The Springfield Police Department’s chief sees calls for changes in the department’s use-of-force policy as opportunities to educate the public on how officers make split-second decisions that may result in viral posts on social media and accusations of police brutality.
“Let’s sit down and talk about what law enforcement use of force is – what governs it, whether it’s a state law, whether it’s case law, whether it’s policy – and talk about what that looks like,” Chief Joseph Behl said. “We have a lack of understanding in our community outside of law enforcement about when and where and why officers can use force and how much.”
When speaking with Illinois Times about the 15-page use-of-force policy and training program, Behl said police must weigh the “totality of the circumstances” when deciding whether to use everything from their mere presence and simple verbal direction all the way to a punch, a Taser strike or deadly force.
Springfield is a city with a history of racial tension, including tension between Black residents and the mostly white police force, as well as reverberations from the 2024 fatal shooting of Sonya Massey by a former Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy. With those factors as a backdrop, Behl has faced criticism for defending the actions of Officer Jacob Walter in the March 27 arrest of 19-year-old Promyss Davis of Springfield amid accusations of excessive force.
Walter, who is white, received no discipline in connection with the incident, in which Davis, who is Black, was arrested after a traffic stop near 15th Street and Cornell Avenue after trying to flee. Davis had felony warrants and was awaiting trial for cases that included aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, aggravated battery to a police officer and resisting police.
Behl said officers also were justified in using pepper spray and “empty-hand” striking techniques to arrest K’Shawn Lamar Rush, a 32-year-old Black man from Springfield, on Sept. 6 in the 2200 block of Yale Boulevard.
Rush was on pretrial release for alleged aggravated battery and aggravated assault, and police said he was observed striking and choking a dog and that Rush tried to use the dog to threaten people. Some commenters on social-media videos of the incident complained that Rush shouldn’t have been punched on the shoulders when he wouldn’t cooperate.
In Davis’ case in particular, Springfield Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory and the two other members of the Springfield Aldermanic Black Caucus, Ward 5 Ald. Lakeisha Purchase and Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams Jr., said the officer shouldn’t have hit the teen, who is considered an adult in the criminal-justice system.
“Nothing justifies getting hit in the head” and putting pressure against her throat, Williams told Behl at the March 31 Springfield City Council meeting.
Williams later told Illinois Times, “There’s many reasons why people run. I’m not saying the citizens are always right,” he said, “but we don’t need to be as aggressive as we’re being.”
Williams added: “Both sides need to change. Our kids don’t trust the police. … The solution is better community relations.”
Community activist Teresa Haley, past president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP, told Illinois Times the police chief should use the Davis case “as a training about what not to do. I don’t think officers should go around punching people.”
Haley said she is “afraid for our young Black men and women” and that it would have been “more acceptable to the Black community” if Walter would have used a Taser to subdue Davis.
However, Behl said the use of a Taser, which is designed to deliver a temporarily debilitating electrical shock, comes with more potential risk than a blow with the hands and can, in rare circumstances, lead to cardiac arrest.
Behl, 45, a 20-year-veteran of the force, is former police trainer who was promoted to chief of the 250-member department in May 2025. He said he welcomes questions and criticism about police conduct.
But Behl, who is white, said he doesn’t relish the often-personal attacks leveled at him during council meetings by people who don’t know him other than by his title.
The chief said he knows punching and hitting someone “looks terrible,” but it is acceptable when justified and can be wiser than using a Taser or a gun.
“Anytime we use force, it’s not pretty,” he said. “It’s not something that we seek to do when we come to work. It’s not something that’s enjoyable, but it is sometimes a necessary part of our job, and so it’s ugly, and we recognize that.”
Behl said SPD and police departments around the country train their officers to respond with the theories outlined in the landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case of Graham v. Connor, which involved a 1984 arrest in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“What that generally says an officer is authorized to use the amount of force necessary to effect an arrest, but it has to be reasonable,” he said.
“And it’s really a totality of the circumstances,” Behl said, “and you have to take into consideration a lot of things, and that comes from the perspective of the police officer at the time. We cannot use hindsight. We cannot slow videos down and take a look … because these things happen in a stressful environment, under extreme circumstances, in a compressed timeline. Police officers are human. Are they going to make mistakes? Sure, they’re going to make mistakes. But that’s why we train as much as we do now.”
During Davis’ arrest, the officer had reason to suspect Davis would resist, and he didn’t know whether the witnesses Davis asked to help get the officer off of her would jump in and interfere, according to Behl.
The chief disagreed with those who said the officer should have let Davis run and then tried to catch her later when backup officers arrived.
“The community has an expectation of public safety,” he said. “They expect us to take people off the street that are violating laws. … We could retreat and not arrest bank robbers. … Now, if we’re dealing with somebody who’s got a suspended driver’s license, maybe that’s a different approach, depending on the circumstances.”
To those who said Davis shouldn’t have been treated differently because of her relatively young age, Behl said many adolescents and young adults have the capacity for violence.
“We’ve seen kids 13, 14, 15 years old carrying guns, shooting people,” he said. “What we have seen is the criminal element is a shift from, let’s say late teens-early 20s to younger kids. … At what point does the community say (Davis) needs to be taken off the street, she is a dangerous person and this is a public-safety concern? Where do you draw the line at? You know, people pay us good money to keep them safe, and that’s what we have to do.”
Behl said he is aware that research shows that Blacks and Latinos encounter more use of force than white people, and he has no data to show that it’s any different in Springfield. The fact that Black drivers are more likely than white drivers to be stopped by police for a variety of reasons is well documented in Illinois Department of Transportation data.
The police department has denied racial bias in police stops, and Behl said ongoing training attempts to reduce implicit bias in all areas of police work.
The department has “doubled-down” on cultural sensitivity training since the 2022 discipline and subsequent resignation of former officer Aaron Paul Nichols, he said. Nichols, a white patrol officer with almost 18 years on the force, didn’t deny posting racist and anti-Semitic social media posts using an online profile.
When asked to describe current police relations with the community, Behl responded this way: “I think we have a group of people, a small contingent of people out there, being disruptors. … We’ve had a ton of people reach out to us, not just me, but other officers in our department, and they are in support of us.
“Now, do we need to work on community relations? Yes. That’ll be something that every police department does throughout this entire nation every single day because of historic reasons of marginalized communities being over-policed, being discriminated against and then the historical challenges that come with policing particular communities.”
Dean Olsen is a senior staff writer with Illinois Times. He can be reached at dolsen@illinoistimes.com, 217-679-7810 or www.x.DeanOlsenIT.
