in favor of increasing the police budget and hiring additional officers.
This is not an isolated event. The UPD budget has been steadily increasing for years, far outpacing increases in other areas of Urbana’s overall city budget. In June of 2024, City Council voted in favor of creating a new police substation on Philo Rd and the creation of new positions to staff that substation. When we talked to the residents of the Philo Rd neighborhoods, they expressed confusion or outright resistance to more police in their streets. Instead of more police, they cited a need for funding affordable housing, after-school programs, and efforts that would address the root causes of the poverty and instability faced by many East Urbana residents.
Despite these setbacks, the people of Urbana continue to fight against over-policing and for an alternative response model. As mentioned above, UPD received approval to create a new substation and two new positions, but Chief Boone had requested a total of eight positions. Public pressure on Urbana City Council succeed in drastically reducing the requests from Boone. After the City of Urbana contracted BerryDunn to conduct a public safety review, one of the key findings in the resulting report was that 64.6% of calls to UPD, amounting to 66% of officer time, were non-criminal calls for service. Upon learning that 2/3 of police time is spent responding to non-criminal calls for service, residents of Urbana pressured City Council to fund an alternative response program that would unburden UPD of some of this workload and instead have trained social workers and other public health professionals responded to these calls. Public pressure was successful and City Council allocated $300,000 of recurring funding and a one-time grant of $150,000 to fund an alternative response program.
After BerryDunn walked away from their relationship with Urbana when they were informed that had to comply with the open meeting act, the city government has struggled to implement the approved alternative response taskforce. According to Alderperson Grace Wilken, the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) group “has been selected to facilitate the taskforce meetings, in compliance with the open meetings act.” It’s important to note that while LEAP advocates for criminal justice and drug policy, the organization is comprised of current and former police officers, judges, and the like. An alternative response model should be based in the community and employ non-police experts on public health and safety. Chief Boone has his own idea about community policing. Boone wants to hire what he calls “community engagement” officers, a term that he only defined in writing last month after city council had been asking for it since October 2023. According to Alderperson Chris Evans, Boone’s document states, “The Community Engagement Team (CET) is… dedicated to strengthening public trust… [and] focuses on three key public safety priorities: (1) domestic violence prevention and advocacy, (2) neighborhood-based violence reduction. And (3) youth engagement and diversion from the criminal justice system.” In short, the new cops are supposed to perform some of the important tasks of an Alternative Response team, except without the correct training, and with the ability to arrest or kill community members on the spot. As Urbana resident Eddie Pratt Jr. puts it “It’s terrifying for me to talk to a cop in a uniform. They have a badge and a gun…”
According to Alderperson Chris Evans, Pratt Jr. has good reason to be terrified of Urbana police, as it is Evans’s opinion that “there is the real-deal anticipation of extreme violence between police and the citizens out on South Philo Road.” At the June 18 Urbana City Council meeting, Chief Boone had the following to say regarding the Philo Rd substation: “So, I would not, I want to underscore, would not recommend just one officer. We’re talking about an area in which crime happens, folks.” Urbana police have a history of not being help accountable for employing unnecessary violence (see this, this, and this). Is this the kind of community engagement UPD has planned for Urbana?
This is out of step with what community leaders have had to say on the issue. Executive Director and Founder of The Well Experience, Dr. Stephanie Cockrell stated on a public social media post that she is “concerned by the continued lack of concrete, systemic solutions for the disproportionate policing and profiling of Black residents in Urbana. What is missing… is a commitment to investing in preventative measures that are proven to support Black communities.” Rev. Terrance Thomas of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church shared similar thoughts on social media: “More police aren’t a solution. It’s a scare tactic and a soundbite. This isn’t The Wire or some comic book. Outside of a police state where cops are stationed on every corner and we have drones flying above head, having more police would not have prevented any … tragedies.” Dr. Cockrell and Rev. Thomas are not alone in this view. Representatives of numerous community organizations in Urbana such as The Well Experience, FirstFollowers, CU TRI, Bethel AME, the NAACP, as well as the Cunningham Township Outreach Team Leader have all publicly advocated for an approach to violence that prioritizes addressing its root causes; investing in the holistic welfare of marginalized communities. But instead of listening to community experts’ solutions to crime, Mayor Williams and Chief Boone are now considering further punitive approaches like outlawing ski masks.
As the budget for UPD has increased by over $6 million since 2019 (an increase of 71% according to Alderman Evans!), little to nothing has been done to address the high rates of poverty in Urbana. The poverty rate in Urbana is 24.8%, which is over twice the statewide rate in Illinois of 11.6%. The federal poverty line (FPL) for an individual is $15,650. The average rent in Urbana is at least $1,140 per month, which is 84.7% of the FPL. Federal guidelines state that renters become cost-burdened when they spend 30% or more of their income on housing. Due to ever-increasing police budgets and irresponsible spending, Urbana has implemented 1% grocery tax that will now further burden an already impoverished community.
This police budget increase also comes after much discussion about the falling rate of reported crime in Urbana. in 2022 and 2023, reported crime was at a ten-year low and UPD reported an additional 5% drop in crime. While the police budget has now grown to over $16 million annually, very little has been done to implement the alternative response program that was funded by City Council. A year has passed and little to no progress has been made.
It’s clear that the city government does not have the best interests of Urbana’s working class in mind. As Pratt Jr. puts it, “They’ve been telling us no to reparations forever, then turn around and spend millions on their political candidate of choice.” But recent history shows that when the working people of Urbana unite toward a common goal, they can pressure the mayor and City Council to do the right thing.
Prairie Liberation Center 