Chelsey Farley of Springfield remains critically injured as a result of the crash with now-retired SPD Sergeant Michael Egan. Her family faces severe medical expenses. Those who wish to donate to support Chelsey’s recovery can do so here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-chelsey-farleys-medical
Grief and suspicion were already surging through the Springfield community in the week following the disastrous proposal of a “public camping” ban — well before police and city officials allegedly attempted to protect a retiring police sergeant who near-fatally crashed into civilians on his final day at the Springfield Police Department.
At the September 3 Springfield City Council, Police Chief Ken Scarlette gave his assurances to a skeptical public that, had the ordinance passed, the Springfield Police Department did not intend to use it to “handcuff” the unhoused population of the City. Scarlette took that opportunity to restate recent promises to the community that his office’s priority is de-escalation and safety.
Chief Scarlette’s September 3 speech came at a time where many community members were warning of what they feared was unprofessional, dangerous, or even outright criminal behavior by the SPD; videos circulating on social media raised alarm even among Springfield alderpeople about the conduct of the City’s law enforcement, citing the recent hospitalizations of Ardell Hampton Jr. and Jaylin Netters following arrests which some members of the City Council worried were excessive. Netters was wounded when an SPD K9 unit bit him while he was restrained; Hampton’s parents told the City that their son was afraid to leave his home after being repeatedly targeted by traffic units.
The September 3 speech also came at a time where, as members of the community recalled throughout the “public camping” ban saga, alderpeople such as Ralph Hanauer of Ward 10 were complaining about the police being overburdened by calls to late-night clubs and bars in Downtown. Public speakers questioned the wisdom of adding “social worker” and “crisis management” to the list of duties to be executed by a police force which reportedly struggled at night to deploy more than one officer per ward outside the Downtown area.
Community resources such as Continuum of Care warned City officials on several occasions that the police were, from their perspective, being asked to do too much too far beyond their purview even before the “public camping” ordinance appeared over Labor Day weekend. When that ordinance emerged without the input of those community resources, members of the public again expressed dismay, arguing throughout a nearly 5 hour-long session of City Council that rushing the ordinance to emergency passage on a 3-day weekend was not so much in ignorance of the advice of local experts as it was in contempt of them and the public at large.
Thus the relationship between the City and its residents was already strained when on the night of Thursday September 5 at 10:02 PM SPD Sergeant Michael Egan near-fatally collided with a motorcycle carrying Springfield residents Trevor Hopkins and Chelsey Farley. Michael Egan has since been arrested by the Illinois State Police and charged with Aggravated Driving Under the Influence Causing Great Bodily Harm, but not before the City released multiple conflicting statements about the nature of that crash, allegedly suppressing facts about the case and ignoring the family of the victims.
By Saturday the 7th video taken by witnesses at the scene of the crime was circulating showing SPD first responders “helping” Egan, ignoring obvious symptoms of intoxication but yet also attending to Egan at the scene for more than 6 hours, allowing him to freely wander the crash site with unsteady legs, receive refreshments, and even relieve his bladder in open view of the public.
SPD, witnesses say, declined to test Egan’s blood alcohol content upon arriving at the scene but did draw blood from the severely injured motorcyclists Hopkins and Farley in order to conduct a field sobriety test, prior to their evacuation by emergency medical teams.
Then on Monday the 9th a protest outside City offices against the misconduct at the crash site culminated in police battering demonstrators with riot shields, targeting organizers and jeering at protestors from inside of a locked public building. That same day, 4 days after the crash, the Illinois State Police announced the charges against the now-retired Egan, who was released to the public after his arraignment. The arrest did nothing to quiet the protests, nor did the seizing and arrest of activist Brandon Dorr and Intricate Minds Executive Director Tiara Standage at the protests.
Nor did the sudden announcement on Tuesday morning that Mayor Misty Buscher and Alderwoman Lakeisha Purchase, who originally sponsored the “public camping” ban, were seeking to withdraw the proposal. By then some members of the community had grown so cynical that they wondered, as one person in the community posed to WMAY: “Did the city pull the ordinance to distract from [the crash]?”
Yet later at that evening’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Ward 1 Alderman Chuck Redpath prompted cries of complaint from the audience when he moved to ignore the City’s standard procedure and push registered public comment on the now-defunct “public camping” ordinance to the end of the meeting after all other business. When all but Aldermen Redpath and Hanauer voted to allow the public comment in keeping with practices, the crowd erupted in laughter. An agitated Alderman Hanauer then initiated an argument with an audience member, Evan Brown, drawing in bickering from Redpath and additional members of the public before the evening’s Committee Chairman, Larry Rockford of Ward 4, was able to calm the room.
When speaking about the police, the crash, and the overall attitude of the City towards the many recent controversies, Evan Brown and others highlighted the confrontation with Hanauer and Redpath; Brown deemed it “childish and unprofessional.” The recent behavior of City officials, he said, was only “further decaying the public trust.”
Evan Brown, Ken Pacha, and many others spoke to definitive experiences with the Springfield Police Department which colored their relationship with law enforcement.
In particular, Ken Pacha, a local journalist, offered a reminder of controversies at the SPD over the last two decades, including the framing of Renatta Frazier, as well as the Shredgate scandal, and the “Hooked on Ebonics” T-shirt worn by former Deputy Chief of Police Cliff Buscher — brother in-law of Mayor Misty Buscher.
“The history of this city’s disgusting with the police department,” said Pacha. “The reality is, what I saw on the video from the Egan incident, was egregious favoritism. Reality is, they could have sent out a community representative to speak with the assembled protestors, to share that commonality of disgust, and instead they chose to attack us.
“They had the chance to de-escalate. They didn’t attempt to calm the crowd, and they responded with aggression and force — from their attacks on Jaylin Netters with a police dog, to the assault of the jump-out boys on Ardell Hampton Jr., to shooting a man in the back as he ran away, to the county coming to an unincorporated part of our city and murdering Sonya Massey in her own home. We as a community don’t feel safe from the police, and the violence they’re allowed to visit upon us at will for decades.
“This is the same PD we want interacting with the unhoused? I mean, that’s the same PD we want to keep giving more money instead of mental health counseling services, instead of outreach for the unhoused, or instead of, let’s be honest, the easiest solution to someone not having a place to live: give them one.”
These were sentiments completely unmoved after Chief Scarlette once again offered a speech early in the Committee’s meeting, expressing remorse for the conduct of Egan and the several officers who responded to the scene. In that speech Chief Scarlette apologized to the city and to the families of the victims, condemned Michael Egan for derelicting his oath, accepted full responsibility, and promised transparency to Chelsey Farley’s family in investigating the misconduct of his department on Thursday.
Caitlyn Weiss, sister of Chelsey Farley, did however express gratitude to the Chief of Police: “Chief Scarlette and Deputy Chief Dodds have shown me compassion, have shown my family compassion by standing up here and doing all we asked them, which was telling us they’re going to hold them accountable. And now that still has to happen, but they did the right thing.”
Of Mayor Buscher’s response to the catastrophe, however, Caitlyn said, “It was so much, too little, too late.
“You hugged me when you came in,” she said to the Mayor, who watched in silence, “so that three times throughout the meeting you could say, ‘I hugged you, because I care. I’m that type of person.’”
The Mayor’s office, as Caitlyn and others pointed out, did not refer to Trevor Hopkins by name: “I’m sure it’s because you hadn’t contacted them,” mused Caitlyn, “Like you didn’t contact me. I had to get the meetings with all of you — I set these up myself for my baby sister, because she can’t speak and she can’t breathe on her own right now.
“The more that these situations happen, the more the public is gonna be outraged,” she warned. “The Mayor and the Chief and everybody want our family to be a good representation of how they’ve bridged a gap in the community, and [Scarlette] is trying to… but guess who’s above him: the Mayor. She’s not bridging anything around here. Not at all.”
Caitlyn Weiss continued, “I had an extra sonogram since I’m pregnant and I had to go today to make sure everything’s okay, because this stress has been insane at the hands of a ‘retired’ officer. But the point is, it’s all the officers, because we wouldn’t have this big situation, the videos online and everything that you know is going on in the news, without the situation at the scene. Everyone wants to minimize and say ‘He’s been arrested, it wouldn’t have changed things.’ And let me tell you, it would have changed me and my father, watching them smile. They knew that they were on video and they were looking right at it. They let him walk around. Would you or I be put in a cop car instead of bouncing around the scene and in and out of your vehicle tampering with evidence?
“The conduct of the Springfield Police before it was handed to the Illinois State Police is egregious. The scene is insane to watch with this condition my sister was in on the ground. There’s a witness who saw every last thing of it who’s more torn up than my family because the state he watched two people be in. I could guess he thought she was dead — but she’s not gonna die. And now this is gonna come out, and it’s going to be more and more and more. And because of the way that they wanted to immediately cover it up – and that is so obvious – I can’t condemn the protestors that you wanted to say yesterday are violent, and that there’s a separation. Because there’s unfortunately not. The way that nobody’s transparent, the way that you don’t want to speak to your community, is why there are people who are peaceful protestors.”
“We need accountability, and there absolutely needs to be reform[…] I believe in Chief Scarlette at this moment, so he has time to keep that. I absolutely don’t believe in our mayor.”
Later in the meeting, a bruised, wounded, heavily bandaged Trevor Hopkins, having been cleared by the hospital, made an appearance to speak.
“I may be here,” he said, “But Chelsey’s not. And that’s the problem.
“I feel as if, if it was me in those shoes, I would have been arrested immediately,” observed Trevor. “I would like to know an answer soon as to what you guys truly think is the right route from here – because right now it’s not working.”
But by the point Trevor Hopkins stood to speak, Aldermen Hanauer and Redpath were not available to answer or at least listen, as they had already left amid the citizens’ addresses to the Committee of the Whole.
“I respect all of you that stayed,” said Ward 3 resident Bradley Russell. “Why couldn’t they? You guys are here for us, right? Why can’t you stay here for the entire meeting?
“Listen to us,” he pleaded with the City, “not just the cops, not just the fire department — we are the citizens. Listen to us.”
“Please listen to us”: Springfield community members declare the City has broken public trust
Grief and suspicion were already surging through the Springfield community in the week following the disastrous proposal of a “public camping” ban — well before police and city officials allegedly attempted to protect a retiring police sergeant who near-fatally crashed into civilians on his final day at the Springfield Police Department.
At the September 3 Springfield City Council, Police Chief Ken Scarlette gave his assurances to a skeptical public that, had the ordinance passed, the Springfield Police Department did not intend to use it to “handcuff” the unhoused population of the City. Scarlette took that opportunity to restate recent promises to the community that his office’s priority is de-escalation and safety.
Chief Scarlette’s September 3 speech came at a time where many community members were warning of what they feared was unprofessional, dangerous, or even outright criminal behavior by the SPD; videos circulating on social media raised alarm even among Springfield alderpeople about the conduct of the City’s law enforcement, citing the recent hospitalizations of Ardell Hampton Jr. and Jaylin Netters following arrests which some members of the City Council worried were excessive. Netters was wounded when an SPD K9 unit bit him while he was restrained; Hampton’s parents told the City that their son was afraid to leave his home after being repeatedly targeted by traffic units.
The September 3 speech also came at a time where, as members of the community recalled throughout the “public camping” ban saga, alderpeople such as Ralph Hanauer of Ward 10 were complaining about the police being overburdened by calls to late-night clubs and bars in Downtown. Public speakers questioned the wisdom of adding “social worker” and “crisis management” to the list of duties to be executed by a police force which reportedly struggled at night to deploy more than one officer per ward outside the Downtown area.
Community resources such as Continuum of Care warned City officials on several occasions that the police were, from their perspective, being asked to do too much too far beyond their purview even before the “public camping” ordinance appeared over Labor Day weekend. When that ordinance emerged without the input of those community resources, members of the public again expressed dismay, arguing throughout a nearly 5 hour-long session of City Council that rushing the ordinance to emergency passage on a 3-day weekend was not so much in ignorance of the advice of local experts as it was in contempt of them and the public at large.
Thus the relationship between the City and its residents was already strained when on the night of Thursday September 5 at 10:02 PM SPD Sergeant Michael Egan near-fatally collided with a motorcycle carrying Springfield residents Trevor Hopkins and Chelsey Farley. Michael Egan has since been arrested by the Illinois State Police and charged with Aggravated Driving Under the Influence Causing Great Bodily Harm, but not before the City released multiple conflicting statements about the nature of that crash, allegedly suppressing facts about the case and ignoring the family of the victims.
By Saturday the 7th video taken by witnesses at the scene of the crime was circulating showing SPD first responders “helping” Egan, ignoring obvious symptoms of intoxication but yet also attending to Egan at the scene for more than 6 hours, allowing him to freely wander the crash site with unsteady legs, receive refreshments, and even relieve his bladder in open view of the public.
SPD, witnesses say, declined to test Egan’s blood alcohol content upon arriving at the scene but did draw blood from the severely injured motorcyclists Hopkins and Farley in order to conduct a field sobriety test, prior to their evacuation by emergency medical teams.
Then on Monday the 9th a protest outside City offices against the misconduct at the crash site culminated in police battering demonstrators with riot shields, targeting organizers and jeering at protestors from inside of a locked public building. That same day, 4 days after the crash, the Illinois State Police announced the charges against the now-retired Egan, who was released to the public after his arraignment. The arrest did nothing to quiet the protests, nor did the seizing and arrest of activist Brandon Dorr and Intricate Minds Executive Director Tiara Standage at the protests.
Nor did the sudden announcement on Tuesday morning that Mayor Misty Buscher and Alderwoman Lakeisha Purchase, who originally sponsored the “public camping” ban, were seeking to withdraw the proposal. By then some members of the community had grown so cynical that they wondered, as one person in the community posed to WMAY: “Did the city pull the ordinance to distract from [the crash]?”
Yet later at that evening’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Ward 1 Alderman Chuck Redpath prompted cries of complaint from the audience when he moved to ignore the City’s standard procedure and push registered public comment on the now-defunct “public camping” ordinance to the end of the meeting after all other business. When all but Aldermen Redpath and Hanauer voted to allow the public comment in keeping with practices, the crowd erupted in laughter. An agitated Alderman Hanauer then initiated an argument with an audience member, Evan Brown, drawing in bickering from Redpath and additional members of the public before the evening’s Committee Chairman, Larry Rockford of Ward 4, was able to calm the room.
When speaking about the police, the crash, and the overall attitude of the City towards the many recent controversies, Evan Brown and others highlighted the confrontation with Hanauer and Redpath; Brown deemed it “childish and unprofessional.” The recent behavior of City officials, he said, was only “further decaying the public trust.”
Evan Brown, Ken Pacha, and many others spoke to definitive experiences with the Springfield Police Department which colored their relationship with law enforcement.
In particular, Ken Pacha, a local journalist, offered a reminder of controversies at the SPD over the last two decades, including the framing of Renatta Frazier, as well as the Shredgate scandal, and the “Hooked on Ebonics” T-shirt worn by former Deputy Chief of Police Cliff Buscher — brother in-law of Mayor Misty Buscher.
“The history of this city’s disgusting with the police department,” said Pacha. “The reality is, what I saw on the video from the Egan incident, was egregious favoritism. Reality is, they could have sent out a community representative to speak with the assembled protestors, to share that commonality of disgust, and instead they chose to attack us.
“They had the chance to de-escalate. They didn’t attempt to calm the crowd, and they responded with aggression and force — from their attacks on Jaylin Netters with a police dog, to the assault of the jump-out boys on Ardell Hampton Jr., to shooting a man in the back as he ran away, to the county coming to an unincorporated part of our city and murdering Sonya Massey in her own home. We as a community don’t feel safe from the police, and the violence they’re allowed to visit upon us at will for decades.
“This is the same PD we want interacting with the unhoused? I mean, that’s the same PD we want to keep giving more money instead of mental health counseling services, instead of outreach for the unhoused, or instead of, let’s be honest, the easiest solution to someone not having a place to live: give them one.”
These were sentiments completely unmoved after Chief Scarlette once again offered a speech early in the Committee’s meeting, expressing remorse for the conduct of Egan and the several officers who responded to the scene. In that speech Chief Scarlette apologized to the city and to the families of the victims, condemned Michael Egan for derelicting his oath, accepted full responsibility, and promised transparency to Chelsey Farley’s family in investigating the misconduct of his department on Thursday.
Caitlyn Weiss, sister of Chelsey Farley, did however express gratitude to the Chief of Police: “Chief Scarlette and Deputy Chief Dodds have shown me compassion, have shown my family compassion by standing up here and doing all we asked them, which was telling us they’re going to hold them accountable. And now that still has to happen, but they did the right thing.”
Of Mayor Buscher’s response to the catastrophe, however, Caitlyn said, “It was so much, too little, too late.
“You hugged me when you came in,” she said to the Mayor, who watched in silence, “so that three times throughout the meeting you could say, ‘I hugged you, because I care. I’m that type of person.’”
The Mayor’s office, as Caitlyn and others pointed out, did not refer to Trevor Hopkins by name: “I’m sure it’s because you hadn’t contacted them,” mused Caitlyn, “Like you didn’t contact me. I had to get the meetings with all of you — I set these up myself for my baby sister, because she can’t speak and she can’t breathe on her own right now.
“The more that these situations happen, the more the public is gonna be outraged,” she warned. “The Mayor and the Chief and everybody want our family to be a good representation of how they’ve bridged a gap in the community, and [Scarlette] is trying to… but guess who’s above him: the Mayor. She’s not bridging anything around here. Not at all.”
Caitlyn Weiss continued, “I had an extra sonogram since I’m pregnant and I had to go today to make sure everything’s okay, because this stress has been insane at the hands of a ‘retired’ officer. But the point is, it’s all the officers, because we wouldn’t have this big situation, the videos online and everything that you know is going on in the news, without the situation at the scene. Everyone wants to minimize and say ‘He’s been arrested, it wouldn’t have changed things.’ And let me tell you, it would have changed me and my father, watching them smile. They knew that they were on video and they were looking right at it. They let him walk around. Would you or I be put in a cop car instead of bouncing around the scene and in and out of your vehicle tampering with evidence?
“The conduct of the Springfield Police before it was handed to the Illinois State Police is egregious. The scene is insane to watch with this condition my sister was in on the ground. There’s a witness who saw every last thing of it who’s more torn up than my family because the state he watched two people be in. I could guess he thought she was dead — but she’s not gonna die. And now this is gonna come out, and it’s going to be more and more and more. And because of the way that they wanted to immediately cover it up – and that is so obvious – I can’t condemn the protestors that you wanted to say yesterday are violent, and that there’s a separation. Because there’s unfortunately not. The way that nobody’s transparent, the way that you don’t want to speak to your community, is why there are people who are peaceful protestors.”
“We need accountability, and there absolutely needs to be reform[…] I believe in Chief Scarlette at this moment, so he has time to keep that. I absolutely don’t believe in our mayor.”
Later in the meeting, a bruised, wounded, heavily bandaged Trevor Hopkins, having been cleared by the hospital, made an appearance to speak.
“I may be here,” he said, “But Chelsey’s not. And that’s the problem.
“I feel as if, if it was me in those shoes, I would have been arrested immediately,” observed Trevor. “I would like to know an answer soon as to what you guys truly think is the right route from here – because right now it’s not working.”
But by the point Trevor Hopkins stood to speak, Aldermen Hanauer and Redpath were not available to answer or at least listen, as they had already left amid the citizens’ addresses to the Committee of the Whole.
“I respect all of you that stayed,” said Ward 3 resident Bradley Russell. “Why couldn’t they? You guys are here for us, right? Why can’t you stay here for the entire meeting?
“Listen to us,” he pleaded with the City, “not just the cops, not just the fire department — we are the citizens. Listen to us.”
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