[Imc] Re: [Prairiegreens] 2 arrested for peaceably observing anarrest - hearing today!

[Cope Cumpston]

I'll be following this and will be involved as a member of the Urbana Human
Relations Commission. In January Myrna Golden, another commissioner, and I met
with Chief Adair to talk over general community concerns about racial profiling
and use of the dept. dog. At the urging of the HRC the Urbana police instituted
a system of recording all police stops so that we could begin to compile data
to respond to community concerns.

Today and tomorrow I'll be at the state-wide Human Relations Commission meeting
in Matteson and will do some scouting around about other communities that have
worked on citizen review boards.

Cleveland Jefferson has been pushing this idea for quite a while; the only
overt resistance I've heard was from Bill Becker, who is no longer in the
picture as Champaign Police Chief.

Cope Cumpston


John Wason wrote:

> At 11:04 AM 05/02/2001 -0500, Danielle Chynoweth wrote:
>
> >Two Urbana residents were arrested yesterday for observing Urbana police
> >make an arrest.  According to the two arrested, they were 15 feet away and
> >were arrested for "obstructing a police officer."
> >
> >Those arrested were Tim Gibbs and Laura Anderson who attend the School for
> >Designing a Society.  They were outside the schoolhouse when they observed
> >the arrest.
> >
> >They will have a hearing today, Wednesday at 1:30 PM in Courtroom F in the
> >county courthouse building.
> >
> >People are encouraged to attend the hearing to show support for peaceful,
> >citizen observations of arrests.
> >
> >This action feeds into recent, local arguments for establishing a civilian
> >police review board in both Champaign and Urbana.
> >
> >
> >-- danielle chynoweth
> >   urbana independent media center
> >   urbana.indymedia.org
>
> I'd like to follow up on this a bit.  Tim and Laura had been held in jail
> most of the night.  About 30 of us local "activists", give or take, showed
> up at the Courthouse today for this hearing, which was in fact an
> arraignment.  There were a couple of Greens, as well as people from the IMC,
> the School for Designing a Society, and others, including our intrepid
> Urbana City Council members Danielle Chynoweth and, later, Laura Huth.
> Please forgive me if I'm leaving anyone out.  Only five of our number were
> allowed into arraignment court, and our group was chased out of the building
> and even off the ourside steps by the courthouse gendarmes following the
> arraignment.  I was reminded of Dave Johnson's hearing, in that the
> courthouse officials didn't seem to know what to do with all of us.
>
> I don't want to steal anyone's thunder in reporting the details of this
> story, especially since I don't know all the details.  A couple of folks
> from the IMC - Sevilla and Ben Emerick, I think - will be writing up the
> story for dissemination by the IMC and possible publication in the Octopus.
> Tim and Laura have several legal alternatives, and they will have to decide
> what they want to do, hopefully with our support no matter what they decide.
>
> As Danielle says above, this ties in with the Greens' initiative to attempt
> to bring about civilian police review boards in Urbana, Champaign, and the
> County.  Among many other things we accomplished Tuesday at our meeting, we
> Greens formed three ad hoc committees, dealing with redistricting, creation
> of municipal utilities, and creation of civilian police review boards.  So
> far myself, Laurel Prussing, Lance Graves, and Geoff Robinson are on the ad
> hoc committee re police review boards, and we're looking for more people who
> might be interested in working on that issue, so if any of you reading this
> is interested, please let me or one of us know.
>
> Also, Laurel, as a member of the NAACP, has taken the liberty of getting us
> Greens on the agenda of the May NAACP meeting to dicuss the police review
> board issue with that group. It's near the end of the month; Laurel will
> e-mail us details as to the date, time, and place of the meeting.  I would
> encourage other interested Greens to attend, though I'm not sure how many of
> us in attendance would be optimum.  In my own mind, we want to show the
> members of the NAACP that we have some degree of support in the community,
> which translates into numbers.  At the same time, and again in my own mind,
> we don't want to overwhelm them.  They're the experts on police oppression,
> not we, though we've just learned a bit more about it in the persons of Tim
> and Laura.  It might be desirable for Tim and/or Laura to relate their
> experience to the members of the NAACP, if they so desire.  Other than that,
> my own inclination is to make it clear that we're not the experts, but that
> we want to offer our support and assistance to the NAACP and to other
> interested constituencies in the community in making the civilian police
> review boards happen.
>
> I encourage as much feedback and participation on this issue as possible.
> The time is ripe, and I urge us to proceed with, in the words of the U.S.
> Supreme Court in a slightly different context, "all deliberate speed."
>
> John
>
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--
Copenhaver Cumpston
 Art Director
University of Illinois Press
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