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

[Laurie Solomon]

> I read David Green's experience with the wild car and the police not
> even feigning interest.

This is rally an unfounded and unsupported speculative attribution on both 
David's part and your part.  We have no way of knowing for a fact that the 
police were not even feigning interest or were not actually interested and 
involved in dealing with the complaint behind the publically visible scenes. 
We do not even know if the person David spoke with was a civilian 
mployee  -full time regular employee or part-time intern - of a sworn 
officer or if that person was acting  disinterested or actually 
disinterested, of if that was just David's impression or interpretation.  I 
do not think that throwing around value laden or emotionally charged wording 
or generalized accusations does anything to help matters or to resolve 
problems. I often have to wonder if some of the posts are just merely rants 
intended to vent frustrations and emotions or are actually intended to 
achieve something other than rebel rousing on a purely symbolic verbal and 
theatric level.

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Karen Medina" <kmedina67 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 2:04 PM
To: "Peace-discuss List" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] interaction with Champaign police / driver did 
allthe wrong things

> 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
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