Tired of having to dodge bullets, more than 150 Cabrini-Green housing development residents and neighbors told officials Tuesday that they will take their anger to City Hall and the Chicago Housing Authority if conditions don`t improve in two weeks.
Residents presented the officials with a list of demands, including police patrols of high-rises, installation of metal detectors in buildings identified as sniper hideouts, and promises that a police substation remain staffed by city officers.
”Clean up your house, CHA,” community activist Eric Sloss told more than a half-dozen city and CHA representatives at St. Matthew United Methodist Church, 1000 N. Orleans St. ”Get it together. . . . We serve notice today.”
The July 23 sniper slaying of 15-year-old Laquanda Edwards helped spur the residents and activists to demand the meeting.
She was shot in the back of the head at Larrabee and Hobbie Streets while on her way to the store for milk. Police suspect that the fatal bullet came from the upper floors of the building at 1117-19 N. Cleveland Ave., a partially occupied 11-story building, nicknamed ”snipe tower.”
Another activist, Marion Stamps, challenged residents to ”reclaim our own community. You have got to start telling brothers they have a
responsibility to protect you.”
Stamps directed some comments to women. ”If you tell a man he can`t bring a gun in your house, that should be it,” she said.
Although Stamps said she wanted city police to be accountable to the residents, she said she was leery about too much reliance on the police for security.
Stamps said she opposed metal detectors and said turning the area into a
”police state” might give the impression the people cannot run their community. ”We are saying we have lost control of our families.”
Stamps urged young men in the room who identified themselves as gang members to help end the violence at the development.
Some of the young men said they are willing to negotiate truces with rival gangs.
One major demand by Sloss and others is that the substation at 355 W. Oak St. should remain staffed by Chicago police and not by CHA security personnel. Charles R. Bowen, a mayoral assistant, assured residents that the substation would be staffed by police.
Bobby Burns, a who has lived at Cabrini-Green for 30 years, said she was especially disturbed by the Edwards shooting because she has an 18-year-old daughter.
But Burns said she refuses to move.
”I`m going to let them know I can raise a young lady in Cabrini-Green,” she said. ”I`m going to fight.”
