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Author    Post   untanglingwebs El Supremo Accusations of gang ties, intimidation mark Cicero election November 27, 2012|By Joseph Ruzich, Special to the Tribune Cicero, no stranger to political high jinks, is fielding a full slate of candidates for February's town president election, and the jockeying has already grown contentious. (Tribune photo, Chuck Berman) Things are starting to get ugly in the race for president of Cicero — a town where political hardball is commonplace. Incumbent Larry Dominick, who will be seeking a third term as town president in February, has moved quickly to denounce one of his four challengers, former McPier executive Juan Ochoa. Ochoa, who has the backing of U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is hoping to win a majority of Cicero's Hispanic vote. The west suburb is about 80 percent Hispanic. But Dominick's campaign is trying to link Ochoa and his campaign workers to a Chicago street gang. Dominick officials say gang members are knocking on doors throughout town to promote Ochoa's run for office. Ochoa said no current gang members work for his campaign. "Many of these individuals are volunteers for CeaseFire (now Cure Violence) and are former gang members who are now out helping people," Ochoa said of the staffers. "Dominick also uses CeaseFire volunteers to assist him with his campaign. Many of them, of course, are reformed gang members." Dominick would not comment for this story, but Cicero town spokesman Ray Hanania said, "Dominick is probably using CeaseFire members and volunteers to help him get re-elected." But he added that some of the individuals on the Ochoa campaign have been included by the Chicago Crime Commission in its current book of known gang members. "That's the difference," Hanania said. "Our guys aren't in that book." Ochoa said he doesn't understand what relevance that has. Meanwhile, Ochoa is accusing Dominick of putting two other Hispanic candidates on the ballot to draw votes from him, accusations the candidates and Hanania deny. Ochoa also is claiming that Dominick is using the town police for his benefit. On Election Day earlier this month, Cicero police officials charged a 55-year-old campaign worker for Ochoa with disorderly conduct for allegedly "sexually" threatening a female poll worker at a polling place, authorities said. The town immediately issued a news release after the incident, linking the campaign worker to a Chicago street gang. The woman, who pressed charges against the man, happens to be a secretary for Dominick, according to Hanania. "He never said anything to her," Ochoa said. "All of a sudden 10 police officers come to arrest him. (The man) is a grandpa, for goodness' sake." Hanania, who also is a spokesman for the Police Department, said details about the number of officers involved weren't available, but he added that typically three or four officers respond when an arrest is made. Ochoa said it also angers him that police came to the scene and made the arrest but made no arrests during a scuffle among campaign workers representing the two political parties at the Cicero/Berwyn Houby Festival in October. "We called 911, the police did come, but they didn't arrest anyone," Ochoa said. According to Ochoa, the incident occurred after a truck denouncing him and Gutierrez attempted to block Ochoa and his campaign workers while they were walking in the parade. The billboard on the flat truck read "Tell Luis Gutierrez and Juan Ochoa to take their Street Gang Friends back to Chicago." Hanania said Dominick's campaign sponsored the truck, but the spokesman added that he was told by town officials that the incident did not warrant any arrests. Ochoa said the while the incidents can be distracting, he is trying to stay focused on his campaign and his message. "The people of Cicero need better representation," Ochoa said. "I want to clean up town government and I think the residents want that too." Also on the ballot are Lizveth Mendez, a community outreach liaison for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan; Ruperto De Loera, an administrator with the town Fire Department; and former Cicero Senior Services Department Director Joe Pontarelli. Mendez said she believes that she has a good chance of winning the election and denies she entered the race to split the Hispanic vote. "I was not put into this race for Larry Dominick or anybody else," Mendez said. "I want to be town president. The same political machine has been running Cicero for years, and I want to change that. My goal is to have an open and transparent government. We need to manage our tax dollars wisely so it can benefit our education system and our safety." Mendez said she does not want to criticize the other candidates, but added that she would eliminate nepotism in town government. "The current administration has used town government to benefit family and friends," she said. "I would never do that." Mendez also said she has no affiliation with any political organizations. "I'm not trying to just get the Latino vote," Mendez said. "I want all the residents to like what I stand for." De Loera also denies that he is in the race to break up the Hispanic vote. "This is about me," he said. "There is no truth to that." De Loera, a lifelong Cicero resident, said he's still developing a plan for the town. "I love Cicero and I believe in Cicero," said De Loera, 29. "President Dominick has done a good job bringing new businesses to town, but I am younger and have a hunger to do even more for the community." Hanania said Ochoa's allegations about splitting the Hispanic vote are outrageous. "What would be the reason for that?" Hanania said. "I mean, come on, why doesn't he (Ochoa) say that Pontarelli was put in place to break up the white vote?" Pontarelli has said he is running against Dominick, in part to eliminate nepotism in the town. He also accused Dominick and his campaign of using intimidation tactics. Pontarelli said he was transferred from his director job to a less desirable position after Dominick heard he was running against him. Pontarelli is focusing on getting a large portion of senior citizen votes in town. Hanania said Dominick is running on his achievements from the past eight years. "Cicero is a different place now," Hanania said. "Residents receive more services, more businesses have moved here and crime has gone down. I think residents will vote on his record." Fri Feb 08, 2013 1:50 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo For years I have heard allegations that certain political groups,churches, and nonprofits have employed the use of gang members to intimidate candidates and influence elections in the City of Flint. Absentee ballots have been one venue that is frequently referred to as far as intimidation. Allegations swirl that even churches use gangs to try to further their political aspirations. You can't argue that certain nonprofits are given advantages in federal contracts that they should be procluded from. i have heard about nonprofits that use their staff to hold small political meetings to influence government, while being paid to perform tasks related to the nonprofits. One county attorney had to warn one individual over their political activities. When will the feds step in and finally do the job dealing with political corruption ? Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:00 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo Gangs and Politicians in Chicago: An Unholy Alliance LAWBREAKERS, LAWMAKERS: In some parts of Chicago, violent street gangs and pols quietly trade money and favors for mutual gain. The thugs flourish, the elected officials thrive—and you lose. A special report. By David Bernstein and Noah Isackson (page 1 of 5) A few months before last February’s citywide elections, Hal Baskin’s phone started ringing. And ringing. Most of the callers were candidates for Chicago City Council, seeking the kind of help Baskin was uniquely qualified to provide. Baskin isn’t a slick campaign strategist. He’s a former gang leader and, for several decades, a community activist who now operates a neighborhood center that aims to keep kids off the streets. Baskin has deep contacts inside the South Side’s complex network of politicians, community organizations, and street gangs. as he recalls, the inquiring candidates wanted to know: “Who do I need to be talking to so I can get the gangs on board?” Baskin—who was himself a candidate in the 16th Ward aldermanic race, which he would lose—was happy to oblige. In all, he says, he helped broker meetings between roughly 30 politicians (ten sitting aldermen and 20 candidates for City Council) and at least six gang representatives. That claim is backed up by two other community activists, Harold Davis Jr. and Kublai K. M. Toure, who worked with Baskin to arrange the meetings, and a third participant, also a community activist, who requested anonymity. The gang representatives were former chiefs who had walked away from day-to-day thug life, but they were still respected on the streets and wielded enough influence to mobilize active gang members. The first meeting, according to Baskin, occurred in early November 2010, right before the statewide general election; more gatherings followed in the run-up to the February 2011 municipal elections. The venues included office buildings, restaurants, and law offices. (By all accounts, similar meetings took place across the city before last year’s elections and in elections past, including after hours at the Garfield Center, a taxpayer-financed facility on the West Side that is used by the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.) At some of the meetings, the politicians arrived with campaign materials and occasionally with aides. The sessions were organized much like corporate-style job fairs. The gang representatives conducted hourlong interviews, one after the other, talking to as many as five candidates in a single evening. Like supplicants, the politicians came into the room alone and sat before the gang representatives, who sat behind a long table. “One candidate said, ‘I feel like I’m in the hot seat,’” recalls Baskin. “And they were.” The former chieftains, several of them ex-convicts, represented some of the most notorious gangs on the South and West Sides, including the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, Black Disciples, Cobras, Black P Stones, and Black Gangsters. Before the election, the gangs agreed to set aside decades-old rivalries and bloody vendettas to operate as a unified political force, which they called Black United Voters of Chicago. “They realized that if they came together, they could get the politicians to come to them,” explains Baskin. The gang representatives were interested in electing aldermen sympathetic to their interests and those of their impoverished wards. As for the politicians, says Baskin, their interests essentially boiled down to getting elected or reelected. “All of [the political hopefuls] were aware of who they were meeting with,” he says. “They didn’t care. All they wanted to do was get the support.” Baskin declined to name names, but Chicago has learned, through other sources at the meetings, the identities of some of the participants. They include: Aldermen Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward), Walter Burnett Jr. (27th), Willie Cochran (20th), and Freddrenna Lyle (6th). Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd) attended a meeting; upon realizing that the participants had close gang ties, she objected but stayed. Also attending were candidates who would go on to win their races, including Michael Chandler (24th) and Roderick Sawyer (6th). Darcel Beavers, the former 7th Ward alderman who would wind up losing her race, and Patricia Horton, a commissioner with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District who lost her bid for city clerk, also met with the group. Chandler, Brookins, and Burnett told Chicago they did not attend such a meeting. Sawyer and Horton did not return several calls seeking comment. A spokesman for Dowell confirmed that she attended the meeting after she objected. Beavers, Cochran, and Lyle, who was recently appointed as a Cook County judge, said they attended but were not told beforehand that former gang chiefs would be there, nor that the purpose involved gang-backed political support. “It, basically, was no different than sitting in front of any other panel that asks you questions relative to constituent issues,” said Cochran. During the meetings, the politicians were allotted a few minutes to make their pitches. The former gang chiefs then peppered them with questions: What would they do about jobs? School safety? Police harassment? Help for ex-cons? But in the end, as with most things political in Chicago, it all came down to one question, says Davis, the community activist who helped Baskin with some of the meetings. He recalls that the gang representatives asked, “What can you give me?” The politicians, most eager to please, replied, “What do you want?” Street gangs have been a part of Chicago politics at least since the days of the notorious First Ward bosses “Bathhouse John” Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna, who a century ago ran their vice-ridden Levee district using gangs of toughs armed with bats and pistols to bully voters and stuff ballot boxes. “Gangs and politics have always gone together in this city,” says John Hagedorn, a gang expert and professor of criminal justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It’s a shadowy alliance, he adds, that is deeply ingrained in Chicago’s political culture: “You take care of them; they’ll take care of us.” To what extent do street gangs influence—and corrupt—Chicago politics today? And what are the consequences for ordinary citizens? To find out, Chicago conducted more than 100 interviews with current and former elected officials and candidates, gang leaders, senior police officials, rank-and-file cops, investigators, and prosecutors. We also talked to community activists, campaign operatives, and criminologists. We limited our scope to the city (though alliances certainly exist in some gang-infested suburbs) and focused exclusively on Democrats, since they are the dominant governing party in Chicago and in the statehouse. Moreover, we looked at the political influence of street gangs only, not of traditional organized crime—a worthy subject for another day. Our findings: • While they typically deny it, many public officials—mostly, but not limited to, aldermen, state legislators, and elected judges—routinely seek political support from influential street gangs. Meetings like the ones Baskin organized, for instance, are hardly an anomaly. Gangs can provide a decisive advantage at election time by performing the kinds of chores patronage armies once did. • In some cases, the partnerships extend beyond the elections in troubling—and possibly criminal—ways, greased by the steady and largely secret flow of money from gang leaders to certain politicians and vice versa. The gangs funnel their largess through opaque businesses, or front companies, and through under-the-table payments. In turn, grateful politicians use their payrolls or campaign funds to hire gang members, pull strings for them to get jobs or contracts, or offer other favors (see “Gangs and Politicians: Prisoner Shuffle”). • Most alarming, both law enforcement and gang sources say, is that some politicians ignore the gangs’ criminal activities. Some go so far as to protect gangs from the police, tipping them off to impending raids or to surveillance activities—in effect, creating safe havens in their political districts. And often they chafe at backing tough measures to stem gang activities, advocating instead for superficial solutions that may garner good press but have little impact. The paradox is that Chicago’s struggle to combat street gangs is being undermined by its own elected officials. And the alliances between lawmakers and lawbreakers raise a troubling question: Who actually rules the neighborhoods—our public servants or the gangs? This article appears in the January 2012 issue of Chicago magazine. Did you like what you read here? Subscribe to Chicago magazine » Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:12 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo (page 2 of 5) The police officers were in a squad car in October 2007, patrolling a section of Uptown some call a walking Please delete me!, where drugs are sold openly. When they saw a silver Chevy Cavalier roll through a stop sign, they ran a check on the plates and discovered that there was a warrant for the arrest of the owner. They approached the car. One passenger turned out to be Rahiem Ali, a 29-year-old Gangster Disciple with a criminal record dating back to 1995 and a rap sheet with nearly 40 arrests. Ali and his twin brother, Rahmon, were well known to police. The two ran a lucrative Uptown drug spot and were notorious for being among the biggest, baddest gangbangers in the neighborhood. According to the officers’ report, they saw Ali shove a hand into his pants pocket and pop something into his mouth. When they ordered him out of the car, Ali shoved the police aside and ran. It took four officers to subdue him. One suffered a cracked tooth when Ali hit him with his elbow. Two officers doused Ali with pepper spray before he coughed out two plastic bags filled with 23 smaller bags containing what was suspected to be crack cocaine. Later, at the police station, two lawyers arrived to see Ali. In any other neighborhood, the officers might not have noticed them. But not in Uptown, not when one of the lawyers was Brendan Shiller, the son of Helen Shiller, the 46th Ward alderman. The 46th Ward is one of Chicago’s most diverse communities, home to the well-heeled and the downtrodden. Throughout her career, from 1987 until she stepped down last year, Helen Shiller was known as a fierce advocate for the latter. Few aldermen on the City Council have been more resistant to gentrification or more likely to embrace social welfare programs. In Uptown, large public housing complexes were a source of pride for Shiller, who trumpeted how they added diversity to the ward and provided a rare commodity on the North Side’s lakefront: affordable housing. Her critics, meanwhile, argued that the complexes bred and fostered a criminal population, and they accused her of not doing enough to stop the drug and gang violence that dominated specific buildings. During meetings with the police department’s command staff, says a high-ranking police source, Shiller “never [made] a big push to go after any kind of organized narcotic operation.” Officers working in the 23rd District say Shiller and her chief of staff, Denice Davis, frequently came into the station after certain Uptown residents were arrested to try to defuse things. Police say Davis’s interference on behalf of gangbangers and the Alis—whose mother, Aqueela, was part of the alderman’s political organization—had a chilling effect on their policing efforts. What was the point of making an arrest when it brought trouble from the alderman’s office? “Certain officers would get the message: ‘Maybe I shouldn’t make this stop’ or ‘Maybe I shouldn’t investigate this,’” says Joe Cox, a veteran officer from the district who retired in 2010. Shiller says she “didn’t have a relationship” with either of the Ali twins, nor did she offer any assistance to them. “My relationship was with their mom. I knew she had sons that had difficulties. I didn’t interact with them. I didn’t know them.” As the Ali brothers collected thousands a week running the drug spot around Lawrence Avenue and Sheridan Road, word spread among the police to treat the two with kid gloves. A police source says that during arrests, the twins would say, “I’ll have your job. Do you know who my lawyer is? Do you know who his mama is?” The source adds, “They would mention the alderman by name. They would mention Brendan Shiller by name.” Police and Shiller’s political opponents suspected that the alderman deliberately turned a blind eye to gang activity in order to bring the gang element into the fold and build up her voting base. “It’s what I like to call the exchange game,” says Sandra Reed, who twice lost elections to Shiller, in 1999 and 2003. “She protects the kids, even when they are doing wrong. She helps the parents. They think she is going to protect them, so they all work for her.” Some speculate that Shiller helped Aqueela Ali fend off multiple attempts to have her and her sons evicted from their apartment at 920 West Lakeside Place, where rules prohibit criminal behavior by residents. (Shiller acknowledges she helped Ali with “housing issues.”) While it’s not entirely clear what her role was in Shiller’s political organization, Ali served as a poll watcher, an election judge, and a Shiller campaign worker since at least 2002, campaign records show. Records also show that she gathered petition signatures to get Shiller on the ballot in 2003 and 2007. But it may have been Ali’s choice of residence that provided her with the most political firepower. Her building is one of the largest Section 8 facilities in Uptown, home to between 800 and 1,000 residents. Ali had clout and the ability to sway public opinion. She was the leader of the building’s tenants’ association board and, perhaps most important, the mother of Rahiem and Rahmon. “You’re talking about the mother of the most well-known gangbangers in the neighborhood,” one officer says. “When she knocks on someone’s door, do you think those people are going to say no?” (Ali did not respond to requests for comment.) In a ward where the difference between winning and losing can be a few hundred votes, an election can turn on a campaign’s ability to win particular blocks or buildings. For example, when Shiller was first elected alderman in 1987, she won by just 498 votes. In 2007, her last election, she beat the challenger, James Cappleman, by a mere 700 votes, fewer than the number of residents living at 920 West Lakeside. Rahiem Ali died on March 23, 2010, after ingesting a plastic bag of narcotics during an arrest and falling into a coma. (As he lay in the hospital, Brendan Shiller represented him in court on charges of aggravated battery to a police officer and resisting arrest.) Ali’s death was ruled an accident by the Cook County medical examiner. Helen Shiller, still the alderman of the 46th Ward, reached out to the family, giving $200 to his mother the day before services were held at a West Side funeral home. The official record categorizes the expenditure as “community outreach–funeral expenses” from Citizens for Shiller, her campaign fund. Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:17 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo (page 3 of 5) That a sitting alderman would help pay for the funeral of a notorious gangster shows how the interests of politicians and gangs can intertwine. For the Ali twins, the connection conferred an above-the-law aura. For their mother, it offered the opportunity to work in the community as part of the alderman’s inner circle. For Shiller, the relationship seems to have brought street cred and political muscle that helped her fend off tough challenges at the ballot box. Because campaign disclosure rules are vague, such relationships aren’t usually reported, nor are they easy to track through the paperwork on campaign contributions and expenditures that candidates are required to file. Assessing how pervasive the alliances are, or how much back scratching actually takes place, is difficult. Oversight is virtually nonexistent. Thus, the relationships are usually hidden from public scrutiny. Even so, there’s no rule prohibiting aldermen from forming such relationships. State lawmakers are similarly unconstrained. Compliance with Illinois’s ethics act, which contains the code of conduct for legislators, is voluntary. As it’s put in the law, the ethical principles “are intended only as guides to legislator conduct, and not as rules meant to be enforced with disciplinary action.” (Many elected officials in Chicago and Springfield have also been stalwart opponents of rules designed to shed more light on potentially questionable conduct or to make their offices and political operations more transparent.) Allowed such free rein, our lawmakers operate in an ambiguous moral universe that seems as lawless as some of the street corners in their districts. “No wonder corrupt pols here fear only one person: U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald,” said a Chicago Tribune editorial a few years ago. Many forms of political corruption—taking bribes, rigging elections, engaging in pay-to-play deals—are plainly unethical, if not illegal. But forming political alliances with gangs isn’t a clear matter of right or wrong, some say. In many Chicago neighborhoods, it’s virtually impossible for elected officials and candidates for public office not to have at least some connection, even family ties, to gang members. “People try to paint this picture of bad versus good—it’s not like that,” says a veteran political organizer based in Chicago who specializes in getting out the vote in minority areas. “Everybody lives with each other, grew up with each other. Just because somebody goes this way or that way, it doesn’t mean you’re just gonna write them off automatically.” For better or worse, gang members are constituents, the same as businesspeople in the Gold Coast. Says Aaron Patterson, an imprisoned gang member: “It ain’t like gangs come from another planet.” For some politicians, gang members can be a source of political strength—all the more so given that the once-formidable City Hall–Cook County patronage system, the lifeblood of the old Machine, is mostly gone. In the heyday of the Machine, recalls Wallace Davis Jr., a former 27th Ward alderman, political chieftains could simply snap their fingers and marshal a large cadre of city workers to go door-to-door with “a pint of wine and a chicken” to turn out the vote. Few politicians nowadays have such armies at their beck and call. To win elections, many officeholders and candidates—especially those who represent parts of the city with high concentrations of street gangs—turn to those gangs as their de facto political organizations. “It went from wine and a chicken to hiring a gangbanger,” says Davis, who served from 1983 to 1987. “It’s unfortunate.” Though estimates vary, most authorities and criminologists agree that there are 70,000 to 125,000 gang members in the city. In the numbers game of Chicago politics—in which, as the old joke goes, a one-vote victory constitutes a landslide—a constituency of that size gets noticed. (Keep in mind that in Illinois convicted felons can vote once they are released from prison.) And though gangs are anything but a monolithic voting bloc, they can, and sometimes do, offer enormous numbers come election time, especially when you count their relatives, friends, and those they muscle at the polls. “An alderman ain’t nothing without the backing of the neighborhood,” says a top-level Gangster Disciple from the South Side. “Without the gangs, it’s hard [for politicians] to exist.” A Latin King, interviewed at Cook County Jail, recalls how the top leader of his gang, the Corona, ordered every member in his area to vote for Ricardo Muñoz, the 22nd Ward alderman. “Every chapter had to vote for that guy, anyone who was eligible to vote,” says the Latin King. “That was a direct order. That means you can’t say no. If you do, you face a violation”—typically a beating, or worse. He estimates that the gang delivered hundreds of votes, maybe even a thousand or more, in one of Muñoz’s elections in the 1990s. Moreover, he says, members were also directed—under the threat of punishment—to pass out campaign flyers for Muñoz and walk around carrying his signs. They were instructed to wear their Sunday best: ties, khakis, trench coats. “No thug clothes,” he recalls. Muñoz says he does not seek out gang support: “There is no coordinated effort in any way, shape, or form.” Many politicians who enlist gang members try to cloak the relationship in the rhetoric of political empowerment or social activism. They’ll say they want to get troubled youth involved in the political process in constructive ways: doing things like circulating nominating petitions, passing out campaign literature, or registering voters. They’ll say that for many of these men and boys, participating in politics is one of the few positive things they’ve done in their lives. Some gang members seem to welcome the chance to leave the thug life, if only temporarily, and use the political system to better their lot. They say they have grown tired of gangbanging, realizing that it typically ends in one of two ways: death or prison. But honest jobs, they quickly point out, are few and far between where they live. “We don’t just all want to sell drugs,” says a Vice Lord leader from the West Side who is in Cook County Jail. “Some people [are] trying to do right .” UIC’s Hagedorn and others who study gangs say that as long as the gangs don’t cross a line of illegal behavior, they should be political forces in their communities. “It’s a good idea to bring gangs into politics,” Hagedorn says. “Co-opt them, get them to go legit. It worked for the Irish, right?” But law-and-order absolutists say today’s street gangs are much different from the Irish gangs of old: They are not just a bunch of toughs who brawl in the streets. “Gangs drive all of the crime in Chicago, and it’s shocking that some of these [public servants] want to align themselves with them simply for political gain,” says Jody Weis, the former Chicago police superintendent. “It’s kind of like selling your soul to the devil.” Weis’s predecessor, Phil Cline, agrees: “If they think that they can use the gangs and the gangs aren’t going to want something in return, they are wrong. Once you start lying down with dogs, you are going to get fleas.” Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:21 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo (page 4 of 5) . The West Side Vice Lord at Cook County Jail speaks with a raspy voice about his own experiences with politicians. The leader of his gang, he says, had struck a deal with an alderman who was giving the Vice Lords extra money to buy heroin and high-grade marijuana. It was a win-win for everybody, by his account; the whole operation raked in $50,000 a day. Most of the money went to the gang, but the alderman took a nice cut, he says. Before he was charged with shooting a rival gang member, the jailed Vice Lord says, he regularly met with the alderman in parking lots or at a Mexican restaurant to pick up and deliver envelopes of money. In time, the alderman—whom the Vice Lord refused to name but described as heavyset and middle-aged—grew more comfortable with these meetings and began asking to be introduced to young women who hung around the gang. In return, the Vice Lord recalls, the alderman would sometimes give the gang a heads-up about what was discussed at CAPS meetings, where police and residents talked about neighborhood crime and other issues. The alderman, he says, would tell them which corners or gang members were receiving police attention. That way, the gang would “know how to move around” to avoid police, he explains. (Many aldermen wield considerable influence over the police commanders in their districts. In some respects, the commanders unofficially report to the aldermen.) He says that the alderman would also let them know about jobs at particular construction sites in the ward. The Vice Lord and five other top gang members—all of whom requested anonymity out of concern for their safety—described how gangs and public officials use each other in ways legal and illegal. Though they are from different areas of the city, their stories are similar. Generally speaking, they say, the relationships grow out of activities related to Election Day, when politicians can offer dozens of temporary jobs to those willing to do the get-out-the-vote work or, if necessary, intimidate voters, tear down signs, or vandalize an opponent’s campaign office, among other misdeeds. From there, the relationships can, and do, get seedier. A high-ranking Latin King claims that a Latino elected official, still in office, and a member of his staff routinely buy drugs from the gang. “They do PCP, coke, smoke weed, drink, everything,” he says. Several gang members call such actions common. “That shit that goes on behind closed doors is outrageous,” says a Latin King from another part of the city. Two police sources—a former gang investigator and a veteran detective—bluntly acknowledge that even if the police know of dubious dealings between an alderman and a gang leader or drug dealer, there is little, if anything, they can do, thanks to what they say is the department’s unofficial rule: Stay away from public officials. “We can’t arrest aldermen,” says the gang investigator, “unless they’re doing something obvious to endanger someone. We’re told to stand down.” The detective concurs: “It’s the unwritten rule. There’s a two-tier justice system here.” Meanwhile, the city’s inspector general can’t—by design of the City Council—investigate council members. (In May 2010, the council, under pressure to curb its corruptible ways, created its own inspector general. The job went unfilled for more than 18 months, until last November, when the council picked a New York lawyer for the part-time position, which has a minuscule budget and no staff and which critics have decried as window-dressing.) Beyond providing protection from police—the gangs’ number one request—public officials can help in other ways. Gang leaders, particularly the most powerful, are usually looking to build on the riches they already have. Knowing an alderman or a state legislator—or even a congressman—can help. Traditionally, aldermen have almost total say over what gets built and what sorts of businesses open in their wards. They also have considerable sway over city contracts, which can mean tens of thousands to millions of dollars for gang-owned businesses. By many accounts, state legislators and, to a lesser extent, the lawmakers in Washington can, and do, steer state or federal contracts or grant money to gang-backed businesses and gang-friendly nonprofit fronts. This isn’t always as simple as a direct contract. Sometimes officials and other political insiders encourage gang leaders to form minority subcontractor companies and hook them up with reputable city contractors. It solves problems for everyone: Gang leaders who want to get on the straight and narrow, or perhaps launder their profits from their criminal enterprises, can form legitimate businesses that won’t draw scrutiny; contractors get a minority-owned company to work with (the city requires that 25 percent of all contract payments go to minority firms and 5 percent to female-owned firms); the political go-betweens get political support or just goodwill that they can draw on later—and maybe even a cut of the profits. Consider the case of Radames DeJesus. A convicted cocaine dealer who was sentenced to seven years in prison for shooting and seriously wounding three rival gang members in 1989, DeJesus, 45, is currently active in the Latin Kings, according to three Chicago gang investigators and a well-placed Humboldt Park gang member. At his 1990 trial, a gang investigator testified that DeJesus was an enforcer in the gang. DeJesus admitted he was a gang member but not an enforcer, according to court documents. Sometime around 2006, sources say, a political insider told DeJesus he could start up a minority-owned business and reap lucrative city contracts. He then opened SewerTech Services, a sewer maintenance company on the city’s West Side. SewerTech has received a total of $31.1 million in subcontracts from Kenny Construction, the politically connected firm that has won hundreds of millions of dollars in sewer lining and repair business under the Daley administration. DeJesus also hit the taxpayer trough in March and July 2010 for nearly $300,000 in grants from TIF Works, a program that awards tax increment financing to companies for job training in TIF districts. (City records show that SewerTech has been paid about $94,000 so far.) The law enforcement sources, who closely monitor the Latin Kings in Chicago and beyond, say DeJesus has been “laying low” but maintains an “active connection to the organization”—an allegation confirmed by the Humboldt Park gang member. In a statement to Chicago, DeJesus said: “I am not affiliated with any street gang. I left that destructive life behind two decades ago.” He added that he tries to help other former gang members, hiring them to work at SewerTech and offering them Bible study classes to support their efforts to turn their lives around. “I believe in second chances,” he said. In a separate statement, Kenny Construction said SewerTech was the lowest bidder on their two projects and added that the company has done a good job. When Chicago asked a spokeswoman for the city for comment, she said the city had not been aware of DeJesus’s criminal background or his alleged current gang involvement. While all city contractors must disclose whether their businesses’ owners have felony convictions—they can be ineligible for contracts if they’ve been convicted of bribery, fraud, theft, or other so-called crimes of deceit—subcontractors aren’t required to file felony disclosures with the city. Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:26 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo (page 5 of 5) No account of city politics and gangs would be complete without mentioning the federal case against the former 20th Ward alderman Arenda Troutman. When Troutman pleaded guilty in 2008 to tax fraud and taking payoffs from developers, the case made for lurid headlines. It wasn’t necessarily because of her crimes—bribe-taking and tax-cheating aldermen have been a dime a dozen in the City Council. Rather, it was because of Troutman’s romantic relationship with Donnell Jehan, a leader of the Black Disciples, one of the city’s most ruthless and feared gangs, which ran a $300,000-a-day drug operation on the South Side. Troutman’s case serves as a vivid example of how gangs and public officials can be a toxic mix. The six-year federal investigation unearthed evidence that Troutman had helped Jehan and the reputed king of the Black Disciples, Marvel Thompson, acquire properties and allowed them to rehab buildings without permits. She had also helped them get jobs for young gang members, either through city-run programs or by threatening builders to hire gang crews on job sites. Authorities further suspected that Troutman, or others in her office, may have alerted the gang to police operations. Thompson and Jehan, meanwhile, mobilized their members to do political work for Troutman. Records show that they had also given her thousands in cash, from drug profits and the gang’s street tax. Through it all, Troutman insisted that she thought she was dealing with legitimate businessmen. “They talked like businessmen,” she told reporters. “They were dressed like businessmen. They had business to discuss.” (Chicago’s request for comment from Troutman, who is still incarcerated, went unanswered.) Troutman was not the only politician to get into bed with the Black Disciples. Calvin Omar Johnson, a former gang leader and a friend of Thompson’s, who testified on Thompson’s behalf at his sentencing hearing, says every politician on the South and Near West Sides—from the aldermen up to the congressmen—tried to woo Thompson. “Everybody in that area, everybody in that neighborhood, every elected official in that community asked Marvel for help,” says Johnson. “And Marvel helped them.” Further, three law enforcement sources involved in the federal probe of the gang confirm that two other local politicians besides Troutman—a sitting alderman and an unsuccessful aldermanic candidate—became ensnared in the government’s investigation. The two were interviewed by federal investigators but were never charged. * * * “Bienvenidos a Little Village” reads the sign on the large Spanish-tiled arch at the eastern end of 26th Street, the entranceway to the neighborhood. On this evening, Raul Montes Jr., a community activist there, is in a car giving a tour of the bustling 26th Street commercial corridor—one of the city’s busiest. Montes, 37, points out taquerías, bakeries, and small shops lining the street, as well as the carts that offer an assortment of Mexican street food. To Montes, the scene is a source of pride. “But some people are scared to come here now,” he says. Driving along this 29-block stretch, from Sacramento to Kostner Avenues, the western edge of the commercial district, one can’t miss the clusters of hoodie-wearing teenagers flashing gang signs. The 2-6ers, whose turf is along the western portion of this stretch, wear tan caps; the Latin Kings, in the east, don gold ones. Everywhere in between, Montes notes, are the miqueros, street-corner hawkers who openly sell counterfeit IDs and fraudulent Social Security cards. Vice is all around—and in plain sight. Indeed, crime in the heart of Little Village is higher than in much of the rest of the city. Statistics show that the police district that covers 26th Street and nearby parts of the 22nd Ward had the ninth-highest number of reported violent crimes and the fifth-highest number of homicides citywide in 2011. But, as Montes points out, there are no surveillance cameras posted anywhere along 26th Street. He blames Ricardo Muñoz, the alderman for Little Village. Muñoz, an admitted ex–gang member, has served on the City Council since 1993. Critics cite the alderman’s well-established ties to the Latino gangs in Little Village and also note that Muñoz’s father and his nephew were, on separate occasions, arrested for trafficking fake IDs. Montes, a gadfly who frequently holds protests to focus attention on the lack of police blue-light cameras in his ward, suspects that Muñoz has intentionally kept cameras out to help protect the gangs—a position shared by several law enforcement sources and Muñoz’s various political opponents. (The installation of surveillance cameras at high-crime corners, according to police figures, has cut drug-related crime by 76 percent and so-called quality-of-life crime by 46 percent. Aldermen can pay for the cameras out of the more than $1 million in discretionary funds they receive every year. Muñoz, however, hasn’t bought one.) Over time, Montes has gathered more than 1,500 signatures of Little Village residents and business owners supporting the installation of cameras on 26th Street. “My question is: Why does [Muñoz] oppose cameras so much?” Montes says. “Why would you oppose these cameras when you have high crime in your area? You’re the alderman. You see crime going on. Why does he ignore it?” Muñoz says 26th Street doesn’t need taxpayer-funded cameras: “The business strip should fend for themselves.” He adds that cameras should mostly go around schools and parks. As for the suspicions that he deliberately keeps cameras out to protect street gangs, he answers, “I grew up in the neighborhood, and these statements are coming from haters. They’re just rumors.” Anti-gang activists, police, and political insiders say that elected officials show how serious they are about tackling the gang problems in their districts by the public safety actions they take or don’t take and by the services or favors they provide. For example, many politicians in high-crime districts regularly offer help to ex-offenders who want to get their criminal records expunged—treating such favors as a constituent service, like garbage pickup, rather than a legal process best left to practicing lawyers. Gang leaders we interviewed told stories of how aldermen put off installing or fixing streetlights to keep the streets dark for criminal activity and how gangs can hold picnics or block parties without the required permits. Sympathetic lawmakers can also help gangs by doing little to stop their illicit activities or by accepting bribes to ignore them entirely. “We call it look-the-other-way pay,” says the Gangster Disciple. Indeed, several police sources say most aldermen rarely file complaints about the open drug markets that operate so freely in their wards—unless the action gets too close to their offices or homes. Then they want the police to move in immediately. A brief survey of the City Council’s recent actions on gangs reveals mostly empty posturing and symbolic gestures, some worthy of a Second City sketch. Other than an anti-loitering law that’s been on the books for nearly two decades and various gun restrictions that apply to all city residents, the city’s efforts to combat gangs have gotten increasingly absurd. Over the years, the council has targeted pagers and telephone booths, which are the street offices of choice for drug dealers, and banned the sale of spray paint, which Alderman Edward Burke once called “weapons of terror,” to cut back on graffiti. In 1997, aldermen considered cracking down on residents who put up basketball hoops in their alleys, saying they were magnets for gang members. Soon afterward, Mayor Daley proposed an ordinance making it a crime simply to shout the words “rock,” “blow,” or “weed”—street slang for crack cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. But the absurdity of the City Council’s efforts to deal with gangs reached a zenith in early 2008, when aldermen considered banning the tiny plastic bags commonly used in drug sales. As silly as this proposal was to many people—“Our elected officials are addicted to symbolism,” wrote Neil Steinberg in the Sun-Times—the reaction by opponents was equally ridiculous. Aldermen Freddrenna Lyle and Helen Shiller, for instance, argued that little girls or women who used the bags to carry small beads for their braids could be arrested. Ditto for someone caught with a bag holding spare buttons for clothing, said Alderman Walter Burnett. * * * Come March, Chicago’s powerful political bosses, the Democratic ward committeemen—more than half of whom are sitting aldermen—will be up for reelection. So too will a slate of state representatives, state senators, judges, Cook County officials, and members of Congress. The old rituals will start again, and you can bet that Hal Baskin’s phone will be buzzing. “The reality is, [candidates] are looking for any advantage they can get,” says Baskin. “If they don’t use gangs, someone else will.” Baskin operates his neighborhood center in an old church in Englewood, one of the most violent, gang-filled communities in Chicago. The church, like the neighborhood, has seen better days. Recently, as a light rain dripped through the leaky roof, Baskin tended to a makeshift system of buckets and tarps to minimize the damage. The basketball court and a theatre stage on the top floor are nearly ruined. “There are parts of this city where there are no legal jobs and the drug dealer and the gang leader are the biggest employers in the community,” Baskin says. “The politicians know it; people in the community know it. That’s the social dynamic that plays out in these meetings.” By the looks of this scene, it would seem as if Baskin’s efforts to get politicians to pay attention to the problems in his community haven’t worked. Baskin doesn’t disagree. “It don’t bother me,” he says, adding that it won’t stop him from taking politicians’ calls. “I still believe in the process.” Better to have a seat at the table than no seat at all. Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:33 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo "The former chieftains, several of them ex-convicts, represented some of the most notorious gangs on the South and West Sides, including the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, Black Disciples, Cobras, Black P Stones, and Black Gangsters. Before the election, the gangs agreed to set aside decades-old rivalries and bloody vendettas to operate as a unified political force, which they called Black United Voters of Chicago. “They realized that if they came together, they could get the politicians to come to them,” explains Baskin". After his RICO case against the Cobra's, former Prosecutor Arthur Busch had the Gangster Disciples in his cross hairs. However, when he became a federal target regarding real estate deals determined to be legitimate, the cases did not materialize before he left office. He crossed the local FBI, so was this payback? It seems former Flint FBI lied in the prosecution of a citizen and lost their case. At least three of the gangs named in Chicago have possibly influenced local politics in Flint. just how high up does the corruption go? Does the state believe the local authorities are involved or does the corruption go that high? How far will these illicit connections go to influence elections? More federal money is coming to Flint, so has it already been spoken for and influence paid for. There are those who want an all black council. Are white candidate now targets. Will intimidation continue to be used to stop some candidates from running? Fri Feb 08, 2013 11:20 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo Note: Michael ciric is a blogger who calls himself "an average Joe with an opinion". It just so happens that his position is similar to what I hear residents say on a daily basis. Corrupt politicians and cops feeding a gang culture. No Serious Gun Debate Until Gang-bangers And Political Corruption Eliminated By Michael Ciric, January 10, 2013 at 9:36 am Anti-Gun liberals like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel want to take away guns from law-abiding citizens yet offer no hope in furthering the gun debate because of his administration's inability to control gang bangers and their illegal access to them. It makes no sense to strip citizens of their right to protect themselves until you can level the playing field. Don't get me wrong either because I believe that having sensible gun laws isn't a bad thing. But aren't there already plenty on the books? How about looking at properly enforcing those laws and mandates? But that is not what anti-gun liberals want. Their motives are far more sinister and nefarious than that. They would have you believe that gang-bangers are somehow cut from the same cloth of sensibility as law-abiding citizens are. However, we already know that that is the furthest from the truth. Reality tells us that gang-bangers don't give a damn about society's laws and as such will always have access to firearms. Rahm Emanuel, meanwhile, refuses to properly staff the Chicago Police Department so that they can meet their stated mission of "To Serve and Protect." How many nightmare stories have we heard about the lack of a police presence in those neighborhoods most affected by gang violence? Compounding the problem is the code of silence among residents who fear that the only result cooperation brings is a "snitch winding up in a ditch." Besides, residents have little faith in the police department because many feel they are as bad as the gang-bangers themselves. It's a vicious circle. That, in and of itself, is a deterrent to the gun control debate here. No sane person would give up one iota of their constitutional right to bear arms until society has a level playing field against those that have z-e-r-o regard for the rule of law. As such, big city mayors, like Rahm Emanuel, need to get off their collective asses and eradicate its streets of the war zones in their own backyards before demanding citizens give up their last hope of protecting themselves. Of course that would also require brain dead governors to properly fund empty prisons and forgo those asinine early release programs for all those non-rehabilitated criminals rather than opening up the floodgates of hell unto society. And while we are on the discussion of funding, how about the state properly funding the many mental health facilities that have fallen victim to budget cuts? You know, those of us living in the State of Illinois should be more than aware of these deficiencies. Yet the people don't seem to care as its elected officials have used taxpayer monies for anything but what their clear intent was. Instead they have allowed one politician after another to fill their (or their cronies) pockets with unethical sweet insider deals. If as that weren't bad enough, the people have also stood largely silent as politicians have been allowed to underfund a swollen pension fund system built upon decades and decades of overt patronage and the gaming of it by interlopers aided by windows of opportunity opened by a willing Illinois Legislature. So excuse me if I am a little more than skeptical of the intentions of our "well-meaning Illinois Democrats." Their agendas rarely have the peoples best interests at heart and anyone saying that isn't so is clearly a beneficiary of that system. Yet these are the same people who see nothing wrong with forcing the state to take indecent liberties when it comes slashing funding required to protect its people and keep dangerous or mentally ill people off the streets. I don't know about you but before I would let people like these dictate the debate on guns I would demand that they deal with the estimated 68,000 gang-bangers wreaking havoc on the good people of Chicago. And let's be very clear here Mister Emanuel - there is a direct correlation to the number of gang-bangers and the ineptitude of city and state politicians keeping people in perpetual poverty. So really - is it any wonder then that there are so many gangs and gang members running amok in your city? Hardly! Again, if you want a serious debate or impose stricter regulations on gun ownership then it has to begin with the eradication of the gang-bangers. Better yet, let's eradicate the corrupt politicians too! Sat Feb 09, 2013 8:33 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo WBEZ 91.5 Researchers release study on Chicago Police Department corruption January 17, 2013 By: Natalie Moore . From gang activity to civil rights violations to illegal drug dealing, 300 Chicago police officers have been convicted of crimes since 1960 - and a third of those convictions happened since the year 2000. Researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago on Thursday released the report entitled “Crime, Corruption and Cover-ups in the Chicago Police Department,” which details police corruption and offers remedies. Vice in the police department dates back to prohibition and the early days of the mob, which was linked to Chicago machine politics. The report says in later decades, street gangs cut deals with dirty cops. And as the War on Drugs escalated, so did corruption. “The question on everyone’s mind is why is the gang problem so serious in Chicago. And the gang problem has always been serious in Chicago, in part, because the problem of police corruption has always been so serious,” said John Hagedorn, a criminal justice professor who helped write the report. The report says the CPD “has at the very least a culture that tolerates police misconduct and corruption.” It says a “blue code of silence” and the failure of state’s attorneys to prosecute wrongdoers contributes a climate of tolerance. The corruption has also left taxpayers footing the bill of tens of millions of dollars. Recent high-profile cases have been settled - from Anthony Abatte, the officer who attacked a bartender on videotape, to former commander Jon Burge, who was convicted of lying under oath about torture of mostly black detainees. The authors outline case studies of prominent corruption since the 1970s. There were the “Marquette 10” in which police officers on the West Side were convicted for protecting drug dealers in exchange for money. In 2001, Joseph Miedzianowski, a member of the gang crimes unit, was convicted of running an interstate drug ring between Chicago and Miami. That same year CPD Chief of Detectives Edward Hanhardt was convicted of using secret police information to direct a mob-connected jewelry theft ring. Beyond going down Chicago corruption memory lane, the report outlines several recommendations: extensive ethics training for officers, more accountability for police supervisors and a new police board system. Study co-author and former alderman Dick Simpson said the current appointed police board doesn’t work. It should be changed in one of two ways, he said. “It can either be an elected police board or we can simply replace this entire police board with appointees that come from different backgrounds: good government advocates, civil rights advocates, former prosecutors, former inspector generals, former judges that are looking specifically at the problem of police crime and corruption and the rules and regulations that need to guide them,” Simpson said. Sat Feb 09, 2013 9:05 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo CBS 2 radio Chicago Called Most Corrupt City In Nation February 14, 2012 12:28 PM UPDATED 02/15/12 10:36 a.m. CHICAGO (CBS) — A former Chicago alderman turned political science professor/corruption fighter has found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country. He cites data from the U.S. Department of Justice to prove his case. And, he says, Illinois is third-most corrupt state in the country. University of Illinois at Chicago professor Dick Simpson, who served as alderman of the 44th Ward in Lakeview from 1971 to 1979, estimates the cost of corruption at $500 million. It’s essentially a corruption tax on citizens who bear the cost of bad behavior — police brutality, bogus contracts, bribes, theft and ghost payrolling to name a few — and the costs needed to prosecute it. “We first of all, we have a long history,” Simpson said. “The first corruption trial was in 1869 when alderman and county commissioners were convicted of rigging a contract to literally whitewash City Hall.” In the Northern District of Illinois, which includes Chicago, there have been a total of 1,531 public corruption convictions since 1976, Simpson found. A distant second is California’s central district in Los Angeles with 1,275 public corruption convictions since 1976, Simpson found. Statewide, that number hits 1,828. Only California and New York have more, but those states have much higher populations. Per capita, only the District of Columbia and Louisiana have more convictions. Since the 1970s, four of Illinois’ seven governors have been convicted (Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich). In addition, dozens of Chicago alderman and other city and county public officials have been found guilty, Simpson said. Corruption, Simpson said, is intertwined with city politics. Simpson found that about a third of sitting alderman since 1973 have been corrupt. “We have had machine politics since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871,” he said. “Machine politics breeds corruption inevitably.” Simpson says Hong Kong and Sydney were two similarly corrupt cities that managed to change their ways. He says Chicago can too, but it will take decades. Simpson is set to present his full report Wednesday morning, and testify before the new Chicago Ethics Task Force at City Hall Wednesday night. RELATED: READ THE REPORT HERE In his report, Simpson recommends the following: •Governor Pat Quinn’s proposal to allow Illinois citizens to adopt ethics reforms by referendum should be passed; •Amend the City’s Ethics Ordinance to cover aldermen and their staff; •Give the Inspector General access to all city documents including those held secret by the Corporation Counsel; •Ban all gifts to all elected officials and public employees except those from family members; •Bar all lobbying of other governmental bodies by elected officials and city employees; •Prohibit double dipping, patronage and nepotism with real penalties including firing; and •Improve the city’s ethics training and bring it up to at least the State of Illinois level. Sat Feb 09, 2013 9:09 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo Flint residents during the public hearings in council on police deployment, as well as some council, recommended a police review board. Flint needs an ethics policy and a board to enforce the regulations. Presntly council members violate the charter without consequences. The present regulatory body is inefffective and secret. The media has covered stories on gifts to the Flint council and other political bodies in the county. Complete Towing and Comcast are onlt two of the vendors named for their gift giving. The charter prescribes policies regarding lobbying of council. However council does not require enforcement and has actually encouraged lobbying that serves their purposes. Sat Feb 09, 2013 9:16 pm  untanglingwebs El Supremo CBC Local 2 News in Chicago ‘Killing Is The Solution,’ Gang Member Tells Walter Jacobson September 27, 2012 6:50 PM Walter Jacobson talks with gang members in Englewood. (CBS) CHICAGO (CBS) — Gangbangers in Chicago: What makes them tick, what are they thinking? CBS 2’s Walter Jacobson sat down with gang members in Chicago’s troubled Englewood neighborhood to try to find some answers. Some of the responses he received were not encouraging. “There’s no solution to the violence,” one gang member tells him. “Killing, killing is the solution.” Jacobson asked the young man if he would kill personally, if he had to. “I’ve never killed before, but if I had a gun in my possession,” he said. Jacobson says he has been walking the blocks for many years, but the state of despair never changes – poverty, sticks and stains. The gang members do not like the state of affairs any more than anyone else. “We’ve got to eat. We want to. We want money. We want to get fresh, we want fresh J’s almost every day. We want all that,” another young man said. But where do they get the money they need? The young man answered bluntly. “Rob, steal and kill. That’s the only way. We didn’t grow up in Beverly Hills. We don’t get it handed to us,” he said. “We ain’t living in Hyde Park,” added a third young man. The home of the University of Chicago is only a couple of miles away from Englewood – geographically, at least. But given the state of their impoverished Englewood neighborhood, where is the money they can get? “Selling drugs,” a young man replied. “In our neighborhood, I ain’t going to lie to you. That’s where the money comes from.” Some of the young men were brought into gangs as children. Isn’t that pretty young to play gang warfare? A young man answered: “I chose the gang. I didn’t have to choose anything. I was only 10. My OG (old gangster) gave me everything. But I just went on my own and I chose to get in the gang. We was whipping everybody in the neighborhood. Respect. I was getting money.” The gang members also said they are at war with the Chicago Police Department. “The police hate us,” a young man said. “Every time they ride past us, they shoot us down and do all that. Do what you want to do, I don’t care about you all, keep riding. Who are you all? We’re not scare of you all. I’ll fight you too. Take that badge off.” But he says the police cannot catch them or exact any consequences. “I laugh at the police,” he said. “They’re a joke to me.” And where would the young men like to be in 10 years? One of them replied, “in a mansion, with a lot of cars, and a lot of women.” Another said, “I just hope I’m still living.” Mon Feb 11, 2013 7:28 am  untanglingwebs El Supremo Highsmith depicted a historic Flint in which past leaders created a separate and unequal racial Flint. Leaders today are doing much of the same. While today's criteria may be based on education levels and income levels, there remains a system of inequity in much of Flint, especially the north end. Snyder came to Flint and touted the success of bringing jobs to Flint. Most of our young Flint residents are products of a failing education system that has been frought with corruption and misappropriation. They do not qualify for these jobs. And most of the programs set up to theoretically address this inequity have also been plagued with allegations of fraud. So what is left? To help the north end and other economically disadvantaged areas there needs to be job training programs that work and an education system that actually teaches the youth. Snyder needs to reverse the previous cuts to education to ensure the students have he educational tools they need. And the Flint Board of Education needs to make sure the administration provides the books and educational tools needed to provide a quality education. What's wrong with putting together a system of providing jobs for college and well educated high school students to tutor struggling students. It would serve two needs, jobs for young people trying to make a difference and helping students overcome failure. The above Chicago interview is very much like what is heard in the streets. There are only a limited number of service jobs that do not pay well enough to support a family. In 2001 Tim Herman's group published a report in which they stated they wanted to attract a more afluent population to downtown Flint and today that remains the goal. Using federal money they have developed $100,000 plus lofts which remain unsold and are rented out. Much money has been spent to create a college town environment and extra money has been allocated for extra police. The violence in Chicago is mainly contained in two sections and other areas remain relatively free of the ongoing gang violence, In Flint the downtown area remains free of much of the shooting and crime in the surrounding neighborhoods. Court Street/Cultural area has been plagued with B&E's and some allege there is weekend gunplay associated with a specific downtown venue. Lately the majority of the violence appears to be in the second ward and the Merril Hood turf. However reports of gun shots heard are more widespread. Mon Feb 11, 2013 7:56 am  untanglingwebs El Supremo Violence, gangs scar Chicago community in 2012 Sharon Cohen, AP National Writer 7:12p.m. EST December 29, 2012 Story Highlights Up to 80% of murders, shootings in city are gang-related Chicago is estimated to have almost 70,000 gang members City's murder count for 2012 reached 500 last Friday CHICAGO (AP) — It was February, the middle of lunch hour on a busy South Side street. The gunman approached his victim in a White Castle parking lot, shot him in the head, then fled down an alley. The next month, one block away, also on West 79th Street: Two men in hooded sweatshirts opened fire at the Bishop Golden convenience store. They killed one young man and wounded five others, including a nephew of basketball superstar Dwyane Wade. The shooters got away in a silver SUV. In July, a Saturday night, two men were walking on 79th when they were approached by a man who killed one and injured the other. This shooting resulted in a quick arrest; police had a witness, and a security camera caught the shooting. These three violent snapshots of a single Chicago street are not exceptional. It's been a bloody year in the nation's third-largest city. A spike in murders and shootings — much of it gang-related — shocked Chicagoans, spurred new crime-fighting strategies and left indelible images: Mayor Rahm Emanuel voicing outrage about gang crossfire that killed a 7-year-old named Heaven selling candy in her front yard. Panicked mourners scrambling as shots ring out on the church steps at a funeral for a reputed gang leader. Girls wearing red high school basketball uniforms, filing by the casket of a 16-year-old teammate shot on her porch. A handful of neighborhoods were especially hard hit, among them Auburn-Gresham; the police district's 43 homicides (as of Dec. 21) ranked highest in the city, and represent an increase of about 20 percent over 2011. The outbreak, fueled partly by feuds among rival factions of Chicago's largest gang, the Gangster Disciples, rippled along 79th street, the main commercial drag. That single corridor offers a window into the wider mayhem that claimed lives, shattered families and left authorities scrambling for answers. The scars aren't obvious, at first. Drive down West 79th and there's Salaam, a pristine white building of Islamic design, and The Final Call, the restaurant and newspaper operated by the Nation of Islam. Leo Catholic High School for young men. A health clinic. A beauty supply store. Around the corners, neat brick bungalows and block club signs warning: "No Littering. No Loitering. No Loud Music." Look closer, though, and there are signs of distress and fear: Boarded-up storefronts. Heavy security gates on barber shops and food marts. Thick partitions separating cash registers from customers at the Jamaican jerk and fish joints. Police cars watching kids board city buses at the end of the school day. Go a few blocks south of 79th to a food market where a sign bears a hand-scrawled message: "R.I.P. We Love You Eli," honoring a clerk killed in November in an apparent robbery. Or a block north to the front lawn of St. Sabina church where photos were added this year to a glass-enclosed memorial for young victims of deadly violence over the years. Then go back to a corner of 79th, across the street and down the block from where two killings occurred, both gang-related. There, in an empty lot, a wooden cross stands tall in the winter night. Painted in red is a plea: "STOP SHOOTING." A lone cross stands in a vacant lot on the corner of 79th and Loomis in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.(Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast, AP) THE TOLL Chicago's murder count reached 500 last Friday — the first time since 2008 it hit that mark. In 2011, there were 435 homicides. More than 2,400 shootings have occurred. Gang-related arrests are about 7,000 higher than in 2011. Gang violence isn't new, but it became a major theme in the Chicago narrative this year. Maybe it was because of the audacity of gang members posting YouTube videos in which they flashed wads of cash and guns. The sight of police brandishing automatic weapons, standing watch outside gang funerals. The sting of one more smiling young face on a funeral program. Or dramatic headlines in spring and summer, such as: "13 people shot in Chicago in 30-minute period." It was alarming enough for President Obama to mention it during the campaign, noting murders near his South Side home. Then, addressing gun violence in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting, he cited Chicago again. As grim as it is, Chicago's murder rate was almost double in the early 1990s — averaging around 900 — before violent crime began dropping in cities across America. This year's increase, though, is a sharp contrast to New York, where homicides fell 21 percent from 2011, as of early December. Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says while murders and shootings are up, overall crime citywide is down about 9 percent. He says crime-fighting strategies against gangs — some just put into place this year — are working, but they take time. "The city didn't get in this shape overnight," he says. "I think that we're doing ourselves a disservice by advertising a Vietnam-type body count. I've got to tell you when I speak to people ... they generally say, 'You know what? We don't even hear that anymore. It's white noise.'... The fascination unfortunately seems to be in the media and it's become a national obsession." After the 500th homicide was reported, McCarthy released a statement saying the pace of violent crime had slowed since early 2012. Murders skyrocketed 66 percent in the first quarter of the year over the same period in 2011; by the fourth quarter, the increase had dropped to 15 percent, he said. For shootings, it was a 40 percent hike in the first quarter and 11 percent in the last quarter compared with 2011. The superintendent called the numbers "great progress." Up to 80 percent of Chicago's murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police. By one estimate, the city has almost 70,000 gang members. A police audit last spring identified 59 gangs and 625 factions; most are on the South and West sides . Gangs in Chicago have a long, dangerous history, some operating with the sophistication and hierarchy of corporations. In the 1980s, the leaders of the El Rukns were convicted of conspiring in a terrorism-for-hire scheme designed to collect millions from the Libyan government. Before the feds took down the leadership of the Gangster Disciples in the 1990s, the group had its own clothing line and political arm. Nowadays, gangs are less structured and disputes more personal, says Eric Carter, commander of the Gresham district, home to 11 factions of the Gangster Disciples. "It's strictly who can help me make money," he says. "Lines have become blurred and alliances have become very fragile ." Carter says a gang narcotics dispute that started about six years ago is at the root of a lot of violence in his district. Another change among gangs is the widespread use of YouTube, Facebook and other social media to taunt one another and spread incendiary messages. "One insult thrown on Facebook and Twitter becomes the next potential for a shooting incident on the street," Carter says. McCarthy, who has consulted with criminologists, has implemented several plans, including an audit that identifies every gang member and establishing a long-term police presence in heavy drug-dealing areas, aimed at drying up business. In two districts, police also have partnered controversially with CeaseFire Illinois, an anti-violence group that has hired convicted felons, including former gang members, to mediate street conflicts. McCarthy, who has expressed reservations about the organization, is taking a wait-and-see attitude. "It's a work in progress," he says. "It hasn't shown a lot of success yet." AMONG THE DEAD An 18-year-old walking on a sidewalk. A 36-year-old at a backyard party. A 28-year-old in a car two blocks from the police station. A 40-year-old convenience store clerk, on the job just two months. In a storefront on 79th, Curtis Toler has a map of the street and surrounding area with 10 stick pins. Each represents a homicide in 2012. Toler, a former gang member, spent much of his life causing chaos. Now, he's preaching calm. As a supervisor at CeaseFire, his job is to ease tensions and defuse disputes before they explode. Violence, he says, has become so commonplace, people are desensitized to death. "I don't think we take it as hard as we should," he says. "When someone gets killed, there should be an uproar. But the ambulance comes, scoops them up, nobody says anything and it's back to business." Toler's own life was shaped by guns and drugs. "In the early '90s, I was going to funerals back to back to back," he says. "When you're out there, you think you pretty much got it coming. It's a kill-or-be-killed mentality." As he tells it, he was in a gang (in another neighborhood) from ages 9 to 30, including a six-year prison stint for involuntary manslaughter. He was shot six times, he says; he lifts a gray stocking cap pulled low over his head and presses a thumb over his right eyebrow to show the spot where a bullet struck. "I was blessed" to survive, he says, with a gap-toothed smile. He was once so notorious, Toler says, that one day about a decade ago his grandmother returned from a community policing gathering and began crying. "She said, 'The whole meeting was about you. ... You and your friends are destroying the whole community. ... You're my grandson, but they're talking about you like you're an animal.'" Now a 35-year-old father of four, Toler says he decided to go straight about five years ago. He knows some police don't believe his transformation. He regrets things he's done, he says, and for a time had trouble sleeping. "Life has its way of getting back at you one way or another," he says. "I believe in the law of reciprocity." Toler's message to a new generation on the streets: I keep asking them,' What's the net worth on your life? There is no price.... You only get one. It's not a video game.'" "You get some guys who listen," Toler says, "and some who really don't care. ... They say, 'I'm going to die anyway.'" Two blocks east in another storefront on 79th, Carlos Nelson works to bring a different kind of stability to Gresham. As head of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp., he lures businesses to a community that despite its problems, has well-established merchants and middle-class residents who've lived here for decades. But Nelson, a 49-year-old engineering graduate raised in Gresham, sees changes since he was a kid, most notably the easy access to guns. "These aren't six-shooters," he says. "These are automatic weapons." Police say they've seized more than 7,000 guns in arrests this year. Strict gun control measures in Chicago and Illinois have been tossed out by federal courts, most recently the state ban on carrying concealed weapons. Nelson says he sees limited progress despite new crime-fighting approaches. "The Chicago police department is a lot like a rat on a wheel," he says. "They're getting nowhere. They put metal detectors in the schools but they don't put that same amount of money in to educate our kids." But Nelson also believes the problem goes beyond policing. A cultural shift is needed, he says, to break the cycle of generations of young men seeing no options. "It's almost like the walking dead," he says. "They're emotionless about shootings or death or drugs. They think that's all that's expected of them ... that they will die or end up in jail. That's a hell of an existence. That's truly sad." AMONG THE LIVING A 17-year-old hit in the leg, wrist and foot while in a park. A 13-year-old struck in the back while riding his bicycle, A 38-year-old shot in the face while driving. Cerria McComb tried to run when the bullet exploded in her leg, but she didn't get far. Someone heard her screams, her mother says, and rushed outside to help her make a call. "Mommy, mommy, I've been shot!" Cerria cried into the phone. Bobbie McComb ran six blocks, her husband outpacing her. "I'm panicking," she recalls. "I can't catch my breath. All I could think of was I didn't want it to be the last time I heard her voice, the last time I saw her." Cerria and a 14-year-old male friend were wounded. The bullet lodged just an inch from an artery in the back of Cerria's right knee, according to her mother, who says her daughter is afraid to go out since the early December shooting. Police questioned a reputed gang member they believe was the intended target; Cerria, they say, just happened to be in the wrong place. "I'm angry," McComb says. "I'm frustrated. I'm tired of them shooting our kids, killing our kids, thinking they can get away with it. ... If it was my son or my daughter standing out there with a gun, I would call the police on them." A few blocks west, on 78th Place, another mother, Pam Bosley, sits at the youth center of St. Sabina Church, trying to keep teens on track. The parish is run by the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a firebrand white priest in an overwhelmingly black congregation whose crusades against violence, drugs and liquor and cigarette billboards are a staple of local news. Bosley's 18-year-old son, Terrell, a college freshman and gospel bass player, was killed in 2006 when he and friends were shot while unloading musical equipment outside a church on the far South Side. A man charged was acquitted. "I think about him all day and all night," Bosley says of her son. "If I stop, I'll lose my mind." Bosley works with kids 14 to 21, teaching them life and leadership skills and ways to reduce violence. Sometimes, she says, neglectful parents are the problem; often it's gangs who just don't value life. "You know how you have duck (hunting) season in the woods?" she asks. "In urban communities, it's duck season for us every day. You never know when you're going to get shot." In December, Bosley phoned to console the grieving mother of Porshe Foster, 15, who was shot a few miles away while standing outside with other kids. A young man in the group has said he believed the gunman was aiming at him. "I know how it feels to wake up in your house without your child, and you don't want to get out of bed, you don't feel like living," Bosley says. St. Sabina is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Bosley sent balloons to the girl's funeral. On Dec. 6, hundreds celebrated the A-student who liked architecture and played on her school's volleyball and basketball teams. Her brother, Robert, 22, says his sister "knew what was going on in the streets as well as we did," but he didn't worry because she was either at school, home or church. "She was always a good girl," he says. "She didn't have to look over her shoulder. She was a 15-year-old girl. She didn't ever do any wrong to anybody." In March, St. Sabina parishioners, led by the Rev. Pfleger, marched through the streets in protest, calling out gang factions by name. They planted the "Stop Killing" cross on 79th. In April, the priest and other pastors returned to 79th to successfully stop the reopening of a store where there was a mass shooting; they condemned it as a haven for gangs. In December, Pfleger stood in his church gym, watching gang members hustle down the basketball court. On this Monday night, in this gym, it was hard to tell who was who. The basketball teams wore different colored T-shirts with the same word: Peacemaker. They're all part of Pfleger's 12-week basketball league, aimed at cooling gang hostilities by having rivals face each other on the court. Many players, from 16 to 27, have criminal records. The league grew out of a single successful game this fall and has high-profile supporters, including Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls. Pfleger says the games have helped players build relationships, see beyond gang affiliation and stop shooting each other, at least for now. "I have people tell me I'm naive, I'm stupid, I should be ashamed of myself working with these gangs," he says. "I could care less. We've demonized them so much we forget they're human beings." But Pfleger also says games alone won't change anything. These young men need jobs and an education, and he's working on that. "When there's no alternative," he says, "you'll continue to do what you do." 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