<div dir="ltr"><div>My <a href="http://www.smilepolitely.com/opinion/what_happened_on_new_years_night/">article</a> about what happened in Savoy on New Year's night when U of I police fired into a carload of black youth, shooting one of them in the back twice, nearly killing him. U of I police chief Jeff Christensen has still not explained how many bullets police fired that night. What are they hiding?<br><br></div>BD<br><br><div style id="stcpDiv"><div class="">
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<h1 class=""><a href="http://www.smilepolitely.com/opinion/what_happened_on_new_years_night/">What happened on New Year’s night?</a></h1>
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June 3, 2015 <span class="">/</span> 3:00pm <span class="">/</span>
<a href="http://www.smilepolitely.com/spusers/1416">By Brian Dolinar</a>
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<p>
On New Year’s night, a Black Lives Matter protest broke out in Savoy
after two University of Illinois police officers fired bullets into a
carload of African American youth, wounding two people, with one of them
shot twice in the back. This was not long after demonstrations had
erupted in Ferguson, New York, and across the country. A large crowd had
spilled out into the parking lot of an apartment complex following a
party. After witnessing police shoot at the car, they imitated those who
saw Mike Brown killed, putting their hands up and yelling, “Don’t
shoot.”</p>
<p>
When black youth are shooting at one another, it grabs media headlines.
But when black youth are shot by police there is not the same level of
concern. In fact, the University of Illinois Police Chief Jeff
Christensen never admitted that the two young men involved were struck
by police bullets, nor has he stated how many shots were fired that
night. No one in the media has cared to ask. Again, the message sent is
that black lives don’t matter.</p>
<p>
The police portrayed this is as a gunfight they had disrupted. Chief
Christensen said in a press release that it was “fortunate” that police
intervened “before anyone was killed.”</p>
<p>
Yet one person was almost killed―by police bullets. “I almost died,”
the young man told me in an interview. Fortunately, he lived to tell his
story.*</p>
<p>
Since Ferguson, there has been growing awareness about police
militarization. The New Year’s incident is proof it’s not just an issue
in big cities, but also in “liberal” college towns like
Champaign-Urbana. Police today are well-trained and heavily-equipped.
For one of the white officers, UIPD’s Douglas Beckman, this was not the
first time he had pulled his gun on black youth. In 2009, Beckman was
one of three officers who fired the fatal bullets killing Toto Kaiyewu.
Despite his training―or perhaps because of it―Beckman appears to have an
itchy trigger finger. </p>
<p>
<strong>How Many Bullets?</strong></p>
<p>
Police were responding to calls of what sounded like either fireworks
or guns being shot off on New Year’s Eve, both of which are illegal, yet
still occur. Savoy does not maintain its own police department and
contracts with the Sheriff’s office for patrol. But it was New Year’s
night and deputies were busy taking other calls. The Village at Colbert
Park apartments are mostly rented out by University of Illinois
students, which is why UIPD may have responded. A Tolono officer, Justin
Levingston, was one of the first to arrive on the scene.</p>
<p>
I have attempted to piece together the incident after filing public
records requests, reading press releases, attending a court hearing, and
speaking to the two young men involved.</p>
<p>
A crowd of approximately 80 youth had assembled in the parking lot
after 1 a.m.. A fight broke out between two black teens. One of them
pleaded guilty to pulling out a 99mm pistol to fend off a beating by
several individuals who had joined in. There was a loud shot, whether it
was from the fight or elsewhere is not clear. Police claim to have seen
the young man they call the “shooter” (although there is apparently no
evidence that he fired a gun) run back to a white Suburban. Two U of I
police officers, Douglas Beckman and Nathaniel Park, who were carrying
AR-15 rifles, aimed at the truck and shot multiple times.</p>
<p>
How many bullets police fired is still not known. According to
Sheriff’s Deputy Rich Ferriman, there were “several bullet holes all
down the passenger side of the white SUV.” Photos afterwards showed the
rear and side windows completely shot out.</p>
<p>
The young man who was hit twice claims he heard 16 shots fired.</p>
<p>
To date, I have been denied police reports written by the two officers
who fired shots, Beckman and Park, as well as the Tolono officer who
witnessed the entire event. Gunshot residue (GSR) tests were conducted
on the two individuals involved, but again I have been denied the
results. I attempted to reach UIPD Chief Christensen after the
investigation was completed, but my calls went unanswered.</p>
<p>
I have investigated other officer-involved shootings―Kiwane Carrington,
Toto Kaiyewu, Donnell Clemmons―and such refusal is, in my experience,
very unusual.</p>
<p>
<strong>A Chaotic Scene</strong></p>
<p>
As the crowd dispersed that night, others also rushed inside the
Suburban―there were four young black women, one of whom was the driver,
and another young man who had jumped into the back seat. The “shooter”
was on the passenger side, outside of the car. The driver “panicked” and
put the car in reverse. Without warning, the two police officers shot
indiscriminately into the moving car with several bystanders in the way.</p>
<p>
When police fired into the Suburban, the young man in the back seat
laid over two of the girls “in order to protect them.” He remembered
glass flying in the car. “They was trying to kill us,” he explained to
me. He was struck in the back by two police bullets. When one of the
bullets shattered his shoulder blade, his whole right side “went out.”
Formerly a high school basketball player, he now doesn’t have full
mobility in his right arm. </p>
<p>
He recalled lying wounded for several minutes while police retrieved a
bulletproof shield to approach him. One of the young women was yelling,
“Help, he is about to die!” He would spend the next four days at Carle
hospital recovering from surgery to remove the two bullets. </p>
<p>
U of I police officer Ryan Lepp heard over the radio that a person had
been wounded and “may not be breathing.” He was one of the first to
approach the young man. As he wrote in his report, he saw a gunshot
wound “in his upper back” and a “pool of blood” next to the car. When he
reached the young man, he noticed he had “trouble breathing.” Inside
the car, he discovered a small handgun with no bullets.</p>
<p>
<strong>Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!</strong></p>
<p>
After the crowd witnessed police unload their rifles into the Suburban,
they held an impromptu protest. An unnamed witness saw one of the young
women “standing over” her friend “screaming.” It was her screams that
had “attracted a large crowd to gather near the area.”</p>
<p>
According to U of I police Sgt. Joseph McCullough, “several members of
the crowd walked in front of me and other officers while putting their
hands in the air and saying, ‘Don’t shoot!’” Others had their phones out
“video recording officers’ reactions.”</p>
<p>
As UIPD officer Jason Bradley recounted, “The scene was very chaotic.”
Another UIPD officer, Anthony Carpenter, gives his account, “There was
also a large group of individuals interfering with officers by yelling,
video taping, and holding their hands up in the air taunting officers.”</p>
<p>
The second young man, the so-called “shooter,” was grazed by bullets in
his right arm. He was charged with aggravated discharge of a weapon,
and illegal possession of a firearm without a FOID card. Held on
$750,000 bond, he could not afford the $75,000 to get out, and so he
spent 97 days at the county jail. He hired a private attorney, who
negotiated a plea bargain, and he bailed out. On May 11, he was given 30
months of probation for simple possession of a gun.</p>
<p>
<strong>Who Is Officer Beckman?</strong></p>
<p>
Officer Beckman was also one of the officers that shot and killed 23
year-old Toto Kaiyewu who some might remember was wielding a machete
against police on Interstate 74.</p>
<p>
On April 6, 2009, Beckman left his campus patrol to join a car chase
that ensued after a Villa Grove cop racially profiled Kaiyewu. Beckman
had with him the police drug dog which he thought could be of help if
Kaiyewu tried to run on foot. He ended up being one of those who fired
the bullets killing Kaiyewu.</p>
<p>
While this may sound like a justifiable police homicide, it was later
found out that Kaiyewu had been suffering from mental illness.
Certainly, to Kaiyewu’s mother who travelled with her family from Texas
to speak out at a press conference, her son’s death was not an
inevitable outcome.</p>
<p>
I witnessed first-hand Beckman’s reckless behavior in my own
neighborhood. One night on February, 4, 2014, there were red-and-blue
lights outside my house in Urbana. I looked out my front door to see
what was going on. I saw officer Beckman pointing his gun at a small red
compact car with several black passengers inside. I recognized them
from the apartments across the street. Beckman was yelling at me “Get
back into your house.” It took me a moment to realize he was pointing in
my direction. If he would have fired, my porch could have been riddled
with bullets. I could have been hit by a stray bullet.</p>
<p>
According to reports I later obtained, Beckman had observed the red car
at the intersection of Lincoln and University. Recently rear-ended, the
car’s tail lights were broken and the trunk lid was bouncing up and
down. Beckman pulled behind the car and turned on his lights. The car
turned east at Main Street and continued, with Beckman now turning on
his siren.</p>
<p>
As Beckman wrote in his own report, the vehicle proceeded through the
residential neighborhood, “never exceeding 27 mph.” The driver turned
off Main Street and stopped in front of his aunt’s apartment, just
across from my house. His aunt had let him borrow the car. </p>
<p>
I watched out my front my front window as Beckman and other officers
conducted what police call a “felony stop.” They ordered the passengers
at gunpoint to exit the car, get face down on the pavement, and put
their arms behind their backs to be handcuffed. Inside the car were two
black men, ages 27 and 25, in the front seat. Alarmingly, in the back
seat there were also three small children obviously in the sights of
police guns. All this was over a traffic stop.</p>
<p>
After the incident, I went outside to ask for the officer’s name and
found out it was Beckman. When I read that the same officer Beckman was
involved in the New Year’s incident, I immediately recognized the name.</p>
<p>
While our State’s Attorney cleared both Beckman and Park of excessive
force in the New Year’s incident, we can recognize a pattern of police
violence. This is, in part, due to the growing militarization of police,
even on the campuses of state universities. Here, U of I police
participate in SWAT raids that will soon utilize an MRAP recently
acquired by the Sheriff. It is also due to the police fear of black
youth, who are heavily surveilled if they dare to enter campus grounds.
As activists Terry Townsend and Martel Miller exposed, local black youth
are chased off the property when they attempt to use the spaces of
higher learning.</p>
<p>
There are still many unanswered questions about what happened New
Year’s night. How many shots did police fire? Was the gun found in the
Suburban connected to the young man charged? Was the gun fired? At the
end of the day, we must ask, did police overreact? Did their involvement
help to deescalate or escalate the situation? This is not just a
theoretical question, but one of life and death.</p>
<p>
<em>*We have intentionally withheld the names of victims of police violence.</em></p></div> - See more at: <a href="http://www.smilepolitely.com/opinion/what_happened_on_new_years_night/#sthash.ovOT94xj.dpuf">http://www.smilepolitely.com/opinion/what_happened_on_new_years_night/#sthash.ovOT94xj.dpuf</a></div><br><br><div><div><div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.<br></div><div></div><a href="http://briandolinar.com" target="_blank">briandolinar.com</a><br></div></div>
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