Eighteen months ago, the 22nd Police District on the southwest side became one of five prototypes for CAPS, the city’s new community policing program. No longer would officers be pulled routinely off their beats; instead, they’d stay put while emergencies were answered by roving “rapid response” cars. The beat officers’ duty was to establish and maintain close links with the neighborhoods they protected.
The Prestas, who operate a small neighborhood bookstore, concluded that the public wasn’t showing up because handbills advertising the meeting were being poorly distributed by the police. The Prestas took over the publicity. They cadged lists from a couple of home-owners’ groups and augmented them with the names of people who had applied to 19th Ward Alderman Ginger Rugai for permits to hold block parties. Eventually the Prestas set up a system of 40 block captains, covering about one-third of the beat, who take fliers door to door. In addition, Michelle mails out some 40 announcements to people she knows are interested.
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The police make announcements and present the neighbors with a map detailing robberies, burglaries, auto thefts, and drug arrests from the previous month. Most of the evening, however, is taken up by residents airing their concerns. These have ranged from drugs and the intrusion of the Black Disciples street gang on the beat’s east end to more mundane matters; in September, two mothers rambled on and on about their kids’ stolen bikes.
The neighbors feel they get action in return. When informed that kids were painting a viaduct with graffiti and throwing rocks, Desch, partner Larry Stankus, and a third officer made several passes by the site. “That cleared things up,” says Stankus, “and at the next meeting they actually applauded us.” The September meeting ended with a march past a drug house just as some tactical officers swooped down to make arrests. The raid was coincidental, says Desch, but the marchers were delighted.
“We had it on good authority that one of the stations they wanted to close was the 22nd District,” recalls Connaughton. The station, housed in a small building on 111th Street that has no lockup, had been shuttered for four years in the early 1970s, and there were fears it might be sacrificed again. “We felt that if we lost the station, we’d lose the foundation of the neighborhood,” says John Presta. By now, the Prestas’ store had been burglarized a couple of times and they’d both joined the BAPA safety committee. The committee, demanding an open police station and a chance to experiment with community policing, gathered 15,000 signatures and staged a demonstration that blocked the street in front of the station. One Friday hundreds of southwest-siders flooded the City Hall switchboard with save-the-station pleas.
One balmy Friday evening in late August the Prestas put together a “unity rally” at tiny Graver Park, beset by gangs and drug dealing. About 100 CAPS supporters, many of them parents with their kids, showed for speeches then lit candles and walked the adjacent streets, paying special attention to a couple of drug houses. Recently the Prestas led some marches around Saint Margaret of Scotland Church, blocks infested with Black Disciples. “Down with drugs, up with hope,” the marchers chanted, as gang members taunted, “Up with drugs, down with hope.”
Last Thursday, Mayor Daley chose Saint Margaret of Scotland Church in beat 2213 as the site of a press conference in which he announced increases in police manpower and lauded the CAPS program. He noted that the day before, a foot patrolman acting on a tip from a woman he’d met walking his beat had arrested a suspect in the murder of an owner of Army & Lou’s, a popular restaurant in Chatham. “Most crime can be solved when the community gives information,” Daley said.
