Mob incident not motivated by race, authorities say
Posted Jun 27, 2011 @ 10:05 PM
Last update Jun 27, 2011 @ 10:22 PM
PEORIA ?After allegations of a racist mob intimidating residents in Central Peoria captured nationwide attention over the weekend, police and city officials tried to quell residents? concerns Monday.
The attention stemmed from a group of about 50 young people who walked down Thrush Avenue toward Sheridan Road just before 11 p.m. Friday. Paul Wilkinson, a Sheridan resident, said some in the group were yelling, ?We?re gonna kill all the white people.?
City officials downplayed the racial angle Monday at a news conference at City Hall. Of the 20 houses police stopped at to speak with residents, only one resident reported the group used racial slurs, said City Manager Patrick Urich.
?They may have been said. It may have been one individual in the group. It may have been five. It may have been 10,? Urich said. ?We don?t know for certain.?
There were no fights, injuries or property damage, police said. The group came from a party somewhere on University Street.
Wilkinson, president of the Altamont Park Neighborhood Association, emailed his account to several City Council members and a local blogger several hours after the incident.
When his account was published on the Peoria Chronicle blog, dozens of other sites, including The Drudge Report, picked it up and brought nationwide attention to the incident.
Although Wilkinson spoke with a Journal Star columnist Monday, he did not respond to calls for this article. The investigation into the case continues, and police have stepped up patrols in the neighborhood where the incident occurred.
Peoria police Capt. Mike Scally said more was made of the situation than actually occurred, and the online race allegations brought attention to it.
?I can?t control email, and I think that?s why we?re here right now,? Scally said.
Scally said Wilkinson has complained numerous times about groups in the street and other issues.
Urich called on residents, city officials, neighborhood associations and police to address issues that make people feel unsafe in their neighborhoods.
?This isn?t the only neighborhood where we?ve had incidents like this,? he said. ?We can?t just say that this is occurring just here in this neighborhood. That?s why it takes a larger community discussion about the livability of our neighborhoods.?
C.J. Summers, who is in charge of the Peoria Chronicle blog, received Wilkinson?s email about the incident at 1:50 a.m. Saturday and posted the account to the blog about 3 a.m.
The blog received 306,000 hits after the posting ? compared to the 600 to 800 it receives per day ? and crashed. It was back up Monday evening.
Summers, who has known Wilkinson for five years, said he thought Wilkinson?s claims were newsworthy on a local, but not national, scale. He added that Wilkinson had been instrumental in trying to clean up the neighborhood.
?It just doesn?t seem like a guy like that would be prone to making things up just to get headlines,? said Summers, 40.
A number of people who live in the area said a large group was walking on the streets but was not yelling anything racial.
Debbie Armstrong, who lives on Thrush, said the situation wasn?t a big deal.
?I park my car out front all the time and I?ve never had damage,? she said. ?The guy who wrote that blog should be punished. Take his computer away.?
The actual incident was not like anything being reported around the country, said Doug Burgess, the police?s public information officer. He received calls from as far away as New York about the incident.
?It has really escalated out of control,? he said.
Michael Boren can be reached at 686-3194 or mboren@pjstar.com. Philip Johnson contributed to this story.
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