Is CAPS Going the Way of the Dodo?

Sorry to rehash old news here, but I just found this great WBEZ piece from June about how drastically CAPS beat meeting attendance has fallen since 2002. Both the story and the comments below make excellent points about how people do not trust police officers, how gang members' friends and families attend CAPS meetings and thus silence real discussion with officers, and how recent cuts are likely to make the situation worse. You can also see the contrast between police service in West Town and in South Chicago on display in the comments section.

I'm just now trying to get in touch with the CAPS implementation office--I have a contact email but not a phone number. Well, thanks to CLEARpath and a few minutes of digging, I now have a number: 312-747-9987. But now they're asking me for my party's extension and there doesn't seem to be a way to leave a general message. It's now awfully close to 5 p.m. on a Friday in July, so I can't say I'm surprised. Will have to try again next week.

CAPS meeting Monday night

In case anyone's checking, don't forget tomorrow night at 6 p.m. is the 931 beat meeting at Chavez Elementary School.

I didn't write about last month's meeting, but it was reasonably well attended and some people made a point of mentioning good news as well as complaints. And in one case, complaints were good news--the police noted that there were more calls about loitering and drug dealing at the northwest corner of 50th and Marshfield.

Our Officer Friendly made note of the block party on our block and also that open gym has resumed on Saturday mornings at Chavez. Over 50 kids were already showing up in August.

Just a quick note on the deluge--my basement is wet but seems to have taken a bit less of a beating than it did last time.

Fast Post-CAPS Action!

Wow, I'm shocked. Our Officer Friendly's chat with the landlords of the house on the next block has shown some quick results. There's now a "No Loitering" sign up right on the corner.

Apparently Officer Friendly himself spent his lunch hour yesterday circling the block and telling those guys to move. He even wrote one of them a ticket. They were mad, but they left. I haven't seen a big pack of them there today.

I might even go up and clean up the traffic circle and the corner there tonight if it stays quiet. Just adding one more signal to say "we won't put up with your mess around here."

This business with people hanging on the block has got to be over with by August 2. Jay-Z's auntie and I went to see the alderman's aide tonight. Good thing, too--she couldn't find our application for a block party permit. So I filled it out again and she faxed it downtown to DOT right in front of us. When the alderman came to sign it she introduced herself to us and we invited her to come. I suggested she come to the party between 2 and 4 p.m. when we're having basketball with some college coaches in charge. She said yes.

I heard from Auntie that plans are in the works for food and a DJ and I didn't have to do anything. Thank God!

I think I'll suggest to Officer Friendly that he invite the landlords to stop by our block party. If there's any trouble, they'll see it for themselves. More likely, and better, they'll see that this block is not what it was 15 years ago, and they need to step up their game screening tenants, because people here won't put up with out-of-control neighbors. (Yeah, we have our problems, but the problems of recent vintage cross a line.)

We're also planning to get registered as a block club. I think we have enough people willing to sign up as officers. I just hope everybody who wants a title can have a title they like and can do at least some of the work. "We never had a block club the whole time I've been here," Jay-Z's aunt told me. I think that is almost 20 years. No wonder it's taken four years to even get close to it.

CAPS Meeting

I took a couple of neighbors (two from the same family) to our CAPS meeting tonight. I went to give the police a heads-up about the block party. Also, our problem corner has been problematic of late and I wanted someone else from the block besides me to be there.

Turns out I didn't have to worry about the corner not getting discussed. We walked in a few minutes late and it quickly became the hot topic of the night. All the regulars were complaining about litter, loitering, gangbanging, drug sales and intimidation going on over there. Medicine Man was harassed by these guys his next-to-last day here. I was really angry when he told me that--he almost got through the whole year here without incident, and then these jokers showed up.

Interestingly, the landlords of the building where strangers hang out in front all the time arrived shortly after we did. It took me a few minutes to realize they were the landlords at our corner--not sure if I just lost focus or if the constant switching between Spanish and English got me confused.

Although the landlords took a pretty severe verbal beating from some of the regulars who have been coming to this meeting for years and had never met them before, they appeared willing to work with the police on curbing the loitering in front of their building, though they were reluctant to start formal eviction proceedings on a family that seems to have connections with the loiterers. I guess we'll see what happens here.

One of the officers present had looked up the number of calls to police about problems on the corner in the last week, and it was less than 12. Half of them probably came from me--I'm pretty sure I called five or six times last week.

It's tough to decide when to call though, because if they're just hanging out, there isn't much anybody can do, so I don't want to bother a dispatcher. Late at night I'll call about noise and earlier I'll call if it looks like an argument might erupt into a fight, but I can't see well enough from here to know if drug sales are going on.

Afterwards, I asked someone I've made friends with a couple of blocks north if I could call him and his family when I call 911 so they could make an additional call. He said yes. Since I got here I've tried off-and-on to start a phone tree, like the city and CAPS tell you to do, but there are lots of problems with doing this. Some are due to a lack of organization at our beat meeting--every month we all sign in and put down our phone numbers, but I have no idea what ever happens to those sheets. Nobody has ever tried to connect those of us who attend.

Tonight was the first time I've ever gone up and asked someone if they would help me with a 911 call. It's taken nearly four years for whatever combination of building relationship and increasing Spanish fluency for me to get to the point where I felt comfortable doing that. (I used English tonight to ask my neighbor up the street, but we've mostly spoken Spanish up to now.) The family who came with me also agreed to call and gave me their number.

Over the weekend, a friend of mine told me at his CAPS meeting in Little Village a while back, they used to get cell phone numbers for beat officers so they could call up and let them know where to swing by on their shift, suggest what to look for, etc. That's another thing I've never seen here.

Then of course there's the issue of creating enough community that people want to form a phone tree, and helping them get over their fear of retaliation. I got numbers from some families when I held an impromptu block meeting last fall, and they're still up on my fridge, but I have to admit I don't use them. I feel awkward speaking Spanish on the phone to strangers--one family doesn't have working phone service now--lots of times I'm making phone calls at 11 or later and I don't want to wake people up, blah blah blah. Plus one of the moms told me she called the police over something a while back and the next morning, the headlights on her car were broken.

Well, I just put my mini-phone tree to its first test. There are three guys out there on the corner right now drinking 40s and hollering. I called the cops, then I called my two neighbors who said they'd help me out tonight. One didn't answer; the other agreed to call right away. It's a start.

Secrets of a Successful Beat Meeting

On Thursday night, less than two hours after the announcement that that a suspect had been arrested in the murder of Leticia Barrera, about 20 people from the beat where she lived and died were sitting down in St. Michael's school cafeteria with their local police officers.

"When somebody does something, you guys follow through. Thanks for providing that confidence," said beat facilitator Marina Alonso, who doubles as Hedges Elementary School's parent coordinator.

Unlike every other beat meeting I have attended in Back of the Yards so far, this one has a steady facilitator who has developed strong relationships with the people who live in the beat. Alonso also draws up each month's agenda and stays in contact with the police between meetings to make sure that community needs are being addressed.

This month the community also thanked the police for retaking control of St. Michael's gym, which had been overrun by gang members openly representing and trying to recruit. We could hear the excited shouts and dribbling coming from the gym while the meeting went on.

The feel of the meeting was very different from others I have attended. The police were engaged in the conversation, not just sitting there talking among themselves or looking anywhere but at the residents. There seemed to be real dialog between residents and officers, not just residents making requests or giving their complaints.

The police also seemed much less defensive and more interested in residents' perspective here than elsewhere. For example, near the end of the meeting a female officer present said, "The mothers I've dealt with are helpless. They don't know what their kids are doing. Ninety-nine percent of them are lovely people, but their kids are lost." She wanted to know what is being done to help and educate parents so they can better monitor their children's activities. "These kids are someone's kids. Is there any way someone can educate the parents?"

Oscar Contreras, who works with youth and with parents to prevent gang violence, told her about a parents' group now meeting at St. John of God, 51st & Elizabeth, every other Saturday. Mothers there support each other in their efforts to help their children stay out of trouble and leave gangs if they have already become involved.

"That's great," the officer responded.

After the meeting, Alonso told me that the attendance Thursday was lower than usual because they had parent workshops at Hedges. Many of those who did attend had been at school most of the day already. Their stamina was rewarded with a stack of Little Caesar's pizzas afterwards. During pizza time, Alonso carried her granddaughter over her shoulder and chatted with other moms and grandmoms present. She always makes herself informally after the meeting to pick up sensitive information people might not want to give out in public.

Both she and Contreras credited residents for their courage in stepping forward with information that led to the arrest in the Barrera murder.

"The community came together," Contreras noted. Apparently, someone at the press conference questioned the significance of one arrest in a city full of violent crime. To the naysayer, Contreras said, "It is a big deal. It brings closure."

It also increases the community's trust that the police will come through. During the winter, after the news reports about the killing had died down and before there was much evidence beyond what security cameras in the area had been able to capture, 9th district officer Eric Wier met with residents and told them he felt "ashamed" that the case had stalled, Contreras told me. Wier vowed to keep the case moving forward, and "he fulfilled his promise."

For more on Wier, see the Sun-Times article here.