Probably few people noticed when the opening bell rang a few minutes early Thursday morning at the Emmet Elementary School on Chicago`s West Side. The early bell was to ensure that Emmet`s pupils would be safely inside as a task force of 200 federal agents and Chicago police officers raided a neighboring apartment hotel identified as a hot spot of drug dealing in the area.
Law enforcement officials and residents hope the bell signaled not only the start of classes, but the beginning of a new and relatively drug-free era for the South Austin neighborhood surrounding the school at 5500 W. Madison St.
The raid on the Washington Pine hotel and apartments, at 5501 W. Washington Blvd., only a few hundred feet from the school, was the latest move by local and federal authorities against wide-open drug dealing on the West Side.
Last September, federal and local officials promised distraught residents that they would act against the drug dealers who were devastating their neighborhood.
It took a while, but this month the action began. And it came mainly as a result of information supplied by outraged West Siders, according to federal officials.
Just a day before the raid, Chicago police from the asset forfeiture unit and deputy U.S. marshals confiscated two west suburban homes and a Chicago apartment building belonging to a suspected drug dealer accused of operating in the 100 block of North Parkside Avenue, only a block and a half from the hotel.
Drugs being peddled in the shadow of the Emmet School and shifts of drug dealers operating an around-the-clock heroin and cocaine market on Parkside had drawn the most angry complaints from residents when they met with law enforcement officials last September.
The neighborhood, which includes scores of handsome courtyard apartment buildings and other once-prime housing, is being rehabilitated. Drug dealing threatens to kill the entire process, officials said.
U.S. Atty. Anton Valukas, who attended the September meeting, said he came away convinced that there was ”desperation in the streets. We heard the sheer frustration and anger of honest citizens.”
He said FBI and federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, together with Chicago police, decided on a two-part assault on drug dealers.
With one thrust, they are going after the dealers` property under a federal law that allows the confiscation of assets used in or acquired through drug dealing. With the other thrust, they are sending a message with indictments and arrests.
”We want to make seizures and impact-type arrests to let the dealers know we`re coming and to give the community some hope at the same time,”
Valukas said.
Thursday`s hotel raid coincided with the indictment by a federal grand jury of a veteran Chicago police officer and 19 others allegedly linked to a drug ring operating from the building. Authorities said the ring has sold more than $500,000 worth of cocaine and heroin in the last six months.
The ring, which also allegedly included three Cook County Jail guards, was accused of supplying drugs to jail inmates and well as other customers throughout the city.
The suspected ringleader, Patrolman Nedrick ”Rick” Miller, 62, of the Austin District, was taken into custody Wednesday night and was being held without bond.
Dealers arrested on state drug charges can be out on bond within hours, but this is not so in federal court, Valukas said. ”We are able to show the community that they are not put right back on the street.”
Valukas also pointed out that the hotel is less than 1,000 feet from the Emmet School. Under federal law, penalties for drug dealing can be doubled if sales are made within 1,000 feet of a school.
Miller, a Chicago police officer for 35 years who has been described as swaggering through the neighborhood wearing two pearl-handled revolvers in his belt, lived at the seven-story, 176-unit hotel and is suspected by federal officials of being a part owner.
When they raided the hotel and rousted its inhabitants, task force members considered confiscating it under the federal seizure law.
They held back, however, after learning that full details of the hotel`s ownership are hidden in a land trust. While the raid was in progress, Joseph English, a son of Charles ”Chuckie” English, a slain organized crime figure, showed up and identified himself as an owner.
Thomas Scorza, an assistant U.S attorney who was at the scene, authorized a subpoena to be issued summoning English before a federal grand jury investigating the drug ring. The grand jury reportedly is looking into links between the drug operation and the Chicago crime syndicate.
The day before the hotel raid, authorities struck against the Parkside operation by making use of the federal seizure law to confiscate the property of the alleged leader, 28-year-old Rufus Sims.
Although no criminal charges have been filed against Sims, authorities seized his $250,000 split-level house at 2606 Boeger Ave., Westchester; his $250,000 house with a below-ground swimming pool at 6543 Royal Glen Ct., Lisle; his $300,000 12-flat building at 1700 N. Austin Ave.; several luxury cars; a motorcycle; and a giant $10,000 television.
In February, they had seized a $176,000 Rolls-Royce convertible that he had bought with cash only seven months earlier. During the same month, authorities had raided the Westchester home and seized a cache of weapons that included machine guns, grenades, rifles and semi-automatic handguns.
In all, they have confiscated $1.4 million worth of property from Sims.
Federal officals said Sims, an ex-convict, was making about $5 million a year selling cocaine and heroin in $10 and $20 tinfoil packets in the 100 block of North Parkside.
”Forty percent of the customers were not from the area,” said Peter Gunn, an organizer for the South Austin Coalition Community Council. ”I saw a woman in a Mercedes, a professional woman, drive up, pick up a guy in the street. He got out to buy the drugs for her.”
Before moving to the suburbs, Sims reportedly lived in the Washington Pine Hotel.
