ARCHIVES

Checking Chicago’s War on Drugs

by  Editor-in-Chief

Relocated and current Chicago public housing residents as well as their private market neighbors in poverty-stricken areas want to know what the city police force is doing about their safety. They also want to know what the federal government has been doing to stop the flow of illegal drugs and weapons from ending up in their communities

Unspent Billions and Incomplete Housing Projects
According to data provided to RJ from the Chicago Housing Authority via e-mail in early April, 3,838 residents relocated with housing vouchers under the CHA’s $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation between Oct. 1, 1999 and Sept. 30, 2005. A large number have relocated into other high poverty areas in predominantly African American communities ridden with drug and gang activity. 431 relocated to Englewood, 258 moved into the South Shore area, 212 into apartments in the Roseland community, and 211 relocated to the Greater Grand Crossing area.

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House of Screams

by  Assistant Editor

For over two decades, up to 200 African American men were tortured and abused at the hands of former Chicago Police Detective Jon Burge and other law enforcers, according to a recently released criminal report by special federal investigators.

Like something out of a bad, scary movie, one former prisoner after another told their horror stories in the 292-page Burge report. They told investigators how they were tortured and humiliated at the Chicago Police Department’s Area 2 lock up, then located at 91st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, from the 1970s through the 1980s.
After a four-year investigation which cost millions of dollars, the special federal prosecutors handling the case announced the results on a hot day in mid-July. They confirmed reports that actual torture of inmates occurred at the hands of Burge and other police officers at the time. Burge was fired from the police force for misconduct in 1991. But the special prosecutors stated at a press conference when they released the report that no criminal charges could be filed against Burge or any of the other police officers who tortured people because the statute of limitations had expired.
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Publisher’s Box

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On Wednesday, June 21, 2006, Residents’ Journal Editor-in-Chief Mary C. Johns and Assistant Editor Beauty Turner were mistreated by Chicago police officers.

On that day, Johns and Turner were among many reporters from multiple media outlets covering a massive police operation in the Dearborn Homes public housing development.

Officers from several local and federal law enforcement agencies were in Dearborn Homes that day after a number of people died from using heroin which had a potentially fatal additive, and reports indicated that the heroin was purchased in Dearborn Homes.

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Deadly Moves II

by  Editor-in-Chief

In Deadly Moves, a series of articles produced by Residents Journal and the Chicago Reporter magazine in the fall of 2004, a year long investigation found that the murder rate increased in public housing developments and areas where CHA residents had been relocated across the city under the Chicago Housing Authoritys $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation. The articles appeared simultaneously in both publications and resulted in a new police pilot program.

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“Deadly Moves” – an update

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The city, its police department and the Chicago Housing Authority recently proposed to increase police patrols at several public housing sites and in areas where residents have been relocated.

This announcement came after publication of “Deadly Moves,” a series of articles produced this September by Residents’ Journal and the Chicago Reporter investigative magazine on the increased murder rate in and around CHA communities since October 1999. “Deadly Moves” reported that the murder rate in CHA developments nearly doubled since the start of the Plan for Transformation, CHA’s $1.6 billion redevelopment effort.
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Deadly Moves: Lack of Force

by  and Brian J. Rogal

When Francine Washington noticed hordes of police officers outside U.S.

Cellular Field this spring, she walked toward the ballpark and counted them. The stadium, home of the Chicago White Sox, sits about three blocks west of the Stateway Gardens public housing development where she lives with her husband of 23 years.

For years, Francine Washington complained about open drug dealing in the first-floor lobby of the Stateway Garden high-rise where she lives. Only recently have routine police patrols in the building slowed the drug activity.
Photo by Mary Hanlon

“I went out there twice. The first time I counted 105 police officers out there. The next time I counted 107 officers,” said Washington, president of Stateway’s local advisory council, an elected tenant body.
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Deadly Moves: Troubling Development

by  and Brian J. Rogal

While Mayor Richard M. Daley is touting his plans to remake Chicago Housing Authority developments into mixed-income neighborhoods, a firm that manages one of his showcase communities is charging that the city is not doing enough to stop open drug dealing on its site.

The city has a lot riding on the Near West Side’s Westhaven Park. A failure to attract market-rate renters and buyers could set a bad precedent for other public housing redevelopment efforts.
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If the Suit Fits, Who Wears It?

by  Assistant Editor

There have been numerous suits in the world of Chicago public housing. Some hang around like old suits in a thrift shop, and some new ones are tailor made just for the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) by the residents of public housing.

The suits that I’m talking about are not clothes but lawsuits. But these suits are clinging to CHA all the same. Class action lawsuits are what I’m talking about – many of them are being hung out there to air dry, while some of them were considered form fitting.

In some cases, they were tailor made for the residents, and the residents won. Or did they?
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A Championship Victory

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Public housing residents of the Stateway Gardens complex recently scored a slam-dunk victory over the Chicago Police Department in a one-half million dollar over illegal police searches at a basketball game in February 2001.

The Lawsuit
On Feb. 4, 2003, in the case of Williams v. Brown, the City of Chicago and attorneys representing residents of Stateway Gardens entered into a written agreement to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department. The attorneys for the residents from the Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School settled with the city for the amount of roughly $500,000.
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Seniors Graduate Police Class

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Seventy-five senior citizens were honored during a graduation ceremony this past summer for completing an eight-week program in law enforcement. Most of the graduates live in senior citizen housing in the Circle Park Residence at 1111 N. Ashland Ave., and the Amalgamated Senior Residence at 1504 W. Van Buren St. Many of these seniors speak little or no English.

Transportation was provided to get the graduates from the buildings to the ceremony, which was held in the Glasser Auditorium at Mount Sinai Hospital on the West Side. Friends and family members attended the ceremony in recognition of the graduates. Cook County Sheriff Michael F. Sheahan and Second District Cook County Commissioner Bobbie Steele were among the speakers honoring the graduates. Interpreter Carmen Perez translated the speeches for the Spanish-speaking graduates and their families. Read more »

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