Champaign police chief to suspects: We'll put an end to this

CHAMPAIGN – Champaign Police Chief R.T. Finney has news for the young men responsible for more than a dozen unprovoked beatings, mostly in the campus area, in the last month.

"We are familiar with who's doing this. We are familiar with what they're doing and how they're operating and we're beginning to turn the tables on them. We're basically hunting them. We'll do this wherever they go until they quit preying on these innocent people," Finney told The News-Gazette on Sunday.

His remarks came in the wake of the Champaign police's early Saturday arrests of two Urbana teens for aggravated assault and hate crime.

Champaign and University of Illinois police have increased their presence in the Campustown area because of a spike in beatings of white men by groups of mostly black men, apparently motivated by nothing but sport.

About 1:35 a.m. Saturday, police saw a verbal confrontation that appeared to have the potential to become physical.

"We swooped in and took them and made the case from there. If we would have waited, someone would have been injured and we would have had an aggravated-battery case. We did not allow that to happen," the chief said of the confrontation between the teens and the 21-year-old Champaign man.

Finney said the victim was walking in the 500 block of East Green when at least two black men made comments to him that had something to do with his race. Finney said he did not know exactly what was said.

Both men were released from jail after posting bond following court Saturday and were told to be back in court today. The state's attorney's office will decide what, if any, criminal charges to file against them after reviewing police reports this morning.

The 500 block of East Green in Champaign was the scene of an Aug. 15 attack on a white man by four black males who hit and kicked him in the head, causing him to lose consciousness, cut his forehead, and injure his nose.

In most of the other dozen or so attacks reported since that one, the victims have been white men and the attackers black males.

Ten of the attacks have occurred on or very near campus.

The attacks are similar: The assailants approach a man walking alone in the very early morning hours and, without provocation, hit him in the head, knock him to the ground and continue to kick and punch him while he is down.

"One would expect robbery to be the motive, but we just aren't finding that to be the case," said Sgt. Jim Rein, who supervises detectives assigned to the cases.

Most of the beatings have occurred between midnight and 3 a.m. So far, only three men have been arrested in connection with the beatings that caused injury and Rein said he doesn't believe those three are responsible for all the attacks.

"I think this is more than one group," Rein said.

Finney said police have identified several suspects from Urbana.

State's Attorney Julia Rietz said of the men arrested for physically beating their victims, the most appropriate charge for them was aggravated battery and not hate crime. That's because aggravated battery on a public way is a more serious offense than hate crime and hate crime is harder to prove.

"It can be very difficult to prove someone's state of mind unless they specifically say something that we can use as evidence," she said. "If they made a racial comment in the course of another offense, then we could possibly charge hate crime, but there is really no benefit when you talk about beatings on public streets because we already have the Class 3 felony of aggravated battery as an option," Rietz said.

A Class 3 felony is punishable by penalties ranging from probation to two to five years in prison, whereas a Class 4 felony, such as hate crime, has penalties ranging from probation to one to three years in prison.