”for the last few days whole lots of things been going on like shoting, killing, dyeing, death. that happens every day, every week, any month. like they tried to kill my cousin my uncle almost tried to hurt my grandfather to take his money. everywhere you go you see people on streets, in abandon building, on the corners, breaking in houses, getting stopped by police. every day the same things happen.”
-Composition written by a 6th-grade pupil from Robert Taylor Homes.
In an apartment at the Robert Taylor Homes a group of young entrepreneurs conduct weekly business meetings to discuss revenues. They sport designer jogging outfits and thick gold chains that are the envy of their peers.
The men fill out ledgers detailing the work shifts and salaries of their employees-elementary school pupils who are paid $150 to $200 a week to yell
”1151” as a warning when police approach. Sometimes sales of their product must be increased in order to raise bond money for a jailed colleague. The product is drugs. The byproduct is violence.
In an area plagued by chronic unemployment, narcotics is a tempting alternative to a welfare check. It has been the means through which drug dealers have been able to buy expensive cars and clothes. But, for the many law-abiding residents of the Taylor Homes, the largest public housing development in the world, it has simply brought more bloodshed and
intimidation.
Over the last few months violence has escalated at the complex, forcing tenants to flee or live like hostages. More and more, drugs and crime dominate the lives of the residents, including the very young.
”There are more participants, more people willing to sell it,” said police officer Tom Kampenga, of the Public Housing South Unit. ”And everyone is willing to be arrested to make that money.”
When asked to write compositions about their daily lives, children attending the nearby Beethoven Elementary School write almost exclusively about gangs and drugs. Of 18 6th graders asked to write spur of the moment accounts of their lives Friday morning, 16 students mentioned crime.
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”Last week there were gun shot in the neighbor and it was an automatic uzi an it shot about 20 time straight,” wrote one student. ”Everybody also running police came but didn`t get any because they`ve hid theire gun under thing.”
Another wrote, ”My sister new this girl and she got shot. And these boys was shooting at these other boys and almost miss my sister.”
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According to police, much of the violence is triggered when turf boundaries are challenged at gunpoint. Allegiances shift overnight as gang members vie for lucrative markets for cocaine and karachi, a potent form of heroin that often is mixed with barbiturates.
”It`s going to blow up eventually, all-out war, a dope war,” said police officer Edward Bone, of the Public Housing South Unit.
”They`re very organized, well-armed, and we have a lot who don`t care about when to squeeze the trigger. These guys can`t shoot, so when they come out with these Uzis, it`s spray the area.”
For many who live in the sprawling 28 high-rise Chicago Housing Authority complex, the war is already underway.
During the first quarter of 1989, major crimes reported at Taylor have increased by 65 percent, according to police records. During the first three months of last year 267 were reported. This year the number was 441.
During that period, robberies have more than doubled to 98 and assaults, which include shootings, have risen from 95 incidents to 167.
Cmdr. Eddie King, of the Wentworth District, which includes Taylor, estimates that more than two-thirds of the crimes committed there are related to rapidly expanding narcotics sales.
Each day police seize evidence-”dolls stuffed with dope,” Bone said,
”pop cans, coffee cans, false fire extinguishers, aerosol sprays, Right Guard cans up on the shelf.”
And police concede that gang members even deal narcotics from units directly above the office of Cmdr. Hosea Crossley, of the police public housing unit in the Taylor high-rise at 4844 S. State St.
”The gangs know that we are limited in what we can do,” said Crossley.
”They know they can keep on operating. The same places we hit go back into operation the next day, or even that same day.”
Four public housing police officers and additional district squad cars patrol South Side CHA properties, including Taylor, between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., Crossley said. According to tenants and police, most deliveries of narcotics are made in the pre-dawn hours.
Police point out that many of the dealers who operate in Taylor do not live there. In fact, it is difficult to keep track of who lives in the complex. In 1985-the last time a census was taken-Taylor housed 18,670 residents.
In the last year, 302 apartments at Taylor were vacated and remain unfilled, according to CHA records. In all, 915 of the development`s 4,230 apartments are now empty.
”We`re losing all the good people,” said Bone. ”They`re finding places to move and get out of here. The new people are transients, they`re young, they`re not stable and they don`t care what happens.”
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”One day I saw this person getting arrested in the afternoon and his girlfriend was mad at him and she threw all his close, money, vaulables and he said he was going to get her,” wrote a 6th grader at Beethoven. ”Two days later, she was so scared and moved out.”
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This month, CHA Chairman Vincent Lane began securing three of Taylor`s high-rises at a cost of $2.5 million, said CHA spokeswoman Katie Kelly. The open-air elevator lobbies on the first floors will be expanded and enclosed and armed guards will be posted. Additional elevator lobbies will be created on each of the 16 floors. Visitors will have to be buzzed in by residents.
Lane hopes to enclose all 28 buildings within five years, Kelly said.
But as these high-rises are secured, gang activity will move to other buildings, often triggering turf wars, police said. ”It`s still a supply and demand game,” said Bone.
According to police, the complex is divided into approximately three large sections, each controlled by a different gang or alliance of gangs.
One gang leader who until recently exploited the lawless environment of the Taylor complex is Robert Dordies, known to residents as Cold Black. According to police, Dordies, who is not a resident of Taylor, ordered a 10 p.m. curfew last month in order to limit competition around 4101 S. Federal St. and gain control of the building.
”They tell them if they catch them downstairs. . . they`ll pop `em,”
said a resident of the high-rise who requested anonymity. ”As soon as it gets dark, whoever is standing there, they just start shooting.”
Dordies, 32, who was charged with murder earlier this month, controlled drug trade in at least eight high-rises at the north end of the two-mile long Taylor complex, police said.
An ex-convict, Dordies began operating at the Taylor Homes approximately three years ago, according to police. He was assigned the territory in Taylor by a gang leader whom he befriended while in prison, police said.
”He starts recruiting these youngsters who look up to him,” said John Risley of the Gang Crimes South unit. ”They see him in the jogging suits and the gold chains and rings and all the money. I`ve seen him in an `89 Chrysler, a Cadillac Eldorado and two or three brand new Chevy Blazers, none of them in his name.”
While Dordies has remained in Cook County Jail in lieu of $300,000 bond, police say that little has changed in the buildings he controlled. They expect another gang member to take his place if he is convicted.
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As the cycle of gang violence continues, more and more law-abiding tenants move out, complicating efforts to retake control from the dealers.
During the past few months, Mary, who asked that her real name not be used, has seen several of her neighbors at 4947 S. Federal St. leave.
Her friend on the 11th floor moved out after her daughter was stabbed, Mary said. And one man on the 14th floor moved out after two of his fingers were chopped off by gang members who were after his rings.
Mary said another woman on the 10th floor is leaving soon. Her boy was killed by gang members because ”he was making more money than the other boys were,” Mary said.
When the rival gang members took off one of the boy`s shoes, they found $3,000, she said. They knew where he kept his money; the other shoe wasn`t even removed, Mary said.
Mary, too, is trying to get out. She has been waiting to qualify for the federal rent subsidy she applied for in 1983. Every day for the past year, she has called CHA to see if her turn is up.
But life at Taylor has become so dangerous that Mary wants to send her three children to Florida until she gets her new apartment.
”I walk them to school and I walk them back,” said Mary, whose children attend Beethoven. ”When you walk them back from school, you`re ducking and you`re making all the kids hit the ground.
”You can`t play in the playground `cause you`d be scared to walk out,”
said Mary. ”People have got nowhere to go. They can`t sit on their porch to get no air. That`s pitiful.”