Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Discussion at Tuesday’s city council meeting of video showing police beating a domestic violence suspect over the weekend included criticism of the police chief. Ald. Roy Williams said it looks as if Joe Behl is picking and choosing which citizens the department is willing to meet with.

Williams: “When a group comes to me and says, the police chief won’t meet (with us) if XYZ is in the room, is that a situation that you’re going thru right now?”
Behl: “We’ve come to an agreement that we’re not going to meet with a certain particular group if there’s a particular person in the room, yeah.”
Williams: “Who is we?”
Behl: “Springfield Police Department.”
Williams: “Okay, so the department as a whole decided this?”
Behl: “I decided that for my staff, correct.”

The group is the Faith Coalition for the Common Good, and the person in question is Tiara Standage. Standage says an officer who choked her during a protest she organized a year ago is the same officer in Saturday’s video. She said the police department tried to coerce her to work for free in exchange for not pressing charges.

“They say, we’ve tried to work with her before,” Standage told aldermen Tuesday. What that really means is, they tried to use me. They tried to float a fake diversion program with no real reform behind it; a program that would rely on my free labor to make them look good. And when I stood here before you and said I would not do unpaid work for the police, that was not refusing to work with them. That was refusing to be exploited.”

Ald. Jennifer Notariano also criticized Behl, urging him to reconsider.

“We saw in that video that de-escalation is something that the Springfield Police Department needs to focus on,” she said to applause from the council chamber, “and completely writing someone off or counting them out is not a way to de-escalate tensions or disagreements or what have you.”

The Saturday incident, in which K’Shawn Rush – free on pretrial release then – allegedly beat a dog and tried to set it onto others, has resulted in charges that include aggravated battery to a police officer, domestic battery, and cruelty to animals.

Standage, founder of the not-for-profit Intricate Minds, is also a member of the Faith Coalition, which is hosting a town hall, “Dismantling Police Misconduct,” Monday, Sept 29, at Lincoln Library.