Sixteen-year-old DJ Cooper said the t-shirts he and his friends wear while walking around the Champaign-Urbana area have caused him to be stopped by the police more times than he can count.

The t-shirts do not say anything obscene. In fact, they are plain white. Just a style people his age like to wear, Cooper said. But Cooper has two additional characteristics he believes sparks the attention from police – he is young and he is black.

“No matter where we’re going, to play basketball or whatever, if they see us, four or five people in white t-shirts, (the police assume) we’re automatically gang-banging. They stop us and ask us questions, take our names and stuff like that,” he said.

Cooper said the officers ask their questions in a respectful manner, but at the same time, he feels disrespected that an officer would take down his name for what appears to him to be no reason.

It was this feeling of disrespect that Champaign men Martel Miller and Patrick Thompson wanted to capture in a documentary they began filming this summer.

Miller, 43, and his cousin, Thompson, 35, took a video camera to the streets of Champaign to produce Citizen Watch, a documentary about the relationship between local police and the community.

The documentary will air tonight on UPTV at 8 p.m.

In response to the audio recording of the police for the documentary, Miller was charged with three counts of eavesdropping, which were dropped Sept. 24, and Thompson was charged with one count, which has not been dropped.

Joan Walls, assistant to Chief of Police R. T. Finney, said she thinks things ended with Miller on a positive note.

“It was Martel who stood up and wanted to talk with the chief, and the chief was willing to sit down and come to the table and it ended up being a very positive end to that story,” she said.

Although Miller said Finney has been “very supportive,” the ending was not as positive for him.

“The thing I don’t really like is that the police department – from the lieutenants, to the chief, to the street officers – I felt that they were really working with us, and then I come to find out that they were investigating us to arrest us,” Miller said.

“And that is not how you build a community relationship. If they felt we were doing something wrong, they could have brought us in and discussed it. All this could have been avoided,” he said.

Walls said Miller and Thompson interfered with police officers trying to do their jobs because they were taping victims who have the right to have a conversation with an officer about what happened to them, she said.

“We have a right to protect citizens, we have a right to protect victims who are confiding in officers,” Walls said.

Miller said this is an example of how “our justice department picks and chooses how they want to use the law” because Miller and Thompson were charged with the same act of eavesdropping on the same day, yet Thompson is still being charged.

Thompson is currently being held at the Champaign County jail for an unrelated charge of home invasion, intimidation, unlawful restraint and criminal sexual abuse. He is accused of forcing his way into a woman’s apartment, pushing her onto the bed, holding her down and fondling her breasts.

Thompson’s wife, Maria, said the charge is completely out of character for him and a full investigation needs to be done. She urges members of the community to attend Thompson’s next court date in support on Oct. 27 at 1:30 p.m.

“It doesn’t make sense that he would do something like this because of what he’s trying to accomplish,” Maria Thompson said.

Thompson is the founding member and president of Visionaries Educating Youth and Adults (VEYA). Maria Thompson said his long-term goal for VEYA is to create a tutoring and mentoring program for at-risk youths.

Maria Thompson said her husband first had the idea for the organization close to a decade ago as he was being sentenced to eight years in prison. She said the judge told her husband that he could either be part of the problem or part of the solution. Those words inspired him to start VEYA.

“Why he lives and breathes today is to bring a change. He wants to bring a solution to the problems,” Miller said. “He got me thinking the way I’m thinking. I’ve got kids – four biological, two stepsons. I’m trying to make a better life for them. Really, a better life for the whole community.”

Miller and Thompson know the statistics are against young black males. Blacks make up 39.2 percent of jails, though they only make up 12.7 percent of the entire U.S. population, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Miller believes a major problem is that many kids do not find direction in life until they are older. Yet by that point, it is already too late for many young adults with felony charges.

“They’ve only lived a quarter of their life and they’ve got a brand on them now for the rest of their lives. It’s like they’re not even really given a chance,” Miller said.

Miller and Thompson are working to find mentors and tutors for community youth like Cooper, who currently attends the Pavilion Foundation School in Champaign. The school’s principal, Fred Kubicek, said the school is designed for students with “severe and profound social or emotional disorders and learning disabilities.” At the age of 14, Cooper was charged and convicted for a felony. He had gone joy riding in his grandmother’s car with his friends and was later arrested by police.

In Cooper’s eyes, the Pavilion Foundation School is a “last-resort … made for people with mental behaviors” – a setting he does not want to be in.

He said this has made him feel like dropping out and has heard comments like “it’s either this school or the joint.”

With the help of VEYA, Cooper is trying to break the cycle he has found himself in.

“I want to get my education. I want to go (to) college. I want to see that for a lot of black kids because they like to drop out and I don’t want to be one of those people.”

Nicole Lamers, a member of VEYA, said the Champaign Police Department can help by “just coming out to play basketball with the youth, get to know their names. Try to understand them, be willing to listen.”

Walls, who helps organize programs where community members and officers can interact, said that such programs do exist but that citizens need to want to participate.

On Oct. 7, the police department partnered with the Champaign Park District to host an event at the Arrowhead Lanes where youths and their families bowled with police officers.

“So it’s not that these officers are waiting back to be called to the scene. They are creating programs that allow them to be able to interact in positive settings,” Walls said.

Miller believes the documentary has accomplished what he hoped: a dialogue between the police department and the community.

“I’m not anti-police, but we really need to work on the police department in our community,” Miller said.

Miller said he was motivated to film the documentary because he has seen police treat people differently because of their race.

“I have watched about 20 traffic stops and I have watched the young African-American male go into arrest instead of given tickets,” Miller said.

In contrast, Miller said he saw two white people being pulled over who were not asked for driver’s licenses or insurance cards by local police.

“And to me that’s just not right,” he said.

Champaign police officer Jeff Munds said he knows some members of the community do not trust the police and said there are no quick fixes or easy answers.

“My suggestion for any citizen is that you demand that the police that work in your area have an open mind,” he said. “The challenge to citizens is to use that same demand on yourselves when you talk and interact with police officers.”

Miller said that despite all that has happened, he plans to continue making documentaries.

“Things happened, so we had to rush our documentary out. A lot of things we wanted to put in there didn’t make it,” he said. “We hope to do another documentary – we are going to do another documentary.”