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This story is part of a partnership focusing on police misconduct in Champaign County between the Champaign-Urbana Civic Police Data Project of the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit public accountability journalism organization, and IPM Newsroom, which provides news about Illinois & in-depth reporting on Agriculture, Education, the Environment, Health, and Politics, powered by Illinois Public Media.
By Farrah Anderson
After two fatal officer-involved shootings in early 2023, the Rantoul Police Department conducted internal investigations into the use of force during those incidents.
Newly obtained documents show the department cleared three officers involved in the city’s first-ever fatal police shootings — including the two who pulled the trigger — and found one officer violated department policies.
In February, Officer Jose Aceves shot and killed 21-year-old Azaan Lee, and in June, Officer Jerry King shot and killed 18-year-old Jordan Richardson in the village of 12,000 north of Champaign-Urbana.
The internal investigations into the shootings occurred in the weeks following the incidents. But the findings were not made public on the department’s transparency site until Nov. 9 — 11 days after the Invisible Institute and Illinois Public Media requested the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The documents reveal that, while Rantoul police absolved both Aceves and King of wrongdoing, the department’s Use of Force Review Board made almost identical recommendations for additional department-level training in both cases.
The review board found that Officer Jerry King, who shot and killed Jordan Richardson during a traffic stop in June, acted within policy. Still, the board ordered that King receive both individual and department-level training.
Similarly, the review board did not find that Officer Aceves’ actions were out of policy when he shot and killed Azaan Lee, but recommended that he undergo additional firearm training. Aceves can be heard on video released by RPD saying that he shot Lee with Lee’s own weapon.
In separate preliminary investigations, which looked at whether King and Aceves committed crimes when they pulled the trigger, Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz concluded that the shootings of both Richardson and Lee were legally justifiable.
Rietz’s decisions have led to local pushback in recent months. The Party for Socialism and Liberation rallied outside the Champaign County Courthouse on Oct. 29 demanding an independent investigation of the fatal shootings, citing a distrust in the ability of law enforcement to police themselves.
At the protest, organizers said they were distrustful of Rietz because of her long-standing reputation for not finding police guilty of wrongdoing.