State's Attorney Primary Podcast

If I was a conspiracy guy, I would say Ivy is a plant by the Dems to make Julia seem moderate and competent.

Well, Kirchner is a Dem.

that's what I am saying, CD.  A plant!  :-)

At Parkland he use to run his office, from what I have been told, out of the part time faculty office.  It came to a head when his secretary, told one of the part time faculty to be quiet since she was  on the phone doing legal work.

No he was an instructor......

And your point is what?  The officers did their job   He ran   He got sprayed.   end of story

Uh..............one is considered an ADULT at age 17 for charging purposes in the State of Ilinois.... It really doesnt matter if it was his 18 or 19 or 21st birthday.  He was already 17. 

...and if he were a juvenile at the time of the offense (16)  he would still have to be charged as one even if he was formally charged after becoming an adult (17)

Mr Ivy never offered much in the way of tangleble things he would or could do that are shown to reduce crime (how about locking up those people that that have shown a tendancy to commit them?) other than a few Obama-esqe platitudes about talking to folks. Yes, the SA is supposed to prosecute, make good, fair decisions, and convict those floks that they think need to convicted. I'm pretty sure Mr Ivy has not spent much face time with any police chiefs wondering what he or the SA can do to prevent crime.

"When the officer asked the young man to stop he had to have a valid reason. Needless to say the teenager had no obligation to obey."

As a layman, I would have assumed that there is always an obligation to obey an order to stop.  The motives or justifications of the officers' actions would have to be sorted out later in court.  Failure to obey an order to stop would seem to be a de facto violation of the law, regardless of the motives of any of the participants.

On January 31st, 2008 at 09:52 AM, Marti Wilkinson (not verified) said:

When the officer asked the young man to stop he had to have a valid reason. Needless to say the teenager had no obligation to obey. The police were out of line....sent the kid to the hospital....end of story.

You are wrong, if a Policeman stops you and wants to question you, You might give him the minimum information, like Who You are. He might ask for some form of ID, they ask everybody, and also run them through the computer system to see if you might have some "paper" warrants.  Black White or whoever.  It is a fact that the majority of calls for the police are from the minority community. Then when the Police come out to intervene in whatever is the problem  somebody starts yelling and then some name calling usually directed to the Police. Then it gets out of control, If you are asked by the Police for any information it is your right not to give them any, It's also their right to arrest you for obstruction of justice, When you are pulled over in a car or stopped on the side walk you must remember that is NOT a courtroom if you have a beef take it to the proper authorities, The Illinois State Police investigates this kind of thing all the time, If you have a problem with the laws in this State do something about it. I'm tired of tax payer money being spent to baby sit this part of the community. Also if you do not want the "MAN "hasslen you, turn down your thumping car stereos, get you tail lights fixed and get a current license plate sticker on your ride.  You don't want the Police coming to your "Hoods" quit calling them!

Speaking of conspiracies, there was an interesting exchange with Mr. Ivy yesterday (publicly archived at http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/2008-January/015438.html).

Ms. Wendy,
Raining on the conspiracy theory would be fine if the facts were different.
Here, we have young man complaining of police misconduct. After those
complaints are made known, the States Attorney does not investigate the
matter as is required. Rather the SAO charges the young man with the one
charge which, if convicted, would negate his civil rights claim. That is
the conspiracy theory that we are really talking about here.
Thank you,
THE Alfred D. Ivy, III

I really don't think that citizens have the legal right to choose when or if to obey an order to stop, except perhaps in the most egregious of circumstances; for the most part, they would only have the right to seek recourse afterwards. Anything significantly more than that clearly results in utter chaos.

Bingo!

I haven't seen ML label anyone on the IMC site a "troll",

Oh really??? Try posting ANYTHING that they don't like and you will be immediately labeled a troll,  It's their site they can do whatever they want,  All that is on it are anti cop, anti white BS. It's a crime that public funds are being spent on this kind of garbage!

"target individuals for violence"- Shows real lack of debate skills, this however is a good reason hide comment. Peace back at you.

The main reason nobody posts at IMC is, I think, because comments that disagree with the site's authors are so heavily moderated as to make disagreement nearly impossible.

Eh, people make their choices and they live with the consequences.  If UCIMC wants more traffic, then they may need to make some changes.  If they're fine with the status quo, well - that's their choice.  Either way, not my problem.

Yeah, it's been almost a year since I left.  I do remember the kerfluffle with the IP addresses - at that time, I was no longer an editor, but they'd basically made the IP address information publicly viewable.  So I looked them up for one thread and posted them.  What was really interesting that there was at least one comment from "anonymous" that had a writing style very similar to ML's.  It turned out that the IP address was the same for that post as the one ML had been using earlier.  This seemed very odd, since ML had previously encouraged posters to register instead of posting anonymously.  After that, he sent out an email to a lot of people about how the post had been a major breach of anonymity, etc.  I wasn't sure if he was actually that concerned about people's anonymity, or if he was more upset about being matched to the anonymous post.

Wow, a few of the posts on this site really upset me, but I will be civil on this response.

The idea that "if you (you being a young African American male) run from the police you get sprayed" and that "you have to stop when an officer of the law says to" being the issue in the example given shows an extreme lack of understanding of the history of law enforcement and attitudes toward law enforcement in large sections of the African American community.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a few ticks short of white, but growing up in what was a nearly all-white area of Champaign I was stopped by the police for the following offenses:

1) Walking home from Hessel Park singing at 4:30 in the afternoon.

2) Walking to Jewel with one of my Asian American friends at 10:30pm on a Saturday

3) Getting the newspaper at 8:00am on a Saturday morning

4) Playing basketball with a mixed group of friends at South Side school at 8pm

5) Playing hip-hop music in my car.

6) Working an internship in inner-city Chicago, a group of us interns (Latino, African and Asian American) were stopped by police while on foot.

1) I was told by the officer, "We heard reports of a questionable character in the neighborhood and I thought it might be you"

2) I was told be the officer, "Oh, from a distance I thought you might have been a trouble maker."

3) I was questioned by the officer, "Why are you in this neighborhood?" "I live here *points at house*" "Do you have some ID?" "No, I don't carry ID to get my newspaper" "I'm sorry, we are just trying to keep your neighborhood safe" "Whatever." I told my mom what happened and she said, "We don't want our neighborhood that kind of safe."

4) We were told by the officers that there were noise complaints because we were "shouting threats" and that we should "go back to where we live".We decided to leave. One of my friends gave them the finger as we left, which I thought was more than justified, but pretty stupid. I was thankful that they didn't see the gesture.

5) I was stopped by an officer of the law in front of my apartment building. I was coming back from my friend's 16th birthday party. I had badly sprained my ankle the day before playing football at South Side. I was playing Ras Kass's album "Soul on Ice". When I was stopped I muted my radio. The officer approached the car and asked, "What are you listening to?" I said, "Ras Kass". While  asking for license/registration he said, "Why are you listening to that?" I said, "It's got good lyrics." He said, "Do you know why I stopped you?" I said, "I have no idea." He said, "Get out of the car!" I said, "Why?" (I suppose I should have been sprayed at this point?!?) He said more firmly, "Get out of the car!" I pulled the key from the ignition and got out of the car. My roomate at this point had seen the lights and in his very non-confrontational way, approached the officer and said, "Excuse me officer, what's going on?" The officer screamed at him, "Get the fuck back in the house!" He said, "That's my roommate--" "Son, if you don't get away from here..." The officer wrote me a ticket for running a stop sign. I said, "I'm sorry officer, but there is no way I ran that stop sign. That's a two way stop." He said, "You're right." and changed the intersection cited on the ticket.

I ended up having to pay that ticket. I was chosen for an internship providing relief going door to door in Robert Taylor Homes and other areas of Chicago, and the court date fell within the middle of my 16 hour workdays up there, so I couldn't get back to contest it.

6) The two white officers asked us, "What are you doing in this neighborhood?" (It was rare to see anyone non-black in this neighborhood.) My friend stepped up and said smiling, "We are doing an internship to help home health care workers." They said, "Not here you aren't. This is our neighborhood." We couldn't help but smirk a little, but she said, "We are here on behalf of home health care workers. Here is some of our materials *showed the literature and need questionairre sheets*" "Do you have some ID?" "No officers, we were not provided with ID. The organization is clearly marked on this literature." "You can't be here without some ID." "This is a public street!" At this point, one of the officers grabbed her (a very small Latina American) and slammed her against a parked car. The rest of us were shouting. The other officer said to us, "Don't do anything stupid!" The first officer asked us, "Are you ready to leave the neighborhood?" We each nodded or said, "Yes." We found a pay phone and called our organizers. They told us to return to the our dorm. They told my friend to file a complaint the next day. I imagine it found the same place most complaints do.

The last experiences I have to relate were when I was in need and wanted law enforcement to come.

1) I arrived home at 2am to find that my house had been broken into. My stereo system which my parents had bought as a birthday present had been taken along with one (1???) of the speakers. My roommates were in their room sleeping. I woke them up to ask them if they had heard anything, but they said, "No". The window to my room was cracked open.
 I debated calling the police (stop for a minute and think about that--I've just been the victim of a robbery and I have to think twice before calling the police) but called 911. I was told that they would send an officer immediately. I went downstairs to wait for the officer.

The officers arrived at  6am. This was on the corner of White and Randolph across from my church New Covenant Christian Fellowship. Since that is approximately 4,000 miles from the Police Department, I can understand why it took so long. My theory is that all units were occupying stopped children of color who may have been singing or getting newspapers. When the police arrived I remember them being very stand-offish and aggressive toward me--the victim of the crime. I don't remember the exact exchange, as I had been up for about 23 hours. They looked at the door, and around the place and said, "We think you should ask your roommates." I said, "What do you mean?" They said, "It was probably an inside job. There are no signs of forced entry." I said, "What about the window?!" They said, "We think that is unlikely and the lock is undamaged on the door." I said, "Can you look at the roof outside the window or something?" They said, "I don't think so." I said, "Can I have a report to give to my insurance?" They said, "Insurance will not likely cover this if we give you a report, since it is likely that your roommates were involved." I said, "Can someone else come look at this?' They said, "If we have to come out again, someone in this house will probably be arrested."

I checked the pawn shops, but nothing turned up. I ended up having to buy a new stereo system. It's worth mentioning that my roommates were some of the most upstanding folks in the community. One is a tireless nurse and the other is a fiercely competitive thoughtful guy who would never steal something because he'd think that would make him worse than the guy standing next to him. Neither had any place to store stereo equipment outside of the house we were living in, and if it had been them during the day, certainly they would have taken both speakers (not that there was any possibility of that).

I have met wonderful officers of the law--empathetic, kind, fair individuals. However, these experiences, which are not at all typical and are likely mild as far as youths of color's law enforcement experiences go, do impact the way I view law enforcement.

I could say with relatively certainty that I've broken less laws than anyone else on this site. I speed occassionally in emergencies. But that's pretty much it. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs and never have smoked or done drugs even a single time. I've never been drunk on American soil. I signal every single time I change lanes or pull out of a parking space. I stole a single pack of baseball cards when I was pretty little because it had a rookie card I wanted on the back (Some of the packs in that era were see-through). I was mortified. I thought about returning it, but decided it was a better idea to never open the pack so I couldn't enjoy it and kept it amongst my things. Throughout my teenage years I would look at that pack and still feel ashamed. I never really comtemplated shoplifting again.

As you can see from my exchanges, I do my best to treat officers of the law with respect. I rarely receive it back. Often I feel attacked or disrespected by them. It's a bit of a struggle to not respond--everything I've ever been taught goes against that. I don't mean fight back, but I mean, I've been taught to correct people when they are in the wrong as anyone on this site has probably been annoyed by at least once. As you can see, on this site, despite no hatred directed outward, I get some hate at me sometimes. However, that's fine. I know not everyone in the world is happy or thoughtful, but no one on this site has the power to take away my freedom.

I don't trust police officers as a group as much as I love the memory of my grandfather or have deep respect for individuals. As an American with my own unique experiences, I should have that right.

I am proud of the choices I've made and I know that some of them have helped prevent any worse experiences. But that's not a fair expectation on every person in the country, especially those who face much worse treatment than I do.

Tell me this, do you really think spray that minor makes it LESS LIKELY he will run next time? I don't recommend it, but I can understand a part of him that feels so disrespected that they wish harm on our brave protectors of the law in the future.

Do you want a fair, safe society or do you enjoy criminalization of minority youth too much to reach those goals?

If my children are treated the same way, I will try to respond in a thoughtful, strategic way. But it will be the hardest it's been for me in a long time to suppress pangs of hate. Please pray that I respond with grace.

"Respect an officer of the law" is a very important law for a civilized society, but it falls light-years behind "An officer of the law must display respectful, fair treatment toward all members of the society they encounter." Without the second, the first one only serves to uphold injustice.

I thought this thread was about the podcast???  What am I missing???

I like a good veer as much as the next guy, but bashing Rietz for the "sins" of the police???