Running Head: FEELING SAFE: IMAGINING ALTERNATIVES TO INCREASED POLICE SURVEILLANCE

Feeling Safe: Imagining Alternatives to Increased

Police Surveillance in Champaign-Urbana
Will Leone
SOCW 410
Carol Mauck








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FEELING SAFE: IMAGINING ALTERNATIVES TO INCREASED POLICE SURVEILLANCE
Feeling Safe: Imagining Alternatives to Increased Police Surveillance in Champaign-Urbana
As University of Illinois alumni Emily Waldron (2013) notes, since 2010, over 500
security cameras have been installed across the campus in keeping with its Security Camera
Policy. This policy tasks the Universitys Chief of Police with oversight of the centralized
security camera systems recordings, while Campus Information Technologies and Education
Services maintains the system software. Following a report of sexual assault at Forbes Hall on
November 8, 2010, the University began an enhanced security campaign that included the
introduction of 24/7 locking of dorm entrances, additional self-defense classes, increased student
dorm patrols and the installation of more security cameras. At the same time, and within a
week of the sexual assault, a coaliton of 25 faculty and student organizations published an open
letter to the University administration in response to an Illini Alert text message issued to all
students, faculty, and staff on the day of the incident. The signatories demanded alternative
means of communication that would avoid shoring up racialized stereotypes, pointing out the
way this texts racially specific and easily generalized incitement to dial 911 upon seeing a
black male, salt/pepper hair, 40-50 years old, 511, 170, med build would contribute to anti-
black criminalization. As Jeff Lowenstein (2014) has pointed out, the stakes of such
criminalization have been high: black people comprised a mere 16% of the population of
Champaign, but constituted 40% of those arrested and 90% of those fined for jaywalking 2010.
Moving into the present, Lowenstein locates stark similarities between Champaign
shortly after its police killed Kiwane Carrington in 2009 and the recent protests in Ferguson,
Missouri that followed after a police offer killed another unarmed black youth male, Michael
Brown, on August 9. Only one day earlier, the University Administration had submitted a
proposal to the Champaign City Council for the introduction of Campus Police surveillance
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FEELING SAFE: IMAGINING ALTERNATIVES TO INCREASED POLICE SURVEILLANCE
outside of campus proper. Specifically, the University had promised $25,000 in funding for four
surveillance cameras to be installed in pre-existing City traffic control equipment located along
the Campustown district of Green Street, claiming that this would enhance student safety given
evidence that many reported crimes took place along this high-traffic public space and that
camera footage had facilitated arrests in recent property and sexual assault crimes. The Council
voted in favor 7-2 to tentatively approve the Universitys proposal, which would cost the
government about $150 annually due to electric use, and will vote on a final agreement with the
University in an upcoming council meeting. As the Council itself indicated in stating their
reservations, the University will likely wish to continue its expansion of surveillance into non-
campus areas given that the Citys traffic system is already wired with fiber optics that could be
used to this end.
As is the case throughout the US, the University Campus Police are funded by the
University itself as well as through state and federal grants. For instance, Illinois House Bill
3911 would provide cameras to be used by these Campus Police to record their interactions with
the public on the condition that all fines be increased by $6 and that all revenue generated this
way be deposited into the fund supporting the grant. Assuming the Campus Police are correct in
correlating the use of the Administrations proposed surveillance cameras with reduced crime
and a higher rate of closed cases, the University can expect its police to generate increased
revenue for the University. Moreover, as was pointed out during the Councils study session,
some of the cameras can be positioned so as to record protests and other large scale special
events that take place in front of Swanlund Administration Building, the home of the
Chancellors Office. At least one council member, Marci Dodds, challenged this flagrant attempt
at suppressing dissent, as she put it (Lavito 2014). Dodds remarks appear well-placed given
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FEELING SAFE: IMAGINING ALTERNATIVES TO INCREASED POLICE SURVEILLANCE
that on August 1 a week before submitting its proposal to the Council Chancellor Wise took
the extraordinary step of de facto terminating Steve Salaitas job offer as a tenured professor of
the American Indian Studies Department. Once again animating the argument of student safety,
Wise issued an initial public open letter to the campus community declaring that her decision had
been entirely determined by Salaitas social media critiques of Israel. To date, resistance to this
tactic of suppressing dissent has taken the form of fourteen University departments that have
voted no confidence for the Chancellor, persistent student-faculty demonstrations and open
letters, and an academic boycott of the University by other academic institutions across and
beyond the US.
My response to the as-yet unfinalized agreement between the University and the City is
an attempt to read sideways across simultaneous and seemingly disconnected occurances, as
Jasbir Puar (2007) suggests we must to effectively challenge systemic violence. I recently
participated in similar work at a semi-structured campus disucssion event titled Black Lives
Matter: Ferguson and State Violence. Among the many viewpoints articulated was a reminder
that campus police were produced in the 1960s to silence the civil rights movement through anit-
black surveillance and violence and that it was not only possible to eliminate campus police,
but that such work has already been done elsewhere and perhaps should be done here as well. I
will not restate here the abundant evidence demonstrating the viability of police and prison
abolition in favor of anti-violent alternatives, as such work is being done by groups such as
Sylvia Rivera Law Project and Incite! That said, as a first step, I suggest immediately building
coalitons with and alongside existing organizations and institutions in opposition to the proposed
off-campus surveillance cameras, using civil disobedience if necessary.

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FEELING SAFE: IMAGINING ALTERNATIVES TO INCREASED POLICE SURVEILLANCE
REFERENCES
Campus Security Cameras. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2014, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=684iw5kS2PU
Champaign Center Partnership. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2014, from
http://www.champaigncenter.com/#!about/c30c
Champaign may add new security cameras to campus. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2014,
from http://www.dailyillini.com/news/article_59feeafe-280a-11e4-8c09-
0017a43b2370.html
Division of Public Safety. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2014, from
http://illinois.edu/lb/article/2668/45043
Lowenstein, J. K. (2014, August 21). In Champaign, Similarity and a Possible Way Forward for
Ferguson. Retrieved September 11, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-kelly-
lowenstein/in-champaign-similarity-a_b_5692130.html
U of I ratchets up security in wake of attacks. (2010, November 11). Retrieved September 11,
2014, from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-11/news/ct-met-u-of-i-safety-
20101111_1_campus-robin-kaler-security-cameras
UI wants cameras on city streets. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2014, from http://www.news-
gazette.com/news/local/2014-08-11/ui-wants-cameras-city-streets.html