From: Mark Alway <alway@accesscom.com>
Subject: [sfskaters] FNS & Police
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 20:24:23 -0800

First of all, I want to congratulate D. on the award he is to receive
this Friday.  D. has done a super job with the FNS since I've been
involved and I know from talking to others that he has devoted many
hours to keep the FNS organized.  I look forward to this Friday's award
presentation.

(and to top it all off, it makes the cops look really silly to be
ticketing folks that just received a special honor from the board of
supervisors.)

In other news...
I've just spoken with the San Francisco Office of Citizen Complaints and
wanted to let you know what I was told.  This office is a community
advocacy group for complaints against police officers.  I inquired about
their services because I felt that it was unfair that the Skate Patrol
was specifically targeted in the Police ticketing serveral weeks ago. 
Interestingly enough, I have not been the only person to complain. 
Several people who were roughed up by Sgt. Hughes have also complained. 
There is a woman named Moy who has been assigned to our case.  She has
previous experience working with Critical Mass.

She is very good and symphathizes with the skaters.  She would like to
see a compromise worked out between the police and the skaters.  She is
willing to work on sitting both sides down at the table.  She also has
the power to do something about it (because she holds a handful of
complaints against Sgt. Hughes).  She believes that the police action
was really rather uncalled for.  She desires to hear from any skaters
(that's you) that felt you were unfairly picked out of the crowd for the
ticket, roughed up, or any way mistreated.  While many people think that
filing a complaint is a big long process, it's not.  She wants the
complaints not to get anyone mad, but to show that there are skaters who
are concerned about the recent police action.  She says that number
matters.  The more people that complain, the better the chance we can
get a compromise worked out quickly.

She has close ties with a Lt. Bruce who apparently is working on getting
a police compromise and a Commander Walkain.

I am pretty happy knowing that there is a lot of support for the skate
and the wheels are turning in several different locations.   Moy is just
one avenue that we may use to get things worked out.

Again, I urge you all to get involved in this movement.  Write a letter
to the board of supervisors, solicit community members to write letters
in support, let Moy know that you're concerned etc.  Just don't use the
"I'm too busy excuse" because that's how the government gets away with
everything. 

-- Mark