Block buster

By: Jeff Kelly LowensteinIn March, Patricia Bridges turned off of 113th Street onto Sawyer Avenue in Mount Greenwood and saw the home where she would be moving with her mother, fiancé and seven children.
She was overjoyed.

Located on a quiet street filled with well-tended lawns in front of Chicago-style bungalows, the two-story house had a finished basement, plenty of bedrooms and a bathroom on each floor. The new home embodied her dream of a peaceful refuge from the sometimes turbulent streets of the Englewood neighborhood where she and her family had lived.

But Bridges’ idyllic vision was quickly shattered. Within five minutes of her arrival, a police car arrived, and an officer informed her that anonymous callers reported a break-in at the house, Bridges said. After determining that Bridges was indeed the incoming tenant and not a burglar, the policeman left.

That scene was repeated during each of her three subsequent trips to inspect the home. Near the end of one such scene, Bridges said she told the policeman, “I’ll see you around.” To which the officer replied, “More than you know,” according to Bridges.

Bridges’ dream has vanished, replaced by a nightmare of police visits; indifferent, if not hostile, neighbors; and vandalism of the family’s home and cars.

Although several other residents of the block staunchly disputed her assessment that these actions were racially motivated and registered complaints about the family’s behavior, Bridges said she fears that her family’s difficulties will only escalate during the summer months. “I’m just waiting on a burning cross,” she said.

Bridges’ family is the only black family on her block and one of the few black families in Mount Greenwood.

In 1940, 35 South Side communities were at least 90 percent white. In 2000, there was only one---Mount Greenwood. Of the Southwest Side neighborhood’s 18,820 residents, 17,127 were white, and just 672 were black, according to the 2000 Census.

The vandalism began before the family moved into the house.

Bridges said someone broke through the back door and the basement door before tampering with a valve on the water heater and flooding the basement.

Bridges reported the basement break-in to police, but the responding officer was resistant to completing a police report about the incident. As a result, Bridges has lost faith in the police and hasn’t reported all of the acts of vandalism, which have continued since the family joined the neighborhood.

Bridges’ black Ford Explorer has been keyed, and the running board on which people step to enter the vehicle has been yanked loose from its foundation. The words “2919 Dickhead” have been traced in the dust on the back of Bridges’ vehicle and scratched into her mother’s station wagon.

Sgt. Wayne Grobarcik of the 22nd Police District said police have taken steps to address the family’s concerns. He spoke with the officer who took the report from Bridges, and the district’s civil rights unit recently spoke to residents in the police beat where the Bridges live. Police have continued to pay special attention to the house, he said. “We are trying to work with them the best [we] can,” Grobarcik said. “They can call us.”

Discussions between the Bridges family and their new neighbors have been virtually nonexistent. And the interactions that have occurred have not gone smoothly.

Bridges and a neighbor, Theresa Razo, are in dispute over a comment that Bridges’ son, Tony, made to Razo’s 27-year-old daughter.

Tony Bridges told Razo’s daughter she was “cute,” according to Patricia Bridges. But Razo said the words were “sweet fine ass.”

Razo and other neighbors strongly denied that racial prejudice has motivated any conflict---a sentiment echoed in an anonymous letter received by The Chicago Reporter.

Copied to Mayor Richard M. Daley and 19th Ward Alderman Virginia Rugai, the letter claimed that members of Bridges’ family have screamed profanities, tossed soiled condoms into neighbors’ backyards and danced on top of a car. “If they can respect themselves and the neighborhood, I have no problem with anyone living in my neighborhood---black, white, purple or green---but when people act the way they are acting, I don’t want them there,” the letter said.

Bridges said that none of these actions happened, and that she fears for her family’s safety. She said family members have been taunted by chants of “white power” and nearly run down by a car.

Bridges has not enrolled her children in any Mount Greenwood schools. Instead, she spends about two hours each day commuting back and forth with her children from the Englewood schools they still attend. “They might get tired of messing with my car and move on to me or my family,” Bridges said.