After fatal shootings, Rantoul police recommended more training. They just sent one officer to a gun range

By Farrah Anderson for Invisible Institute and Illinois Public Media

After Rantoul’s first-ever fatal police shootings in 2023, the Rantoul Police Department conducted internal reviews of both incidents. 

In those internal reviews, the Use of Force Review Board — made up of different members in each incident — recommended further training for both the department and individual officers after absolving all but one officer of wrongdoing in both cases: the February 2023 shooting of 21-year-old Azaan Lee, and the June shooting of 18-year-old Jordan Richardson. 

The Rantoul Police Department’s Use of Force Review Board recommended several department-level trainings, including reality-based training under stress, “force-on-force” training, using control tactics from multiple positions and a “refresher” on the department’s use of force policy. 

However, Deputy Chief Justin Bouse confirmed the department has not implemented any of these trainings based on information obtained through open records requests from Invisible Institute and IPM News. 

The department has been exploring the possibility of implementing the trainings this spring, Bouse said.. But the recommendations are not binding, he noted. 

“Force on Force” training, as defined by the department, allows officers to respond to different scenarios in a controlled environment. At the RPD, this training involves officers shooting semi-automatic rifles and pistols with paint-filled bullets, which help simulate what interactions with armed community members might resemble.

Bouse said this training, in contrast to basic firearm training, can help officers better understand and prepare for what these scenarios will feel like in real life. 

It’s common practice for police departments to recommend these trainings after fatal shootings, said University of Texas at Austin sociologist Michael Sierra-Arévalo, who wrote “The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing” about police training, culture, and violence. But more often than not, those trainings aren’t feasible for small departments to implement, he said. 

“I don’t think there’s any department in the country that would say they don’t want to do those [trainings],” Sierra-Arévalo said. “So that as a recommendation for training strikes me as little more than a boilerplate wish list that you would see come out of the police academy.”

The department claimed they are still evaluating the cost of recommended trainings while working to “balance the need for comprehensive training with fiscal responsibility,” Bouse wrote in an emailed statement.

Farrah Anderson is an investigative reporting fellow with the Invisible Institute and Illinois Public Media and a journalism student at the University of Illinois.