Gangs Chicago

On a wintry evening, chill winds raking the landscape, the barren South Side street corner seemed an unlikely spot for a start-up business. It's a bleak corner, of a piece with its surroundings, one of the more desolate swaths in a section of the city long ravaged by poverty and drugs. Yet it was here, say the police, that a group of entrepreneurs last year chose to establish a briefly thriving enterprise.

The Supreme Court struck down a Chicago anti-loitering law Thursday that authorized police to sweep the streets of those who look like gang members, disappointing Los Angeles area prosecutors who had hoped for a new weapon in their war against street gangs. The 6-3 decision instead gave an unexpected endorsement to old-fashioned principles of civil liberties.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, top police officials and prosecutors gathered on a South Side street corner one morning earlier this month to watch as a wrecking crew began dismantling a weathered two-story building. It was the former headquarters of the El Rukns, the city's most notorious street gang, an organization that after 24 years of dealing in extortion, drugs, weapons and murder had finally been decimated by prosecutions.

A policy that only ambulances rescue patients was changed Monday after workers failed to help a 15-year-old boy as he lay bleeding only steps from a Chicago hospital. Frustrated police officers who were waiting for an ambulance finally carried the wounded boy, Christopher Sercye, into Ravenswood Hospital Saturday night, but he died a short time later. Witnesses at the scene said that despite pleas, hospital emergency workers refused to come to Sercye's aid, quoting hospital rules.

The tragic cycle of youthful violence that claimed the lives of 14-year-old Shavon Dean and Robert Sandifer Jr., the hardened 11-year-old suspect in her murder, came full circle Friday as Chicago police charged two teen-age brothers in the boy's execution. Early Friday morning, detectives arrested Craig Hardaway, 16, and his unidentified 14-year-old brother at their home in Roseland, a community of ramshackle frame houses on Chicago's South Side.

Federal authorities moved Thursday to dismantle the leadership of one of the nation's most highly structured street gangs, Chicago's Gangster Disciples--a narcotics powerhouse that allegedly financed a political action committee that sponsored huge downtown rallies and at least two City Council candidacies. Armed with indictments from a federal grand jury, police and federal agents made arrests throughout the city's South Side and suburbs, as well as within the state prison system.

When Wallace (Gator) Bradley takes to the streets of Chicago's South Side to campaign for a seat on the City Council, he is swarmed by crowds that most urban politicians would dread. They sidle up from all sides, young men in floppy basketball sneakers, young men in expensive jogging suits, young men with pagers, young men with tilted baseball caps adorned with paste jewelry. Down Tobacco Road, down Muddy Waters Drive, they mob Bradley as he passes, shouting "What up?"

Some of the city's most notorious street gangs are infiltrating the Police Department here, and officials can't do much about it. Until gang members in blue break a law, they are protected by their union contract and the right to associate with whomever they please, officials said. In the last three years, at least 15 police officers have been charged with crimes, forced to resign or investigated for membership in a street gang, the Chicago Sun-Times said in its Sunday editions.

On street corners from "the Hundreds" to "the Hole," Larry Hoover was known in this city's cocaine markets as the Chairman of the Board. He may have shared a nickname with singer Frank Sinatra, but prosecutors here say he had far more in common with mobster-bootlegger Al Capone.

A businessman and six reputed leaders of the El Rukn street gang were convicted by a federal jury Sunday of taking part in a murderous conspiracy to distribute drugs in Chicago. "This trial took out the day-to-day street leaders, the most violent people," Assistant U.S. Atty. William Hogan said. "We eliminated the entire upper echelon of the El Rukn organization."

Three times a day, gathering on a housing project commons where even police move with caution, men wearing orange armbands have stood their ground this week to watch out for the children. They have been there on unbearable mornings when "the hawk"--Chicago's infamous lakefront winter wind--roared past the eroding brick towers like an invisible subway. And they have returned twice each afternoon, when the cold burns off just enough for the neighborhood's gun-toting teenagers to settle old scores.

Gangster Disciples chief Larry Hoover, compared by prosecutors here to 1930s mobster Al Capone, was convicted Friday on federal conspiracy charges that could bring a mandatory life sentence. Such a sentence, authorities hope, will derail his direction of a narcotics empire and a political action committee. Hoover, 46, showed no surprise at the verdicts. Six others, including Hoover's vice chairman, Gregory Shell, also were convicted. No sentencing date has been set.

On street corners from "the Hundreds" to "the Hole," Larry Hoover was known in this city's cocaine markets as the Chairman of the Board. He may have shared a nickname with singer Frank Sinatra, but prosecutors here say he had far more in common with mobster-bootlegger Al Capone.

A gang member who pumped three bullets into an 11-year-old boy to keep him from talking to police about a gang killing was convicted of first-degree murder. Cragg Hardaway, 18, convicted Friday, faces up to 100 years in prison when he is sentenced April 1. His brother, Derrick Hardaway, 16, was sentenced to 45 years for his role in the slaying. In August 1994, Robert "Yummy" Sandifer was being sought by police in the slaying of a 14-year-old girl, a bystander in a botched gang shooting.

Some of the city's most notorious street gangs are infiltrating the Police Department here, and officials can't do much about it. Until gang members in blue break a law, they are protected by their union contract and the right to associate with whomever they please, officials said. In the last three years, at least 15 police officers have been charged with crimes, forced to resign or investigated for membership in a street gang, the Chicago Sun-Times said in its Sunday editions.

Federal authorities moved Thursday to dismantle the leadership of one of the nation's most highly structured street gangs, Chicago's Gangster Disciples--a narcotics powerhouse that allegedly financed a political action committee that sponsored huge downtown rallies and at least two City Council candidacies. Armed with indictments from a federal grand jury, police and federal agents made arrests throughout the city's South Side and suburbs, as well as within the state prison system.

A gang member who pumped three bullets into an 11-year-old boy to keep him from talking to police about a gang killing was convicted of first-degree murder. Cragg Hardaway, 18, convicted Friday, faces up to 100 years in prison when he is sentenced April 1. His brother, Derrick Hardaway, 16, was sentenced to 45 years for his role in the slaying. In August 1994, Robert "Yummy" Sandifer was being sought by police in the slaying of a 14-year-old girl, a bystander in a botched gang shooting.

City and federal officials here are encouraging 160 young men from two of the city's roughest public-housing projects to steal, shoot and run into the dead of night. It's not gang-related corruption. It's anti-gang basketball. In the latest manifestation of an idea that has been keeping ghetto youths from turning to crime in Maryland for four years, the Chicago Housing Authority last week began sponsoring a basketball league that plays its games between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.

For three and a half years, police Detective Bobby Drozd roamed the city's wretched back alleys, accepting firearms, money and favors from the drug lords who laid claim to a forlorn pocket of urban America. Drozd was dirty; so dirty that cops who were once his friends reported him to Internal Affairs. But Internal Affairs knew all about Bobby Drozd, a burly officer who was risking his life and reputation to bring a gang of thugs to its knees.

Voters Tuesday turned down bids by two gang-linked politicians to win City Council seats and reelected Mayor Richard M. Daley to a third term. Chicagoans voted in paltry numbers as more than 1,000 police officers patrolled to keep a lid on Election Day harassment at polling places.