Judge releases protester from jail

Last Friday, police took Mike Andrews to jail after he sparred with an officer in a mass bike ride protest. After six days, he's finally leaving the Monroe County Correctional Center.\nMonroe Circuit Court Judge David Welch released Andrews, 54, from jail on bond reduction Thursday. At his Tuesday arraignment, Andrews delayed his release by refusing to plead, according to Welch's office.\nUnder state law, a mandatory plea of not guilty was entered.\nThe county prosecutor charged Andrews with obstructing traffic, disorderly conduct, resisting law enforcement and battery of a police officer, a Class D felony. The longtime Bloomington activist could face up to three years in jail and a $16,000 fine.\nAndrews released a statement from jail Monday detailing his account of Friday's events. His version is similar to police accounts, but he claims officers used excessive force. \nAndrews said in the statement that he and his wife, Nancy Rinehart, spontaneously decided to join the monthly bike protest, which they read about in the newspaper. Wanting some fresh air, Andrews said, he joined the dozens of bicyclists who rode en masse through the streets to call attention to alternative modes of transportation. \nWhen the bicyclists started to hold up traffic on North Walnut Street, police moved in to break it up. In his statement, Andrews said he did ignore warnings an officer gave him.\n"The right lane was a turn-only lane," he said. "(We were) legally traveling in this lane."\nAndrews said the officer -- Cory Grass -- grabbed Rinehart when instructing her to move over.\n"Alarmed by the assault and the prospect of injury to Nancy, I quickly stopped and grabbed her forearm," he said. "I seized the officer's wrist with my left hand, attempting to free her arm so that she would not be pulled roughly off and backwards over her bike."\nAndrews claims the officer then pulled all three of them down and onto his bike.\n"At this point, I was quickly pressed to the ground by several policemen," he said. "I was sprayed in the eyes by some sort of pepper gas from an aerosol can. At the same time, someone was punching or clubbing my thighs repeatedly with some hard object, possibly a heel or a nightstick."\nHis account differs with the police report, which states that Andrews knocked Grass off his bike and pinned him to prevent him from making an arrest. BPD Sgt. Bob Neely said officers used only as much force as was necessary to subdue those resisting arrest.\nNeely said if the bicyclists had complied with officers' instructions to move into the far right lane, police would not have made any arrests.\nIt's not the first time Bloomington police have cracked down on the bike ride, an international event called "Critical Mass" that originated in San Francisco in 1992.\nBloomington activists first staged the event in April 1994, disrupting traffic and getting into several confrontations with motorists. After receiving a number of complaints, police were out in full force for the next mass bike ride that September.\nThat time, they arrested seven cyclists on charges of obstructing traffic and resisting law enforcement, citing 10 others for obstruction of traffic.\nBut the arrests of Andrews and six other cyclists last Friday have still generated a backlash from the activist community, which marched through Bloomington to the police station Thursday.\n"Expressing your opinion is not a crime," Cogi Haggerty, Rinehart's son, said. "We wanted to show that you can challenge authority."\nAndrews has long been active in many environmental and criminal justice causes in Bloomington. He ran for mayor as an independent candidate in 1987, garnering 884 votes, or 7.6 percent of those cast.\nIf convicted, it won't be the first time Andrews has served jail time.\nProtesting state law that prohibited write-in votes, he was arrested in 1985 for refusing to leave a voting booth, Andrews said in a written statement. He was sentenced to 191 days in prison, which he served at the Putnamville State Correctional Facility, according to the statement.