A Dark And Quiet Room

At last, C.J. Summers of the Peoria Chronicle announces his candidacy for Peoria City Council.

It’s late and I’m tired. Otherwise, I’d have some glowing words here about C.J. When he announces more details on his candidacy, I’ll say more about why I think voting for him is a no-brainer. But for now, I’ll just say that I’m really excited to have a candidate on a ballot that I can actually be excited about voting for.

In this blog post I asked several questions:

1) Orange Street isn’t on Bradley University’s campus, nor is there off-campus housing located on Orange Street (that I know of). How does the Bradley University Police Department have jurisdiction in front of my house?

2) Was this situation really resolved in a professional way by the Bradley University Police Department? Couldn’t they have prevented this from escalating? Better yet, was this really the best problem to focus on at this time?

3) Am I really required by law to carry identification on me at all times? Do I need a license to ride a bike?

I’ll grant that #2 is mostly rhetorical, but I’m serious about the other questions. In particular, I’d like to know the answer to question #1. What are the limits of the Bradley University Police Department’s jurisdiction? Can anyone answer this question for me?

Last night, I got to watch police work up close and personal. That’s right; someone was actually handcuffed right in front of my house! Three patrol cars! Five police officers! Imagine my excitement! And the miscreant who was being handcuffed? His crime?

Not having a headlight on his bike.

Perhaps I should start over.

Late last night (starting around midnight and ending around 12:30 a.m.), police from the Bradley University Police Department detained a man in front of our house. I’m using “detained”, because he was obviously not free to leave. The police officers around him made that quite clear, especially since they had handcuffed him. So, “detained” seems like a fair word to use. I personally witnessed from the point where one of the officers put the man in cuffs, forcing him onto the trunk of the patrol car and then laying him in the road. Based on what the man was yelling, this wasn’t particularly gentle treatment, which scratched his face on the road surface. Orange Street was tarred-and-chipped back in the summer, so it’s a rough surface with plenty of loose gravel lying around.

We were able to hear most of the conversation between the various officers and the man in cuffs. As a result, we heard most of the story, which didn’t seem to disputed. The man was riding on his bike when the officers came along and told him to “slow up”. So, the man pulled to the side of the road and slowed down his speed. The officers were unhappy because the man didn’t stop. So, eventually, he did stop, and the officers told him that he was being ticketed for not having a headlight on his bike. He was then told to produce identification. He said that he didn’t have identification on him, so he couldn’t produce any. This apparently wasn’t satisfactory to the officers who claimed they needed some sort of identification in order to write the ticket. I’m not sure how this ended up with the man being handcuffed. I’m going to guess that he was arguing with the officers, but I didn’t actually witness that. I did hear the man yelling and saw the officer cuffing him.

After the man was cuffed, several other officers arrived on the scene. The man was questioned by one of the new arrivals. Why didn’t he stop when told to stop? Why hadn’t he produced identification when asked? The man reiterated that he had been trying to be cooperative but that he had misunderstood the original instruction and that he had no identification to produce. He was just on his way to his girlfriend’s house. At this point, one of the original officers started yelling at him, accusing him of lying about how he had spoken to them. “You didn’t say ‘sir’!” was the quote, as I recall.

While this was going on, another officer searched the bag the man was carrying. No drugs or alcohol were found.

Several of the officers consulted together and apparently figured out that they could write the ticket without identification. All they needed was a telephone number where he could be reached. No, his cell phone wasn’t good enough. So, the officers demanded that the man give them his number and his girlfriend’s name, number, and address. He refused to identify his girlfriend or give her contact information. Eventually, they came to some compromise and required that the man sign the ticket. He agreed, so they uncuffed him so he could sign the ticket. He signed it and took his copy. He kissed the ticket to prove that he was being cooperative, took his bag, walked over to where his bike had been left in the middle of the street, picked up his hat from off the street, and walked off, pushing the bike.

The police talked a little and then dispersed.

So, here are my questions, in no particular order:

1) Orange Street isn’t on Bradley University’s campus, nor is there off-campus housing located on Orange Street (that I know of). How does the Bradley University Police Department have jurisdiction in front of my house?

2) Was this situation really resolved in a professional way by the Bradley University Police Department? Couldn’t they have prevented this from escalating? Better yet, was this really the best problem to focus on at this time?

3) Am I really required by law to carry identification on me at all times? Do I need a license to ride a bike?

So, after last night’s display, I just want to say that I feel much safer in my home than before. It’s good to know that the police are out there, protecting me from dangerous black men riding around on improperly illuminated bikes. Hopefully, as a follow-up, they’ll start fining people for having lawns that are too long. It’s not like there are more important things to be doing.

Note: we shot video. It’s fairly unclear, but you can get some decent audio. When it’s available, I’ll link to it here.

UPDATE: A clarification: as I talked to Crystal about this, she mentioned that two of the cops who showed up later on the scene were Peoria police officers. Upon reflection this makes sense, as they generally seemed more professional than the Bradley officers.

Last summer, we bought a used refrigerator from Appliance Recycler at 4024 SW Adams St. They were willing to haggle, eventually throwing in a small dorm-sized refrigerator as well.

The refrigerator wouldn’t work. It was under warranty with Appliance Recycler, so they sent people out to try to repair it. They were friendly and knowledgeable…but they were unable to fix the fridge. So, we went back to the store, and they let us pick out a replacement refrigerator for free. The replacement ended up being about $100 more than we had originally paid, but they gave it to us to honor their warranty. It was a positive experience, and I’d gladly do business with them again.

Why am I bringing this up?

Last week, Appliance Recycler was robbed. According to the news reports, someone pried open their back door and stole about $20,000 in merchandise. That’s a sizeable hit for a small business to take.

So, if you’re in the market for a used appliance, consider checking out Appliance Recycler. I’m sure they could use the business.

I wrote this for the Spring 2009 issue of our neighborhood newsletter, but I wanted to share it with those of you who are outside the circulating area of that newsletter.

I remember being poor. I remember trying to provide for a growing family on a meager income. I remember going over our budget with a man from our church who stared at us incredulously, amazed that we were getting by on so little.

I remember being on food stamps. I remember how my wife dreaded going to the assistance office for the next dole. She would make sure that her wedding band was prominent, like a talisman against the disapproving glares. She wished that she could just yell, “I was married before I had these children!” But it wouldn’t matter. The steady stream of supplicants were despised by the case-workers. And so, each month, Crystal would swallow her pride and endure their scorn and condescension so that we could afford to eat another month.

And I remember one night when Crystal came home from the grocery store with a tale to tell. The Hispanic couple in front of her in the checkout line were struggling with their food stamp card. Their PIN wasn’t working, so they couldn’t buy their food. Eventually, they had to leave their shopping order and walk away. It broke my wife’s heart. She wished that she could have just stepped up and bought them those groceries. But we were sinking into financial morass ourselves, and all she could do was watch.

Much time has passed since those days. A friend rescued us from the tyranny of the assistance office and helped us dig ourselves out of the debt that we racked up trying to climb out of poverty ourselves. Now I have a good job, making decent money. We’re out of debt and feeding our family, which has continued to grow.

But I remember being poor.

In our society, it seems that the poor are treated either as a plague that must be eradicated or a social ill that must be addressed by some philosophical position or government program. But all these responses hold the poor at arm’s length. Everyone talks about the poor as a group, but few talk about specific people. Everyone talks about helping the poor, but few talk about loving the poor.

I want to love the poor. I want to help provide for their needs as best I can. I want to be the warm embrace, the stern word given in love, the shoulder to cry on when it’s just too hard. And I want to be
the protest and outcry, the public conscience that speaks for those who are powerless and will not be heard.

But it is not enough to live in some upscale neighborhood and occasionally descend from the mountaintop, deigning to bless the underclass with my presence. That would be condescending and
insulting. Instead, I look to the example that Jesus set. The Apostle Paul talks about the love of Jesus in these terms: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9) If Jesus loved me like this, shouldn’t I love those around me in the same way?

And that is why I live here.

So, I blogged about Peoria CrimeView last month. Well, it’s become even cooler.

Now, in addition to seeing an incident map, you can get both summary and detail reports on the incidents within the search that you ran. These reports can be viewed online or exported in a number of formats, including Excel, PDF, Crystal Reports, and XML.

Also, through the CyberWatch feature, you can set up subscriptions to receive reports of incidents within a radius of a specified location. Want to keep an eye on crime in your area? You can get a regular email, customized to your requirements. How cool is that?

If you’re at all interested in tracking police reports for the Peoria area, then I highly recommend checking out this tool. Kudos to the development team for their work and to the Peoria Police Department and Peoria County Sheriff’s Office for making this information available.

…but it’s a great tool! Check out Peoria CrimeView. I was pretty happy to see this, but I was blown away when I discovered that you can run searches based on neighborhood association borders. That’s tremendous!

Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be a way to export to Google Earth files, but that’s probably a fairly specialized need. Still, it would be nifty if that were to become a possibility.

About those crime maps….

Yes, I’m still doing them. I’m actually updating them right now. However, I have discovered the joy of working in Google Earth instead of Google Maps. So those maps won’t necessarily be available online.

That being said, if you want a copy of what I’ve got, let me know and I’ll email you the Google Earth files.

For those of you who haven’t heard:

We are facing what I have known as a crisis for quite some time. Although the murder rate was down 2008 the incidence of illegal gun usage was up and there were people and cars shot at on a routine basis. (Gangs) with (their)/ it’s loose network of community terrorist associates, have taken it upon themselves to terrorize our communities and inner city. We must act and must act as a cohesive group to defeat the enemy that is fueling these (various factions). However we will not fight with the weapons known and respected in the streets:

2 Cor. 10:3-4~ “3-For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4-(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)”

It is my prayer that you will join me at a community pastoral meeting to address this urgent situation at which I will unveil information that is essential in assisting with our understanding of this enemy that we face. I also plan to unveil a community strategy that will involve you and your church in a proactive method of attack against this terrorist group. I am convinced that our inaction is fuel to the flames of the community terrorists who have staked claim to our schools and our streets. It must end and that end must begin with us and our churches. I do not believe that we can expect a government bailout to assist us with this one.

Please join me at 6:30 PM Thursday evening at Higher Dimensions Worship Ctr. at 2610 W. Nebraska Peoria, IL. (Pastor Bob Randle)

Please pass this urgent request on to associates and other pastors who may also be interested in taking strong action against this (these) community terrorist group(s). Thank you and God bless you greatly.

Emphasis mine.

I’m planning on attending this meeting, and I wanted to pass the word to others.

Billy is correct:

And frankly, I think it’s time for the city council to reconsider what exactly qualifies a neighborhood organization as the go-to people[] to speak for a neighborhood. For example, the RRRI allows renters to sit in on meetings, but doesn’t allow them to join and vote.I’m pretty sure that the many-long time renters who live in my building and in neighboring buildings have rights and are affected by the Methodist expansion too. Renters pay property taxes — it’s part of their rent.

But I was really surprised to see this from the comments:

But yeah… do any neighborhood associations really represent their neighborhoods? The utter lack of participation in support of these organizations is alarming. It’s a classic little red hen story… the poor hen making her bread and no one helps her. But they sure as hell complain when it something affects them in a way that matters to them. Here in the uplands only about a couple dozen people (out of 375 or so households) are involved in any tangible way with the neighborhood association. It is frustrating.

Emphasis mine.

That was really surprising to me. I’ve always had the impression that Uplands really had their act together in terms of organization and participation. If a solid association like Uplands only has a “couple dozen people” participating, then what about the less organized ones?

In light of all this, I have to ask: is the neighborhood association concept really the best way for the city to reach its citizens?

Hello, my loyal readers. Today I will tell you a small tale about the glory of God.

This afternoon, I went out to the alley to collect my trash cans. As I normally do, I looked into the trash cans to see what was sloshing around in them. Given that we’ve just had a fairly intense ice storm, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

In one of the trash cans was a purse.

I looked at it for a moment. It seemed like an odd thing to be in my trash can. But maybe we were throwing away a purse that had been a toy. But I’ve been trying to train myself to pay attention to small things. So I fished it out of the trash can. It was so soaked with water that it was dripping everywhere. I poked around at the contents.

It was someone’s purse.

Among other things, the purse included photo ID and a piece of official correspondence. So, I had a name and address. Patty (not her real name) from a South Side address.

We couldn’t find a phone number, so we drove down to the place indicated on the ID. It was actually just on the edge of where Downtown and South Side meet.

She wasn’t there. The address was a group home where her mother lived. But one of the women on staff said that she was normally through several times a week. We were all concerned, because no one had seen Patty for a few days. Eventually, I left the purse and my phone number.

And that would be that, I figured.

Except it wasn’t.

This evening, Patty called. She was overjoyed that her purse had found its way back to her. She said that she had been shopping at Campustown and someone stole it from the car. She thought that she’d never see it again.

I know that this might look like a story about a virtuous citizen helping another person. But that’s not what I see.

I see the glory of God. I see my amazing Father bringing healing to my hurting city. Sure, it was a small thing. But, to Patty, it was a big thing. Tonight, she experienced a little of the rescue and redemption of the Father of lights.

And I was there to see it.

I didn’t think that I’d get to see the end of this story. But I did. It was encouraging. I got to see the hand of God at work.

It was good.

It’s that time again! The Go Play Peoria Fall Minicon will be held on December 6, 2008 at the Samaritan Ministries building. The doors open at 9 a.m., and we wrap up around 9 p.m. Please bring a $5 donation to help defray the cost of food.

Bring your own games, plus a willingness to meet new people and try new things.

Got questions? Ask away!

Yes. This.

Beautiful Feet

Lord God, John Knox once prayed, “Give me Scotland or I die.” I confess that my vision is not as broad as his. But Lord…give me Peoria. Give me the South Side. Give me the Near North Side and Downtown and Bradley University and Renaissance Park. Give me the poor and the broken. Give me the prostitutes and the johns, the crack addicts and the drug dealers, the abused children and their abusers, the poor and the rich. Give me the broken of our city, the discarded detritus of our society, and build from them a temple for Your name.

And with it, Lord, give me an open and willing heart. Give me the love and compassion to reach out once again to the hurting who lash out. Give me the hospitality to open my home to the dirty and inconvenient. Give me the willingness to sacrifice my comfort, my sanity, and my privacy for the sake of those you send my way. Make me the kind of man that I need to be to carry out this mission.

Lord, I walk the streets and alleys of my city, and I see a people who desperately need You. Do not be far off.

Give me Peoria, Lord, or I die.

Hooray! Peoria made the national news!

Illinois Police Pepper Spray Crowd Mourning 4-Month-Old Baby

Honestly, this looks like a mild rewrite of an article from our very own Peoria Journal-Star.

Baby found dead in Peoria home; police fire pepper balls on crowd

Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?

Now, one of my co-workers is a member of the Tazewell County Auxiliary Police, and when this story was passed around the office, he was a bit put out. He pointed out that it is the job of the coroner to take the body of the deceased. It’s also the job of the police to secure a crime scene. For the record, an area where an infant died suddenly counts as a crime scene. Finally, he noted that it is normal procedure to give multiple warnings before using pepper spray.

Here’s an excerpt from the Journal-Star story:

“A bunch of family and friends came and were refusing to let the officers out with the baby,” said Lt. Marshall Dunnigan. “We had to use great force to get the coroner out with the baby.”

So, hang on a sec. There was a crowd of people attempting to interfere with the police doing their proper duty, and so the police eventually responded to protect the coroner and enforce the law? Why is this a problem?

But even the Journal-Star story sounds like the police overreacted, not to mention the Associated Press story that Fox News ran.

Another co-worker put his finger on this issue:

The problem lies in the use of the word “mourners.” That automatically puts the police in a bad light, implying they used force on people who were in emotional distress. It was a crowd gathered at the house that threatened to turn into a mob by interfering with police. Mourners are usually found at funerals, visitations, grave sites, etc., not congregating at a possible crime scene. It shows us how one eight-letter word can skew the perception of an event.

(Emphasis mine.)

And that’s it right there. Let me reword the lead sentence of that news article by making a slight adjustment:

Police officers fired pepper balls into a group of mourners mob gathering at the house of a 4-month-old girl who died in her South Peoria home Wednesday.

Makes a big difference, doesn’t it?

Or, as an alternate example, check out how I tweak this headline:

Officers use pepper balls to break up mob of about 100 people fire pepper balls at group of children

Use of force by the police always draws a lot of scrutiny, and that is certainly a good thing. I’m fairly confident that the entire situation will be reviewed and investigated as necessary internally; moreover, it’s good for the police to be accountable to the public at large. At the same time, we all need to be careful of the opinions that we form as a result of our interactions with the media. Just a single word or phrase can change all our opinions and reactions.

Learn to read between the lines.

First, check out this video of David Simon, creator of The Wire, talking about Baltimore. Here’s a salient quote:

“Some of the smallest, gentlest moments I’ve ever experienced have been being a bystander to how people relate to this city and to each other as Baltimoreans. The trick is to tell the stories [on the Wire] with enough insider affection and insider angst and insider worry and insider anger that other Baltimoreans recognize that it [The Wire] is something of a love letter. It’s from a conflicted and often frustrated lover, but it’s nonetheless a love letter.”

Replace “Baltimoreans” with whoever you live with. Yeah, that’s how I think Dirty Secrets ought to be played.

As I worked on designing Dirty Secrets, I found myself developing this same affection for Peoria. Yeah, I learned all kinds of badness about my city, and I’m still learning more. But, at the same time, it’s my city…the place that I love. This same sense drives my political critiques and all that. I love where I live, warts and all.

So I hope that some of the players of Dirty Secrets would develop a similar feeling about where they live. I guess we will see.