[Peace-discuss] interaction with Champaign police / driver did all the wrong things

[John W.]

You don't say it outright here, Karen, but it's pretty clear to me that the
occupants of the car had drugs or other contraband in the car which they
were trying to dispose of.  And I imagine that they were arrested primarily
for possession of said contraband, with the accident and reckless driving
probably tacked on for good measure.  I'm sure they were also going to be
tested at the police station for drugs and maybe booze, which would make it
a DWI as well.

John

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Peace-discuss,
>
> I read David Green's experience with the wild car and the police not
> even feigning interest.
>
> I had an interesting experience this morning on my way to work the
> AWARE table at the Farmer's Market.
>
> Windsor and S. First St., Champaign (I was going to pick up tee-shirts
> at Stuart Levy's house).
>
> The event would have been a great scenario for the movies on what not
> to do when during a police interaction.
>
> A car wanting to turn right whizzed by on the right of a line of
> vehicles stopped at the traffic light. The car used the bicycle lane
> as if it were a right turn lane (which it is not wide enough to do).
> The car turned right without stopping. Just as the car made it to the
> curve, the traffic light turned green and the line began to move. The
> first vehicle in the line was also turning right, but it was a fire
> truck tanker and had not seen or heard the car pulling along side it,
> nor had the fast moving car noticed that the light had changed and
> that the fire truck was going to turn right too. The fire truck and
> the car clipped each other. The car's back bumper fell to the ground.
> The car did stop briefly.
>
> That was stupid driving, but the next part was absolutely the wrong
> thing to do.
>
> Rather than remain stopped where traffic could still get around it,
> the car driver drove down the road and turned left into the drive for
> the apartments. It turned around in the parking lot and stopped by the
> dumpster. Then the people in the car got out and were walking around
> rearanging stuff in the car and visiting the dumpster. The police
> arrived very quickly. There were three Champaign police cars within a
> quarter mile of that corner, watching traffic. None of them were close
> enough to see event at the corner, but were close enough to come
> almost immediately.
>
> The police did let the fire truck people that the car driver was
> driving on a suspended license. This was wrong of them to do.
>
> There were 4 officers talking to the car driver.
>
> I watched them handcuff the driver of the car.
>
> One policeman took my statement, but kept trying to put words in my
> mouth. I was the car immediately behind the fire truck in the line of
> the waiting cars. I had the best view of the event, and could see that
> the fire truck and the car were going to collide before they did.
> Neither of the drivers involved even saw the other vehicle before they
> collided.
>
> It was an interesting experience.
>
> -karen medina
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20100717/253a6ee9/attachment.html>