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Urbana council debates surveillance ordinance language after police, review boards weigh in
Summary
Council heard competing input on a draft surveillance-technology ordinance: commissioners and legal staff asked to protect residents and require documentation before destroying unapproved data; police urged narrow operational exceptions for exigent use, patches and pending approvals to avoid harms to investigations.
City attorneys, volunteer oversight bodies and the Urbana Police Department spent the Committee of the Whole meeting testing language in a proposed surveillance-technology ordinance that would set approval, reporting and deletion rules for city use of surveillance tools.
"The policy intent is to protect residents from the use of surveillance technology and the data that that would be gathered, with unapproved technologies to the extent that we can," said City Attorney Matt Brushley during a review of revised language intended to prohibit use and disclosure of improperly collected data while adding a pause for legal review when footage may be relevant to prosecution.
Representatives of the Human Rights Commission and the Civilian Police Review Board said they…
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