[Imc] [Prairiegreens] Police Review Board(s)

Sat May 5 11:40:27 UTC 2001

Yes, since I'll be working as part of ISG to get that established, it's one of
my top priorities.

...the review board, that is, i can't make the others. =(

John Wason wrote:

> Well, so far no response to my post below except for Cope Cumpston's two
> e-mails and Laurel Prussing's info about the date and time of the NAACP
> meeting.  So I have some questions for all of you reading this:
>
> 1) Does anyone else want to be on the Greens' ad hoc committee on civilian
> police review boards?
>
> 2) Is anyone interested in attending the NAACP meeting on Thursday May 15,
> and perhaps speaking at it?
>
> 3) Can anyone tell me how to contact Tim Gibbs and Laura Anderson directly,
> to see if they want to tell their story to interested parties?
>
> 3) Is anyone interested in attending meetings of either the Champaign or the
> Urbana Human Rights Commissions?  Cope Cumpston told us when they meet next
> - next Monday and Wednesday evenings, respectively - but I haven't yet found
> out how often they meet, or any other details.
>
> 4) I got a fair amount of material today from the secretary of Champaign's
> City Manager, accumulated when the City of Champaign was considering this
> issue of civilian review of the police back in 1998-1999.  (The City of
> Champaign ended up passing a somewhat watered-down ordinance in 1999, which
> provides only for an annual Human Relations audit of statistics furnished by
> the Police Dept., but absolutely no civilian review of individual cases, let
> alone any actual citizen decision-making power.  The issue is a bit more
> complex than I thought it was.)  Does anyone have a computer with a scanner
> and some OCR software that I could use to scan all this stuff in, so that I
> can make it available in electronic form to anyone who is interested?  I'm
> willing to do the work of scanning it in, if someone will give me some brief
> instructions.
>
> Thanks in advance for all input and assistance,
>
> John Wason
>
> ****************************************************************************
>
> >Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 00:52:23 -0500
> >To: <prairiegreens at lists.groogroo.com>, <imc at lists.groogroo.com>
> >From: John Wason <jwason at prairienet.org>
> >Subject: Re: [Prairiegreens] 2 arrested for peaceably observing an arrest -
> hearing today!
> >
> >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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