OK, this time we’re serious. Seriously. OK. Starting right … now.

”A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Macbeth, 5. 5

That’s it? That’s all there is to this?

It was quite a let down at Peoria Police HQ last week. I was looking forward to months of increasingly bitter acrimony and accusations of racism as the city tried to prosecute a bunch of high school age kids for obstructing traffic. And by prosecute, I mean, “try to get them to pay the tickets.” Instead, the city is letting the Manual 22 (and Woodruff 10) avoid punishment for the egregious sin of walking down the road.

If you are a Peoria resident who happens to have spent the last month in a cave, you might not be aware that the Peoria Police Department, responding to a request from Peoria School District 150, who were themselves responding to complaints from neighbors, decided to do something about the problem of school age kids walking down the middle of the road, slowly, refusing to get out of the way for cars, and sometimes threatening and intimidating drivers.

They responded, some say, by overreacting. On one single day, Sept. 28, police officers swooped down on teenagers as they walked home from school. They ticketed 22 kids at Manual and another 10 at Woodruff. They would have ticketed more at WHS, but the officers there were called away.

Some leaders of the African-American community responded, some say, by over-reacting. Rita Ali, diversity officer at Illinois Central College, said she saw the whole thing at Manual and insisted that not one single student was obstructing any traffic and that except for walking across the street, staying to the side of the road.

This case was like a blank canvas upon which people could paint a picture of the Peoria based on their own biases. Most white people, especially those who grew up in their older neighborhoods and don’t like the changes going on, just clicked their tongues and wondered what the big deal was. These kids are hooligans and need to be put under control.

A rally was held outside of Peoria Police HQ. Speakers hurled all sorts of allegations at the police, City Hall and the Peoria City Council. At one point, it was suggested that this was just part of the city wide conspiracy to break the spirit of black people and make them second class citizens.

I’ve being stopped by police on occasion and I cannot say that I was ever given a ticket for anything I didn’t deserve, nor have I ever been treated rudely by a police officer during any of these incidents. But I am not going to be so stupid as to suggest most black people can say that. All it takes is one officer who assumes you are a friend or family member of a criminal of some sort, and you are pretty much inclined to not dismiss out -of-hand other people’s complaints that they are being harassed or profiled.

So here we were, poised on what was sure to be a long and protracted fight over this thing, and then what happens? Some pastor goes and suggests a compromise, a meeting is held and the city agrees to drop the charges if the ticketed kids attend assemblies planned at District 150’s high schools and middle schools.

Man what a let-down. I was planning feasting on all the controversy. There’s nothing like a racial divide to sell newspapers, boost ratings and drive traffic to certain citizen journalism newspaper sites, like peoriapundit.com. There was no resolution to the dispute over whether or not those 32 kids really were obstructing traffic, as Police Chief Settingsgaard and Ali decided to agree to disagree on the issue. I’d still like to see if there were dashboard camera videos anywhere.

Does the City really think that they can really change behavior by putting kids in an auditorium and lecturing them about the need to respect other people and the law? I attended a lot of similar lectures when I was a kid. They lectured us about the evils of drinking, smoking and premarital sex. It worked about as well as one could expect. I strongly suspect that this is going to give aggressive, confrontational loitering in the middle of the street even more street cred than it already has.

The lectures do eliminate one of the excuses. With the lectures, as well as the massive news coverage, no one can claim they didn’t know they weren’t supposed to do that anymore. Then there are those parents who always threaten to lower the boom on their misbehaving kids, but never do. On one hand, we can’t keep asking our police officers to crack down on crime when every time they do, their bosses refuse to let the punishment stand. On the other hand, people get “probation” all the time for more serious incidents.

This is certain: City officials are fooling themselves if they think local and state NAACP president Don Jackson is going to hesitate to charge the city with racism the next time he sees an opportunity. The Peoria Association of Pastors for Community & Spiritual Renewal, headed by the Rev. Harvey Burnette, really came out of this looking like real leaders who are looking for solutions. Not only have they completed their third gun buyback, they essentially got the ball rolling on a compromise. From the start, they thought the ticketed was a poorly conceived idea, but not racist. And they made it clear they believed the police need to be able to enforce the law. Jackson comes off looking like a complainer who is short on ideas on how to fix the problems.

And there are a lot of areas that require some compromise, or at least better understanding. There are ongoing concerns about the Martin Luther King holiday, minority hiring in the police department, minority hiring in upcoming public works projects, not to mention the atmosphere of segregation that permeated debate on whether to expand the 4 a.m. liquor license zone.

I am not taking sides on these issues, other than to say I’m in favor not using taxpayer dollars to do anything to give one contractor an advantage over another anymore than I am to base hiring decisions on skin color.

I can report that elected officials are giving serious consideration to calls for formal, regular meetings between leaders of the African-American community and police and city hall. I’m thinking the pastors will probably be more than willing to be part of the solution. Not so much for those vested in the culture of complaint.