On Murderers and Babysitters (Part Three)

There is a postscript to this story that explains why I added the word "babysitter" to the title of these blogs.

I had maintained contact with Ike along with his dedicated lawyer,  Aviva Futorian. I remember one visit at Pontiac when Ike was led out in chains to talk with us through glass. He was intensely aware of his “slave-like” status and told me he was deeply embarrassed. He didn’t want to be seen in chains and we found discussions labored and the visit didn’t last long. We did talk about my six year old son Jess.  Ike’s art gave meaning to his life and my little Jess had artistic talent.  Ike had sent Jess a picture and Jess drew one for him along with a few words that a six year old could muster to someone in such an incomprehensible situation.

Ike's letter to my son, Jess

It was at this Pontiac visit that Ike told me that he would not be able to send any more pictures to Jess since his pencils had been taken away from him as possible “weapons” and he was unable to draw with the crude colorless implements they allowed him to have.  

As someone who had killed a prison official Ike had to be constantly aware of threats to his life by correctional officers. His treatment by guards was hostile and at times cruel.  Taking away his colored pencils seemed to me mainly about breaking his spirit.

Things changed a few years later. As Ike sat on death row, Illinois Governor George Ryan became aware of the torture of black gang members by Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge. Several of these men who had been sentenced to death were exonerated by DNA evidence. Ryan ordered hearings to be held on every inmate on death row to allow testimony, mainly from victims, on whether the Governor should grant clemency.  

Two motivations drove me to show up to testify on Ike’s behalf. The nature of his trial had convinced me that some ways had to be found to counter the reign of stereotypes and demonization of gang trials.  And second, my own interactions with him had taught me Ike was not an evil monster, despite having committed evil acts. He was more than one thing and there was a depth of humanity to a man who interacted so sensitively with my son. I had found Ike was likeable and I believed he could be redeemed and rehabilitated.

I showed up at the state office building where the hearing was to be held and entered a room packed with prison guards and officials. They were lining up to testify and filled with hate. One mid level corrections bureaucrat said “Easley must be killed before he kills again.” The testimony went on for a couple of hours before the chair introduced Ike’s new appointed attorney who was visibly intimidated by the show of force by dozens of armed correctional officials. 

His comments are a good example of what passes for a legal defense in many gang trials. He was appointed to make the case for clemency.  I’ll repeat all of his comments verbatim. He said “Here is Professor Hagedorn who will say something on Ike’s behalf.”  That was it, his whole case. 

Everyone’s eyes glared at me as I took the stand. My Oppositional Defiant Disorder kicked in and I briefly summarized the unfairness of Ike’s trial. But my main argument was that this man, who was labeled a monster who had to be killed, was a human being with much good in him. I talked about his abused childhood and feelings of abandonment. I recalled his peacemaking actions in the prison. But I mainly talked about his exchanging letters and art work with my young son. Why would you kill someone who could show such feelings of empathy? Why not treat his emotional distress and let him channel his anger into art? 

There were some jeers but mostly angry stares implying “how dare you defend this monster.”  But the room was stunned when I concluded that if Ike Easley could be paroled and given another chance at life I would welcome him as a babysitter for my son.  I remember a couple of journalists running out of the room to phone in the story and a few newspapers reported my comments. The correctional officials just looked at me in disbelief. My testimony made no sense to them whatsoever. I lived in a different world than they did. Some frames never interact.

Ike only was granted clemency since Gov. Ryan commuted sentences for everyone on death row.  If you haven’t read Ryan’s remarkable clemency statement, it can be found here. If Ryan had looked at clemency case by case I’m quite sure he would have succumbed to pressures by the correctional bureaucracy and Ike would not have been spared.

It was Ike Easley’s trial and humanity that put me on the path to confront stereotypes and demonization at criminal trials.  To me justice in gang trials means two things. First jurors should decide cases and sentences on evidence not on fear and false generalizations. Second gang members are human beings.  Doing evil doesn’t mean you are evil. My empathy for the families of victims does not stop my feeling empathy for a gang member who killed. Another word for “murderer,” after all,  is “human being.”  And I know that is hard for most people to accept.

Laquan McDonald and the CPD's Responsibility for Chicago's Gang Problem

      An appropriate uniform design for the CPD

Internal Chicago Police Department documents claimed recently that gangs were attempting to use the protests of the murder of Laquan McDonald to commit crimes and attack police!  Huh?  

What Laquan's murder actually shows is the culpability of the Chicago Police for the severity of Chicago's gang problem.

Police culture in Chicago has always been ugly, racist, and corrupt. It's history, Richard Lindberg summarizes in his book on the CPD is "to serve and collect."  The problem isn't really accountability. The CPD has always been supremely and supinely accountable..... but to the machine not the people. 

My conclusion from more than a decade of research on Chicago gangs is this: corruption and brutality by the CPD  are principle reasons why Chicago has had such an entrenched gang problem. 

Lets look back.  A major reason why the Outfit, Chicago's mafia, has been around now for more than a century is their cozy relationship to the top echelons of the machine and the CPD. Al Capone was best buds with Mayor Big Bill Thompson in the 1920s.  For decades the Outfit got away with murder.....  literally.  Here is what the reform commissioner OW Wilson said in the early 1960s about his CPD's record clearing Outfit murders: 

           Since 1919 there have been 876 gangland-style slayings in the Chicagoland area. [Of these] only two                                have been cleared by arrest and conviction of the killers.

The CPD did more than allow Outfit hitmen to operate with impunity.  In 1997, Chicago Police Superintendent and champion of "community policing" resigned when it was disclosed he vacationed with Outfit figures. In my book, The In$ane Chicago Way, I report Rodriguez's protection of an Outfit hit man, Pierre Zonis, who was also a Chicago police officer. And then there was Deputy Superintendent and Chief of Detectives William Hanhardt who was convicted in 2001 on running jewel theft ring for the Outfit. And don't forget influential Alderman Fred Roti who was indicted in 1990 for fixing a murder trial, racketeering, and extortion.  The FBI publicly named him as mafia "made man'" while Alderman.  The Outfit has persisted for a century in no small part to active support by the CPD and the machine.

The CPD's policy toward African American street gangs, on the other hand, was brutal repression and lawless violence.  Corruption didn't stop, but as I conclude in In$ane, changed its nature and vastly expanded during the war on drugs. When the gangs took over retail drug sales, the Outfit did not also order their loyal servants in the CPD to protect the new vice lords and gangsters. As the "Don," a blue blood Outfit leader told me in an interview for In$ane, "Without the cops none of this could happen." The gangs had to do it from the bottom up while the Outfit did it from the top down as our study of police corruption showed.

However, the main way the CPD has fueled Chicago's gang problem has been by its brutal and lawless behavior. The outright assassination  of Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton by Chicago Police was only a sign of horrors to come. We can never forget how Jon Burge tortured more than a hundred African American gang members.  No officer reported him, though the screams could be heard throughout the station house. Burge represented the attitude by Chicago Police and their machine masters that extreme brutality on black people was acceptable.  To the CPD and machine, black lives have never mattered. Oh, buy off their votes when necessary, but treat them as less-than-human on the streets. If you were repeatedly beaten and locked in cages like a dog,  how would you respond? The history of  racist hostility by the CPD  explains the strength of gang culture in Chicago. And that brings us back to Laquan.

There are three important points about the murder of Laquan McDonald. First is the assumption by officer Jason Van Dyke that gunning down a black man would be acceptable. "I feared for my life" is now the standard response of police killers. Before they were caught on camera, they got away with it — and often still do.

Second, there were good reasons for him to think he could get away with it.  Just as fellow officers heard the screams of Burge's torture victims,  look at all the officers in the video allowing Van Dyke to kill. When gang members are present at a murder, prosecutors charge them all as party to a crime and they are deemed by law to be as guilty of the murder as the shooter.  The CPD may be upset that the community has a no-snitching culture, but the only effective no-snitching culture in Chicago is the blue code of silence.

Finally, States Attorney Anita Alvarez, McCarthy and Emanuel were aware of the murder and kept it under wraps.  John Kass points out that if the video was made public before the mayoral election, Emanuel likely would have lost to Chuy Garcia. If there wasn't a storm of protest and a "smoking gun" video do you think they would have ever fired Van Dyke or indicted him? Even Burge was never indicted for his tortures.   Laquan's murder was not an aberration but business as usual by the CPD.

Protestors are filling the streets. The CPD's ploy to "look out for gangs using the protests to attack officers" fools no one.  It has been the long standing violence by police against African Americans that has fueled Chicago gang hostility and fanned violence in the black community.  To understand why black youth are so hostile just watch the video.  The BlackLivesMatters movement has the capacity to focus the anger on the streets toward police reform and the machine.

A measure of justice for Laquan should include the indictment of all those police present at the shooting who did not immediately arrest Van Dyke. And it should include the resignation of Alvarez, McCarthy, and Emanuel for trying to cover up a murder.

Talking Common Sense About Gangs and Violence

The violence problem in Chicago is mainly about race, not gangs, guns, laws, or cartels.  

That’s what I’ve learned from two decades of gang research in Chicago.  Today there are more Latino than African American gang members and gangs in Chicago.  Yet nearly 80% of homicide victims and offenders are African American.  Despite this, CPD Superintendent McCarthy and Mayor Emanuel continue to blame “gangs" and avoid linking homicide to Chicago’ history of racial oppression.

Other conventional explanations for homicide also fall flat.  There is no evidence that homicide fluctuates with a rise or fall in the number of guns, which have plagued our streets for decades.  The  Chicago Reporter recently pointed out harsher penalties for gun laws are also uncorrelated with homicide drops.

The notion that our homicide rate is a product of drug cartel rivalries is similarly specious.  The cartels are Mexican and their local distribution thrives on kinship connections. The cartels have been at war in Mexico for nearly a decade yet their violence has not spilled over even to the other side of the border, much less Chicago.  El Paso, only a bridge away from violence-plagued Juarez,  is statistically one of the safest cities in America. The DEA may claim violence in Spike Lee’s “Chiraq” is about drug cartel rivalries, but their self-serving proclamations stretch credulity. 

Our homicide rate, with two small spikes and dips, has stayed constant for more than a decade. With an alarming number of gunshot wounds, it makes sense that random fluctuations in the number of people dying of gun injuries account for occasional increases and drops in deaths. Our homicide rate has settled in at about four times higher than New York City and half of Detroit’s. There is no evidence law enforcement tactics or interventions by groups such as CureViolence have had any measurable impact on our city’s homicide rate since its 50% decline from 1992 to 2004.

Superintendent McCarthy blames the gangs for violence but maybe he doesn’t understand that gangs in Chicago are radically different than in the 1990s. My book, The In$ane Chicago Way, explains how organized wars,  led by incarcerated gang chiefs,  brought homicide levels in the 1990s to twice as high as they are today.  Those wars didn’t end because of any new police tactics, but rather exhausted and fractured the gangs, breaking the hold of the old gang leaders. Today’s black gang members particularly are rebellious even against their old gang chiefs. 

Current research by Robert Aspholm and others finds violence is driven by spontaneous,  local incidents, sometimes gang related, sometimes not.  Drill raps on YouTube often replace memorized gang “laws and prayers” as motivations for violence.  What underlies the shootings in black communities are the same factors that for a century have produced higher rates of African American violence:  the daily humiliations of powerless, desperate, unemployed black men.  

From the 1919 race riots to the years of restrictive covenants and “hidden violence” to the building and then destruction of CHA housing projects there has been an unbroken line of oppressive conditions in Chicago’s black communities.  Have things gotten better?  Despite a growing middle class, the black poverty rate has increased since 1960 to reach one third of all African Americans. Indices of segregation have remained unchanged since the 1960s and the black unemployment rate has doubled. The pool of young, poor, unemployed black men are still on street corners and they are killing each other as this 2012 Chicago Reader graphic shows.

The attempt to blame the gangs fundamentally diverts attention from  the fact that to McCarthy’s police — and the Emanuel machine to which he owes allegiance — black lives don’t really matter. In the 1990s CPD clearance rates for homicide ranged from 64% to 69%. The Superintendent admitted that by September 2015, only 23% of all homicides were cleared. Read that again: less than one in four homicides resulted in an arrest.   When the gangs were at war in the 1990s it was relatively easy to figure out who was doing the shooting.  Despite gang claims they don’t snitch to police, court records show they did, pointing their fingers at rival gang shooters. Today, shootings are more spontaneous, and less controlled, making them in a way more dangerous. Young men hand out violent street justice as retaliation since police can’t seem to find the actual offenders.

This means McCarthy should stop his out of date tactics of threatening old gang leaders to control youthful members over which they no longer exercise control. His “Call Ins” claimed their first death October 13 when Tracey Morgan was gunned down after a meeting with CPD officers. While there have been persistent attempts by gangs to minimize their own violence, from the People & Folks coalitions to Spanish Growth & Development,  gang leaders today simply do not have the legitimacy, organization, or authority to stop the shootings.

Blaming the gangs also diverts attention away from police brutality and corruption. Jon Burge’s legacy has not been forgotten and serious attempts to bring real accountability to McCarthy’s CPD have been largely frustrated. My book demonstrated how police corruption helps gangs thrive. While good police work is part of the solution, bad police work is part of the problem.

All violence is paid for, the philosopher Pierre Bourdieu said. Chicago’s “structural violence” of racism and poverty is coming back to haunt us in many ways, including the hostility of poor young black men.  The rebellion that has been going on in Ferguson for the past year may be a portent of the fire next time in Chicago. 

Here is the uncomfortable truth: There is no easy answer to violence in Chicago.  Our city has to soberly confront its legacy of racism in employment, housing, education, and policing. McCarthy and Emanuel should stop blaming the gangs and calling for new repressive legislation. If the mayor is serious about reducing violence he needs to steeply increase investment in black communities. The best way to prevent violence is to provide hope to the desperate underclass of African Americans in our city. 

The Mexican Mafia

This summer I testified at a RICO trial of two Mexican Mafia members in Del Rio, Texas. It was an unsettling experience, both in getting a clear look at the day to day work of the Texas Mexican Mafia, the Mexikanemi,  but also the actions and rhetoric of the government prosecution. The trial, if you can call it that, was little more than an act of ceremonial injustice.  When it comes to gangs in courts, apparently anything goes:  lies and perjury, bribery,  and making up facts that fit a demonizing prosecutorial story line.

In most testimony I give at trials I dispel stereotypes of a prosecutor alleging gangs are highly organized conspiracies, hierarchal organizations of evil.  In fact, most gangs are loosely organized, unsupervised kids and violence is almost always an act of desperation, anger,  or passion.  For example, a prosecutor often alleges a murder took place so the offender can "rise in rank in the gang" even when there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate it.  When gangs are involved, stereotypes quickly replace evidence.

But in this case I took a very different and, for me, troubling stance.  The US Attorney alleged the defendant was a Lieutenant in the Mexikanemi, and had ordered "hits" for six people at a "junta" or meeting near San Antonio.  The intended victims had failed to pay the "dime" or ten percent tax all drug dealers had to pay in "830" a Mexikanemi-controlled area around San Antonio and Del Rio.  What evidence did the government present? No audio or video recordings, no one who wore a wire, no non-gang testimony.  The only witnesses to the "conspiracy" were several former Mexikanemi soldiers who struck deals — one guy got two years for a murder — to testify they were at a mass meeting where the hits were openly ordered.  The plea deals were so obvious that at one point, the defense attorney told me,  a gang witness looked at the US Attorney and asked if he was telling his story right!

My testimony went to the contradiction in the government's case. They asserted both that the Mexikanemi was a secretive,  highly structured organization AND that a mass meeting of leaders and soldiers was held where ranked members ordered hits in front of a big group of members.  I testified that when "business" is being discussed in most structured gangs, care is typically taken to protect leadership. Potential prosecution revolves around snitches and it seemed "crazy" to me that multiple hits would be discussed in front of so many people. The "junta," I concluded,  was likely a figment of the US Attorney's imagination, invented in order to better make his case. 

The appointed defense attorneys seemed ill-equipped to provide a serious defense.  The jury returned their verdict in only a few hours,  but the verdict in this case was in before the trial even began. The trial was not merely Kafkaesque, but an elaborate myth rather than the reality of justice.  According to Meyer and Rowan, belief in a myth like "justice is being done" acts to legitimate law enforcement institutions. But this belief in "justice" need not have much to do with facts, the evidence, or any rational notion of "truth."  What is important is the appearance of justice,  a myth of the US Attorney as an avenging angel for the public, doing battle with Satan himself, in the case the evil Mexikanemi.   In his closing, the southern Texas US Attorney began with the trusted cliché of terrorists and 9-11 and predictably proclaimed the absolute evil of the defendants. He said conviction was a "no-brainer." 

He was right. Trials like this are not about facts but about the potency of dominant myths to carry the day, or at least a jury. "Gangs" are reduced to images draped in evil and the prosecution case reinforces “implicit stereotypes" of them, as I mentioned in an earlier post.  Uncontested, dominant myths always win.

I had a close look at how the Mexikanemi works and indeed they are a organization that regulates the drug trade through violence.  But while the death toll mounts on the Mexican side of the border, the notion of a "spill-over" of violence is contradicted by the facts.  San Antonio's homicide rate has fallen to all time lows, with only four, yes, that's "4" drug related homicides in all of 2009.  Del Rio, a border city of 35,000, had only one homicide all of last year.  El Paso ranks as one of the nations SAFEST cities: Chicago's homicide rate is TWENTY TIMES higher.  While one homicide is too many,  the drug gangs in south Texas, like the Mexikanemi meet regularly between themselves and there are no drug wars as between cartels in Mexico.  Murder should always be prosecuted, but homicide is not a south Texas problem on the same magnitude as poverty, unemployment, health care, and our obsession with foreign wars. 

This data puts the government's hyperbolic prosecution of gangs in perspective.   We need to sadly recognize that our "law enforcement" agencies have too often produced perjured testimony and some prosecutors will do almost anything to get a conviction.  In Chicago, Police Commander Jon Burge, routinely used torture on gang members to produce convictions for prosecutors who apparently didn't care how he got the confessions.   

Today gangs and terrorists have become so evil in media and law enforcement eyes that torture, bribery, and lies are accepted as necessary to "prosecute" justice.  "Execution first, trial later" said the Queen of Hearts. This is why I do this blog: especially in court, we need research, not stereotypes.