Chicago police and federal agents, searching for weapons and narcotics, used axes, acetylene torches and shovels Monday to dismantle part of the interior of the ”El Rukn Grand Major Mosque,” also known as the headquarters of the Rukn street gang.
The operation began hours after police, with the help of the Chicago Fire Department, entered the fortified building at 3947 S. Drexel Blvd. by force, looking for Anthony Fort, 22, eldest son of imprisoned Rukn leader Jeff Fort, police said.
The building has been the target of numerous police raids, but none as intrusive as the assault that was mounted Monday evening. While owned by the Rukns, the former theater building has long stood as a symbol of what has been considered the city`s most powerful street gang.
Past police raids have been confined to pulling out drawers and opening closets in often futile searches for weapons and contraband.
In Monday`s searches, however, police, aided by the Fire Department, put holes in the outside walls and thoroughly combed the interior, including behind all the inside walls and inside a basement tunnel.
Police said they originally entered the building Monday morning armed with a search warrant authorizing them to look for Anthony Fort. He was sought for questioning in connection with the Thanksgiving Day armed robbery and murder of a 27-year-old South Side woman, police said.
Raiders gained entry by battering a hole in a side wall of the building but failed to find Anthony Fort. Police later arrested him at another location and were expected to put him in a lineup Monday night. By late Monday, he had not been charged.
During the original search of the gang headquarters for Anthony Fort, police found 30 grams of suspected cocaine, more than 300 grams of suspected marijuana and two handguns hidden in desks and other places. They also found a rifle and 30 bullets hidden in a false wall panel, said Cmdr. Frank Radke of the gang crimes south unit.
Based on that evidence, prosecutors from the office of U.S. Atty. Anton Valukas, who have been conducting an extensive narcotics racketeering investigation of the gang, asked U.S. Magistrate Bernard Weisberg for a search warrant allowing a thorough search of the headquarters for more narcotics.
Weisberg issued the second search warrant at 5 p.m., according to police. ”We`re leaving the building in a livable condition, but I don`t know how they are going to be able to use it without electricity and water,” said Lt. Ronald Kelly of gang crimes south.
Officials of the gas and electric companies followed police into the building to shut off those utilities for nonpayment of bills, Kelly said. The Rukns also had not paid their water bills, and the city was expected to shut off the water.
Records in the building also showed that the Rukns owed $29,000 in various taxes and had a $700 phone bill, police said.
Radke said police believed there was a secret hiding place for weapons in the Rukn headquarters. He said police sought a search warrant that would allow them to ”rip out the walls” of the building.
Part of the front of the two-story, mostly brick building was torn off during the search, and passersby could look in from the street.
One of the searchers, officer Jim Fitzmaurice, said police looked behind the interior walls without tearing those down. ”A lot of the walls had holes in them already,” he said.
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By 8 p.m., police and agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had found two more handguns, making a total of five guns authorities removed from the building, Kelly said, and $4,300 in cash.
Valukas said investigators also hauled away documents that appeared to be ”narcotics records.”
Kelly and Sgt. Dave O`Callaghan of the Chicago police said the searchers also found 39 more grams of cocaine along with three or four gallons of codeine, a prescription drug, in a tunnel in the basement.
”The place is a maze,” O`Callaghan said.
Kelly said an informant told police where to find the narcotics or the searchers might not have found it.
The Rukn headquarters at one time housed the Oakland Theater. Gang members remodeled the structure into a heavily barricaded building with steel doors.
The gang has claimed for several years to be a religious organization, a claim that U.S. and state officials have rejected.
In August, 1986, agents searched the building as well as a gang apartment on South Kenwood Avenue. Searchers found small amounts of suspected narcotics in the headquarters, but located more than 30 weapons, including an disarmed U.S. Army rocket launcher.
The building, also known simply as the ”Fort,” has a large mural of the holy city of Mecca painted on the outside, and Islamic services supposedly have been held inside.
Kelly described the interior when police entered Monday. He said the ground floor contained a large room that the gang members called ”the temple” with a carpet on the floor, seating for 100, and colorful banners on the walls.
Adjacent to the temple were three small rooms. One was a kitchen and two were living areas. ”Above one of the living areas was a false area where they had a mattress so that somebody could hide,” Kelly said.
Next to the temple was the old theater. Above the theater were three offices, washrooms and a dance hall.
”We knew they were using the dance hall for weekend dances. It`s got all the equipment for a disco: pinball machines, strobe lights and an area for a disc jockey.”
He said police were checking the stereo and other equipment to see if any was stolen.
Kelly said police did not go in to destroy the building but to look for contraband and ”to put another nail in Jeff Fort`s coffin.”
On Nov. 14, Jeff Fort was sentenced to 75 years in prison for murder on top of his earlier 80-year prison sentence for plotting, but never carrying out, terrorist acts for the Libyan government. Some of his top deputies have also been convicted in state and federal courts recently.
Testimony during a 1987 trial in which Jeff Fort and four codefendants were convicted of plotting, but never carrying out, terrorist acts for the Libyan government, disclosed some details about the headquarters.
Armed guards manned the doors checking identities of visitors by means of a mirror before admitting anyone, according to testimony at that trial.
This heavy security backfired on the Rukns when they refused entry to an envoy of the Libyan government. A witness at the terrorism trial said turning away the Libyan envoy hurt the Rukns` claim to be a religious organization because the Libyans complained that a mosque should be open to all Moslems.
A witness at the terrorism trial also testified that the headquarters had a painting on the wall of a man on a horse, wearing a black mask and carrying a sword dripping with blood. The witness said the picture is a symbol of any Rukn who wears a ski mask and carries out Jeff Fort`s orders to kill someone. The victim of the Thanksgiving Day robbery and murder that led to Monday`s search for Anthony Fort was Katie Vines, of 7420 S. Colfax Ave.
According to Radke, Vines was on her way home last Thursday when she was robbed and fatally shot by two or three men about 4 a.m. in front of 7525 S. Kingston Ave. Police found Vines` keys and two $5 bills at the scene of the slaying.
The Kingston Avenue building allegedly is controlled by Rukns and was searched by police several weeks ago for weapons and bulletproof vests, Radke said.
On Thursday, police arrested Christopher Brooks, 22, of 7618 S. Saginaw Ave., and Darryl Howard, 26, of 1023 E. 46th St., in connection with the slaying of Vines. Police said both are gang members, and both were charged with armed robbery and murder.
Police, armed with a search warrant, took Anthony Fort, of 6247 S. Wood St., into custody at a girlfriend`s apartment at 3500 S. Lake Park Ave. He was carrying a .22-caliber revolver at the time, police said.
During the original search of the Rukn headquarters for Anthony Fort, police arrested three El Rukns who were charged with weapons and narcotics violations. Police identified the three as Arthur Proctor, 47, of 142 W. 118th St.; Charles Green, 46, of 5309 S. Morgan St.; and Dwayne Price, 30, of 5410 S. Carpenter St.
”They`ve always been given the reputation of being a knowledgable crowd,” Radke said. ”But they`re just common street thugs. That`s all they are.”
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