GEO Statement on "Fire Finney" Campaign
The Graduate Employees’ Organization at UIUC (IFT/AFT Local 6300) calls for the immediate removal of Former Champaign Police Chief Robert T. Finney from Parkland College’s teaching staff. Finney is currently teaching classes on community policing to officers in training at Parkland, and we find this abhorrent. While Officer Finney was police chief, from 1993 to 2012, the Champaign Police Department was notoriously violent towards Black residents in Champaign County. Under Finney’s reign of terror, officers operated through intense racial profiling, pulling guns on and brutalizing unarmed Black people.
On October 9, 2009, Finney and Officer Dan Norbits were responsible for the murder of 15-year-old Kiwane Carrington. A Champaign Urbana (CU) Citizens for Peace and Justice (CUCPJ) report found that Finney contributed to the killing by failing to identify himself as a police officer, immediately drawing his gun, and announcing, “Stop or I will shoot you” upon arriving. In the aftermath of the murder, Finney continued to defend the narrative that Norbit’s weapon fired accidentally at close range, despite forensic evidence to the contrary. CUCPJ’s report also identified misconduct that spanned from failures in the Illinois State Police investigation, to the mishandling of evidence, to faulty findings from State’s Attorney Julia Rietz. The report demonstrates that misconduct was not exceptional to this case, but rather, was endemic to policing in Champaign.
Finney’s reign of terror was not limited to the murder of Kiwane Carrington. On March 30th, 2007, CPD Officers Justus Clinton, Andre Davis, and Shannon Bridges, who is responsible for hiring Finney at Parkland, brutalized 17-year old, Brian Chesley–he sustained injuries that hospitalized him. Officers Shannon Bridges and Andre Davis testified in court that they were ordered to target African American people, stop them randomly to check their IDs or run warrant checks. These overt and transparent acts of violence that took place under Finney’s jurisdiction and authority are horrific and completely unacceptable. Countless other acts of violence under Finney’s jurisdiction reveal these cases as the norm rather than the exception.
GEO stood in unwavering solidarity with the CU community opposed to Finney’s reign of terror in 2009, and we continue to do so now. Given his bloody history, Finney’s eligibility to teach classes surrounding policing must be revoked. As a labor union, we recognize the relationship between the lack of resources, like high quality jobs and accessible higher education, and overpolicing in CU. The resources currently being wasted on a racist, murderous officer should be invested in services that benefit Parkland workers and students and the CU community. We demand that Parkland President Tom Ramage immediately fire Finney and make the decision to invest in people, not police.
The Graduate Employees’ Organization, AFT/IFT Local 6300, AFL-CIO, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, represents approximately 2,700 Teaching and Graduate Assistants on the UIUC Campus. In November 2009 and in February 2018, over 1,000 GEO members and allies participated in a strike to secure a fair contract and more accessible UIUC campus. With an active presence in the community, the GEO continues to work for high-quality and accessible public education in Illinois.
For more information, please contact geo@uigeo.org. More information can also be found on GEO’s website at www.uiucgeo.org.
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