ABOVE: Former Danville Alderman Lloyd Randle (File Photo)

Former Danville Alderman Lloyd Randle has announced an additional community meeting at Laura Lee Fellowship House concerning complaints regarding traffic and pedestrian stops involving African American citizens in Danville. It will be 6 to 7:30 PM on Thursday, February 20th. A similar meeting, at that same location, was held this past October 7th.

Randle says a different representative of the Illinois ACLU will be present for the meeting. State ACLU Director of Communications Ed Yonka has attended such meetings on previous occasions.

Danville Police Chief Christopher Yates and Former Alderman Lloyd Randle speak during the last community meeting concerning traffic and pedestrian stops last fall.

Randle says the second major reason for this latest meeting is to explain an agreement he has reached with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office to hear complaints from Danville residents on this issue. Randle says the meeting will include an explanation of how that process will work. Randle maintains that compared to other subgroups, the amount of stops of African American residents in Danville is way too high for a community of Danville’s size.

AUDIO: There’s a process for everything like this, so we’ve been on this path; with the issue of disparity in traffic stops and pedestrian stops for a number of years now. So in that, we’ve been trying to reach out to every agency possible. We finally got the ear of the Attorney General’s Office. What we know is that we have an issue that needs to be addressed.

Randle says what is still needed is an independent scientific review of available data.

Danville’s Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr responded to the news of this community meeting with the following quote:

“It is incredibly disturbing that Mr. Randle continues using inaccurate data to mislead people. Doing so unfairly and unjustly maligns our hard-working police officers and our community as a whole. It also undermines the efforts we’ve made to build trust with our citizens, and lessens our ability to solve crimes.

The Laura Lee Fellowship House is located in Danville at 212 E. Williams St.