Homicides Down Citywide, but Still Rising in Some Neighborhoods

By: Stephanie WilliamsIris Bedenfield serves up red hots and maternal advice at Mandy’s Grill, 743 S. Kedzie Ave. A divorced mother of two, Bedenfield, 41, is a longtime West Sider whose parents opened the grill in 1962. There’s weariness in her voice as she talks about crime in her North Lawndale neighborhood. In April, she attended yet another funeral for a friend’s child lost to violence.

“It’s sad, it’s overwhelming. We feel it’s closing in around us,” Bedenfield said. “They’re burying our young black men.”

The Harrison Police District, which includes her neighborhood, recorded 79 murders in 1999, up from 71 in 1998—the most among the city’s 25 districts. Harrison is one of five districts that grew deadlier last year. The others: Marquette on the West Side; Albany Park on the North Side; Prairie on the South Side; and Grand Central on the Northwest Side.

These districts accounted for almost one-third of the city’s homicides, but one-fifth of the population.

African Americans and Latinos make up more than two-thirds of the population in Harrison, Marquette, Prairie and Grand Central, according to 1998 estimates by the Chicago Community Policing Evaluation Consortium, a research group. Albany Park is of mixed race.

The Chicago Police Department recorded 641 homicides in 1999, down 8.9 percent from 1998’s tally of 704. Homicides have been on a downward trend for six years and in 1999 hit the lowest count since the 647 homicides reported in 1968.

While the rest of the city breathes a little easier, Harrison residents said their neighborhood is saturated with violence. “You get immune to it, it’s no longer a shock,” said Micah Burrell, 24, a commercial project coordinator with Lawndale Business & Local Development Corp., 3333 W. Arthington Ave. “A lot of guys I grew up with—went to high school with—haven’t reached their 25th birthday.”

Dana V. Starks, a 23-year police veteran and Harrison District commander since February, knows the district is bucking the citywide trend. “In this district, if you are honest with people, they will accept that ... you are trying to work hard to alleviate their problems,” he said. “Homicide is an act that, unless you are able to just flood the streets, and I mean flood, then how much of an impact are you going to really, really make?”

Police determined the causes of 446 homicides last year. Of those, 126 were gang-related—more than one in four. Robbery was the cause of 61 homicides, followed by 46 domestic disputes and 46 drug-related killings, records show.

Homicides in Harrison, the city’s deadliest district, were among the most difficult to solve, police records show. Last year, police citywide closed the book on 326 of the 641 homicides, about 51 percent. But in the Harrison District, only 43 percent were solved.

Haunting Scene
Narita Perkins, 39, lost her middle son, 16-year-old Antoine Donte Perkins, on Oct. 7. He was shot three times “near the heart” after approaching a boy who beat him up three days earlier, his mother said.

Antoine belonged to a street gang, and his death was a result of a dispute between rival gangs, said police spokesman Patrick Camden. “They’re getting wiped out over stupidity,” Camden said. “They don’t see how many other people’s lives it affects.”

Perkins recalls her son lying on the pavement, blood pouring out of him. The scene haunts her mostly at night. “It hurt me to my heart,” she said. “I never did think my son was going to go like that. He was just a baby.”

Some residents in the Marquette District said the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, or CAPS, is not the answer to the rise in homicides. “We don’t see that the police are following up like they should,” said Joe Ann Bradley, executive director of the Community Action Group, a 10-year-old advocacy agency at 1444 S. Keeler Ave.

Rita Ashford, a 50-year-old CAPS volunteer in Marquette, voiced similar frustrations. “With a lot of [crimes] here, the police actions are not preventive, they are more reactionary.”

But even with ample police presence, Commander Starks said, violent crime likely will remain a fact of life in a neighborhood facing economic hardship. In the Harrison District, for example, 46 percent of the population lives in poverty, census records show. “The area is an unlimited resource of labor for drug dealers,” he said.

Bedenfield thinks the city has left the area to die. “It’s just plain neglect,” she said, though she’s determined to weather the current wave of homicides.

“I love it here,” she said. “And I won’t go until they drag me out of here.”