[Peace-discuss] Nuisance Ordinance and Racism

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Thank you for taking interest in this, Neil.

The meeting of the committee of the Whole will not meet on Jan 5.  The 
next meeting of the city council will
probably be 12 Jan.  The agenda has not yet been published.

It would be great if you could bring your concerns to the city council 
meeting.

*

I definitely agree that some areas of town are over-policed, but to some 
extent the police are drawn to those areas by
the number of calls for service to those areas, not only because the 
police are going there "looking for trouble".

I am quite familiar with the overexpression of force and authority,  the 
overregulation to the point that "any time they stop you they
can find you doing something wrong".  Selective enforcement almost 
always follows multiplication of regulations beyond necessity.

We also need to consider that there are indeed factors and activities 
that are generating these calls for service.

"Punish, Evict, and Incarcerate" attitude of the city's elitists and a 
"Run, and Gun" method by the police is not going to
provide much of a valuable service to the community.


Neil Parthun wrote:
> At the AWARE meeting, the question was asked how the nuisance 
> ordinance could be brought up in the issue of anti-racism work.
>
> 1. It has been conclusively proven that the minorities have a 
> disproportionate amount of interaction with the Champaign and Urbana 
> police departments.
> 2. The Champaign and Urbana police departments over-police certain 
> areas and thus enforce more authority there.
> 3. With over-policing, it is more likely that police will find 
> "problems", "nuisances" or other reasons to have interactions with 
> minority populations as the data has shown with traffic stops and 
> police contacts in CU.
> 4. The proposal also allows for collective punishment -- giving the 
> city the authority to suspend the rental license for a property for a 
> period of 30 to 180 days.  Tenants who were not offenders could lose 
> their homes due to the collectivized punishment.  When one looks at 
> the racial/class clustering of living space in Champaign-Urbana, there 
> is a clear racialized element that comes into play.  Also, there is 
> the whole issue of the children in a family being punished with having 
> to transfer to a new property, likely transfer to a new school and 
> having their lives completely upended because one person in their home 
> chose to do something inappropriate.
> 5. We've seen the necessity for police review boards due to the 
> problems or racism and abuses of authority that the police have chosen 
> to implement in the community.  This ordinance would give such 
> institutions more authority and power.
> 6. The ordinance also allows for a person's own individual bias to 
> play a role into removing an entire family from a residence. 
>  Remember, there are no trials and there does not have to be 
> conclusive proof, just a preponderance of the evidence.  It also 
> registers calls to a property.  If a person wanted to get rid of a 
> neighbor, all it could theoretically take would be a few phone calls 
> alleging nuisance behavior and a preponderance of the evidence to 
> remove the tenant and the tenant's family.
>
> Live hard,     
>      Neil
>
> Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil 
> obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world 
> in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and 
> cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are 
> full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running 
> and robbing the country. That's our problem.
> [howard zinn, 1922-]
>
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