Residents of the Robert Taylor Homes on Friday accused the Chicago Police Department of laxity in patrolling their development, leading to a crime surge in the three weeks since the Chicago Housing Authority disbanded its own law-enforcement arm.
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“Since the Chicago police came, I haven’t seen them. They’ve been invisible,” one of the residents, Letitia Gipson, said during a news conference at the high-rise development slated for demolition.
Speakers said they have been besieged with robberies and assaults since the city police assumed responsibility for patrolling CHA properties and that they feel less secure.
But Chicago police made 535 more arrests at CHA developments citywide during the last two weeks of October than CHA police did during the same period in 1998, police spokesman Pat Camden said.
The recent abolition of the CHA’s 10-year-old police force is part of Mayor Richard Daley’s $1.5 billion plan to reconfigure public housing in Chicago.
“More police are not the answer to every social problem,” Phillip Jackson, the CHA’s chief executive officer, said at an unrelated event. “Better parenting and supervision of children are what’s needed.”
At issue are the concerns of residents at the cluster of Robert Taylor buildings at 4946, 4947 and 4950 S. State St. The buildings were rehabbed this year at a cost of $47 million to provide a place for CHA residents displaced when harsh winter weather forced the evacuation of other buildings.
“It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money to put $50 million in this complex and not have it secure,” said Paris Thompson, director of a youth center.
Chicago Police Cmdr. Michael Tolliver, who oversees the patrolling of public housing developments, said the department lacks the resources to post officers at apartment complexes everywhere in the city.
“Some of the residents are looking to see the police here 24 hours a day,” Tolliver said.
At least one Robert Taylor resident said the complex now appears safer, with troublemakers less likely to loiter in public areas.
“As long as Chicago police come out and show their faces, it makes those boys disappear,” said Mary White.
Earlier Friday, U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees public housing, charged that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was “slowing Chicago’s efforts” and said he would hold hearings early next year on what he called HUD’s interference.