Sending the wrong message?

A sharp cough came from the BearCat’s engine as it struggled to start. After another try, the massive bulletproof vehicle outfitted with a turret booth and remote battering ram for bashing in doors and windows came to life.

The driver, who asked not to be identified or photographed because he is “working in an undercover capacity,” pulled the armored vehicle around the Springfield Police Academy parking lot and found a spot to park it closer to reporters and other officers. The April 21 demonstration at the training facility on Color Plant Road occurred after Illinois Times reached out to the Springfield Police Department with questions about the agency’s use of the armored vehicle following tense exchanges at several recent Springfield City Council meetings.

In March, the Springfield Police Department needed three City Council meetings to get approval for a new BearCat vehicle to replace the department’s 20-year-old one that has become unreliable. However, this would be the first armored vehicle paid for directly by Springfield tax dollars, rather than being purchased with grant funds or donated through military surplus channels.

SPD Police Chief Joseph Behl told the City Council, “This is the first time we’ve actually asked to purchase a new one outright.”

Police officials, then and in meeting with reporters more than a month later, argue the vehicle keeps police and residents safe in dangerous situations.

“It’s a pretty high priority, considering it saves lives not only of our police officers but our civilians as well,” Behl said. “It became a priority two Thursdays ago when we went to get it and use it – and it wouldn’t start – so it was needed right then and there.”

Behl told the City Council the $445,000 price tag is small when the cost is averaged across 20 years of use.

SPD’s current BearCat was obtained with Department of Homeland Security grant funds that were dispersed to the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System, which then granted the vehicle to SPD more than 20 years ago. ILEAS was formed in 2002 as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to coordinate mutual aid among Illinois law enforcement agencies.

Behl told the City Council on March 16 that SPD asked for a new BearCat from ILEAS but the request was denied.

“There was (sic) BearCats purchased through federal grants recently; unfortunately, Springfield was not able to be a part of those grants,” Cmdr. Jarod Maddox told Illinois Times. “Even though we are a part of ILEAS and we do get some assets from grant funding – a BearCat’s a bigger-ticket item and there’s not enough assets to go around.”

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A controversial purchase

The City Council ultimately voted 7-2 on March 16 to approve funding for the purchase of a new BearCat, with Ward 3 Ald. Roy Williams Jr. and Ward 6 Ald. Jennifer Notariano voting against it. Both said they believed it would further harm the relationship between SPD and the community, citing concerns about militarization of police departments.

The proposal to purchase a new BearCat was initially made by Maddox at the March 3 council meeting.

“It allows (officers) to stay safely behind cover to not make split-second decisions in the blink of an eye at a front door, for say, a hostage situation or whatever it may be,” Maddox said. “It gives them time to think, it gives them time to de-escalate and it protects them – it protects the people they’re called to serve.”

He told the council that the BearCat is never a first choice, but will be brought out when officers are conducting dangerous search warrants or under fire.

Williams contended that the BearCat’s presence in high-intensity situations could lead to escalation by people who feel intimidated.

“Well, of course it shows up, and that’s why (police) get shot at. Because sometimes it isn’t just de-escalating, sometimes it’s escalating,” Williams said. “A BearCat’s not going to stop shots from being fired and de-escalate like you’re saying. Sometimes it’s going to escalate the situation, and I’ll leave it at that.”

While Behl has said that 47% of the calls for service in the city come from Ward 2 and Ward 3, those two council members – who are both members of the Springfield Aldermanic Black Caucus – were divided when it came to the BearCat. The third caucus member, Ward 5 Ald. Lakeisha Purchase, was absent for the vote.

Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory, who voted to purchase the vehicle, said, “…it’s about trying to reduce this violence we have in our community.

“If they got to take that and hide behind it and coax people out who’ve been shooting and all of this craziness that we got in our community, it is serious,” Gregory said during the council’s second meeting on the matter.

But some community groups questioned whether the nearly half a million-dollar expense was the best use of taxpayer funds.

Sunshine Clemons, the founder of Black Lives Matter – Springfield, regularly meets with SPD as a community organizer. She said she would rather see funding allocated toward programs such as the BEACON project that was announced last fall.

“I’d rather our tax dollars go toward the services that are benefiting those in the community that are paying those taxes,” she told Illinois Times.

Diana Elshref, a board member with the Faith Coalition for the Common Good, told IT the money could have been spent on a number of alternatives that would have more consistent, and direct, impact on taxpayers.

“That’s around $450,000 that could be spent on community interventions, mental health crisis teams, prevention infrastructure,” Elshref wrote. “That’s if you’re wealthy enough as a community to easily afford a vehicle like that in the first place.”

Elshref also said if SPD publicly tracked when the vehicle was used and corresponding outcomes, that would possibly help “residents understand whether the investment is justified.”

Multiple other Springfield residents complained about the purchase at City Council’s March 31 meeting.

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Sangamon County’s armored vehicles

During the City Council discussions, Behl cited other police departments with BearCats, including Decatur and Illinois State Police. At the March 10 meeting, Behl and Williams seemed to believe Sangamon County is without an armored vehicle, but the Sheriff’s Office informed Illinois Times it needed to use its armored vehicles four times in 2025, including once in September to assist SPD with arresting someone who had fired shots and barricaded himself.

The current mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle was acquired by former Sheriff Jack Campbell in 2021 through the Department of Defense. The Sheriff’s Office paid close to $38,000 to transport, paint and accessorize the military surplus vehicle, a fraction of the cost of purchasing a new one.

The sheriff’s department has had an on-again, off-again relationship with MRAPs, although it has had a former Brinks armored truck since 2004 when it was acquired for $1 through a federal surplus program.

During Sheriff Neil Williamson’s tenure in 2014, the Department of Defense donated an MRAP with a $733,000 price tag and the sheriff’s department used $6,400 from a drug forfeiture fund to transport it from Texas to Springfield. However, it eventually became a campaign issue, with Democratic candidate Jeff Regan arguing that the sheriff’s department should not be militarized and the MRAP was too hard to operate and maintain. His opponent, Wes Barr, initially argued that the 27-ton vehicle was an asset, but after being elected sheriff Barr decided to give it up. The MRAP made its way to the LaSalle County Sheriff’s Department instead.

At the time, chief deputy Joseph Roesch told Illinois Times that the paperwork required for the MRAP was excessive. He said the federal government wanted the sheriff’s department to write a policy stating the conditions under which the MRAP would be used as well as submit reports documenting each time the vehicle was deployed, even if it appeared in a parade.

Of the four times the Sheriff’s Office used its armored vehicles last year, two instances, in July and November, were to carry out firearm restraining orders and search warrants. Another call was for a hostage situation, also in July, and one was to help SPD with the barricaded individual in September. Crouch reported one use of an armored vehicle so far in 2026 – one was used in February to conduct a search warrant for child pornography.

In contrast, while Maddox told the City Council March 3 there was an “internal matrix” in place to limit the BearCat’s use to high-threat incidents, the city does not appear to formally track when it is used. Illinois Times submitted two separate FOIA requests to the Springfield Police Department requesting documents, training policies and utilization logs for the department’s armored vehicle but the city’s FOIA officers wrote “no such documents exist within the city of Springfield.”

It’s unclear how often SPD’s BearCat, often displayed at community events, was deployed in recent years, but Behl told the City Council that SPD uses its armored vehicle anywhere from 12 to 30 times a year.

Behl did not respond to questions emailed on April 23 about whether he recalled the September 2025 incident where Sangamon County’s MRAP assisted SPD or why SPD does not utilize the Sheriff’s Office’s armored vehicles, or several follow ups.

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Militarization of police departments

Surplus military equipment is commonly used by law enforcement agencies and found in nearly every county across the country.

The Marshall Project reported in 2014 the Department of Defense donated more than $50,000 worth of equipment, including weapon scopes and more than a dozen rifles, to the Sangamon Sheriff’s Office – the same year the first MRAP was donated.

Meanwhile, the DOD also donated around $132,000 worth of equipment to the Springfield Police Department, including more than 50 rifles and a thermal range viewer. The Springfield Park District Police also received more than 10 rifles and a “riot type” shotgun.

Illinois State Police received 375 rifles from the DOD, valued at nearly $180,000. Vastly smaller police departments, such as Chatham, Leland Grove, Riverton and Sherman, also received rifles donated by the DOD.

The debate around police equipment and militarization is far from new. It’s been more than a decade since even some conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute published reports claiming the U.S. is over-militarizing its community police departments.

“This is not to say that police officers do not have a difficult job. They certainly do,” Daniel Bier wrote in the Foundation for Economic Education in 2014. “But it just isn’t unusually deadly or dangerous – and it’s safer today than ever before. The data do not justify the kinds of armor, weapons, insecurity and paranoia being displayed by police across the country.”

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Officer and civilian deaths

Policing is considered a dangerous profession and carries a high risk of being assaulted on the job, but the narrative of a life-or-death profession isn’t corroborated by the numbers. National data from 2020 through 2025 show police officers were more than nine times as likely to kill a civilian than to be killed in the line of duty.

Police killed nearly 7,700 people in the U.S. between 2020 and 2025, while about 820 police officers died in the line of duty from non-COVID causes during that same time frame.

With fewer deaths than other categories such as agricultural work, management operations and grounds maintenance, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found law enforcement was the 17th most fatal job category in 2024, the most recent year figures are available.

The most recent death of a civilian at the hands of a Springfield police officer was in 2023, and prior to that, 2017.

In September 2023, a 17-year-old being held at the Sangamon County Juvenile Detention Center who obtained a gun and took another juvenile hostage while attempting to flee was shot and killed by SPD officer Brian Riebeling. In January 2017, SPD officer John Shea shot and killed a 27-year-old man with bipolar disorder who was resisting arrest and assaulting Shea, who ended up shooting the man eight times.

Riebeling is still with SPD. Shea left SPD in 2021 but has worked for other local police departments since, most recently joining the Divernon Police Department in December 2025, according to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board database.

The last time a Springfield Police Department officer died in the line of duty was December 1979. In 2017, a half-mile section of North Ninth Street was designated as “Officer David Tapscott Memorial Street,” in honor of the SPD officer who died nearly 47 years ago following injuries from a car crash.

The killing of Sonya Massey in 2024 by a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy resulted in a national spotlight on Springfield and a second-degree murder conviction for the officer, Sean Grayson. The county also paid $10 million in a wrongful death lawsuit, the largest settlement to date, but not the first.

A lawsuit filed by the family of Jaimeson Cody, an inmate at the Sangamon County Jail who died from asphyxiation after an altercation with guards in 2021, remains ongoing. The county paid just $40,000 to the estate of Patrick Burns to settle a lawsuit brought by the family after he died in January 2010. Deputies deployed Tasers more than 20 times and hogtied him while arresting Burns after he broke into a home. A few years prior, the county paid $5.3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the widow of Paul Carlock, a jail inmate who died in 2007 after struggling with guards who then sat on him and shocked him with Tasers.

The last time a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy died in the line of duty was March 1975.

Compared to this time last year, violent crime in Sangamon County is down tremendously in 2026, according to the Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting database. There are significantly more deaths from accidental overdoses and suicides than homicides. Also similar to national trends, reports of assault and battery have generally decreased in the past 30 years.

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Another controversy, another study

The same month the City Council granted approval for the BearCat purchase, Springfield police officer Jacob Walter was recorded punching a 19-year-old female in the head while arresting her for outstanding judicial warrants. Springfield Police defended Walter’s actions as by the book, though Williams, the Ward 3 council member, took issue with that playbook altogether.

Rhys Moyar, a citizen who saw video of the arrest online, claimed SPD was standing behind Walter, who was paid more than $96,000 in the most recent fiscal year, as a way to avoid any chance of legal liability.

“Legally, (excessive force) refers to ‘use of force beyond what a reasonable officer uses to question or apprehend the person.’ In layman’s terms, unnecessary violence a police officer commits is unlawful. That’s why our police chief claims, vehemently, it was necessary. They may be held liable while using excessive force while making an arrest,” Moyar said at the March 31 City Council meeting.

Gregory, the Ward 2 council member, also expressed concerns about the incident. Without being more specific, Gregory told Illinois Times that he is looking into whether use-of-force policies can be changed through negotiation with the police union or through state law.

Gregory said he plans to propose an ordinance that would make more complaints about police conduct subject to discussion by the city’s Police Community Review Commission.

The Police Community Review Commission, formed in 2005, allows anyone to file complaints with the city, though the process involves SPD investigating any complaints first and then allowing the PCRC to review its findings. The PCRC has received and reviewed three complaints about SPD since 2020, Ethan Posey, the city’s director of community relations, told IT in November. The last review was in March 2023.

Over the years, the PCRC has been plagued with vacancies, often resulting in canceled or rescheduled meetings due to lack of a quorum. The seven-member board had three vacancies from November until April 21 when two new members, Kamau Kemayo and William Matson, were approved by the City Council. Kemayo, a retired associate professor of African American Studies at University of Illinois Springfield, previously served as the interim executive director of the Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum. No information was immediately available regarding Matson’s professional background.

Weeks after the punching incident and resulting backlash from a variety of community groups, Behl requested nearly $55,000 for University of Illinois Springfield to study, develop and run its own advisory entity to get “community voices and perspectives to address identified problems within the community.”

After extensive debate on April 21, the council amended the contract to require that half of any such body be made up of people living in areas of Springfield with the highest rates of crime.

Gail Simpson, a former City Council member who represented Ward 2, told the council that the idea was a product of a 2022 Community Health Roundtable study that “did not emanate from any specific crisis, but the knowledge that police and community relations across the country are broken and there needs to be a method to repair, rebuild and sustain healthy police community relations.”

Clemons, of Black Lives Matter – Springfield, said any study collecting valuable community insights is welcomed but was unsure if a study is necessary to establish an oversight entity.

“The Police Community Review Commission, in my opinion, is not able to accomplish anything significant with the way that it is formatted, which is why I stepped down,” Clemons told IT. She resigned from the commission in November after five years of service.

“You did this Community Health Roundtable report several years ago. They’re just now getting to the point where somebody wants to actually move on it, and now they want to do another study about how to create an advisory council,” Clemons said. “I don’t know, to me, that another study is needed for how to create an advisory council.”

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Dean Olsen contributed to this reporting.

This article appears in April 30-May 6, 2026.