WBEZ | Criminal Justice

Violence in the streets can start in the home

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:51:00 -0500

Ubaldina is a mother of six, who works the night shift at a packing company so she can be there when her kids come home from school.

She’s raising her kids alone now. She said her husband abused her verbally and physically almost every weekend.

“He came home drunk one day,” Ubaldina said. “I was pregnant with my 12-year-old. And the police came home and arrested him because they found him hitting me. I was on the floor with my face covered in blood.”

Ubaldina said she didn’t have the strength to end the relationship, until her husband tried to abuse her oldest daughter.

“I woke up,” she said. “I didn't make any noise or turn on the lights. I was going to the bathroom and everything was dark. I went back and heard my daughter’s bed moving and that’s when I opened the door and I found him there, but my daughter had no clothes on.”

All of her children slept in that bedroom. They watched what happened next.

“I took him out of the room,” Ubaldina said. “ I slapped him in the face twice and pushed him out. I was so angry that I remember going to the kitchen sink and grabbing a knife. I wanted to kill him.”

Ubaldina took her kids out of their house and waved down a cop car. Juvenal, her oldest son who is now 16, was terrified.

“That really got to me. I wanted to like, already be grown so I could beat up my dad. I wanted to beat him up, and I got so mad.” Juvenal said.

His dad was arrested, convicted and is still in prison. Ubaldina said her kids got some counseling at the time, but nothing to deal with all the domestic violence they witnessed at home.

Today, eight years later, Juvenal and his younger sister still struggle with anger. They’ve both been arrested for getting into fights at school.

“My anger is like when you feel the blood is coming up to your head and is not working back now. You get this nervous feeling and your hands ball up,” Juvenal said.

Experts say that anger can lead to violence on the streets if youth, like Juvenal, have ties to local gangs. They’re finding a link between domestic violence and youth involvement in gangs that goes largely unreported.

“Domestic violence is basically at the root of much of the violence that we see here in the streets,” said Father Dave Kelly of Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation. He teaches at-risk youth -- even rival gang members -- how to resolve their disputes peacefully.

“Most of the kids whom we deal with, youth who are locked up, speak of the violence they had to endure a big part of their life,” Father Kelly said.

Several other agencies say they’re seeing the same pattern.

CeaseFire Illinois, the local branch of Cure Violence, tries to “interrupt” violence before it erupts in the streets. More and more, leaders there say, they’re being asked to intercede in homes, too.

But there’s no single way to measure how big the problem is in Chicago. The Chicago Division of Domestic Violence said it doesn’t collect data on the number of minors who witness violence at home. They referred me to the Chicago Office of Violence Prevention, which doesn’t collect such data either.

“The primary challenge is to find a unique way to count children,” said Chicago Office of Violence Prevention Director Marlita White. “That is going to continue to be a difficult thing, because you are dependent on internal resources of very different departments. And often times you have a child who may be exposed to domestic violence, but also to community violence or to child abuse or neglect.”

The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority collects some data from state-funded domestic violence programs. They said of the 22 state-funded domestic violence organizations in Chicago, more than 11,000 victims of domestic violence sought services last year. Those clients had a total of more than 20,000 children, but only 1,348 of them were identified as witnesses of domestic violence, and also received some type of supportive service.

Domestic violence groups said victims of domestic violence like Ubaldina are often afraid to come forward themselves. They’re also hesitant to acknowledge their kids witnessed the violence and are in need of services. The leaders of those groups said there is no uniform intake form that asks that information.

Some of those agencies like Mujeres Latinas en Accion are starting to identify and treat these young people, but they lack resources and can serve only small pockets of the population. But even when the resources are there, it can be hard to fight the influence of gangs over kids like Juvenal who have seen violence at home.

Juvenal said if he has trouble at home or if he’s being bullied and no one is around to protect him, the gangs are there.

“It’s easy man. It’s really easy. If what you need is protection, they are gonna throw it at you,” he said.

His mom said the gangs have been after him since he was 13. He also has cousins who are already gang members.

What stands between Juvenal and the gangs is the aid of one cop.

Officer Rafael Yañez mentors Juvenal and other at-risk youth. He founded an organization called Union Impact Center that provides after-school sports and mentoring.

On his own time, Yañez picks up Juvenal and his sisters every Saturday and drives them to a local gym.

“He is running away from the problems and the male figures and the real role models that he has are not the most positive ones, but are the only ones there,” Yañez said.

Juvenal sits up front so they can talk. Juvenal tells Yañez his plans of building a recording studio in his room. At the gym, they talk about the importance of keeping good grades for college and, as usual, they play ball.

Yañez said it’s hard for Juvenal to control his anger and that gets him in trouble.

“There was a time where I had to be in his high school, I was called by the principal maybe every week. Sometimes every other day to come and talk to him about his behavior,” he said, adding that’s slowed down since the pair started working together.

And he said Juvenal’s mom, Ubaldina, calls him when her son comes home late or breaks the rules.

“I prayed to God so my kid would not accept to join the gangs,” Ubaldina said.

Despite all of this support, there are ongoing pressures for Juvenal. His family lives in a crowded apartment. The TV is always on, and his younger siblings play everywhere.

At home he loses his temper easily. Ubaldina worries because her son is growing up without a father. And if he wants to go out, the gangs are right there.

“My perimeter is where I live and how I get to school, that’s it. You know like sometimes I get mad because I can’t go places that some of my friends can go to,” Juvenal said.

He lives with a constant reminder of the looming violence just across the street. It’s a memorial made of stuffed animals and beer cans.

A young man* who lives nearby stooped to clear garbage away from it and said the altar’s there to remember a friend who was shot three years ago, on Thanksgiving.

“All his friends gathered up before going back to their families for Thanksgiving and I guess they thought they were gangbangers and started shooting at the group, and he is the one that got shot,” the neighborhood resident said.

So Juvenal sees this every day. And he said he stays inside as much as he can. He’s trying to figure out how to build that recording studio in his bedroom using foam and cardboard.

But the lure of the streets is evident even in his favorite rap tune, “Knuck if You Buck.” He likes the song because he said it reminds him to always stand strong.

But even though Juvenal’s trying to stay out of a gang, he knows one more fight could change everything. If he joins, he said he’ll have to get tattooed, carry their guns and sell their drugs.

When I ask Juvenal where he sees himself in five years, he said he isn’t sure if he’ll even make it that far.

*Name withheld by WBEZ to protect the family’s confidentiality. And WBEZ isn’t using the last names of the family in this story to protect their confidentiality, given the nature of the abuse.

House lawmakers dispute interests of having crowded prisons

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:22:00 -0500

A controversial measure that would change how the U.S. Census counts Illinois prison inmates is advancing in Springfield.

The census counts Illinois’ prison inmates as residents of the town the prison is in, not the town they came from.

That population can affect a region’s eligibility for government money.

State House members narrowly approved a bill Wednesday saying the state will start keeping track of an inmates’ last known address for census purposes.The measure passed with the bare minimum of favorable votes, 60-55.

The bill’s passage upset Republican State Rep. Chad Hays from Danville, which has a prison that currently holds about 1,800 inmates, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.

“I just lost 2,000 residents,” Hays said after the vote.

He sarcastically said he’ll start sending expenses to the City of Chicago for projects paid for with government money.

But State Rep. Monique Davis of Chicago suggested those who have prisons in their districts have a financial interest in keeping their prisons full.

“Let’s see how many enhanced penalty bills will pass, let’s see how many new bills were put in the criminal code if that population is no longer valuable to certain groups,” she said.

The measure still needs the support of the Senate.

Tony Arnold covers Illinois politics for WBEZ. Follow him @tonyjarnold.

Cook County inmates compete with Russian inmates in online chess match

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:32:00 -0500

Inside the Cook County Jail law library, 10 men were hunched over laptops playing online chess. A live video of their competitors, all Russian inmates, was projected on the wall.

Correctional Officer Patrice Faulkner roamed the room, encouraging players to take their time. “I’m nervous, because this is a big deal,” she said.

The program is run by Mikhail Korenman, who met chess legend Anatoly Karpov last year. The two chess players, along with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, hatched the idea for this tournament, which, according to Dart, is the first of its kind.

It was a hard match. The U.S. team was entirely from Cook County, while Russia chose players from across the country’s prison system.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said he had no delusions the match would solve current diplomatic issues between the U.S. and Russia. But he thought chess was a good activity for the men because it encouraged thinking ahead five or six moves, because you must consider the future impact of every action.

Warren Jackson, one of today’s players, said he had seen that change in himself, “I’m more proactive than reactive now. So I do think chess plays a heavy game when it comes down to you making decisions.”

In the end, Russia won. But Dalvin Brown, Chicago’s star player, won both his games. Karpov complimented his skills and the Russians said they will be sending him a chessboard.

Shannon Heffernan is a WBEZ reporter. Follow her @shannon_h.

HIV-infected teacher's aide accused of molestation

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:53:00 -0500

ST. LOUIS — An Illinois special-needs teaching assistant accused of molesting a teenage student in school while knowingly infected with HIV remained jailed Tuesday as police investigated another claim of similar misconduct by the man involving a different student.

Prosecutors in St. Clair County east of St. Louis charged Mario L. Hunt, 35, on Monday with felony counts of criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse and "transmitting" HIV through intimate contact during the first half of 2011, when the student was 17. The transmission charge means a defendant merely exposed a victim to the virus that causes AIDS, not necessarily causing actual infection.

Cahokia police Lt. Dennis Plew said Tuesday he was unaware whether the teenager, now 19 and still a student at Cahokia High School, has been tested for HIV.

At least one other possible victim has come forward, though that case has not yet produced charges, Plew said. Police publicly implored the school district's parents to report any questionable dealings between Hunt and their children — or at least get them tested for HIV if they're reluctant to get police involved.

"This is horrible," Plew told The Associated Press. "I'm sure some kids come to school and put a lot of trust in a teacher, and for anyone to take advantage of that is a terrible thing."

Hunt does not have a listed home telephone number, and online court records do not show whether he has an attorney. He was jailed on $300,000 bond.

Hunt, an alumnus of the Cahokia school district where he has worked since 2007, was arrested Monday, when the 4,000-student school system first learned of the charges without sufficient time to quickly notify parents, Superintendent Art Ryan said. That would come Tuesday, Ryan said.

Ryan said a parent reported earlier this month to school administrators that her son had suspicious text and Facebook exchanges with Hunt. As the district was investigating that, the mother also went to the village's police, who interviewed Hunt last week, Ryan and Plew said.

Without identifying the teenager, the criminal complaint alleges Hunt "holds a position of trust, authority or supervision" over him. Ryan said he was uncertain whether the teenager had been a student in the special-needs classroom Hunt assisted or if the young man was the son of the mother who originally complained. Either way, Ryan said, privacy laws preclude him from divulging any link between the teen and Hunt.

Hunt, who also served as the high school's boy's assistant track coach and athletic trainer, remains on the district's payroll, pending a June 10 meeting where the school board will consider his employment status, Ryan said.

Ryan said Hunt frequently has helped with prom and homecoming events and that "all of the kids certainly seemed to like him."

"You always think something like this isn't going to happen here and we'd be able to see something, but it's just so tough to know," Ryan said. "Realistically, what can you do?

"It's hard to tell what's going on in people's hearts and minds."

Illinois lawmakers revisit life sentences without parole for juveniles

Mon, 13 May 2013 08:08:00 -0500

Illinois lawmakers are still negotiating a bill that would ban juveniles from receiving life sentences in prison. It comes nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the practice unconstitutional.

About 100 of Illinois’ prison inmates are serving life sentences that they received as juveniles. Since the Supreme Court’s decision last year, state lawmakers are taking another look at how the state sentences minors.

Jobi Cates, with Human Rights Watch, said the Supreme Court acknowledged in the majority opinion that young teens’ minds aren’t fully developed and may not understand the consequences of what they’re facing.

“The brain science tells us that we need to take another look when their brains have fully matured and that’s why we believe that a review well into the time served is critical to meeting the standards set by the Supreme Court,” Cates said.

Legislation is still being negotiated, but one proposal would allow those facing a long sentence to petition for a hearing after serving 15 years.

“That this young man is going to die in that prison is - it compounds the tragedy of the original crime,” she said.

State Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie is taking the lead on the legislation in Springfield. She said prosecutors and victims’ rights groups are concerned about what the changing law will mean to those already sentenced to life without parole.

“Certainly for the families, there’s obviously a concern that what they thought was more or less a done deal could now be re-opened,” Currie said.

Currie said negotiations are expected to continue this week.

Tony Arnold covers Illinois politics for WBEZ. Follow him @tonyjarnold.

Police Board fires cops for conduct captured on gang video

Sat, 11 May 2013 06:00:00 -0500

The Chicago Police Board has fired two officers for conduct captured on a 2011 gang video (above) discovered by WBEZ.

The board found patrol officers Susana La Casa, 49, and Luis Contreras, 44, guilty of numerous administrative charges and decided the fitting punishment was dismissal, according to James P. Lynch, the attorney who represented the police department in the case.

The guilty charges, Lynch said, included unlawfully restraining a youth, transporting him without a valid police purpose to the turf of a gang that would threaten him, and making a false statement about the incident to an Internal Affairs detective.

La Casa and Contreras arrived March 19, 2011, on a Logan Square block to assist two officers who had handcuffed a gang member named Miguel “Mikey” Castillo. The youth ended up in the backseat of the SUV that La Casa and Contreras were driving. They drove him to a block of nearby Humboldt Park that a rival gang claimed as its territory.

A 90-second amateur video shot there shows La Casa and Contreras outside the SUV, a Chevrolet Tahoe with standard police markings. Three of the doors are open as onlookers converge, peer in on Castillo, taunt him and flash their gang’s hand signal. As Castillo tries to cover his face, La Casa tells him, “Put your fucking hand down.”

The video appeared briefly on YouTube, where WBEZ spotted it. The department quickly stripped La Casa and Contreras of their police powers and began an investigation. Interim police Supt. Terry Hillard called the incident “not professional” and said “scared straight” tactics were always inappropriate.

Supt. Garry McCarthy, Hillard’s successor, recommended last September that the board dismiss the officers. At the board’s evidentiary hearing, which lasted two days in February, La Casa and Contreras insisted they were just trying to give the young man a ride home and he never faced danger.

La Casa declined to comment about the dismissal. Contreras and attorney William N. Fahy, who represented the officers, did not return calls.

Neighborhood reactions varied. Eric Hudson, a homeowner who worked with La Casa and Contreras against Logan Square gang activity, said the dismissal stemmed from a police department culture “weighted to Irish male cops.”

Hudson called La Casa, an Illinois-licensed clinical counselor, a hard worker who did not deserve to be branded as abusive. “This woman is a social worker, not Jon Burge,” Hudson said, referring to the notorious Chicago detective imprisoned in connection to police torture cases.

But Rev. Kenny Ruiz, the former head of a gang-intervention program at the McCormick Tribune YMCA, hopes the dismissal sends a message to other officers. “Do what the side of the police car says: ‘Serve and Protect.’ That means everyone,” Ruiz said. “They can be the conduit for something positive for the young people and the challenges that they face.”

The board, a nine-member panel appointed by the mayor, does not usually dismiss officers recommended for that punishment. During this year’s first three months, the board fired just three of 13 officers that either the police department or the Independent Police Review Authority had recommended for discharge. In eight of those cases, the board ruled that the fitting punishment was a suspension or reprimand. In another case, the respondent resigned. In another, the department withdrew the charges.

Under Illinois law, officers can appeal their dismissals to Cook County Circuit Court.

Castillo, who did not suffer physical harm, received $33,000 from the city as part of a settlement in a civil suit over the incident, according to an attorney representing him. The suit, filed in federal court, alleged false arrest and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s office reviewed the incident but declined to bring a criminal case.

Chip Mitchell is WBEZ’s West Side bureau reporter. Follow him on Twitter @ChipMitchell1 and @WBEZoutloud, and connect with him through Facebook and LinkedIn.

Sheriff warns Indian immigrants of scam

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:05:00 -0500

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is warning Indian immigrants about a phone scam that’s recently targeted several victims in unincorporated Des Plaines. Victims received calls in which they were told they owed money to the Internal Revenue Service or to a collections agency, and that failure to pay would result in arrest or deportation.

“The amounts actually vary from victim to victim in the reports that we’ve had, but in some cases it’s been in the thousands,” said Sophia Ansari, Press Secretary at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. Ansari said the caller often instructed victims to pay with a replenishable debit card.

The perpetrator spoke to the victims in English, Hindi, Gujarati and other Indian dialects.

Ansari said anyone who receives a suspicious call from someone claiming to be from the IRS or from a collections agency should record the name and number of the caller, and to contact the agency that the caller purports to represent.

Odette Yousef is WBEZ’s North Side Bureau reporter. Follow her at @oyousef.

Chicago police chief says teen fired at officers before he was shot and killed

Mon, 06 May 2013 18:12:00 -0500

Family members say a 16-year-old shot and killed by Chicago police Sunday had a history of mental illness.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy told reporters that police chased Tywon Jones after he fired into a crowd shortly after 4 p.m. in the 1300 block of South Independence Boulevard on the West Side.

“This kid was shooting into a crowd … and when the kid became aware that the officers were following him he turned the firearm on the car and fired at my officers a couple of times. They returned fire and unfortunately the kid expired,” McCarthy said at a press conference Monday. The press conference was about the department’s effort to get guns off the street.

Jones’ stepfather Kevin Bell said the teen was taking medication for bipolar disorder. Bell said Jones, who lived on the 1600 block of South Hamlin Avenue, had gotten into some trouble with police before, but he described him as a normal teenager.

McCarthy said this was “not the first time” Jones had a run in with police, but he didn’t know if the officers were aware of Jones’ mental illness.

“Somebody who may have a history of mental illness, if they’re pointing a firearm at you, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

McCarthy said the incident was another example of the importance of getting “guns out of violent criminals’ hands.”

“If these weapons were not on the street, this [wouldn’t have happened]. It couldn’t be simpler,” McCarthy said.

Dave Miranda, a spokesman for Chicago Public Schools, said Jones was not an active student in CPS, and the last school he attended was the Nancy B. Jefferson School at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.

No one else was hit in the shooting, McCarthy said. The superintendent said he did not know how many times Jones fired before officers shot him.

Larry Merritt, a spokesman for the city’s Independent Police Review Authority, said the authority is investigating the shooting.

This is the 18th time someone was shot by Chicago police this year, Merritt said. Last year there were 50 such shootings.

Police union spokesman Pat Camden said when a police officer shoots someone it is “a very, very traumatic experience.”

Any officer involved in such a shooting is required to undergo counseling, Camden said.

In Cook County courts: Not guilty? Go to jail anyway

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Cook County has a pretty curious way of dealing with people who are acquitted in court, people who are found not guilty. The county has a practice of violating their constitutional rights, and the practice goes back decades. That's what happened to a man named Calvin Marshall. You can hear what Marshall went through after he was found not guilty of murder by clicking on the audio above.

West Side politician's attorney says state representative unfairly targeted by feds

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:08:00 -0500

Attorneys have come out with their defense for an indicted Illinois state representative charged with bank fraud.

State Rep. LaShawn Ford was indicted on 17 counts of bank fraud and lying to a now-failed bank. He’s accused of getting a $500,000 increase and extending his line of credit with the bank to rehab Chicago properties. Instead, he used the money to pay car loans, a casino and expenses for his 2006 campaign.

The charges stem from Ford’s dealings with ShoreBank in 2006, before Ford was elected to represent Chicago’s West Side in Springfield.

Ford’s attorney, Tom Durkin, said in a new court filing that Ford was indicted because he was elected.

“He is the only person, to my knowledge, to ever get charged with anything out of the whole ShoreBank collapse,” Durkin said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Which I find odd.”

ShoreBank provided loans to low income parts of Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. It shuttered after the housing collapse.

Durkin wrote in his court filing that Ford was a long-time customer of ShoreBank. The former head of the bank’s loan committee once said of Ford, “when an individual [like LaShawn Ford] is a well known customer of the bank, the paperwork may be more relaxed and not completed as thoroughly as by newer customers.”

Durkin also requested that prosecutors identify the expenses that were allegedly unrelated to the rehabilitation of Ford’s properties before trial.

Durkin said prosecutors wrongly charged Ford with 17 counts. He said some of those counts are duplicative, and could be in violation of double jeopardy standards.

Ford’s indictment became public after he won re-election in November. He has since been named chairman of a new committee in the Illinois House called the Restorative Justice Committee.

“Even before the situation that has occurred with me, you will see that my record shows that I’ve always fought for a fairness in justice,” Ford said in February of the appointment.

Ford’s indictment came after federal prosecutors charged another Illinois state representative from Chicago’s West Side, Derrick Smith, with taking a bribe. House members took the rare move to kick Smith out of office in August, but Smith regained his seat by winning election in November. House members have said they haven’t tried to kick Ford out of office since the charges against him are not related to his time in public office.

A trial date for Ford has not yet been set.

Tony Arnold covers Illinois politics for WBEZ. Follow him @tonyjarnold.