Marcus Abston was sitting in his neighborhood park, hoping to spend a recent Friday afternoon posting his resume online and searching for jobs from his laptop.
When two young men walked up to him, the 21-year-old college student thought nothing of it because he knew them. Then one of the men hit him in the back of the head, and the other struck him with a stick, he said. In the chaos that followed, Abston was dragged by their car.
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He suffered a concussion and skinned hands and lost his laptop. Two weeks later, Abston says he knows his attackers and their addresses, and has told Harvey police his story over and over, but no one has been charged.
From the start, his family said, it took three phone calls and an hour for police to respond to the attack. The first 911 call was considered a prank, they said, and it’s been a fight every step of the way since. “I feel like now I’m a target,” Abston said. “My trust has been smashed. I’m afraid [the attackers] may come back to shut me up.”
Critics of Harvey police say Abston’s story illustrates firsthand how an understaffed and overwhelmed department deals with ordinary citizens.
Abston and his mother, Marice Wall, said they made numerous phone calls to the department, had meetings with police officers and detectives, and sought assistance from neighboring crime-fighting agencies. Eventually, Wall said, she started investigating herself.
“It’s been sloppy work and mishaps,” she said. “I had to work on it because nothing was happening.”
Harvey police would not comment on the case because it is under investigation, officials said. But a spokeswoman for the department said all 911 calls must be taken seriously and handled professionally and effectively.
In a written statement, Sandra Alvarado said the situation was brought to the mayor’s attention and he is making sure it’s being handled.
“Tapes regarding the 911 call have been pulled and are currently under review in order to determine if there were any departmental regulations violated during the alleged call,” the statement said. “Anyone who is found to have violated departmental regulations will be disciplined accordingly, because the mayor believes that safety is uncompromisable.”
Abston, a zoology student at Southern Illinois University, said he was working on the laptop–where he saves his college projects, photos and letters–when the men attacked him July 7.
“I fell to the ground,” Abston said. He dropped his laptop, and one of the men grabbed it and took off running, he said.
Abston tried to chase him, but the man tossed the laptop to another man who was waiting in a car. Abston said he knew the driver and tried to plead with him.
“I said, `How can you do this to me?’ ” he recalled. ” `It’s me.'”
When the driver began pulling away, Abston said he held onto the door and was dragged about 50 feet. When he let go, he hit his head and was dazed.
“I don’t know how I made it home,” he said.
Abston’s mother remembers clearly.
Wall said while her son was fighting for his laptop, some neighborhood children came and got her. She told her daughter to call police, and she went to the park, baseball bat in hand, to get her son. When the two returned home, they learned the police weren’t coming because they thought the girl was making a prank call.
Wall said she called police herself and asked them to come to her home. But it wasn’t until the third time they called that an officer showed up, she said.
“My son was robbed and beat up,” she said. “He was hurt. An hour after the first call, Harvey police came.”
It took a number of meetings for a report to be filed and investigated, she said. She was able to get one of the men jailed on an unrelated case, she said, and after more pushing, the car used in the attack was impounded. Still, Wall is frustrated.
“I’m just looking for justice,” she said. “I can’t be satisfied until something is done.”
The laptop was a gift, Abston said, which he used mainly for schoolwork and research projects. He believes it was sold on the streets. Norm Frese, president of the Illinois Council of Police, said his union has received several complaints from Harvey officers about staffing. The union contract, signed in June 2005, calls for at least six patrol cars on the street at a time. But rarely does that happen, he said.
“There are two to three beat cars working on a Saturday night, which leaves citizens unprotected,” Frese said. Alvarado said she would not comment beyond the written statement.
Ald. Ronald Waters (6th) has requested a state probe of the Police Department. In a personal case, he said he had to call police four times to get a squad car to his house, and another time it took nearly an hour to get an officer to come and question suspicious people in front of his house.
“I am an alderman, and I get this kind of service,” he said. “What chance does a citizen stand?”
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Waters said he can relate to what Wall and her son are going through.
“My heart bleeds for the family,” he said.
Wall said officers have told her she’s interfering with their work. “I don’t expect the Police Department to apologize to me,” she said. “But I do expect them to do their job. That laptop is sitting somewhere in this neighborhood–that’s a slap in the face.”
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