Beat 733: Some Progress--and a Little Frustration

By: Chanel PolkCrime is down in Beat 733. The 54-block area, which runs from 69th to 75th streets, and west from Racine Avenue to Halsted Street, recorded 427 crimes last year, down from a decade-high of 839 in 1995.

Police and residents alike attribute the decrease to the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, better known as community policing.

"I remember when you didn’t see kids on the streets," said Alexander Pratt, a 70-year-old retired postal worker who volunteers as a facilitator for the beat. After community policing started, "the first thing I saw was girls jumping rope. That’s how I knew it was working."

The beat is now a model for the Englewood Police District, said 51-year-old Pearl Black, a 35-year resident who has attended the monthly beat meetings since 1993. But attendance is down, she said. "Everybody used to talk about how we had so many people. We used to pack it out, almost 80, 90 or 100 people."

Other residents complained they have to spend too much time going over the same ground with new officers. Some issues never get past the talking stage, they added.

Twenty-seven different officers and four sergeants attended the six meetings held from March 1998 to March of this year, according to The Chicago Reporter’s analysis. The official beat meeting logs were obtained from the Chicago Police Department by the non-profit Chicago Alliance For Neighborhood Safety.

The Reporter sat in on the Oct. 26 meeting in the basement of New Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, 848 W. 71st St. Most of the 26 residents who attended were middle-aged or elderly; seven officers also participated.

Pratt announced that Chicago Police Sgt. Michael Lacey, who was expected to bring the meeting agenda, wasn’t coming.

The group grumbled at the news. "We’re beginning to wonder if they think this beat is important. We’re feeling slighted," said Rebecca Murray, a retired teacher who has lived in Englewood for 40 years. "We’re trying to build it back up, but we’re kind of walking on sand," added her husband, William Murray, a retired postal official. Lacey later told the Reporter he had been out on an emergency call.

Still, the meetings do produce results. Officer Jack J. Meseck, who has worked the beat since 1993, reported that in the previous month police made 10 felony arrests in trouble spots identified by the residents. "Many of the players have been locked up," he said.

But progress can be slow. Seven months before, residents reported that a semi-truck and trailer were parked in a privately owned vacant lot on the 900 block of West 71st Street. They said the truck and other vehicles obstructed the vision of motorists and posed a risk to children.

At the Oct. 26 meeting, Community Policing Officer Joseph Clarke reported that police couldn’t tow the truck unless it was parked on the street. The city Department of Streets and Sanitation could only take action, however, if inspectors found evidence of rats, he said.

Residents weren’t satisfied. "Why wasn’t this said seven months ago? When a kid gets raped nobody’s going to take the blame," Black said to the officers. "It might not be a big thing to you because you don’t live here, but we do."

Since the meeting, the truck’s owner has moved the trailer to the street, Black told the Reporter. But police have done nothing about it and don’t even ticket it anymore, she said.

Contributing: Alden K. Loury