chicago, mob violence, death, yawning cops, 16, poverty, olympics, everyday

by fairleft2, Wed Sep 30, 2009 at 09:06:42 AM EDT


WARNING: graphic video

Where were the police when a gang of kids murdered 16-year-old Derrion Albert outside Chicago's Fenger High School?

A squad car was two blocks away. When what you see on the video happened, officers knew about the disturbance and decided not to respond, not to do anything at all.

The two cops were scared or didn't care. Probably the latter. The disturbance you see on the video or similar was a near-daily event, to be anticipated and prevented (see Fenger beating death: Violence, tension had been building over years). Get it, cops? Crime prevention. Where were you?

Why is no newspaper angry at the police? Why no editorials about this?

Where are the police this morning, two days later?

A TV reporter (the local Fox affiliate) at Fenger High School since 6 a.m. today reports at 8:30 that he hasn't seen a single cop car at the school.

. . .

So no police at Fenger this morning either.

Where are the police?

I walk out my door in my basically crime-free Chicago neighborhood and there they are, parked at the corner like they are nearly every morning.

They're in Andersonville, Beverly, Bridgeport, Hyde Park, Lakeview, and Lincoln Park, the middle-class and yuppie neighborhoods.

So "we're" all comfortable in our cocoons, and no one's asking WHERE WERE THE POLICE and where are the police today? Except that reporter on the local Fox affiliate. (For any more days will this be a story?)

Meanwhile the corporate media imposed on us is in a mood to ignore reality and celebrate. We're being hyped to put the $20 billion Olympics tab on Chicago's over-drawn charge account. An Olympics that won't improve busted transit or schools, or prevent crime through a stronger police presence in working class and poor neighborhoods.

An Olympics to bail out Mayor Daley's main constituency, the construction industry. Thank gawd he and it got Hyde Parker Obama to go to Copenhagen and save their bid!

Meanwhile, the city overall, its people and their needs can go to hell.

With the police two blocks away sitting on their fat asses.

P!S! -- Read this about Fenger High School and its neighborhood:

Fenger, where last year 6 percent of its students met or exceeded standards on the reading portion of the ISAT [Illinois State Achievement Test].  The same for math.  

The PSAE was no better.  This year, 6.3 percent for reading and 1.1. percent for math.  You read that right.  Out of 189 students taking the PSAE in math at Fenger, only two met or exceeded standards.  Where's the outrage and trending topics?  99 percent of its students are considered low income.  Roseland [Fenger's neighborhood] suffers from high foreclosures and a third of its residents live in poverty, but it can't get stimulus dollars for job training and renovating houses.  Yet the Department of Housing and Urban Development is all ears when it comes to helping finance the proposed Olympic Village.

Photobucket
Derrion Albert, RIP

Tags: Barack Obama, Chicago, Crime, Derrion Albert, Olympics, Poverty, Richard Daley (all tags)

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10 Comments

Shadow_head_small
Re: chicago, mob violence, death, yawning cops, 16

While this act is as horrific as they get. Your diary does nothing to help.

One, the police have increase patrols in the area of Fenger. Also community groups area assisting in patrolling the area to improve safety for the students.

Police and Chicago Public Schools say they're looking to prevent more violence by increasing patrols before and after classes and by offering free bus service to some students.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/30/ crimesider/entry5352501.shtml

Next you should provide a link that supports your statement that the police were two blocks way and knew that the beating was taking place and did not respond in a timely fashion.

by jsfox 2009-09-30 09:48AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
You're so wrong

I'll look for that reference to the police being two blocks away. I heard it on TV, I think. In any case, police were close by and they were well aware of the continuous gang and mob violence in that immediate area, as you can read about in the Chicago Tribune article cited near the beginning of the diary.

Derrion, an honor student, was an innocent bystander of a street fight between a group of young men who come from the CHA's Altgeld Gardens and those who live in the neighborhood near the school known as the "Ville."

"These students can't walk down the street," said Cortez Spearman, who claimed to be a graduate of Fenger.

"If they aren't from around here, they are going to get jumped on," he said.

"The police are out here, but they are not doing their job," he said.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/17 95984,CST-NWS-mitch29.article

The deep injustice in the distribution of the police will not go away by quiet negotiations and by not criticizing the police. Sorry.

by fairleft2 2009-09-30 10:18AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
BTW,

the police always increase patrols and so on for awhile after the event.

But they were fully aware of this mob/gang violence going on since school started 4 weeks ago. But now, after a student is dead, they start their patrols. Yeah, great.

And for how long? Exactly until this blows over, gets out of the headlines.

by fairleft2 2009-09-30 10:32AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Re: BTW,

From the article you did link: FYI this is prior to the beating.

Police said additional patrols were sent to the school, including 10 police officers and one sergeant from a special unit. But the fight erupted five or six blocks from Fenger, in an area that was not getting special attention, police said. "They waited until they got way out away from the school to do their business," Morgan Park District Cmdr. Mike Kuemmeth said.

"They know where the school officers are. They want to go where they are more anonymous to air their grievances, and unfortunately airing your grievances now turns to physical confrontation," he added.

Still, police acknowledged they could improve their communication. Chicago police said they will begin to adjust their tactics based on what has happened at school or in the neighborhood on a given day.

Police said they would beef up security patrols around the school and along CTA bus routes, and the school district would provide extra buses for Altgeld students to and from school.

by jsfox 2009-09-30 10:45AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Re: BTW,

Those promises will be kept for awhile, until this is a non-story.

by fairleft2 2009-09-30 10:52AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
patrols not in the neighborhood

"I think they tried to recruit him and he said no and he just tried to go home and they just jumped on him,'' said the Rev. Victor Grandberry, who met with Derrion's family after Thursday night's murder and is acting as their spokesman.

He was just a nice young man that grew up in the community," added Grandberry, who's been on Fenger's Local School Council for eight years. "Folks just bullied on him, they tried to rob him, they tried to do everything they can." . . .

Grandberry faulted school and police officials for not beefing up patrols in the neighborhood. He said there were fights at the school on Wednesday that sparked the shooting at the school Thursday.

"That should have let them know to have more police protection in the area,'' said Grandberry.

http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-teen-bea t-to-death-roseland-september25,0,532261 2.story

by fairleft2 2009-09-30 11:02AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Re: patrols not in the neighborhood

Grandberry faulted school and police officials for not beefing up patrols in the neighborhood.

Well of course, do not blame the kids, the crappy parenting or the sick community that these kids come from.... just blame the school and the cops.
You know, city kids really should stop shooting each other and beating each other up.  Someone in that community, perhaps all of the parents together, should do something.

by TeresaInPa 2009-10-01 05:05AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Stop making excuses for the cops

It's their job to make this city secure, they're doing a terrible job (except in the yuppie neighborhoods), and all I hear from conservatives and Reagan Democrats is blame-shifting.

by fairleft2 2009-10-01 06:58AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Re: Stop making excuses for the cops

well I am not a conservative or a Reagan democrat.  I am a liberal with plenty of sympathy for those children.  However, the cops can NOT be everywhere.  Most of them care very much what happens in their various cities and tax payers can not pay enough taxes to make sure we have enough cops to stop this sort of thing.
The surest way to continue to have inner city people be helpless victims is for them to continue being helpless victims, blaming everyone else besides themselves for the terrible communities they live in.
And it is not just them.. it is middle class people in the suburbs who do not see that their kids are on drugs etc....and also blame that on schools.  

ps... I do not believe that cops were just sitting a few blocks away and decided to let murder happen. Sorry about that, but while there is police brutality, from some cops,  toward people they consider perpetual perps, most cops are not monsters.

by TeresaInPa 2009-10-04 10:14AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
You've never been to Roseland, have you?

by fairleft2 2009-10-04 06:11AM | 0 recs

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