Artensa Randolph had some advice Monday for those legal counselors opposing the current policy that allows security officers to search Chicago Housing Authority apartments without a court-issued warrant.
“They should come and live in one of our areas,” said Randolph, a CHA resident and official with tenants groups there. “Don’t come in and live like Jane Byrne.”
Randolph’s advice, which was intended for ACLU attorney Harvey Grossman, underscores the debate in federal court that pits constitutional law against the reality of life at many CHA buildings across the city.
In a suit filed in November against the housing authority and on behalf of Mark Pratt and other CHA tenants, Grossman seeks a halt to the sweeps of apartments by security guards for guns. Grossman, the legal director for the ACLU of Illinois, filed the suit on the grounds that the sweeps violate the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
The sweeps followed a rash of shootings in CHA high-rises last summer.
Although acknowledging the need for more security for public housing, the ACLU argued in its suit that the searches of CHA apartments without the usual court permission represent a “trampling” of the basic rights of citizens.
In a hearing Monday before U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen, ACLU attorneys asked for a temporary restraining order preventing further searches.
Andersen promised a decision on the gun sweeps by next Monday.
Attorneys arguing against the searches focused on the rights that protect all citizens from unwarranted searches.
Edward Feldman, an attorney in private practice who is working with the ACLU on the case, told the court that increased security cannot “come at the expense of people’s rights.”
Feldman said in past sweeps, security officers had combed through tenants’ closets, refrigerators and drawers.
“They (tenants) have a right under the 4th Amendment to say `no,’ ” Feldman said.
F. Willis Caruso, the CHA’s general counsel, argued that “this is not a conventional case.”
Caruso compared the mix of guns and violence at CHA to a bomb in building.
Caruso said if a bomb were discovered, “nobody would think about a warrant.”
The sparring continued outside the courtroom, where supporters of the searches, including Rev. George Clements, made it clear that the lawlessness that afflicts many public housing complexes demands stern solutions.
“We are confronted with a state of emergency,” Clements boomed outside the courtroom. “People are dying now.”
Clements, the former pastor of Holy Angels Catholic Church on Chicago’s South Side who now lives in Washington, D.C., appeared at the hearing on behalf of a group of CHA tenants who support the search policy. Clements said his group is considering joining the legal fray, but it has not been decided in what capacity.
Clements slammed the ACLU, saying the organization has not been in touch with the people who live in public housing.
“None of them (ACLU attorneys) have ever had anything to say to the tenants council,” Clements said.
Clements said that though the ACLU may be concerned with legal rights “we’re concerned with the people who live there every day.”
Grossman accused Clements of trying to polarize tenants and argued that his group represents clients who hold leadership positions in the CHA community, suggesting that “perhaps it is the father (Clements) who is a stranger.”
Grossman acknowledged that there are those residents who support the sweeps.
“We don’t question there are tenants with a different view,” he said.
