[Imc] Tim and Laura Arrest

[Mike Lehman]

Vivek,
AFAIK, the Urbana police are as unsupervised as the others; they've just
been a little more circumspect about this sort of BS than the Champaign
cops. There have been a number of incidents over the years that should
remind us that oversight is a necessity for proper conduct. The most
infamous one was a certain ranking Urbana officer who pulled out his gun
at an official meeting of a citizen's group (NOT a review board) to
illustrate a point. The man was promoted and is still on the force.

With examples like that and the ever-aggressive Champaign cops getting
away with, well, let's call it what it is, murder (in at least one
recent infamous case) and roughing up little old ladies, it should come
as no surprise to anyone living in this county that there is a desperate
need for civilian review boards at all police departments, including the
county sheriff.

This doesn't even begin to address the subject of the secret police that
operate in this county and who get away with plenty, too. But if it's
secret from the public, how will anyone know what's going on? The Drug
War is a big reason for all this unsupervised hanky-panky and the sooner
it is ended, the sooner everyone can start really exercising the rights
we have, but rarely use, except for answers to government tests in
school. It's all just "academic" when it comes to civil rights in this
country these days. 

Then there is the abolishment by the Supreme Court of the Fourth
Amendment last week. I'm afraid we haven't seen anything yet, unless we
start acting to reverse this totalitarian trend.
Mike Lehman

Vivek Srikrishnan wrote:
> 
> One of my major priorities as Racial Profiling Director for ISG is going to
> be to get the Champaign and University police civilian review boards...I'm
> not sure what the Urbana police have in place right now for that, does
> anyone know?
>