URBANA – Officials in Urbana have tabled an ordinance that would require the city’s police department to seek approval before purchasing and using surveillance technology, including license plate readers, facial recognition software, drones, social media analytics software, mobile X-Rays and tools used to gain access to a mobile device.
The ordinance would require the Urbana Police Department to submit a report at least 60 days before seeking approval for the purchase and use of any surveillance tools – along with a draft of what its policy might look like. The public would have 45 days to submit formal comments to the city council before they vote on allowing the new technology.
There is currently no policy requiring the police department to get approval before purchasing and using surveillance tools.
The move, which was discussed at Monday’s Urbana City Council meeting, stems from years of discussion about increasing transparency. More than 40 people attended the meeting, and 20 made a public comment about the legislation. The vast majority of public comments were in favor of the ordinance.
Among them was former council member Danielle Chynoweth, the Urbana Township Supervisor and founder of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center.
“I think Urbana needs to think very hard and very carefully about how to craft a regulatory framework for police surveillance technologies that’s really in the public interest,” Chynoweth said in an interview. “I think tabling the issue actually allows the public to be more involved in the process, allows the public to be more engaged and vocal in the process.”
Sana Saboowala, a member of the Champaign-Urbana Muslim Action Committee, said she feels the ordinance is a way to protect against over-policing in the community.
“As Muslims, that’s a really important issue for our community,” Saboowala said in an interview. “Since 9/11, Muslim communities have been policed all over the nation, and a lot of the surveillance laws that have been put in place on the national level have been targeting Muslims … Putting these kinds of measures in place at the local level feels protective to us.”
The measure, in her perspective, isn’t an “anti-police” ordinance; it’s about police accountability.
“I think more than what we would lose, it’s about what we could gain as a community in terms of public safety and transparency by having an ordinance like this,” she said.
Brian Dolinar, a community journalist who writes about police and surveillance, said he’s skeptical about the way police can use surveillance technology.
“Is this going to be used in some kind of future police charge against me and put me on court, matching my identity here with some police body camera footage that’s being put on some cloud and ran through some state STIC [Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center] technology and used to put charges against me and put me in jail?” Dolinar said during the public comment period.
He noted that surveillance technology was used to identify activists involved in the University of Illinois encampments where protesters voiced their opposition against Israel’s war on Gaza and the university’s investment in companies with ties to Israel’s military. Several protesters are facing felony mob charges.
Council members said they tabled the ordinance because several thought its current language was too broad. They said they want to discuss the legislation further and specify what it would require before making a final vote.
Only one person who spoke at the meeting completely opposed the ordinance: William Colbrook, who is the former Parkland College chief of police and director of public safety and current candidate for alderman in Ward 6 of Urbana. He said the ordinance will hinder police investigations, jeopardize officer safety and make the city less safe.
“This ordinance strikes me as an attempt to restrict the daily operations of our police department,” Colbrook said. “It is micromanagement by the council of a city department. I believe it is overreach and exceeds the authority of council.”
But Anita Say Chan, an associate professor at the University of Illinois’ School of Information Sciences and College of Media, said she sees it differently. Chan researches the social impacts of contemporary data-driven technologies and said since modern technology is always changing, local governments should be aware of how these technologies can be regulated to keep people safe.
“There’s nothing particularly radical about this bill,” Chan said in an interview. “It just sort of responds to the changing nature of technologies, and I think very responsibly asks our governance and oversight mechanisms to also evolve in accordance with the acquisition and the integration of quite new and powerful technologies.”
She said police surveillance disproportionately affects underrepresented and historically marginalized individuals.
“There is a bias towards one creating data trails around people who have been historically marginalized, stigmatized, creating data trails around them that impose a higher burden on them in terms of having to prove innocence,” she said. “Putting in a heightened number of cameras in certain neighborhoods creates an extra burden of surveillance and oversight on that community that, in the end, is being used to figure out if there are heightened patterns of criminal activity.”
Chan explained that several cities, such as San Jose and Boston, have implemented similar ordinances that require approval before police surveillance technology is used. She said this can help improve community-police relations.
“What you end up having is a much more sort of vigilant and thoughtful and engaged kind of conversation usually happening between public officials and public authorities, including law enforcement and the residents and community,” Chan said.
In June 2023, council members Christopher Evans and Grace Wilken proposed similar legislation that would have required council approval before police purchased surveillance technology, but the measure failed. Council members provided feedback to improve the legislation’s language and noted they would return to the topic in the future.
The ordinance notes that the use of surveillance technologies can have a negative impact on civil rights and liberties that are protected by the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and that decisions about such topics should be made with community input.
Several people who spoke at the meeting mentioned the urgency to pass this ordinance, noting president-elect Trump’s aggressive deportation stance. They said since Urbana is a sanctuary city, they want to ensure everyone’s rights are protected.
The ordinance will stay in the Committee of the Whole so that council members can discuss it further and make changes, if needed. The next meeting is scheduled for Jan. 6.