OPERATING IN THE DARK
OPERATING IN THE DARK
By Christopher Evans
At the February 2 Urbana City Council meeting, outgoing city council member Jaya Kolisetty remarked in her last speech on council floor:
“Another thing that’s been a major priority for this council...is talking about violence prevention. And I just want to strongly encourage us to think about responding in a way that is evidence-based and based on best practices. As we tackle those challenging issues, whether it’s gun violence, domestic violence, that we’re utilizing expertise in our community. We have some of the leading experts on violence prevention working at the university. We need to be having these conversations with the university involved - not just in isolation, and that we again are using evidence-based and survivor-centered approaches to this work.”
Kolisetty’s commentary exposed an ongoing problem with the Urbana City Council: it’s frequent ignorance toward addressing violence in the city of Urbana. The city council is under-qualified to be establishing policy about crime in Urbana for it rarely has a clue how to do so.
Take everyone’s number one obsession, gun violence for example.
The City Council has no information regarding employment status of the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding the education level of the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding intoxication on drugs or alcohol by the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding the family conditions- parents/marital status/children of the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding housing status of the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding mental health histories of the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding how the gun was obtained by the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding why the offenders were carrying a gun.
The City Council has no information regarding what the disputes were about or the existence of a motive for shooting the gun.
The City Council has no information regarding prior criminal convictions for violent crime of the offenders.
The City Council has no information regarding past imprisonments of the offenders.
The City Council has no information if the perpetrators were once a victim of violence or sexual abuse.
The City Council has no information regarding if the perpetrators knew their victim.
The City Council has no information regarding whether shots fired without anyone hit had an identifiable, intended victim.
All the Urbana City Council knows is race, age and gender of the shooters and their victims.
That kind of information may be the concerns from behind the windshield of a squad car, but we can forget about serious policy-making that intervenes against shootings before they happen.
According to what the Urbana City Council knows, Mayor of Urbana DeShawn Williams fits the description.
The Urbana City Council couldn’t tell you even the most rudimentary basics about its police department, despite the fact the council eagerly spends $16,353,167 tax dollars in 2026 on policing, a 71% increase since 2019.
The Urbana City Council couldn’t tell you how many arrests the Urbana Police Department makes in a year or for what reasons do the Urbana police arrest people.
The council does not know how many of Urbana’s arrests lead to a prison sentence or how many of Urbana’s cases result in probation.
The council doesn’t know how many drug overdoses there are and from what type of drug.
The council doesn’t know how many police reports the department writes.
The council doesn’t even know what direction all this is going.
Over the last ten years, are the incidents of crime trending up or down?
The Urbana City Council would flunk that question.
We’re at that point in the movie where if we were to ask the Urbana City Council, “What would you say the police do here?” the council wouldn’t know.
The Urbana City Council is told it’s poverty that creates crime, yet the council has zero understanding as to why people are poor in a town that has a 24.8% poverty rate, higher than Chicago and Mississippi. The council knows little about how a low bank account causes a person to commit an act of violence. The Cunningham Township Supervisor repeatedly warns the council the boat is taking on too much water when it’s the township fielding more calls for service than the police department.
Nonetheless, the Urbana City Council often prioritizes throwing more tax money at the police department, unrealistically expecting the police to solve these myriads of social problems. The council treats crime and violence like a problem to be set by the side of the road and it’s the faithful police department who are unfairly expected to come pick it up and take it away.
Hopefully, Urbana’s Alternative Response Task Force will broaden the vision and provide different solutions for violence prevention the council could consider investing in. The Task Force has monthly meetings until July and maybe the Urbana City Council can get beyond its stuck-on stupid.
And if any of the university experts Alderperson Kolisetty referred to, or those folks most impacted by these problems happen to be reading this, on behalf of the Urbana City Council we say:
“Little help, please!”