Yates Building
Many of us were very disturbed by the Yates Building incident in
Chapel Hill last year and wondered how the police were trained to deal
with public events and demonstrations. How do the police do arrests?
What crime and other public safety issues do we have in Chapel Hill?
Well, here's a chance for you to find out how our officers are trained
and what they do.
For the last
year I've been working with the Community Policing Advisory Committee and the Chapel Hill Police Department to dramatically
revamp its Citizen's Police Academy. The new Academy will give participants an
inside look at the police department and its work. You'll get to operate a
simulator and see what it's like to respond to a domestic call that turns
violent, sit in a squad car, watch the SERT and K9 teams in action, and talk to
the Chief of Police about tough issues. Along the way you'll learn about the
Department's work, how you can help make a safer community and much
more. Participation will involve attending one evening session on April 24 or 25
as well as an afternoon session on Sun. April 28.
In case anyone wants to see the anarchist point of view on the Yates building, their views apparently include killing police officers, "cops are bastards", and "pigs gonna pay". And since when is wearing masks in public something that is considered benign?
http://anarchistnews.org/node/17958
This just arrived from Town Manager Roger Stancil:
In consultation with the Town Attorney, I have developed the following statement that we will provide the media. If you have any questions, please let me know.
At the Town Council meeting Monday night, I and many others felt frustrated, after issuing our statements and as the Council was deliberating, unable to respond to or correct the circuitous discussion between council members, Chief Blue, Mr. Stancil, Mayor Kleinschmidt, and Attorney Karpinos.
Two months later, Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil has published his memorandum to the Town Council, outlining his "conclusions, actions and recommendations" related to the occupation of and subsequent police raid at the Yates Motor Company building on W. Franklin St. last November. It's an impressively bland endorsement of paramilitary police action, largely devoid of content. Stancil wastes no time in reaching the conclusion you may have expected him to reach—that the police did everything right and nothing wrong—and that if anything needs to happen as a result of these events, it's that the CHPD should adopt a new media relations policy.
When the former Yates Motor Co. Building was taken over on November 13th it was in the process of becoming the temporary home of an art installation for the holiday season - an effort led by the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership. Those events derailed the art installation, but did not curtail it. The art installation will be unveiled this Friday, December 9th, 2011. The road has not been an easy one as described in this blog post by Meg McGurk of the Downtown Partnership.
I just sent the following to the Mayor and Town Council of Chapel Hill. It somewhat re-hashes my previous comments here on OP, so I'm not going to front-page it, but wanted it to be on the record.
I was extremely disappointed to see the Town handle the anarchist break-in at the Yates Building so poorly after working so well with the activists at Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro for the past month. What happened last weekend played into every simplistic anarcho-fantasy about jack-booted thugs violently protecting the wealthy. That's not the Chapel Hill we know, but there is a vocal group of residents that now may never believe otherwise.
I'm undecided about Jim Neal's specific proposal for an independent commission to study the events of last weekend. Do we really have to empanel a committee to tell us what almost everyone knows (at least in retrospect), which is that the police action was unnecessarily forceful and overly broad? However, I very much want and need some clearer answers from the Town of Chapel Hill.
This press release was issued today...
The General Assembly of Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro, meeting at Peace and Justice Plaza, expresses outrage and disappointment at the disproportionate and disturbing use of force by the Chapel Hill Police Department.
I spent most of Sunday afternoon out at the Haw River just outside the mill village of Swepsonville about five miles upstream of Saxapahaw. I managed to enjoy most of my time out there even though I was there was because I have been having trouble there with trespassers. The land I own out there is the hydro-electric power plant that formerly powered the cotton mill in Swepsonville.
My hydro-electric plant has been out of operation for about 40 years and the windows in the building are almost completely broken out. Inside the building are huge, deep holes in the floor where the generators once sat atop the turbines. I have been gradually working on making the interior of the building safer by covering over the huge holes in the floor, but the building is definitely not a safe place for unwary visitors.
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