Dear Editor,

It seems that Cecil Gilbert, who is black, and a white woman were harassed by a mob in Peoples' Park after they made innocuous remarks about an unleashed dog. They escaped to their car, which was surrounded and beaten with brances. In escaping, they hit one assailant with their car, for which Mr. Gilbert was arrested. After learning the facts, the prosecutor dropped charges and said he plans no further investigation, since nobody is pressing charges.

I trust Carl Salzmann as a prosecutor, and very likely his decision not to press charges against anyone is correct given the difficulty of proof--- but someone needs to look into this further. It doesn't matter that Mr. Gilbert doesn't want to press charges. For one thing, he might be afraid of retribution. For another, he doesn't live in Bloomington and doesn't have to come near People's Park again. The rest of us do.

The impression left by this story is that downtown Bloomington is controlled by violent hoodlums. Do I need to carry a gun if I get ice cream there Saturday night? Is it unsafe for black people to patronize Bloomington businesses, or were the attackers merely using racial slurs as the first insults that came to mind? Do we need to get rid of People's Park? Or are all these fears unfounded, because the newspaper stories don't reflect what really happened? Someone needs to answer these questions.