[Peace] Monday night - Tasers in Urbana

[Brian Dolinar]

Apologies - the meeting Monday night is at *5:30 p.m. *(not 7). BD


On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Brian Dolinar <briandolinar at gmail.com>wrote:

> Tomorrow night, Monday at 7pm, there will be the first of two critical
> hearings before Urbana city council about a proposal to purchase Tasers for
> the police. There will be a presentation by the officer leading the Crisis
> Intervention Team about why police believe they need Tasers. It is vitally
> important that the community send a message to police that we oppose Tasers.
>
> For some 10 years now, community pressure has been the only thing keeping
> Tasers out of the hands of police, first in 2004 when then Chief Finney
> wanted to purchase $30k worth of Tasers, and again in 2009 just before the
> police killing of Kiwane Carrington when it was leaked that the Champaign
> police again were planning to acquire Tasers.
>
> Statistics from IDOT have shown for several years that African Americans
> are at least twice as likely to be pulled over by police during routine
> traffic stops. A recent story in the *News-Gazette*<http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2014-04-03/state-marijuana-proposal-would-affect-urbanas-rules.html>showed that of 203 tickets issued for possession of marijuana since a 2008
> ordinance was passed in Urbana, 123 tickets were given to African
> Americans, again far disproportionate to their 15 percent of the local
> population.
>
> If Tasers are in the hands of police, we know that African Americans will
> be the ones most likely to be electrocuted in order to achieve
> "compliance." If Urbana is able to get Tasers, the Champaign police are
> sure to follow. Come out Monday night to tell Urbana *NO TASERS!*
>
> BD
> --
> Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
> briandolinar.com
>



-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
briandolinar.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace/attachments/20140413/c2e30ffc/attachment.html>