In January of 2020 there was a big kerfuffle over the alleged theft of a purse from the Carle Auxiliary Resale Boutique, 810 W. University Avenue.  State Representative Carol Ammons was named as the suspect and naturally, with very little information, everyone lost their minds, because that is the nature of politics.

State’s Attorney Julia Rietz handed the case over to a special prosecutor, citing a conflict of interest.  If you want to know more, and don’t mind clumsy reporting and a perversion of the facts by someone who writes to feed the addiction of her “crime news junkies”, seek out Mary Schenk’s articles on the issue.

Though I’ve never met or spoken to Carol Ammons, and I don’t really know much about her, she and I have one thing in common: we have both been accused of stealing a purse.  My own story is memorialized on www.corruptcu.com, and the experiences I had as a result of that incident have certainly been the primary reason for the creation of Check CU.

A week or two ago, Check CU received a redacted copy of the Urbana Police report from the alleged theft on January 7^th, 2020.  I never tried to send a FOIA request for the police report myself, but I know of multiple attempts by others that were denied by the City of Urbana.  Urbana is also currently being sued for the police report.

Having possession of the report before it was available through any other media outlet allowed me to step through the most interesting thought exercises.  As it happens, I had just submitted my candidate petition to run for the Urbana City Council, and I was provided the police report immediately after doing so. 

I was able to start thinking like a politician, moving the chess pieces around the board in my head.  I’m not interested in being a crime reporter, and I despise Mary Schenk’s irresponsible clickbait mugshot reporting.  I thought about just posting the police report in Check CU’s records database and leaving it alone.

I discussed it with a few people, and received all kinds of interesting feedback.  Someone told me that the Ammons family is powerful, and would crush my City Council candidacy if I were to post the police report.  “Could they really be that petty?” I wondered.  “Definitely don’t post it until after the petition challenge deadline” they told me.  Huh.

Another person suggested that the report could ruin Titianna Ammons’s chances in her run for the Urbana City Clerk spot.  If that is true, then it certainly reveals just how terrible we’ve all become at actually judging a person on their own values and actions rather than casting them into groups and classes.  I don’t really know much about Titianna, but I remember being impressed when she spoke at a debate on policing held by the Illinois Newsroom back in July.  I do hope she wins the Urbana City Clerk spot, as she seems adamant about actually increasing public access.

The few people with whom I discussed this were pretty much all in agreement: posting the report would bring me “factions” of new political enemies.  After some consideration, I realized I was being encouraged to think in exactly the manner of the people I might call “corrupt”.  The revelation that followed shortly after, described with the most journalistic precision that I can summon, is “to hell with that”.  The public deserves access to these records.

I’m not terribly interested in writing about a purse theft right now.  I do think the way that this incident was handled by the state police and the special prosecutor is highly questionable, and maybe I will write about that at some point.  In the meantime, I’ll just remind everyone that the Champaign Police officers, in regards to my own arrest and prosecution, certainly made their best attempt at making me look guilty in their reports.  They wrote things that made me appear guilty and selectively omitted items that would exonerate me.  Indeed, police have repeatedly shown themselves to be deserving of a very high level of skepticism and scrutiny.

So, the police report is available below this article, and this article simply has my own musings, but no actual information about the contents of the police report.  I am convinced of the authenticity of the report, and you can read it yourself.  I’m sure Republicans will blast away without thoughtful consideration, and Democrats will tirelessly defend without thoughtful consideration, and we’ll all continue to fail to have honest conversations with each other.

-Christopher Hansen, Urbana

Urbana Police Report on Alleged Carol Ammons Purse Theft 2020-01-07 (click for full 11-page PDF):