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Brighton Park Parents To Ask For More Police Outside School To Fight Gangs

By Ed Komenda | January 16, 2017 1:39pm
 The City of Chicago shut down two neighborhood businesses for building violations less than a week after a fatal gang shooting pushed Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) to call for the properties to be shuttered in an effort to stop gang loitering.
The City of Chicago shut down two neighborhood businesses for building violations less than a week after a fatal gang shooting pushed Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) to call for the properties to be shuttered in an effort to stop gang loitering.
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DNAinfo/Ed Komenda

BRIGHTON PARK — Parents of students at Shields Middle School are now demanding more police on the streets to protect their children from a recent surge in gang violence that left three men dead over the past month.

At 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, members of the school's Parent Advisory Committee will meet with Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) and Deering District Cmdr. Stephen Chung at 2611 W. 48th St. to unveil a petition asking for a Chicago Police patrol car to be stationed at 43rd and Rockwell streets before and after school.

“As community residents of Brighton Park, we are concerned about the recent increase of gang activity and gang-related shootings in our community; more specifically at the intersection of 43rd Street and Rockwell Avenue, while school is still in session,” the petition reads. “With this petition, we are hoping to regain a safe and welcoming neighborhood for our children and residents. We know that with police presence at this intersection, safety and security will be brought back to our community.”

Read the petition in full below:

The intersection of 43rd and Rockwell streets is a longtime hotspot for gang activity and the sight of several recent gang shootings.

After a Dec. 16 gang shooting killed two people and seriously wounded two others in front of a neighborhood market across the street from Shields, Ald. Lopez sent a letter to city building and business officials urging them to shut down Mercado 43 and neighboring Taqueria La Cantera to stop gang loitering, calling the intersection an “open-air drug market."

By the following Monday, the city shut down the businesses for numerous code violations. They remain closed.

Neighborhood groups said a pair of businesses closing is not enough to make Brighton Park safe.

"Families in Brighton Park are tired of the alarming increase in violence in our community," said Patrick Brosnan, executive director of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, one of the groups organizing the meeting. "We are therefore creating a comprehensive violence-prevention program with the goals of immediately bringing peace to the community and encouraging investments in school and community-based strategies for the long term, investments that will work to break the cycle of poverty and violence."

Though the Chicago Police Department has deployed a mobile command unit in from of Shields Elementary on weekends and the Cook Cook Sheriff's deputies have shared patrols in Brighton Park, Lopez said the neighborhood needs more resources to fight gang violence.

"We are trying to show an increased presence," Lopez said. "However, gang members on a mission to kill people will always find a way, even with the increased presence."

He said the city should use money that had been earmarked for a property tax rebate — but didn't get spent because of a dearth of rebate applications — "to combat violence and invest in programs that we know have a record of proven de-escalation between gangs."

From 2013 to 2016, the number of shootings each year in Brighton Park jumped from 16 to 64 — a 300 percent increase, according to a DNAinfo analysis. The number of people killed during that time increased from one in 2013 to 10 in 2016.

The last deadly gang shooting happened around 6 p.m. Wednesday in the 3700 block of South Western Avenue, leaving a man dead and four other people wounded.

A carload of gang members rolled up on a van filled with Satan's Disciples, a rival street gang, according to Chicago police.

Someone in the car sprayed the van with an assault weapon, killing 18-year-old David Gonzalez and wounding four others, authorities said. The victims who made it to Stroger Hospital alive were 18, 21, 22 and 25.

Investigating the scene, Police Department detectives found .223-caliber bullet casings fired from an assault weapon. Their discovery matched the size of ammunition used in the Dec. 16 shooting.

Neighborhood advocates attribute the rise in gang violence on the South Side to a lack of resources.

In 2012, the state budgeted $30 million to fund two programs that aimed to keep Chicago kids off the street and out of trouble. The Neighborhood Recovery Initiative created 80 jobs for young adults and 50 for parents to serve as mentors in 20 Chicago neighborhoods. The Safety Net Works offered school-based counseling and crisis intervention to derail violence on the streets.

During its next budget-cutting season, the state slashed the funding in half. Today, those programs don't exist.

Over the next four years, the number of shootings in Brighton Park increased by 250 percent — from 15 in 2013 to 54 in 2016.

Though resources are scarce in Brighton Park and nearby Back of the Yards, Ald. Lopez said there's something neighborhood folks can do now to help curb gang violence:

Speak up.

"With everything we are doing, we can't do it alone," Lopez said. "People know who the gangbangers are and where the guns are hidden. Businesses need to come forward. Parents need to come forward. Otherwise, they are just as liable for the violence as the person pulling the trigger."

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