Frank talk about police misconduct

More than a year removed from a life-altering accident, Chelsey Farley strode to the front of a packed conference room at Lincoln Library Sept. 29 and spoke before an audience that included members of the Springfield Police Department and Sangamon County Sheriff Paula Crouch, attending the Faith Coalition for the Common Good’s town hall on police misconduct.

Last September, Farley had just opened her new business and was riding with her then-boyfriend, Trevor Hopkins, on his Kawasaki motorcycle when the two collided with a car driven by newly retired Springfield police sergeant Michael Egan.

Egan was ultimately charged with driving under the influence, aggravated DUI and making an improper left turn into oncoming traffic. His case still pending. Multiple officers who responded to the crash were disciplined for their handling of the accident scene. For a month after the crash, Farley was hospitalized while recovering from a brain bleed and multiple broken bones, including her pelvis, tailbone and both collarbones.

“The SPD underwent an internal investigation and four officers were found guilty of wrongdoings at the scene. One of them received a six-day suspension and retraining was all for the rest of them,” Farley said. “I do not believe the punishment was severe enough for the failure they provided me as a Springfield resident.”

Farley said there was not enough accountability for, or amongst, police.

“Around here, you’re either one of the good old boys or you’re not,” she said. “Whether it be the (Springfield Police Department) or Sangamon County, the police in our city believe their lives are worth more than ours. What they’ve done to me, Sonya Massey and countless others cannot be forgotten. We deserve better and we will continue to strive for better treatment as a community.”

City Council flare-ups 

Though some Springfield police officers were in attendance to hear Farley speak, including Commander Brandon Golden, who participated as a panelist, far more officers attended a rowdy Springfield City Council meeting Sept. 16. At that meeting, SPD Chief Joseph Behl told the council he received an invitation to the Faith Coalition’s event but also claimed he was “venomously admonished” following the Sept. 9 council meeting for expressing disinterest in taking part in an event with Tiara Standage, who serves as the community leader of the Faith Coalition.

At the Sept. 16 City Council, Behl showcased some of the police bodycam footage and a social media video of a September 2024 protest outside the municipal building – in which police eventually brought out riot shields – that was organized by Standage to object to the department’s handling of the accident that left Farley hospitalized.

The footage, which can be seen on the City Council’s YouTube page, starts with about two minutes of protesters standing in the vestibule, chanting “fuck the police” at more than half a dozen police officers who are behind a set of doors. It then cuts to security cam footage of protesters entering the vestibule and tearing down paper that covered windows of the front doors. The video then cuts back to bodycam footage outside the police department, around 20 minutes after the protesters were chanting in the police department vestibule. By then, police officers already have riot shields out. Finally, a social media video is shown where, while police with riot shields are pushing back protesters, Standage raises an open plastic water bottle above her head and flails it behind her toward the line of police.

Police officers grabbed Standage and arrested her for battery. Behl said Springfield police “showed significant restraint during this event with a group of peaceful protesters who became unlawful.”

“At some point, we have to take action. When an aggravated battery, a felony, is committed on one of my officers, we cannot sit back any longer,” Behl told the council. “Ater committing the battery, Tiara was grabbed by officers who attempted to pull her into a safe area behind the line of police. In doing this, officers were able to get hold of her hooded sweatshirt. We attempted to pull her behind the line of officers, which is an approved, appropriate and trained technique but she fell to the ground as she was pushed by the crowd. At that time, officers let go of her and a short time later, Tiara was arrested without further incident.”

According to Behl, Standage and the Springfield Police Department agreed to a diversionary program in lieu of formal charges against her, which Standage told City Council last month was a “fake diversion program with no real reform behind it.”

A week later, Behl told the council that Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser “reluctantly terminated the program.” Still, Standage expressed a desire for Behl to attend the Faith Coalition’s recent town hall.

“The police should not get to decide when they are held accountable. They should not get to pick and choose which voices matter,” she said at a Sept. 9 Council meeting. “I urge you to take a stand, demand that Chief Behl and SPD attend these town halls and face the public.”

“The worst thing we can do is not talk,” Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams Jr. told Behl at the Sept. 16 City Council. “We got too much work. It’s too much for all of us to do to make it personal. We can fight tonight, but tomorrow we have got to work on something else and do something else… we have to find a way to move forward. We have to stop pointing the fingers.”

Behl responded to Williams by saying he was ready to make progress. 

“I am ready to move forward,” Behl said. “I’m not a person that holds grudges. I’m not going to sit on something and never look past it but we have to have a sense of trust and decorum, and once we get that we can move past these things.”

The Sept. 16 council meeting struck a chord with multiple public commenters, including Bree Roberts, a member of the Massey Commission. 

“We have people sitting up here talking about, ‘Oh well, these officers didn’t sign up for this.’ You know what I didn’t sign up for? I didn’t sign up to be treated differently because of the color of my skin, but unfortunately, that’s something I have to deal with,” Roberts said. “Can we have a conversation about that, or do you only care for the officers in this city? Do you not care about your civilians, the people that your officers are supposed to protect and serve?”

Reggie Guyton, an artist and Springfield resident, said at the Sept. 29 town hall that the police department putting up construction paper to block the view of protesters outside the department last year was not an effective de-escalation tactic.

“This protest was an opportunity to be accountable and to improve community relations. Instead, they chose to take insult and claim fear. You don’t get to ignore us when we’ve harmed the community. We don’t get to ignore you,” Guyton said. “Hiding from us wasn’t going to make anything better, so that was the reason why this butcher block paper was taken down.”

American policing

The town hall eventually transitioned into a brief question and answer session for panelists, which included two law enforcement leaders and multiple community advocates. One question read by the moderator pointedly asked, “Why do you think the police don’t value Black lives?”

Sunshine Clemons, founder of Black Lives Matter Springfield, explained that the country has a number of institutions, not just policing, which were built with legally racist frameworks.

“The police are part of a racist system,” she said. “But it’s not just the police, every system that is here in America is part of a racist system. (The police) ought to get more exposure because lives are in their hands, but the judicial system, the education system, every system in America was built on racism. We were not part of the people that were considered when these systems were built.”

The NAACP and even some national law enforcement organizations publicly acknowledge on their websites that slave patrols – men who caught people attempting to flee enslavement – formed in the early 1700s represent some of the earliest organized policing in the country.

Clemons added that it’s not necessarily the individuals but the country’s policing system itself that devalues Black people.

“I believe there are good officers in a messed-up system. I don’t think every officer is racist,” she said. “But they are working for a system that does not see us the same as it sees other races in this community. They’re working for a system that does not value us the same way it values other people. It does not see us. At times, it still sees us as three-fifths. That is the system that needs to change and so we cannot help by putting more people that look like us into a system because then the system changes them.”

Commander Golden addressed the question about police valuing Black lives bluntly.

“I’ll tell you, that hurts. I can tell you that every one of my officers would take a bullet for any one of you any day of the week,” he said. “Understand that that the young men and women that we have that are coming out here and working every single day come from your streets. We are a microcosm of your society.”

Golden added that he respects how “sometimes reality is perception” and attempts to better the department are challenging when “when it’s very difficult being a law enforcement officer in this day and age.”

Cherena Douglass, vice president of the Faith Coalition, said the different demographics of Springfield could learn from talking with one another.

“We have all types of walks of life right here in Springfield and one thing we have great in this state is we are both a municipality and a rural area. Let’s be real, this is not a city, this is a town,” she said. “My point is, we are we are in the middle. We have both rural farms and we have urban persons who wouldn’t know what to do without corn being in a can.”

Douglass praised the town hall as a space where Springfield residents could speak freely and hopefully learn from one another.

“That’s what we have to do, continue to come to this place and not get offended – or it’s OK to get offended, but not get so offended that you don’t push forward and keep moving,” she said. “Instead of calling it the divide and bridging that gap even further, I think we got to move through it and start coming to the table and doing this more.”  

Dilpreet Raju is a staff writer for Illinois Times and a Report for America corps member.