[Peace-discuss] Important from the police

[Kranich, Kimberlie]

Hi, all.

Lt. Gallo from the Champaign Police Department. We talked about two
important things:

1) the shoving incident against one of us on Feb. 15th and 2) last week's
demonstration.

1) According to Lt. Gallo, last Saturday the Champaign City Manager drove by
our protest and saw more than one of us in the "middle of the road."  Lt.
Gallo said that it appears that we are in violation of our agreement with
the police.

I told him that we were very close to drafting "preferred guidelines" for
demonstrating and that once we did, we would pass them out to everyone who
joined our line. I said that we get people who join us spontaneously and
that not everyone knows what we talked about with police but that we were
trying to communicate this.  

I wasn't at the demonstration last week so I can't vouch for what the city
manager said.

Randall is almost done drafting a new version of the "ground rules" document
I started. His revision is based on input from last Sunday's meeting.

It is up to us, as regulars at the protests, to explain to people our
agreements with police. If we "get caught" disregarding our agreement to
stay in the first lane of traffic only, I could imagine we could be warned,
ticketed and worse: police could try to prevent us from demonstrating.

Who wants that?  I want to keep on being able to peacefully demonstrate
without a forced week or two or however many weeks off. Please, let's watch
out for each other while we are demonstrating. 

2) The shoving incident.  Who was shoved?  I don't know his name. But, since
we are almost two weeks out from the incident and no one called police and
therefore an on-scene report was not made, the man who got shoved will have
to decide what, if anything, he wants the police to do.  AWARE cannot act on
behave of this individual.  But, Lt. Gallo said the police are very willing
to take action against the man who shoved one of us.

Here's what the person who got shoved would have to do:

Go to the police station and file a report. The truck driver's license plate
number is listed in the email below.  Based on the report, the police could
do one of three things, according to Lt. Gallo:

1)Write up a report and sent it to the state's attorney's office for
prosecution
2) Talk to the driver of the truck and issue him a city charge of battery
which is a $175 fine
3) Talk to the man who shoved one of us and tell him not to do it again

Lt. Gallo said his department would take whichever action the person shoved
wants them to take.  

Again, AWARE can't act on this incident as a group now, but we can support
the person among us who was shoved if he wants to take any action.

I won't be at the demo on Saturday because of a conflicting event. I hope
someone will help us stay in the first line of traffic so we can keep on
doing what we're doing with any challenges to our right to do it.


Kimberlie




-----Original Message-----
From: John Fettig [mailto:jfettig at students.uiuc.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 7:29 PM
To: Kranich at will.uiuc.edu
Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] I talked to the police


Kimberlie, 

The license plate is (Illinois plate) 413 1675.  It was a reddish
(auburn/maroon?) GMC Jimmy.  I say Jimmy, but it could possibly be
another model of GMC.  The only thing I have in the picture is the
license plate and GMC, there isn't a model listed.  If you want the
picture, I can send it to you. 

The guy driving the car was probably mid 20's white, and I think about
5'10" with brown hair.

Let me know what happens.

John