Ex-Chicago Cop Speaks Out

-So recently retired lieutenant, right?
-Yes.
-How many years?
-I was on 32 years.
I started January, ’91
and just left last year.
Okay, so today you’re gonna bring us
into different corners of Chicago,
explain the current crime situation.
Police perspective, what’s going on?
-So where we are right now
is near Montrose Harbor
and what we’re looking at out here
is all these tents are homeless people.
-Why’d you want to show this?
‘Cause homeless
doesn’t mean crime necessarily.
What’s the thing about this situation?
-So right now our officers
are completely over taxed
because we’ve got this migrant situation.
-Okay.
-All the migrants are literally living
in the police stations
throughout the city.
They have full access to
the lobbies of the police stations
and they’re setting up
their own encampments outside.
A homeless person,
if they slept in the police station,
every single morning they’re booted out.
We’ll let them in because
the weather, they can sleep there.
In the morning they gotta go,
they’re gonna all day long,
and then maybe they’ll come back at night.
Migrants have full access,
they can be there all day.
They actually send busses
called a shower wagon
that’ll pull up so that the migrants
can take showers and get cleaned up.
We’re spending millions of dollars
to take care of the migrants
and I’m not saying we shouldn’t.
They’re here trying to get a better life.
I get all that,
we should take care of them.
But look… What are we doing for them?
We’ve got empty schools,
empty buildings all over the place.
How ’bout you set up a one stop shop
where they have medical,
they have counseling,
and they have whatever they need.
-Sure, sure.
-And allow both in there.
-Okay.
So in Chicago
are there a home for those people
if they want to get off drugs,
play by the rules
of the curfews, be clean?
Could they go into a home?
There’s shelters, they’re all full.
-They’re full?
-Oh, yeah.
-Our shelters are full up.
-Oh, okay.
[Peter] What’d you say
about vets out here?
[man 1] There’s a lot of vets out here.
It’s like real old guys.
[man 2] Plenty of Gulf War guys.
-So in Chicago can you
get housing if you want?
Will the city give you housing or no?
-Nope.
-If you’re clean, off drugs–
-I don’t do drugs,
I don’t have a felony, record.
-Can you sleep at the police station?
-No.
Tried to get some food, clothes,
couldn’t get none… yeah.
Right down the corner.
-Okay, so how do you guys feel about that?
-I just gave them the finger
and walked off.
-I was living in Charlotte,
North Carolina, got word my dad was dying,
by the time I got here he was dead
So I payed for the funeral,
everything I had,
and I was living in the house
that he was living in for a month,
and after that went to go
for an interview, came back,
the house was padlocked.
-A job interview?
-A job interview.
I’m a cook.
So you have to have
a serve safe certificate down here.
-In Chicago?
-Yeah, you have to have one.
I don’t have one,
in Charlotte it’s not required.
So they gave me
a little hard time to get a job.
[John] How long you been out here?
-Eight months.
[John] So you were
out here in the winter time?
-Not over here in the winter,
I was outside, on the train.
-That’s another place where
homeless will seek shelter is on trains.
They’ll get on the trains,
it’s a warm place to sleep,
and they’ll ride from one end
to the other back and forth
usually when they get to the end…
-Ticket to a train the other direction.
But then you gotta look at
people too that’s trying to go to work
Going to school or whatever,
they have nowhere to sit.
People pissing, drinking,
a lot of stuff going on.
I got robbed on the train.
That’s why I don’t’ do it no more.
-So there are all types of homeless?
Like there are guys out
here on Fentanyl right now?
-What I see is a lot of homeless people
that have Social Security checks.
They’d rather do drugs
than try to get housing.
They’ll set up for
a week or two in a hotel somewhere
soon as they money gone,
they right back on the train.
-[John] Here’s 20 bucks for you guys.
-[men] Appreciate it.
[John] Thank you guys, all right.
[John] At the end of the day
this is not the answer
and there are resources.
They’ve even got
federal money that came in.
CBS was trying to FOIA
to see where the money was spent
and the city’s refusing
to answer the FOIAS
’cause they don’t want to say
where the money went.
Millions and millions of dollars.
So it’s frustrating.
They should be able to take care of both.
The amount of migrants,
I don’t know what we’re up to now.
Let’s just go crazy
and say 30,000 migrants.
How many are coming into Texas every day?
-Oh, those towns are getting hammered.
-So we’re a sanctuary city.
It was all well and good because
the politicians loved that talking point.
“We’re a welcoming city, sanctuary city.”
It was all good
as long as they weren’t coming here.
But as soon as they came it’s like,
“Oh, they’re terrible down there.”
“They’re using them as pawns.”
Because they want
the talking points and to say they care
but they don’t want to do
anything when it’s at their front door.
-Now they have to deal with
the problem and it’s more complicated.
-The problem is,
“Fine, we’re gonna displace the homeless.”
-I saw it in McAllen, Texas
right near the border.
Homeless got kicked out
of the shelter and migrants took over.
There was a contract
and money to be made unfortunately.
-100% Yep.
[Peter] John, I appreciate
you taking us in because law enforcement
really won’t go on camera these days
because of unions, chain of command,
it’s pretty much impossible.
Sheriffs can speak
but I don’t think they have the
lay of the land like you guys in Chicago.
-Right.
-Thank you for that.
-Absolutely.
-It’s really hard to get access,
I don’t know why unions are so against it.
-It’s not the unions.
-It’s not them?
-No, it’s the department.
It’s department policy,
you’re not allowed to speak to media
and not allowed to talk about things
like we’re talking about today.
-Why is that?
-Police union would love
to have the information out there.
-Okay, so I got that wrong.
-It would be a free for all
and the departments don’t want
what they perceive to be misrepresentation
or whatever, they want control, right?
That comes from
even beyond the department.
That’s the mayor, the politicians.
They don’t want everybody
speaking about what’s going on.
They want to control
to keep everybody quiet.
Freedom of speech is intoxicating
and once I retired I was able to speak out
and shine a light on a lot of things.
And that’s even why I’m doing this today.
I love this department,
my brothers and sisters in blue.
The officers that are out there
every day putting their lives on the line
and people need to know
about how their own safety is put at risk
because of the way things are run
and I think you just gotta
get the word out and hopefully…
Hopefully something
will click somewhere and make a change.
It’s a beautiful city that’s unfortunately
being absolutely ruined by politicians.
-Absolutely ruined?
-Yeah.
-We’re gonna get into that today
but as a tourist
I don’t see
the absolute ruined part of things.
-It’s being ruined from the inside, right?
It’s almost the infrastructure,
the pubic safety aspect of it.
Chicago’s become
national news on a regular basis
with the crime
and issues that’s going on here.
That’s putting a hit on our tourism.
There’s been a significant decline
in people coming here, businesses closing.
[Peter] This is a beautiful street.
[John] Oh, this whole area,
this is the Gold Coast.
This is multi-million dollar
homes and condos.
-But look how well it’s taken care of,
you have the planters here.
-Streets are clean.
-Oh, yeah.
Versus a lot of US cities, the Downtown
of Chicago looks way better off right now.
-I gotta say.
-Yeah, it’s a beautiful city.
There’s people that won’t come here
because we’ve become national news
because of the issues
of the teen takeovers.
People in other states
think that it’s a shooting gallery here.
-Yeah, but I would say
as a tourist here a week and a half
come to Downtown Chicago.
-There would be no reason not to.
-100%.
-It feels very safe walking around here.
-It is.
-Things could happen
but it feels totally fine.
-Worst case scenario
if you’re out here at night
you could possibly end up in a mob,
and it’s going to be
teenagers running around
they might try to steal your purse.
-I know that sounds terrible…
-The odds of that are so small.
-The odds are pretty small,
you should be able to see it coming.
-The odds are super small I think.
[Peter] Homicides have been
going up the last few years
but if you look at numbers historically
1974: 970 homicides.
1992: 939.
And then 2022: 695.
So there were times it was even worse.
-So it was bad in the ’70s, right?
Late ’60s, you had
all the riots back then.
Martin Luther King assassination,
Kennedy Assassination,
there was all kinds of things going on.
My father came on the job
in January, 1968
right out of the academy into
the Democratic convention riots
that went on here.
But then slowly over time the different
mayors that came through here,
Mayor Daly in Particular,
they realized we needed
to get public safety under control.
Because that’s gonna have
a significant impact on businesses.
I mean these businesses…
These stores… This is Oak Street.
-Super high end.
-Okay.
-And see this car here?
-Yeah.
-Scarecrow policing.
That car is there, there’s another
up there, you’ll see them all around.
-They just sit here with their lights on?
He’s not going anywhere,
not doing anything.
Got some cars that are patrolling.
-There’s a heavy presence down here.
-There is a heavy presence.
For the most part though,
as stupid as most bad guys are,
most criminals are, they figure out that
the police aren’t going to do anything
because that’s what they’re told to do.
They’re told to sit there and be present.
-Okay, so criminal steals something,
goes flying down this street
what are these cop cars doing?
They’re gonna call it in
and if there’s any cars we’ll go after it
but they’re not gonna leave their posts.
-So it’s good to have them here though.
-I’m not saying it’s bad,
it’s one method of policing
but you still have to have accountability,
and lock people up.
Perfect example, the first warm weekend
we had here this summer
teens came Downtown, took it over.
They were jumping on busses,
jumping on cars,
I think they made 12 arrests.
To give you a comparison,
I came out in ’91
and 1991 was the first time the Bulls won
and all of a sudden
the city went up for grabs.
That caught
the police department off guard.
I remember that caught us off guard,
115 arrests.
1992, it happened again,
we were ready for them,
986 arrests,
and then 1993, 1200 arrests.
We were locking people up.
And what I was getting at earlier is when
you saw those high homicide numbers
in the ’70s that was
going down because we were
holding people accountable,
locking people up.
I think we got as low, if you look
at the scale, maybe 300 or 400 murders.
-Yep.
-Right.
And then it started to go up again.
And when politics started to control
how the department operated,
everything from when we chased cars,
whether we chased people on foot or not,
promotions.
We stopped promoting people
that had experience
and started promoting people
based on race and gender,
experience be damned.
We started moving people up
because whoever got into power
wanted to move up all their friends
and family as quick as they could.
So somebody would go from Sergeant
to Deputy Chief in nine months.
So they don’t get an opportunity
to learn each role as they go up
so they don’t have any experience
of how to handle or do anything.
-Lot of nepotism here?
-Ton… It’s friends and family.
It’s been for the last
probably 10 years big time.
A lot of friends and family
as far as the promotions.
[John] I took the exam in the late ’80s
and there were 32,000 other people
that took the exam with me.
Just huge numbers, all taking it at
the same time in schools and everything.
And at that time it was still hard
even though they were hiring like crazy
it was hard to get on
the police department.
People who wanted to be police officers
would take a job in the suburbs
as soon as they got called
for Chicago, they would come here.
It was unheard of for anybody to resign
but what has changed is
in 2021 376 officers resigned
from the Chicago Police Department.
That’s huge.
That tells me right there that
they’re not leaving law enforcement,
they’re leaving Chicago law enforcement
and they’re lateral transfers.
You’ve got all these
other departments around the country
that are now poaching them.
They’re coming, and picking them up,
and offering incentives,
and offering reasons, and basically
the one simple reason is,
”Hey, we got your back.”
”We’ll back you up.”
Which is all these officers want.
They want to come out here
and do the job that they came to do
and not have to worry
that they’re gonna get jammed up
because some boss is looking to
protect their own butt or some politician
doesn’t want to lose the next election.
-Okay, so a lot of police officers
aren’t feeling appreciated here?
Fair to say?
-I would say, yes, that’s a given.
-For sure they don’t feel appreciated.
-Okay.
-But additionally they don’t feel like
they’ve got the support that they need.
-The backing they need.
-Okay.
-When an officer makes a mistake…
And mistakes can happen
in anything, right?
-Any line of work, mistakes can happen.
-Sure.
-Here, a mistake in law enforcement
could end in a fatality.
God forbid, right?
But if the officer didn’t have intent
and didn’t do something
that was just absolutely egregious…
Of course the bad ones,
you gotta hold accountable.
If someone does something
blatantly wrong, absolutely.
-It is what it is.
-Yeah.
Sometimes mistakes happen
You can’t start sending these guys
to prison and destroying their families.
These politicians
will jump the gun in a second.
They’re throwing the officer under the bus
before there’s an investigation
-Okay, why is that popular
for the politicians to do that?
-Because society in general…
There’s always been this idea
of bashing the police
but at the end of the day
the majority do support the police.
I still think that’s true,
I think the silent majority
are supportive of police.
But now it’s become politically popular
to paint the officers as the bad guys.
That, “I’m the anti-police candidate.”
“I’m the candidate that’s gonna
crack down on police brutality.”
As if the officers are
running around doing drive-bys
and beating people on a regular basis.
That is absolutely not the case.
-Right, and I’m sure these politicians
have law enforcement around them, right?
-Oh, protection…
-Protection, right.
-So I retired in November last year
and right after I retired
that’s when I was able
to first speak up and Lori Lightfoot
who could be criticized
for a ton of things
but one thing in particular,
she took the security detail,
so each mayor has
their own security detail.
When Mayor Daly was in he had
26 officers total in his security detail.
-Just for him?
-Just for him.
-Some of it’s for his family.
-Okay, okay.
-26 officers,
there’s a commander and some sergeants.
Then Rahm Emmanual came in,
he reduced it down to 16, all right?
She came in and she increased it to 115.
She had 115 police officers
that were a detail assigned
to not only her mobile detail
as she would move throughout the city,
she’d have two officers
in the car with her,
she’d have two officers
following behind her, two in front of her,
another two that would go in advance.
But she also had a minimum, no less than
16 officers protecting her house 24/7.
Even if she was out of town.
You would have two squad cars
parked in front of her house,
two squad cars behind her house,
another car driving around
with two officers,
you’d have a SWAT car,
it’s called a sword car.
This one car could literally start a war
it’s got so much firepower in it,
would be parked parked at least
a block or two away from her house.
She’d have a covert car that would follow
to see if her detail was being followed
I mean…
-Was she under a lot of threat?
-No more than any other politicians.
I mean she wasn’t…
You’re in the lime light, you’re gonna
make people mad, upset people,
but she took it to
a new level with the amount.
You had districts
that were starving for officers
or people complaining about the CTAs
and the crime on the CTA.
They didn’t have enough officers
to actually ride the CTA trains
and she’s got 115 officers
assigned to her detail.
[John] This is
the 18th District of Chicago
and these are all migrants,
they live here.
-[Peter] They live in–
-[John] In the station.
-In the station? Wow.
-Yeah.
[John] Food is brought to them,
clothes are brought to them,
they have more stuff
than the homeless people.
I guarantee they didn’t
bring this stuff with them.
-How many police stations in Chicago.
-Twenty-three.
-Is it like this at many of them?
I’ve seen a few.
-There’s some that are worse than others.
On average, they usually have
probably 40 to 50 migrants.
-[John] I mean this is insane.
-[Peter] Yeah.
-Look they’re just kids, right?
-I mean…
-Right, right.
-They’re still people of course,
they’re human beings
and they doing what they can.
-Someone’s just spoke to us
out here helping out.
She doesn’t want to be on camera
but what’d she just say?
-What she said is that there are
shelters they’ve set up for the migrants
to take them to but they migrate back here
because they’re better taken care of
than they are at the shelter.
So they want to be here.
-From my understanding, they’re legal
to be here because they’ve claimed asylum.
Now that’s gonna have to
go through an asylum court.
They’re backed up
for years at this moment in time.
-Right.
-Most cases are not
legitimate asylum cases.
Right now it’s roughly one in ten
are legitimate as in fleeing persecution.
-Right, right.
-They’re economic migrants.
Things are not easy in Venezuela,
not easy in many places
south of our border.
They all went through
a horrific journey to get here.
-I’m sure.
-They payed the cartels a lot of money.
-Yeah.
-I don’t know what it’s like
from Venezuela, last time I checked
from Honduras
it was 6,000 to get over the border.
-Right.
-So they’re selling everything they have.
-That’s why they’re not
going anywhere else.
That’s why they’re at these
police stations, this is all they know.
So this is where
they would come, and set up,
and all that stuff
out there will move in here
every single night.
-Tonight it comes in?
-It’ll all come in.
If it’s warm enough you might have
a few that’ll stay out there.
but for the most part– Oh, hey.
They’re gonna fill the lobby here.
Some districts have a community room
and they’ll let them fill up in there
if there’s overflow.
See, what does this say?
It’s in Spanish so I’m not sure.
Attention…
It’s probably telling them
to leave during these hours
so they can clean and come back in here.
-[Peter] Yeah, it’s sad.
-[John] Uh-huh, it is.
-Saying it’s dangerous.
[Peter] So…
[Peter] That price used to be
way more a half year ago.
-There’s so many now
maybe they’re making it up on value.
-Maybe.
[John] A train?
[Peter] Okay, how do you say
where did you cross in United States?
Texas, Arizona?
-Texas.
-Texas.
-McAllen?
-So I don’t know the words,
my Spanish is terrible but…
[in broken Spanish] How did you decide
LA, Chicago, New York?
-[Peter] Chill?
-[John] Safer?
[Peter] What happened?
[John] So he fell off a bike I think.
Jean Carlos.
[John] Jean Carlos, Okay.
[Peter] So if you’re here
like these workers, these ladies
that didn’t want us there, you could tell.
They were like, “Don’t film that.”
you could get the vibes.
They’re seeing this end of things,
people, nice families,
dealing with a crazy situation,
you want to help.
-It’s very human.
-Sure.
If you’re just standing here, right?
-I feel the emotion talking to that guy.
-It’s perception
-I want them all to do well.
-Sure, sure.
-If you’re on the border
with customs and border protection
seeing how the system is broken
you’re gonna see a different world.
-They’re helping a lot of people too.
-Right.
-So it’s very–
-You’ve got officers
that are bringing in extra clothes
that they have at home,
Officers are bringing food,
some officers are giving them money.
They feel bad
for these kids and stuff, you know?
This shouldn’t be a police matter.
-They have enough going on right now.
-100%, you know?
We had the bus that came in,
I don’t know what district
but there was a three-year-old baby
on the bus that died in transit.
And you had several migrants
that were sick, scarlet fever.
There’s illnesses that are
being brought into the police stations.
We’ve had outbreaks… Hey.
We’ve had outbreaks of lice.
We’ve had chicken pox, measles,
I mean everything that’s gonna come
with just large groups of people
that are put together
that don’t have access to
the necessary hygiene and whatnot,
and illnesses that
they’re bringing with them,
and that puts the–
Look, you saw the officers.
There’s no barrier there, there’s nothing.
So in the morning
they’re shaking out their blankets.
-The officers are like, “What the hell?”
-Yeah.
Concerned are they gonna catch,
or get sick, or bring it home?
-So we just had this officer come up to us
and he dropped the information.
-They’re still canceling
officer’s days off.
So he’s 10, 15, 20 days in a row
without a day off,
plus on top of that during
what would be his regular work days
he’s working
three days a week double time.
-He said firefighters,
other city workers get maternity leave.
-It’s been a recent
hot button issue with the union.
Almost every other city agency,
there’s, I guess maternity leave
when they have a baby.
Both husband or wife, it doesn’t matter,
they’ll take off for the baby.
Chicago Police doesn’t have it
and when the new mayor came in
he just gave it to the teacher’s union.
So the teachers now have it.
For whatever reason
he won’t give it to the police officers.
And so here, the fact that he
brought it up, it’s just one more thing.
It’s like, “Why?”
Why do they have to fight for it?
You just gave it away
to the teacher’s union.
Why wouldn’t you say, “It makes sense,
give it to the officers as well.”
-To all city workers.
-Right.
Some say, “How important is it really?’
Well it’s important enough
if you just had a baby.
You want to be home with your child
and you see other departments getting it
and you see the new guy
handed it over to the teachers
without batting an eye and he doesn’t
give it to the police department
that sends a signal that maybe
this guy doesn’t support the police.
Maybe this guy isn’t on our side.
Maybe things didn’t change
once again and here we are.
Just gonna go through
the same motions again with a politician
who talks a lot
and does nothing support the police.
That’s why it’s frustrating for them.
[John] So we’re going to Oak Street
to see what’s going on over here.
There is supposed to be
a car stationed over here
because I’m told that some of the migrants
have been prostituting themselves
behind one of the restaurants over here.
-Okay.
So I didn’t mean this to be
a migrant story honestly, but it’s–
-It seems to be turning into it.
-It’s what’s unraveling.
Law enforcement, this is one of
the issues they’re dealing with?
-Right.
-But we’re gonna see
some other parts of the city
and talk about different crime?
-Yeah, yeah.
-An overview of Chicago PD right now.
I wanted to show this because this is
taxing the department, right?
Our officers are busy dealing with this
and we’re already thin as it is.
We’re already losing
over a thousand officers a year
to retirement or resignations,
and we’re only hiring 200 to 300 a year.
I think last year they were bragging
they hired 600 officers
but when you’re losing 1,100
you’re not keeping up with attrition.
Adding to it, look,
this is the recent report,
there’s migrants doing prostitution
because they’re dropped here…
-With no money.
-With no money.
They don’t know what do do,
yes, if they go to the right places
food is brought to them
but eventually they’re gonna
want to venture out on their own
and unfortunately they go
to the streets, there’s vultures out here.
-They’re totally vulnerable.
-Absolutely.
-Easy targets.
-The pimps out there
are going to pull them in and say,
-“I’ll show you how to make quick money.”
-Right.
Next thing you know…
-Sure, there’s some nice false promises.
We’ll get you an apartment, we’ll get
you this, you can raise your kid better.
-Which if the city wants to be
a sanctuary city then where’s your plan?
You now have people here
so take care of it.
Letting them sleep in the police stations
every night is not taking care of it.
[Peter] Okay, so you’re saying
areas like this in the city right now,
some of the migrants are ending up in…
-Some migrants are being recruited
or end up doing prostitution.
Some are being used to sell drugs.
[Peter] That was a weird encounter,
she looked at me like…
-Waiting for you to stop to see
if you wanted anything, I guarantee.
-Okay let’s see these guys coming up.
I’m gonna bring my mic down.
-[Peter] What’s going on, man?
-[man] How you doing?
[unintelligible chatter]
[John] Everything good?
[Peter] What’s your take on this, John?
-I would say if we asked
we probably could get something.
-We are in…
-[Peter laughs]
-Too bad I had to pull
the camera down, he was right there.
-If we asked, we’d get something for sure.
-There it is right there, that alley,
they’re looking back.
[John] They’re definitely working.
-Yeah.
Those are their pimps maybe
or who knows what they’re doing.
-Who knows but…
-You hate to label
until you know completely.
-They might not even have pimps,
they might have been recruited
by some homeless guys
or some guys in the area
just saying, “Hey, you can make this.”
They might not be
the traditional pimp.
There might be
some of that out there as well.
-Yeah.
-Some of that as well but it might be
opportunists that are saying,
“Hey, if you want to make some money,
here’s what you can do.”
[construction noise]
-[Peter] What’s going on here?
-[John] Outdoor roll call.
They do that to… I’ll be honest,
it’s smoke and mirrors.
So they’ve got some of the bosses,
all the officers to make a showing
to the public, “Look, we’re here in force,
we’re here for your safety.”
-[jet noise]
-[John] That’s a jet flying overhead.
For the air, water show.
But that’s what that is,
an outdoor roll call.
-These guys are walking the streets?
-They’ll be out walking the streets, yeah.
-So there’s a lot of presence down here?
-Yeah, I keep going back to
it’s the scarecrow policing, right?
If a mob comes down here,
they’re really not going to engage.
-When did that change?
-Changed under Lightfoot and it changed
over the last three years basically.
Where foot chase policy was introduced
where you need to have
reasonable articulable suspicion.
RAS we call it.
That somebody is either
have committed a crime,
are about to commit a crime,
or in the act of committing a crime.
Running in itself is not a crime.
So if you have a group of people that
come up and suddenly a window gets broke,
unless you know exactly which person
it was that broke that window
and people start running everywhere,
you can’t chase after them.
You can’t… They’re just running.
And running is not–
-Okay, say someone breaks in here…
-If there’s one person,
but if you got 50 people…
-You got 50 people, you see one
running out, you can’t chase them?
-That’s not how it would be.
All 50 would…
Break the window, run inside,
come out and run in different directions.
Some might have merchandise,
some might not have merchandise.
So to have officers pick one for a theft,
their idea is to chase
that one person down
to try to catch
that one person for that arrest.
They’re all over the place.
Instead what you do is go in,
they go in there, you corral them.
You got ’em,
you take ’em, and lock ’em all up.
But they’re not doing that.
♪ jazz ♪
[John] The city’s really good at
maintaining, especially down here.
When you start getting into
certain parts of the city,
they’re not so good at maintaining.
If they’re focusing all their resources
on this and not so much…
If you get into the heart of
the South and West Side of Chicago.
And you know that’s the frustrating thing.
When you’ve got these politicians,
some that hold office
10, 20, 30 years in office.
Yet the communities that they represent
are dilapidated, and crumbling,
and their infrastructure is crap.
How do they keep getting elected?
They do nothing
to fix and improve their communities.
They’ll talk a lot and complain a lot
but they’re not doing anything.
-So what’s your answer to that?
-How do they get elected.
-I wish people would wake up.
Because people don’t vote.
They have successfully stifled the vote.
If that’s the right word.
They’ve got people so convinced
that their vote doesn’t matter, count.
Even if you have a close election
people are like, “Holy cow.”
By the next election they forget.
“Last one was close,
if I coulda made a difference.”
-So recent mayoral election,
high turnout, low turnout?
-Recent mayoral election,
lower than usual turnout,
and it was a hot election.
It was really a transitional point
for the City of Chicago,
which way we were gonna go,
and you had two
completely different candidates.
Both Democrats but the one was
definitely more conservative, pro police,
the other one was kind of teacher’s union
and definitely I would say not pro-police,
and a million people stayed home.
We have over 1.5 million
registered voters in Chicago.
About 500,000 people came out,
a million people decided that it wasn’t
important enough for them to vote.
So the, I’m gonna call him the
anti-police candidate won by 28,000 votes.
Back in 2021 or maybe it was 2020,
I don’t remember the date
but the mayor looked like
she was standing up against
the Trump administration.
So what she did is
they put through city council,
they modified our policies
in regard to cooperating with
Customs and Border Protection or ICE.
-Okay, so if it was a non-sanctuary city,
law enforcement
and ICE would work together
and law enforcement would give
the illegal citizen over to ICE,
ICE would deport,
or is that how it would work?
-Right, right.
-Okay.
With certain laws,
if they committed a felony.
It was dealing with the criminals,
we weren’t even talking about…
We’re not just grabbing people
off the street and saying,
“Show me your papers,
we’re gonna report you to ICE.”
That’s not what it was about at all.
It was criminals.
If you’re committing a crime here
and you also happen to be illegal
why not turn them over to ICE?
Do we really want
criminals here in any capacity?
If you’re out here committing crimes
you shouldn’t be here then.
And they took that away.
So the Chicago Police Department
is not allowed to work
with ICE in any capacity.
So this is Clinton and Grenshaw.
There’s a video out there
that shows the last teen takeover
and basically they
send out on social media,
whatever app it is they’re using,
where they’re going to meet,
and they start to show up,
the crowd gets bigger
and then somebody sets off something
and they go crazy.
-Right here, this 7-Eleven?
-Yeah, right here. Yeah.
-So how many teens are we talking?
Hundreds.
Basically causing chaos.
Throwing stuff up in the air
and just destroying everything
for no particular reason whatsoever.
Just to do it because they could.
Because of the last teen takeover
that happened here,
they brought in a mobile police camera.
So right now they’re watching from
the local district SDSC room,
and they can monitor everything
and see what’s going on.
So they can zoom in on us now
and say, “Hey, what’s going on?”
What’s are they up to now, right?
-Yeah, but this isn’t
like a target location.
-You just go to another one over there.
-Right, so they’re not gonna come here.
They’re gonna go start somewhere else.
The reason why all this stuff
is happening is because
of lack of money
spent in communities, lack of jobs,
all these issues and problems.
But then he’ll also say
it’s a small percentage
that are community crimes, maybe 5%.
Somehow the other 95%
that are in those same scenarios
are able to restrain themselves and not
come out and do destructive damage.
If you watch the video from here,
maybe we can talk to somebody
and figure out what happened,
but from what I could see in the video
they weren’t stealing
because they were hungry
or because they wanted
to put food on the table.
They were literally just coming here
and throwing stuff, just destroying.
-Yeah.
[Peter] Sir, the camera’s not on you,
you’re the owner, right?
-[man] They didn’t even take value.
-[John] Right.
They just destroyed it,
they took chips, soda, salsa,
and threw it everywhere.
-Just to be destructive?
-Yeah, fire extinguishers.
-[John] Spraying everywhere.
-[man] yeah, like Grand Theft Auto.
[man] Look at that beautiful view,
this is what made me buy this store.
[John] That’s exactly what it is, right?
[owner] But you know how the mayor’s always
talking about honor roll kids and good kids.
That’s good to reward them
but you gotta help the kids that have
the bad parents or have no parents.
We gotta show
some kind of support to those kids.
So they know that we do care.
-I wish there was a program we could do.
-Yeah, more schools, more…
-It ain’t like it used to be.
-They’re not bad kids.
Ain’t’ no more YMCA.
[Peter] They don’t have structure,
discipline, that sort of stuff.
[owner] That’s what I was
trying to tell the news teams.
[Peter] What happened with the news teams?
They gave me like 15, 20 minute interviews
and all they took from me was mob action.
Two seconds.
-They didn’t let you speak?
-No they let me speak for 20 minutes.
[John] Ended up on the editing room floor.
-Channel 7, Channel 5…
-[Peter] Can I put the camera on you?
-[owner] Yeah, I don’t care.
But they mayor’s gotta do something
for the kids that aren’t being reached.
That the parents aren’t’ there for them
or they were too young.
-We gotta go–
-Parents gotta step up
and say, “I need help.”
-Yeah.
-A lot of people so scared.
A lot of people scared of asking for help,
they think they can do it all theyself.
Ain’t nothing wrong with help,
don’t nobody wanna see kids–
-You think the parents
should ask for help?
-Yeah, parents should ask for help.
-You’re from the neighborhood?
-Yeah.
-How are things these days?
-It’s okay but like you say,
worried about the mob thing.
A lot of people scared, that’s why
there’s a lot of guns in the city.
Everybody wants to get a gun,
you know, they scared.
Everybody just wants the city to be good,
it’s a beautiful city.
My grandmama told me
the City of Chicago got burnt down.
Look at it right now.
It’s a good city, I’ll tell everybody.
Everybody, don’t let
the social media and the YouTube…
-That’s what I’m making.
-And music videos and everything
get you throwed off and everything.
All you gotta do is ask for help, man.
It’s out here, there’s a lot of people
out here, black, white, Hispanic,
You pull the skin up off us, we ain’t got
nothing but blood and veins right here.
It’s just they need help, that’s all.
Guidance, no school, no basketball,
no football, ain’t no YMCAs no more.
You gotta get them something, you know?
I grew up playing marbles, used to be
20 of us in a big circle playing marbles.
These days they want to do other things,
they want attention, that’s all it is.
Attention, before I even come outside,
I got a one-year-old, and a nine-year-old,
I make sure I go to the park
or do something with them for two hours
before I come outside.
-Good for you.
-That’s a blessing though, yeah.
-[robotic voice]
-So that…
It’s being recorded right now?
-24 hours.
-Always.
-Okay.
So sir, how long
have you had this store for?
-Only a month.
-What?!
-I’ve been through hell.
[all laughing]
-It’s a new one? It looks new.
-It was corporately owned,
I was here for like two years.
-Where you from? You from Chicago?
-I’m from South Side.
But we have another store,
Pine Grove and Diversey, North Side.
My partner had no idea.
He didn’t grow up
in the South Side, I did.
I can handle it but he’s here
for 10 minutes like, “I’m leaving now.”
[all laughing]
-But I’m good, I love everyone,
I treat everyone respect,
and everyone that walks through this door
I say, “Hello, sir. Thank you, sir.”
I’m a very polite person
until they give me otherwise notion.
I’m always very polite.
I just really think
the mayor needs to hear
some of us
small business owners out a little bit.
-Do you feel like you’re not being heard?
-No, he doesn’t care.
He’s saying that
I’m calling the kids mobsters.
I didn’t say that, the definition
of a mob is a large group of kids.
-Right.
-I’m not calling them mobsters.
-So there are a couple
small sound bytes taken out of context?
They did 20 minute interviews
and only took out what was negative.
-What the mayor said at a press conference
one of the reporters mentioned mob action
and if you look up the Illinois statue
there’s a statute that’s mob action
and it’s a large gathering of people
that are basically committing crime.
Whether destruction or whatever.
The mayor stopped everybody
and said, “No, no, no, wait a minute.”
“You gotta be careful with your words,
you can’t call them little Al Capones.”
[owner] It was totally wrong
what he said.
-Right–
-It’s not Al Capone.
-Mob action doesn’t mean mobsters.
-Tommy guns everywhere…
-Yeah, mob action does not
mean mobsters, it means a group of people.
-That’s what I meant.
-Right, and so the mayor
somehow took mob action…
I thought he was a teacher but somebody
took mob action and came up with mafia,
and mobsters, and Al Capone,
and that’s not it at all.
-So you were put under the bus a bit?
-A little bit
but a lot of people that come here,
they know I’m a good guy
and I try my best.
That’s short, you just…
Yeah, he a good guy.
Come here all the time,
everything, you know?
Who don’t want people standing
in they store laying on the floor?
You wouldn’t want that, nobody
would want that, scares customers off,
other than that,
I can say this man is a good guy.
The other big problem
is tent city is a block away
and I have to remove probably 20 to 30
homeless from the front of my store
’cause they’re begging,
and scaring people, walking up to women,
people come up to me and say
they don’t want to come here
’cause they’re afraid.
They kick my sign,
throw garbage cans down,
throw everything.
They get into fits and rages.
-That’s a tough way
to start a day going to work.
-Yeah. [laughs]
-[John] You’re not 24 hours here then?
-[owner] Yeah.
Yeah, but they know when I’m here…
-[Peter] Can we go in?
-[owner] Yeah.
They know it’s party time.
Yeah, it’s not happening here.
[Peter] You have to
physically move them sometimes?
-Yeah, we have to fight
for what we want here.
-What were you saying about the difference
between migrants and the homeless?
-What I’m seeing is
a lot of them are hard workers.
A lot of them are trying to get jobs.
-The migrants?
-Yeah, the migrants.
-They’re trying to get jobs,
they’re doing anything.
A lot of the guys that do construction,
they’re using them as helpers.
I can’t say all of them but the ones
I’ve seen, they’re trying to do something.
-Migrants unfortunately
don’t have work papers
so they have to work under the table.
-Yeah, they’re getting cash.
-Getting cash.
So they have to do it sneakily
and it’s hard on employers too
because they have to be
in this illegal status with employees.
[John] Up on the West Side
at one time there was…
You could pull up to
a certain gas station or Home Depot
and there’d be 30 workers
that would just mob your car.
“Hey, we’re ready to work.”
So I imagine now
that’s at the Home Depot here, right?
-Yeah.
Is that what they’re starting to do?
-More in the South Side.
-Contractors are coming to get supplies.
So then you got
your labor force in the parking lot
waiting jump in and go to work.
-I get how it affects the city
and paying under the table is bad,
we don’t do it but…
I get how it’s bad
but these guys at least want to work.
These homeless
just want to leech off everybody
and that’s the problem.
You know, we can’t have
violent mental people
leeching and demanding stuff.
I just had a guy this morning
demand that I give him food
because he thinks I’m rich
and that we can afford it.
No, we can’t.
You know, owners of small businesses
live check by check also.
People don’t realize that
we don’t make as much as they think.
You know it’s a grind.
I’m here seven days a week.
[John] Right.
-I shouldn’t be here seven days a week.
Something goes wrong,
like the looting or anything else,
that’s a loss for me, you know?
We just did the loss from the looting.
It was almost $5,000.
Damaged equipment, stolen stuff.
[John] Right, and they’ll say,
“He’s got insurance.”
but your deductible
is gonna be whatever it is
if you don’t wanna file the claim
sometimes it’s better just to pay for it.
-Just to pay for it, it goes up, yeah.
I mean people don’t understand the deals
we have with using 7-Eleven’s name.
I mean it’s 50/50, man.
We’re not getting 100% here.
[John] Right.
-We’re not bankrolling, like people think
we can just give out stuff.
[Peter] I’ve gotta say this probably
the nicest 7-Eleven I’ve seen.
[owner] They knocked aisles over.
They destroyed the front end caps.
-Were you here inside?
-I came on scene.
-So what was that like?
-Uh, it was hectic
but they were little kids.
-I wasn’t really scared.
-How little?
-Honestly they looked like 10 to 18.
10-years-old,
I seen some young ones out there.
-Right.
-There was a little kid crying,
“My friends left me.”, crying, bawling.
I was like, “Hey buddy,
you gotta pick your friends wiser.”
-They left him, you know, I felt bad.
-Wow.
So you’re basically dealing with
the root causes surface
and people like you
have to deal with them first hand.
So the root cause is
a lot of parents aren’t involved,
spending enough time with their kids,
not enough discipline.
The government isn’t stepping in
and creating some
hard boundaries with this stuff.
-They have to be tougher.
-And then you have to carry it all.
-Yeah, I’m carrying the weight
on my shoulders if I want to survive.
You have to fight for everything in life
but there’s a good fight and a bad fight.
The looting is a bad fight, you know?
Good fight is earning it.
I do a job on top of this.
I’m a graphic designer.
-No way.
-Yeah.
-You go home from this and–
-And I bang out some jobs.
-Wow.
-So it’s never ending hustle.
You go home, edit, that takes hours
but I’ve done that editing.
So I understand it’s a grind.
-Yeah, and nothing’s ever for sure.
-No.
-I could lose my channel tomorrow,
you could lose this business.
-Me and my guy had three
pizza businesses for COVID, pizza buffets.
We lost everything.
This is my second time
losing everything in life
and coming from the ground up.
[John] Gotcha.
That’s a shame, that’s the little girl
that was shot in the head, right?
Yeah, that’s horrible.
So the wake is tonight, what funeral home?
Oh, gotcha, okay.
All right, man, thanks.
I’ll talk to you, all right, bye.
So that was Alderman Sposato.
Um…
Just did a murder last week.
A neighbor was in his house, little girl
was outside playing, eight-years-old,
and he was complaining that
she was making too much noise
middle of the day,
he walked out and shot her in the head.
The father saw it, tackled him,
fought over him, gun went off,
shot the offender
in the face but he survived
and the father went to his little girl
and she didn’t make it.
So the wake is tonight.
-Oh my God.
-It’s horrible.
I mean all the guy had to say is…
The offender said,
“I was on some pretty hard drugs,
didn’t realize what I was doing.”
-What’s going to happen to him?
-He’s gonna get convicted of murder
and he’ll get sent away.
-How many years do you think?
Shooting an eight-year-old.
-Shooting an eight-year-old in the head,
walked up to her point-blank.
-That’s life, right?
-Oh, sure.
-I’m sure he’s not getting out anytime.
-Okay, good.
I was scared you were gonna say
five years or something.
-I’m like, “Oh my God.”
-Oh, no, no, no.
Something like that,
they’re gonna be solid on that.
There’s so many things
they do get out for but no, that one.
[Peter sighs]
It must be absolutely brutal.
Being in law enforcement,
to leave your family every morning,
go out and deal with society’s problems.
-So that’s the thing about it is
as police officers…
I mean I loved the job.
I loved being a police officer.
The ability to be able to
go out there and help people
and the camaraderie, and just
the whole thing that goes with it,
and there’s so much variety.
It’s not like you’re going
to an office job nine to five
and you’re doing A, B, C,
every single day the same thing.
-It’s always something different.
-It’s exciting?
-It’s exciting you’re going from
moments of boredom to all of a sudden
you’re off and running,
chasing after somebody,
doing whatever you’re doing
Basically helping people
that are being victimized.
In every aspect of it but at the same time
you see some horrific stuff.
Some stuff that really
takes a toll over time.
I mean we’re still human beings
and as much as officers
suppress all that stuff,
that’s why you end up with a high rate
of suicide, alcoholism, divorces,
because actually
it’s gonna catch up to you.
But ultimately at the end of the day
it’s in our DNA, it’s what we do.
-Knowing what you know now,
would you get into it?
How policing is now,
would you sign up for it again?
-So that’s a probably not
because of the way it is now.
It’s completely different now than it was.
The ability to be able to help people
seems to have changed dramatically.
I know that sounds weird.
It’s like, “What do you mean
you can’t help people?”
Because look,
the store that we just came from,
there’s no officers around here
that are going to be able to prevent that.
-In the ’90s or 2000s you woulda–
-Woulda locked everybody up.
Pulled up here with the paddy wagons,
the police wagons.
Woulda pulled up there
and grabbed everybody we could,
locked up as many as we could.
-So what would happen to the 11-year-old?
The 11-year-old?
That’s looting at the 7-Eleven.
-Brought him to the station
and his parents would get him.
-So there’s accountability?
-There’s accountability,
the parents are being inconvenienced
because we’re gonna track ’em down.
Trust me, I had it before
where we had little kids in custody
and we’re calling, and calling,
we send a car out to the house
and it’s inconvenient for them.
They… A lot of them
don’t want to be bothered
but you force it.
You make it happen
and that’s just what
they have to do and when you do that
because they don’t
want to have to do it again.
They don’t want to get called out again.
-So what happens now
when the 11-year-old gets caught there?
Now probably get dropped off at home
and say, “Don’t do that again.”
That’s it.
There’s no inconvenience to the family,
there’s no nothing.
Nobody’s gonna have to go to court.
There’s gonna be
almost no accountability whatsoever.
[Peter] Do you have
a lot of these in Chicago?
-Yes.
-What do these people do in the winter?
-A lot of them go to the trains
and they ride the CTA trains
all night to stay warm.
Sadly, some of them will freeze to death.
-You saw that in law enforcement?
-Oh, absolutely. Yes, yes.
Now somebody donated these
I guess these are…
they’re tore up pretty good,
these orange ones
are insulated a little bit better.
-Somebody donated them.
-Oh, okay.
But obviously they’re getting
destroyed and beat up.
I don’t know how well they’re gonna be.
Oh look, they even have an entrance.
-But no one here can
show up at the police station
and ask to sleep for the night?
-Not in the summer time
but if it was freezing cold in the winter
yeah, every police station, firehouse,
there are warming centers
get out of the cold to help them
if they can get there and come in.
There’s also organizations
that pick people up
and see if they can get them to come in.
Some don’t want to come in.
Like I said, there’s mental issues,
there’s substance abuse issues.
So yeah… but in the morning
unless it’s really bad conditions outside
they’re gonna be told to leave.
They’re not gonna get the same treatment
the migrants are getting.
-[Peter] What’s this here?
-[John] Juvenile court.
Where the kids that are
gonna be detained will be housed.
-This whole building for the city?
-Yeah.
-How is in there? Have you been in there?
-Yeah.
-Sad seeing those kids in there?
-There’s so many kids that are either
forgotten or their parents are doing drugs
and not caring about them
and taking care of them.
So they’re just discarded
and left to fend for themselves.
And the gangs pick them up then.
-Right, ’cause the gangs offer
that family structure they’re craving.
-Right, right, right.
Like there’s the kid, Adam Toledo.
-Mm-hmm.
-I don’t know if you heard
about that case, that’s the 14-year-old.
They’re trying to fire the officer
which is complete BS.
-Mm-hmm.
-But that was the case where
the 14-year-old was with a 23-year-old.
23-year-old is on video
shooting at a car that goes by.
Shot spotter goes off which alerts
the district that… shots fired.
-Okay.
-Officers respond there,
two subjects take off,
the one stops and falls,
the partner grabs that one,
the other partner continues on chasing
the one that he sees has a gun.
He gets to a point in the alley,
he’s yelling at him, “Drop the gun.”
The kid turns and in a split second,
if you watch the video
the officer had
I think eight tenths of a second
to make a decision ’cause you see
the gun when it’s down
and the kid turns and brings his hands up.
And what he did is in one motion
the kid threw the gun behind the fence
but there is absolutely no way
you could see that.
-Oh.
-The officer fired one shot in the chest.
The kid goes down and it’s not like
the officer didn’t pull up and say,
“Oh look, I’m chasing
a 14-year-old with a gun.”
All he knows is that he’s chasing
a person that’s got a gun in his hand.
That he’s responding to a shot spotter
that went off where shots were just fired.
So he’s not chasing a kid,
he’s chasing an individual
that he doesn’t know who he is
or anything about him,
all he knows is he’s a man with a gun.
But as soon as that one shot goes off,
the kid goes down,
the officer immediately holsters
his weapon and started performing CPR.
Did everything he could to try
to save that kid until other officers came
and were able to relieve him
and took over on the CPR.
And if you watch the video,
you actually hear the officer,
he’s breathing heavy,
he’s sighing,
then the officer actually starts to cry,
and he’s walking around.
Then you can see he goes
right behind the fence there
and he shines his light on the fence
and you see there’s the gun
that the kid just pitched
And he’s not jumping up and down,
“Hey, the gun’s over here.”
He just like… “Huh.”
He knew he was right,
he knew he saw a gun,
and in a split second he’s distraught
that he had to shoot this kid.
-Yeah.
-But he wasn’t left with any options.
-So what’s happened to the officer?
-So immediately put on
administrative leave like they always do.
They go through the process,
the reviewed it
and they weren’t going to charge.
Then the department decided
they’re moving to try to fire him
for violating the foot pursuit policy.
The officer didn’t
necessarily see a gun right away.
The gun didn’t appear
until he was well into the foot chase.
There’s so many issues and problems
with it but at the end of the day
that policy wasn’t even
in place at the time.
The policy came into place after
but they did have a guide
for suggestions
on how this policy would be.
So it’s all BS, and it’s all political,
and they’re just looking to
hang this officer out to dry.
And what they put this officer through
is one more reason
that this just spreads throughout
the department that low moral.
Because it just shows that
there’s always a political agenda
to every decision that they make
and this is no different.
-So it makes the job extremely difficult.
You have to make
all these split second decisions.
Like when you’re in
survival mode sometimes, right?
-And because of it
more and more officers are getting hurt
and going to get hurt
because they second guess themselves.
You have to be able to,
with all the training that you get
to be able to make that decision
and not have to worry that if this
ends up going viral on social media
or the news or whatever
that they’re gonna try to fire you for it.
Because that’s gonna cause them
to second guess themselves
or to relax and that’s when
officers get hurt or killed.
[John] We’re going into
the West Side of Chicago
and just another example
of the type of violent crime
that we have going on in Chicago
this is a McDonalds over here where
the father took his daughter to McDonalds
and rival gang members saw him,
wanted to shoot him,
and ended up killing
his daughter in the car behind him.
-That’ so sad.
-This is the 11th District,
Harrison and Kedzei.
Would be considered one of
the higher crime districts in the city.
So homicides are not at the highest point,
they’re going back up again
but this is what I heard
from a guy in South Side,
shootings, gunshot wounds are way up.
-Off the charts.
-So what’s going on?
Correct me where I’m wrong.
-Medical.
-They’re shooting legs, butts,
parts of the body, not to kill them
but it’s almost like
the modern day fist to the face.
-No.
-No, am I wrong in that?
-No, nobody can shoot like that,
that’s Hollywood.
-Okay.
-That’s like telling a police officer,
“Why didn’t they shoot
the gun out of his hand?”
-Just bad shots?
-No, they’re doing drive-bys.
No, better medical.
They’re saving more lives.
You shoot somebody,
if an officer gets on scene quick enough
they’ve got the packs to be able to
stop bleeding
and stuff themselves, paramedics.
-So if we were back in 1970–
-What’s that?
-This is Harrison and Kedzie.
They’re finally, finally
fixing this garage.
-If we were back in 1970–
-There would have been thousands?
-People that get shot today… yes.
If you had the same amount
of shootings now in the ’70s
you woulda had 2,000 murders a year.
They’re just better at saving people
now than they were before.
People are surviving
what used to be fatal injuries.
-Oh, thanks for that.
-That makes sense.
-That’s the big difference
is medical technology.
That’s why the homicide rate
went down from the ’70s.
I shouldn’t say alone.
You know, policing had a part of it
but big huge significant part of it
is they save more people.
[John] 1993, I just got off work
and back then we had pagers,
and I got a page
to call somebody back and went here
and the payphone
that was there didn’t work.
So I went inside,
I knew the clerk that was working there.
I just got off work
and I asked if I could use his phone.
Well, while I was talking to him he
told me there was two guys
that were parked out in a car.
-See that sign that has graffiti on it?
-Okay.
-So there was two guys in a car there.
And they were drunk,
coming inside giving him a hard time
and asked if I could just
go out and shack ’em, get ’em to leave.
So they were right here.
-Right here? Okay.
-Yeah.
And so at that time I was only
on the job two years, young, naive.
Thought all I have to do
is show my badge, tell them to leave,
and they’ll go ’cause I’m police.
And so I did that, went out there
and when I went to the driver’s side…
Now I’m in between two cars, right?
I tap on the window,
I have my badge in my hand,
and I show my badge in the window
So the guy looks at me,
the badge, and looks up at me,
and I notice at the same time
the other guy was leaning over
and they were trying to pop the ignition,
trying to steal the car.
But at that point the guy
in the driver’s seat,
he was actually out on parole
for a reckless homicide
and didn’t want to go back to jail
so he rolled out of the car.
We started struggling,
fighting in between the two cars,
the other guy came around,
knocked us down,
and then now I had
the two guys up on top of me.
The one offender kicked me in the face
and had repeatedly and my head
was hitting the rim of the car next to us.
The impacts were so hard that I could
see a flash of light with every kick.
The other guy started going for my gun.
I had a five shot snub nose on.
We started struggling for the gun.
They were able to get my hand
on the side and the one guy
was stepping with his heel into my hand
and I could literally feel
the gun slowly slip out of my hand
and that was the worst feeling
in the world when the gun was gone
and I knew that
I lost control of the weapon.
The offender stood up over me
and he fired twice point-blank.
One of the rounds
grazed me in the top of the head.
And then he took off with the gun
The other guy stuck around
to put in a few more kicks.
Officers arrived on scene
’cause the 7-Eleven clerk called.
They were able to catch
the one offender on scene.
The other one got away at the time.
They rushed me to the hospital,
ended up having a plastic surgeon come in.
I got 37 stitches in my lips.
My jaw was dislocated
I got a hairline fracture
in my orbital bone, my cheek there.
Um, I was messed up pretty good.
The offender they caught on scene,
they got him to the station.
He actually ended up
having a cuff key concealed on him
and he was able to get himself uncuffed
and got out and escaped from the station.
Jumped on a bus.
He walked out of the station,
jumped on a bus.
He was gone,
there was a manhunt that went on.
They caught him the next day
and when they caught him
he gave up the other offender
was his brother-in-law.
-So you have to be a little bit crazy
to be an officer, don’t you?
Like you have to be a little crazy
to step out of your house in the morning
say bye to your wife and kids,
or no kids, dogs, whatever,
and know that you
might be getting into that.
That sounds terrible.
-Something to say to that, right?
I noticed it actually when I retired.
The day I retired I remember
we have what’s called cake and coffee
and that’s where all the officers
in the station come around
and they tell stories about you
and it’s just a tradition thing, right?
I remember looking over at my wife
and that was the most calm pleasant look
on her face that I’d seen in a long time.
It was like the stress just washed away.
And I realized in that moment that
police officers,
when we go to work every day
you wouldn’t be able to do your job
if you were going to work every day
worried that today
was gonna be your last day
or today was the day
something bad was gonna happen to you.
We don’t think.
For us, we get to work,
from the time we step in the door
it’s ball-busting,
joking, camaraderie, laughing.
Now we’re gonna go on the street
and we’re looking for bad guys
and patrolling, talking to
your partner in the car.
And then there’s those oh sh*t moments
when something jumps off
and now you’re immediately
chasing a man with a gun
running through yards,
doing whatever you’re doing
or maybe there’s a car chase,
or whatever happens and stuff.
And then after it’s all done and over with
if everything goes well
and nobody gets hurt
then it’s a, “Oh, that was awesome.”
The stories about that.
But for our families,
from the time
we walk out the door it’s stress.
They hear somebody… if an officer
got shot was that their loved one?
They’re immediately trying
to call and get ahold of you
Before when I came on,
there was no cell phones.
You know, there was pagers.
But if they heard something
on the news now they’re calling
trying to find out what happened,
calling the station
to see if everything’s okay.
It’s constant stress
for not only your spouse
but for your parents, siblings.
They’re experiencing
a different experience than what…
-They’re not getting
the reward that you’re getting.
-No.
-Because you’re taking risk.
In that risk is excitement,
and you feel alive, and then
there’s camaraderie, the brotherhood.
-Yeah, you’re not thinking about…
We’re not honing in on the risk.
All their honing in is on the risk.
Right? The family,
that’s all they know is the risk.
With us the risk is
so far down on the totem pole.
All the other things are what
we’re dealing with and thinking about
and the risk just… I don’t want to say
it’s not a factor but it’s just
it’s not at the forefront of our minds.
Because you wouldn’t
be able to do your job if you were…
-That’s why I think
you guys are all a bit crazy.
-That’s why I say it’s in our DNA.
You think what we do is crazy,
you’re the crazy one.
You’re the one that’s going
to Iran or going to the hood
and you’re interviewing gang bangers
and maybe talking to cartel
or whatever it is that you’re doing.
You got no backup, you don’t have
a vest on, you don’t have surveillance.
You don’t have… You have nothing.
At least we’ve got a radio,
bullet proof vest, a gun on our hip.
At least we have the perception of safety.
You’re on a tightrope
with no fricken’ net.
Be careful.
So this is Superdawg.
It’s been around since the ’50s
and it’s one of those old…
Where the car pulls up
and they come take your order type thing.
Very popular place.
[Peter] All right,
so how do you know John?
-So just through the police department.
When I was a cop I never had
the pleasure of working with John
but when I ran for office he was
running for office at the same time.
-For office? What do you do?
-Alderman of the 41st Ward.
-Okay, okay.
What’s good here?
-Everything’s good here.
If you want a cheeseburger,
cheeseburgers are awesome,
they got great hotdogs and fries.
-What are you getting?
-I’m not getting anything,
something to drink,
I gotta watch what I eat.
I let myself go.
Why don’t you give him
the whooper cheesy
with just the ketchup on it.
Get the fries on it and everything, yeah.
-That be all?
-That’s it.
-Anthony, you don’t have to pay, c’mon.
-I got it, I got it.
[clerk] Number 13,
you can come back and pay.
-Thank you.
-Thanks, boss.
[Peter] Anthony, so you’re one of
the 50 aldermen in Chicago?
-I am.
I am the Alderman of the 41st Ward.
Which is the farthest Northwest Side
ward in the city of Chicago.
-So what’s going on in Chicago
through your perspective?
An alderman’s perspective,
which you’re all different, right?
-We’re all different, 50 of us.
-50 of you.
Every ward is a different animal.
We’re extremely lucky the way
the dynamic works in the Northwest Side.
-Okay.
It’s a ward that is broken up of
just an astronomical amount
of city workers.
You’ve got police officers,
firemen, plumbers, electricians.
The vast majority
of your city population employees
live in the Northwest Side here.
Oh, interesting.
-We have the least amount
of police officers
allocated to the Northwest Side.
We’re the 16th District.
16th District is the largest district
in the City of Chicago
and we have the least amount of crime
because a lot of the police officers here
help maintain the streets and protect it
even when they’re on or off duty.
If you look at our wards right now
you have multi, multi generations
of family that never
left the neighborhood.
My first house was four blocks
from the house I grew up in
and now I’m on my third house all within
10 blocks of the house I grew up in.
-Okay, so there’s accountability.
You see something happen
at your neighbor’s house,
you’ve known them forever,
you’re gonna step in?
-Yeah, protect your neighbors,
your property, the neighborhood.
And a big thing too is
we’re community-based, parish-based,
we’re based off our churches here too.
We raise our kids.
We put the time and effort
into taking care of our kids,
raising them right,
making sure they’re growing up
even if it’s a broken household
both parents are taking accountability
and making sure
they’re brought up the right way.
-No teen takeovers
at the Shop & Save there?
-You’re not gonna see it,
if anything you’re gonna see
teens volunteering there if there’s
community events going on.
-Okay, now you’re making it sound
like a North Korean tour.
-It’s the most amazing place.
-[both laughing]
-Kids volunteering?
-It is the most amazing place
that’s why I’ve never left.
No one leaves the neighborhood.
You’ll end up buying a house
four blocks from your house.
“I grew up, I’m moving away.”
That’s not what happens here.
What’s a home cost around here,
modest three bed, two bath?
-So there’s a humungous
up and down swing on that.
You can get a three bedroom home
in this area for about $375,000
all the way up to $750,000.
It depends on where it is.
We have some McMansions
in the neighborhood too.
-So 750, your getting a nice place?
-You’re getting a nice place,
we even have million dollar homes.
And we have a lot of three flats,
four flats, multi-unit buildings
that are owned
by the residents that live here
they’ll live in it and rent it out
to neighbors in the community as well.
-So Chicago, really broken up
into neighborhoods like most cities.
-Yeah.
-But from what I’m understanding
through what you just said
you guys seem like
you’re doing pretty well here,
another part of the city
might be doing terribly,
and you’re living in two different worlds
even though you’re in the same city.
-It is like two different worlds.
And you know it’s unfortunate
that’s the way it is
but I mean when people
came to Chicago back, back in the day
my father, my grandfather,
you moved to the neighborhood,
like I’m Italian-American.
My father told me back in the day
when his family came over
they all moved to
the Italian-American neighborhood
where everyone spoke the same language.
Polish-American did it too.
Jewish, Irish, African-American,
everybody moved to the neighborhoods
and those neighborhoods
just blossomed from there,
but you ended up being around…
They say it’s so segregated here,
that’s not true.
Chicago chose to segregate itself
and still does it to this day
but they don’t do it out of malice,
they do it out of
you wanna be by your Italians,
the Irish, the Polish.
-Is it a cultural thing?
-It’s a very cultural thing, yeah.
-Okay.
So you don’t see anything wrong with it?
The thing I see wrong with it is
sometimes you’re just overexploded
with this one
nationality in a neighborhood
And that’s a tough go at times
but you know what,
still to this day
when people come across the ocean
or move from a different country to here
they move to the neighborhood,
where they speak the language.
-Where they feel comfortable.
-You want to go with
what you know, what’s familiar.
-It’s natural human behavior.
-Yeah, absolutely.
-So in the national news or on YouTube
people are saying Chicago is so dangerous.
What would you say to that?
-It is absolutely dangerous,
I’m not gonna lie to people.
-But you’re saying here it’s not.
-Here it’s not because
we police ourselves over here
but if you look in
other parts of the city right now
where they’ve demonized the police.
You’ve got aldermen that are
trying to get police officers fired,
defund the police, trying to
pull resources away from officers.
Trying their hardest to get
less people to take that job right now.
You go in these other neighborhoods
that have a lot more crime,
there’s no policing there.
It’s so out of control right now
Here, to date right now,
we are in August 17th.
As of right now we have 2,015 people
shot in the City of Chicago.
417 homicides.
Where else in the world do you have that,
that isn’t in a war-torn country?
There’s nowhere.
So it’s the unfortunate thing about it.
If you look at
the last five years in Chicago
amount of people shot here, I think it’s
over 37,000 people have been shot here
in the last five years.
Where else in the world
do those numbers exist?
We have an extreme issue here
with accountability
for parents raising their kids.
For actually cracking down
on crime in their neighborhoods.
We’ve got these social
and community groups
that are saying they’re
getting to these kids, they’re not.
There’s a gun in every car.
-So you want to get rid of guns,
that’s the solution?
-I’m an advocate of the gun right now.
-Okay.
-I’m an advocate of the gun
because there are so many on the street
that for John Q. Citizen
that pays his taxes
or pays her taxes,
that follows the law to the T.
-They’re not safe.
-Yeah.
-They’re absolutely not safe.
-You’re saying citizens
should have their own gun?
-Yeah, I’m totally fine with citizens…
What’s it in Illinois,
can you conceal carry?
-Yes, you can concealed carry.
And my thing is our citizens right now,
we’re being car jacked
and not…
This neighborhood’s seen carjackings too.
You got people stealing
catalytic converters.
-That’s going crazy everywhere.
-At an alarming rate and they’ve got
a lookout that’s carrying a gun.
We just had it two weeks ago.
A guy upped a pistol on somebody
while stealing a catalytic converter.
So nobody’s safe right here
and I’m an advocate for the gun.
-So you’re saying you’re appalled
by the numbers of gun shooting victims.
-Yeah.
-You’re appalled by those numbers
but you want everyone to have guns?
-What I would like is everybody
to be properly trained, licensed,
and have the vetted information
to actually carry a gun.
Where if you look at 99.9%
of the criminals on the street right now
not one of those guns have been–
You guys want this table here?
Not one of those guns–
Yeah, take it.
Not one of those guns have been
purchased over the counter legally.
No one’s been certified.
No one’s carrying a concealed weapon card.
These are offenders
that are buying these guns illegally.
-So if you do away with guns,
you take them out of these citizen’s
homes or cars
but the criminals
will still have guns, right?
-Oh my God, at an alarming rate.
An astronomical amount of guns out there.
-Yeah, that’s just common sense.
-Absolutely.
-Criminals aren’t gonna follow the law.
-They don’t follow the law.
Before we had concealed carry
Chicago is one of the harshest
and strongest anti-gun enforced cities
in the entire country.
We had the strictest laws
against handguns.
-Which means what?
-Which means that even when
we were the most enforced
against illegal carrying of a firearm
we couldn’t keep up with the amount
of offenders that had guns.
So there was nothing set in place.
The concealed carry just came
I don’t know how many years back
but the ability to
carry a handgun, that’s new.
It was illegal, period.
It’s considered blasphemy if you try to
put ketchup on a hotdog in Chicago.
I used to actually get yelled at
by my father jokingly like,
“You’re ruining a Chicago hotdog,
you can’t put ketchup
on a Chicago hotdog.”
So you got a…
-I got a hamburger.
-Can I put ketchup on this?
-You can put ketchup
on a hamburger for sure.
-[Peter] John, what’s going on here?
-[John] So this is Sergeant Rubble.
He kind of became the district mascot.
We rescued him about a year ago
He already got his uniform dirty.
He became like an emotional support dog
for the officers in the 16th District.
They love him over there.
He was abandoned a year ago
over at Harlem and Foster.
We took him in and he needed a surgery.
Got his surgery and now we take him
to schools and different events
and even the angriest
or most stoic officer
just melts and smiles
when he walks in a room.
[Peter chuckles]
-Superdawg burger.
-That’s a whooper cheesy.
-Whooper cheesy.
Since nineteen-something, right?
[Anthony] 75 years this year.
-Little cheese, ketchup.
-[Anthony] Delicious, ain’t it?
-[Peter] Mm-hmm.
-It’s easy to eat.
-It is easy.
Nice soft bun.
And ketchup on the burger
but not on the hotdog.
-Not on the hotdog, I told you.
They make an issue with that.
[all chuckling]
[Peter] I don’t want to
just go doom and gloom.
Solutions are basically I hear it
through and through again,
strong parenting, good values.
Is there anything else
I’m missing or is it that simple?
-No, it’s not that simple.
We’re also gonna have to hit a point where
that mask that’s been put
over the police department
as they demonize them,
that they’re evil, they’re bad,
they’re doing wrong out there constantly,
we have to get behind our police officers.
If you let the cops
go out and do their job
to the best of their ability,
being proactive police officers,
they’re gonna shut down crime
before it happens.
Unfortunately where we’re at right now
’cause the lawsuit rules the country
you have officers forced to be reactive
because the proactive officer gets sued
and nobody backs up the proactive officer.
“Why did you do that?”
It looked like suspicious activity.
Well suspicious activity
doesn’t follow the proper guidelines
of what you do as a police officer.
Now you’re profiling so you’re gonna
get sued and lose your job.
What other option do these officers have?
Not to sit back and hopefully
see something before it happens
or listen to their radio and react to it.
When I got on and I know when John
got on officers had the utmost pride
to get in that car
and look for something that’s going on.
The drugs, the guns, to find it.
Now everybody’s looking
for a way to sue the police.
They got their phones on everything,
film everything because
we want them to make a mistake
that a lawyer can prove in a court.
That’s a tough pill to swallow
for officers.
So we gotta let the police
be the police again.
That would be a huge difference.
-Always gonna be bad policing
like bad burger-makers,
like bad doctors,
bad teachers, bad YouTube creators.
So the goal is weed out the bad ones,
back the good ones.
-Right?
-Train, train, train, train.
Vet them properly
before you get them in here.
Don’t just try to hire people ’cause
you have to fill certain demographics.
Why not hire the people that want
to be the police and want the job?
Whether they’re female,
male, White, Hispanic, or Black,
go after the ones
that really want to be the police,
and train the heck out of them.
Give them the opportunity
to be good police
but then back them up
when they’re doing their job.
-What about pay?
-I feel that our police officers
get paid a good amount of money
but for how the difficult the job is
and how much time and effort
they put into this, and how much overtime,
and how much family time they miss,
they’re nowhere near the amount.
-Okay, what’s a starting guy get paid
and then say five years in?
-God, right now…
I don’t even know
what the start is right now.
-Is it $60,000?
-I think it’s $60,500.
Then you go into a five year step.
[John] Five year step,
so maybe they get up to 100.
-Yeah.
[Peter] So $60,000,
someone can raise a family on that here?
The wife would have to work
or the partner would have to work, right?
-There’s the vast majority
of this neighborhood
works two, three jobs easily.
-Police officer only works one job though?
-[Anthony] No, absolutely not.
-[John] No.
There’s lots that maybe were carpenters
before they became police officers
so they work their carpentry on the side.
Some of them are real estate inspectors
and they’ll do that on the side.
I was a lawyer, I did that on the side.
Especially if you’re trying
to put your kids through private school
because let’s face it,
the Chicago public school system
is horrific, it just is.
That’s a fact, look it up.
It’s not good.
Nobody wants to send their kids to
the public schools if they can avoid it.
Now there are some public schools
but a very small number of them
and they’re hard to get into
because you have to live near them
to get your kids into them
or know the right person
but they’re gonna
send them to private school.
Private schools are expensive now,
to go to Catholic school is not cheap.
And there’s no way you could do it
on one police officer’s salary.
If you want your wife…
If you’re in a family where you decide
the wife is going to stay home
and take care of the kids
they’re definitely working overtime,
they’re doing court.
They’re trying to get
as much as they can in
and working whatever side job some
are working security on their days off
just to make ends meet.
[John] I believe in any
big city department whether it be
LA, Chicago, New York, that any officer
that’s on 5, 10 years or more
that they have some form of PTSD.
The stuff that you’re subjected to,
that you see, the violence,
the gruesome scenes, suicides,
or just a death investigation
where the person was there for a month
before they were discovered
or the horrific things
they do to each other, to animals.
All that stuff builds up over time
and like I was saying before
that while we don’t
outwardly express that stuff,
we internalize it, right?
You build a callous to it
but it builds up over time.
I think that the reason there’s such
a high suicide rate with police officers
is because of the PTSD.
-It’s not diagnosed.
-How bad is it?
-It’s very bad.
We have a city of 12,000 police officers
and at one time we had as many as
5 councilors and I think
they brag about how they’re up to 15 now.
They’re trying to get up to 23.
I mean that’s nothing for what’s needed
and because they’re so short-staffed
they only come out
when an officer kills himself
or an officer gets killed
in the line of duty or something.
Then the councilors
come around for a little bit
and they disappear again.
It’s available to us but it’s not
the same as if you could have that
where every district…
I believe actually that officers
should be required to go quarterly
to sit with a councilor for an hour
whether you say something or not
at least have to sit in a room
and I think officers would open up
and I think it would be helpful.
But there’s so much red tape with that,
with the city, and the union, and whatnot.
Whether they would
do that or not but, you know…
Things like this,
bringing a dog to roll call,
all this stuff makes a difference.
I know we’re big city cops, Chicago.
Supposed to be all tough and everything
but you need this stuff
from time to time, right buddy?
[John] Let’s go, slowpoke.
[Peter] Keeping the streets safe.
[dog panting]
[John] That was a dilapidated old
news stand that was just falling apart.
Looked like crap
and I would pass it
every day going to work.
and I stopped to check it out
to see if it was abandoned
because I never saw anybody in there
and found that there was a guy there
that he would only sell newspapers
once a week on Sundays.
-Right here?
-Right here, see this?
His name was Anthony.
I got on social media
and said we were gonna fix it up.
The community came out big time
and we put a new roof on it.
I got an artist who was a police officer.
Actually described what we wanted to do
and we got a mural that was created.
This was Anthony,
he was the news stand guy.
-Okay.
-And then on this side over here
this is my other dog, Pedro.
So Pedro made the news stand.
And then this side here,
my plan was…
I haven’t gotten to it, I’m gonna have
the local schools do some type of mural
or something and let them
put something up on this side.
So the goal was to get Anthony set up.
We found out while we were
in the process of it that he was homeless
and he was a vet.
-Okay.
-He was in the Air Force.
We put together a GoFundMe.
We were able to pay his rent
for two and a half years
and got him set up.
And it came together really, really nice.
It’s gotten a little bit beat up,
I gotta come back,
stain the side and fix it up.
Somebody grafitti’d the door
so we gotta replace the door.
But the community came out.
It was incredible from just
a social media post everybody came around.
The roofing company donated the roof.
A spray foam insulation company
spray foamed the inside of it.
I had a carpenter, Tony Gilatti,
he came out and did the carpentry work
to fix it up.
Like I said, the door got jacked up.
-So one thing you were saying off-camera
is that crime in Chicago currently
is spreading out
into neighborhoods like this.
Which is a bit unusual, right?
-Yes.
-What were you saying?
-We’re in the Northwest Side
of Chicago right now.
Some joke and call it copland,
this is where all
the first responders live or teachers
and city workers basically.
And what the issue with Chicago was
is crime for the most part used to be
predominantly…
The higher crime areas
would be the South and West Side.
There would be crime all over
but not as much now that it’s spread out
and there’s probably
a lot of reasons but this district here
on the Northwest Side is 30 square miles.
-Okay.
-That’s huge.
-It is huge.
…to try to police that
with a thinning police force
you end up with a lack of manpower.
With a lack of presence.
-Right?
-Yeah.
-And the thing is there’s no
cookie cutter method for policing
in a city this size
because what might work here
might not work in Englewood.
-Mm-hmm.
-What might work in Englewood
might not work Downtown, right?
So in Englewood there’s
a lot more problems and issues
societal problems.
There’s a lot of different things
going on there.
Whether they’re poor…
There’s a lot of things that you’re not
gonna be able to police your way out of.
In a community like this
on the Northwest Side
where it’s middle class,
you don’t have a lot of the problems
you would have on the South Side.
This is where high visibility does work.
Where if you see a squad car all the time
that’s gonna deter crime because
the majority of crime that’s here
is imported, it’s driving in.
So they can jump right up the expressway.
Up there?
-Yeah, right on the other side.
Right on the other side of that
is the expressway and it runs Downtown
and it curves around, and circles into
the South and West Side of Chicago.
So because of that
if we had a bigger police presence here
like we used to have
that’s a deterrent for crime.
But again, if you were to go to Englewood
you could throw 500 police officers…
Unless you got an officer every 20 feet
you’re not gonna have the same impact
as far as the deterrent.
You’re gonna have to have
a little more action.
So politicians have no problem
depleting the workforce here
to send them to those busier districts.
-Oh, interesting.
-And what they’re doing is like when
it was Jody Weis,
he was the FBI guy that came in.
He made the mistake of saying
he was gonna reallocate officers
from the Northwest Side
and send them to the busier districts,
and everybody went nuts,
and they shut that down.
Well what they figured out was
don’t say that we’re going to do that
and they just don’t
keep up with attrition.
So these districts have
a lot of senior officers retiring.
-They just don’t replace them.
-Okay.
-We had almost 300
police officers at one time,
we’re down to 170 in this district.
-Almost half.
-I mean it’s incredibly low.
There are days when they are
actually downing police cars
because we don’t have
the manpower to put them up.
So we now have less officers
at any given time.
-Criminals are onto this, right?
-Oh yeah, they figure it out
and they’re coming up here
and they’re stealing, doing robberies,
catalytic converter thefts.
They’re doing all these things
and they go back and say,
“Hey, there’s nobody stopping us,
nobody confronting us.”
-Right.
[John] This is the 16th District.
[Peter] Full circle,
back to migrants at the station.
-Yes.
[John] Hey, Rich.
So…
[Peter] Wow.
[migrants speaking Spanish]
[John] He says talk to him.
[Peter] This is wild, John,
I’m not gonna lie to you.
-This is what
the other district will look like.
They were probably
all outside earlier today.
-So it’s like a lot of these officers
are working in a nursery.
-100%.
-Sometimes it gets so loud in here
it’s hard for them to hear.
[children chattering]
Yeah, it’s…
-[Peter] What’s up you guys?
-[children] Hello.
[John] People bring stuff
to them all the time,
they set them up with food over here.
Just when you think
you’ve seen it all in life, John.
I’m just coming into things that…
-It comes back down to,
again, there’s no plan.
They have no plan, you know?
This didn’t start last week, this has
been going on like this for months.
[Peter] What do you got here, medicine?
-Yeah, so see, she’s sick.
So…
She’s sick, they’re sick,
so don’t know what they’re sick from or…
[Peter] Wow.
So they got full food set up,
bananas, drinks.
-Yeah.
-So why is this put on
the police department?
Isn’t there a better place for this?
-That’s where it started
and for whatever reason…
So…
[Peter] Hola… No?
We’re in the police station.
-All the kids are sick.
All the kids.
Okay, they all want work.
“City of Chicago identification.”
So they give them full on IDs?
[John] Okay, so Chicago is giving them…
That’s the first I’ve seen that.
[John] That’s just an identification card.
-Okay, so they get IDs but can’t work?
-Not unless they get
some type of work permit.
-That’s crazy they can’t work.
-I know.
-This is insanity.
-There’s appears to be
no plan to correct it going forward.
-Just hang out here for a month?
-Well here, so…
When there was a big push
to do something about this
they got one of the local city colleges
and cleared them all out,
and moved hundreds to the city college.
That was only during summer,
now as soon as school’s back in session
pulled them all back out and right back
to the districts they took them from.
[Peter] So this is the one officer here.
Unfortunately he can’t speak on camera
but just one officer
manning this station right now.
[children playing]
Just met this nice lady
outside the police station.
She doesn’t want to be on camera
which I understand
but you wanted to say something.
[woman] Yes.
I wanted to speak out about the people
who are being held at the police station.
I think that it’s a kind and generous
thing to do to try to help them
but I also think that they’re putting
us at risk when we enter to get services
because of, again,
like the guy said at the front desk,
there is lice and I had to step out.
I can’t be in there
because I don’t want to catch lice
or any kind of virus that they might have.
As a citizen I don’t think that’s fair
to us to have to go through that
to get services
because they’re holding the people there.
-They can make a separate area for them.
-Mm-hmm.
-But they shouldn’t
have to put us at risk
for whatever is in the building.
-Agreed, it’s crazy.
-It is really crazy and it’s scary.
[Peter] We got the couple,
the young couple down here.
[woman] Oh, yeah.
-[woman] Oh my goodness.
-[Peter] Those guys are funny.
John, thank you for bringing us in.
-Absolutely, thank you for
shining a light on what’s going on here.
So many people don’t know about it
because they get snippets in the media
or it’s not reported at all.
There doesn’t appear to be a plan.
Now we did just get a new superintendent,
hopefully this is gonna be key.
The mayor will let him
run the departments.
Our past mayors,
like they have their fingers in everything
and non-police officers
try to run law enforcement.
When you try to run
law enforcement politically
it doesn’t work.
You can’t make political decisions.
You have to run…
Public safety cannot be political.
-There’s a lot going on here in Chicago
and around the country
but this was a very interesting look
into something I had no clue about.
All right guys, until the next one.