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THE DAILY ILLINI
MONDAY February 18, 2019
The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
WWW.DAILYILLINI.COM
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Vol. 148 Issue 42
Joining the force
Reporter rides along with Urbana officer BY JULIE KANG STAFF WRTIER
The Urbana Police Department’s ride-along program, open to citizens and members of the University community, allows people to experience firsthand what goes on during a police officer’s shift. The events in this article took place from 9 p.m. on Wednesday to 2 a.m. on Thursday with officer Josh Jeffers. Jeffers has been working in the department for around three years. to sign a waiver that talks about the potential dangers of the experience. It states the department is not responsible for any harm that may occur.
Riders are also prohibited from recording or photographing the ride-along unless special permission has been given prior to riding.
9:13 p.m.
tiple departments in the area, including Champaign and University of Illinois police. Messages are also sent and received from METCAD 9-1-1, the main Public Safety Answering
Point serving the area. This is where all 911 calls are directed and where dispatchers relay information to officers on duty. All license plates Jeffers looks up on his laptop come back as valid.
9:35 p.m.
a bad reputation,” he said, laughing. Jeffers also talks about what happened a few days ago when he was trying to talk to a man sleeping in his car at a gas station. Jeffers had been trying to determine whether or not the man was drunk and asked him to roll down his tinted windows. As the man rolled
down his window, Jeffers saw a gun on the man’s lap and immediately drew his gun. “That definitely got my heart racing,” Jeffers said. “The scary part of the job comes after work on the drive home when I’m thinking about it. In the moment, it’s more adrenaline.”
10 p.m.
they are in close proximity. Jeffers runs radar — he uses a radar that reflects radio waves off cars to determine their speed. The radar shows almost
all cars entering the street are driving past the speed limit. When they approach the location where the police car is and spot the car, they slow down significantly.
10:12 p.m.
his pocket. “There’s nothing wrong with (having a pocketknife). It’s not that big of a deal, but it’s nice to know what I’m getting into,” Jeffers said. Jeffers checks the information on the driver’s ID and types it into his laptop.
The driver has no warrants and has a valid license. He is issued a ticket of $120. “I make the decision to give a ticket before I even stop the person. There’s no racial profiling — I didn’t even know what (the driver) looked like before I stopped him,” Jeffers said.
10:45 p.m.
The driver who was stopped had not stopped at a stop sign near Broadway Avenue. The driver is driving in a rental car with a license plate that does not have a sticker indicating the expiration date. The officers
and the dispatchers cannot find the license plate number in their database. “Every single license plate we type in usually comes back,” Jeffers said. “That’s really weird that it’s not coming back.”
Jeffers drives around the location as backup. He makes a stop at the gas station near Carle Foundation Hospital on University Avenue to talk
to a worker he has grown close with while on the job. “Interaction with the public is what we want,” Jeffers said.
8:50 p.m.
Upon arrival at the Urbana Police Department, located at 400 S. Vine St., riders are asked to provide their IDs and Jeffers drives around the area, listening closely to the radio while running several tests on license plates using his laptop. The radio messages he receives come from mulJeffers looks for cars with headlights that are not on. He explains people are usually scared when he pulls them over for not having their headlights on, but he is simply trying to help. “We give them money for headlights if they need it. We try to get people to like us since we have such Jeffers parks on a street along Lincoln Avenue near University Avenue. The police car is out of the view of vehicles driving by until Jeffers pulls over a car for driving at 47 mph on a street with a speed limit of 30 mph. Backup arrives and watches on the other side of the car while Jeffers speaks to the driver. The backup officer informs Jeffers the driver has a pocketknife in Jeffers backs another officer’s traffic stop. He explains for night shifts, the officers always request for a backup officer to be in the area in case of an emergency.
11:15 p.m.
An unknown issue is reported to the officers: A man, who was slurring his words, gave his address to dispatchers and hung up.
a man with a brown jacket by near the soccer fields of Over the radio, dispatch- and a hood over his head has Urbana Middle School. The ers say someone reported been flagging down passers- reason is unknown.
12:13 a.m. Thursday
12:31 a.m.
Jeffers makes a stop at the METCAD 9-1-1 office, as there are an unusually low number of calls coming in. The building is under high security, as
the dispatchers play a crucial role in police departments’ jobs. There are currently five dispatchers on the job. They manage six computer monitors — they
take calls, relay information to officers, type messages and data into the system and look up any needed information. The dispatchers work eighthour shifts.
ington Street. The driver is suspected to be drunk and Jeffers backs another tells the officer he just came is asked to perform a finger traffic stop on East Wash- out of the local strip club. He test. He is let go.
1:25 a.m.
1:36 a.m.
Jeffers is flagged down by a man standing at the side of the road. The man said he has been walking all night from Champaign and is trying to get to where he is residing. He said he is injured. Jeffers gives him a ride home.
As he talks to the man, Jeffers realizes he is the same man who had been flagging down passersby earlier near Urbana Middle School. Jeffers said his shift ends at 7 a.m. He usually likes to go home and watch TV until around 10 a.m. Although
it is tiring to constantly change his sleep schedule, Jeffers said night shifts are one aspect he loves about his job. “I love the adrenaline and the action,” Jeffers said. “It’s what gets me going.” sekang2@dailyillini.com
KENYON EDMOND THE DAILY ILLINI
A total of 42 trees were marked with bright pink “X”s, signaling they will soon be removed.
‘X’ marks the spot: Tree demolitions scheduled BY SAMANTHA BOYLE ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
As part of a bigger project to improve mobility in the Champaign-Urbana community, 42 trees from Wright Street and Armory Avenue are marked with large, pink “X”s and are scheduled to be removed. Brent Lewis, University landscape architect, said the Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project is working to restructure the campus, and within that redesign, the trees are lost. Currently, MCORE is in its fourth phase out of five. The MCORE Project began its preliminary design in 2015 and is scheduled to complete construction by 2020. “Each street will undergo either full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to rebuild the streets into multimodal complete street corridors to accommodate all modes of travel (bus, pedestrian, bike, and vehicle),” according to the MCORE Project website. The project is estimated to cost about $46.9 million. Although through phase four of MCORE, 42 trees
are being taken down, 43 trees are also being replanted, Lewis said. Across the entire project, over 100 trees will be removed and replanted. “Even though we are taking down trees, we are getting a net benefit,” Lewis said. He said some of the Sweetgum trees on Armory Avenue already don’t have the best planting area because of factors such as the soil they are planted in. They can also cause mobility issues for some pedestrians when the seed pods fall. “With the MCORE Project, we are able to mitigate that problem,” Lewis said. He said when the trees get replanted, there will also be a higher soil volume, which will allow the trees to live 20 to 30 years longer. Diane Plewa, Plant Clinic diagnostician, said both Champaign and Urbana have Tree City USA status. According to the Arbor Day Foundation, in order to be labeled a Tree City, a city must maintain a tree board or department, have a community tree ordinance,
SENIOR REPORTER
Members of the University’s Senate have responded to the online and inperson harassment of an outspoken professor with steps to prevent contentious in-class confrontations. However, there is still disagreement over whether these steps are strong enough. Jay Rosenstein, professor in Media, has long been a target of online harassment becauseof his strong public stance against the University’s former mascot Chief Illiniwek, culminating in an incident in January 2018 where he was accused of following a supporter of the Chief mascot into a bathroom
and filming him without consent. Although Rosenstein denied filming the supporter and charges were dropped, outrage over the incident spread across online communities, with petitions calling for his firing and sites encouraging trolling and threats against the professor on social media. The threats against Rosenstein became considerably more serious when one C-U resident who had attacked Rosenstein repeatedly online and in person during faculty Senate meetings enrolled in one of his Fall 2018 courses for the pur-
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spend at least $2 per capita on urban forestry and celebrate Arbor Day. “Trees provide a lot of value,” Plewa said. “There are economic, ecological and aesthetic values to those trees, and so there are a number of organizations that are really prominent in trying to promote the value of trees. Encouraging people to plant them, to maintain them, that sort of thing.” Plewa said it’s important to enjoy trees, considering it is one of the reasons they are planted in the first place, but they are living things and a lot of stressors can affect them, such as bad weather and diseases. “It’s one of those things that you easily take for granted,” Plewa said. “But when you go to the (Main) Quad, they have those trees along the sidewalks, and you see people sitting under them, and you see people having the hammocks that are tied between them. We use trees in a lot of ways, and so it’s nice to appreciate them.”
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