Race and Respect

By: Rupa Shenoy and Mick DumkeFor weeks, Chicago's power players traded press conferences and indignant remarks over whether race mattered in the appointment of a new police superintendent. By Sept. 17, Mayor Richard M. Daley was completing the first round of interviews with three finalists--none of them African American.

That same afternoon, another discussion about police was taking place outside a small frame house on the 5900 block of South Peoria Avenue in Englewood. The community, which is 98 percent black, has a history of high crime rates and strained relations between residents and police officers, though the 7th Police District, which includes Englewood, has been led by an African American commander for more than 20 years.

This conversation had a different urgency and tone than the back-and-forth among the politicians: About a dozen people, ranging from small children to seniors, were talking about how police had fatally shot 23-year-old Shurron Grant next to the front porch of the house four days earlier. And they agreed that, while they'd like to see more black police leaders, the more pressing issue is finding police willing to end what they describe as a pattern of contempt and mistreatment.

Grant's mother, Suharia, paced the sidewalk, handing out bright orange fliers calling for people to march to the district police station the next day. According to Pat Camden, the police department's deputy director of news affairs, two officers were responding to reports of gunfire in the area early in the morning of Sept. 13 when they saw him firing an assault rifle into a crowd. Grant turned toward the officers and shot at them several times, and the officers shot back, Camden said. Grant died later that morning. The officers were not injured. They recovered his gun, Camden said.

Suharia Grant, who lives about two blocks away, doesn't believe her son would have been firing a gun. She noted that residents are used to high crime and run-ins with police, but said she was still shocked by the incident. "This is Englewood," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "You always see sirens. You always hear sirens. But just because you live here doesn't mean you're a bad person."

Another of her sons, Marcus, pointed to his fat lower lip, which he said was caused by a punch from a police officer during a melee the night after the shooting. Marcus Grant said he had been walking down the street, asking people to sign a poster as a memorial to his brother, when several police officers jumped out of their cars and roughed him up. He was arrested for mob action, he said. "The police look at all of us around here like we're criminals," he said, adding that it didn't matter whether the officers were black, white or Latino. "They all act the same."

Leaning against a fence a few feet away, Stacey Plummer, 20, had a similar view. Plummer, who described herself as a good friend of Shurron Grant's, said that, the night he was killed, dozens of people had been outside after leaving a party. Police officers saw the group and seemed to get nervous, Plummer said. "There were a whole lot of black people out, and I guess when they saw that, they got scared," she said. Plummer was outside near Grant when he was shot, she said. She said she hadn't seen a gun in his hands.

As police officers roped off the area around Grant, people began to pelt them with rocks and bottles, Camden said. Plummer said police approached her, put guns to her head and demanded she get down on her knees. They let her go several minutes later, she said.

Plummer said she had never been stopped by police before, though she had seen others harassed and even beaten with billy clubs. But she downplayed the importance of race, adding that the police leadership in Englewood, and in the department as a whole, has to work on approaching the community with more concern. "We just need somebody who's fair, because we don't have rights anymore with the police."

A car pulled up, and the Rev. Paul Jakes, jumped out. Jakes, a frequent police department critic and former mayoral candidate, worked through the group, shaking hands and handing out fliers for the march. As he gave an interview, three teenage boys who had been at the party with Shurron Grant sat on the front porch and listened, seemingly still stunned.

Unlike the residents, Jakes argued that more black police leaders and more veterans would reduce the disrespect and abuse that he said officers often heap on community members. He also demanded that Daley extend the hiring process for the new superintendent to include black candidates. "Race matters, because it's at the roots of the disrespect," he said.

David Bayless, the police department's director of news affairs, said that, after a gang-related shooting earlier this year, the department responded to community requests by putting more officers on Englewood streets. While working to combat violent crime--which is down 15 percent in Englewood so far this year--police officers "have an obligation to treat the citizens with respect and dignity," he said.

And citizens who don't receive that treatment should report the officers involved, Bayless said.

Speaking by phone that week, several other leaders emphasized that Englewood needs officers who are fully committed to the community.

Two days after the shooting, Ephriam Ben-Ephriam, a local chairman of the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, was arrested for disorderly conduct after a protest at the 7th District police station at 6120 S. Racine Ave.

Ephriam said he had been pressing an officer for information about another protester he believed had been detained. The officer told him, "'If you ask me one more time, you're going to be where she's at,'" Ephriam said. "I don't believe it's a coincidence that, at the point of my arrest, they were all white cops."

Still, "to the people, a police officer is a police officer," Ephriam said. The race of the police superintendent doesn't matter, either, he said. Former superintendent Terry G. Hillard, who retired in August and is black, "stinks right now," Ephraim said, because he didn't do enough to improve police treatment of African Americans.

Roderick Drew, a spokesman for the mayor, brushed off the criticism. "The residents of the city of Chicago were very fortunate to have Terry Hillard as their superintendent," he said. "He was a loyal public servant."

Anna R. Langford was traveling in Louisiana when she got news of Grant's shooting. "They're still killing people in Englewood," she recounted saying out loud.

Langford knows how the neighborhood works. In 1952, she and her husband and son became one of the first African American families to move into Englewood. As the alderman of the 16th Ward in the early 1970s and again in the mid-1980s, Langford often found officers shaking down black residents or beating them, she said.

She believes that black leadership can make a difference in policing, but says officers of any race have to know and understand neighborhoods like Englewood in order to serve them, "It depends on the attitude--it's not how many people you arrest, not how many notches on your gun, but what good you can do for the most people."