New gun study

[2aguy]

Brain...this is the help they give a democrat alderwoman to get elected and what she does for them....again, guns in the hands of law abiding citizens aren't the problem......

As the Ali brothers collected thousands a week running the drug spot around Lawrence Avenue and Sheridan Road, word spread among the police to treat the two with kid gloves. A police source says that during arrests, the twins would say, “I’ll have your job. Do you know who my lawyer is? Do you know who his mama is?” The source adds, “They would mention the alderman by name. They would mention Brendan Shiller by name.”

Police and Shiller’s political opponents suspected that the alderman deliberately turned a blind eye to gang activity in order to bring the gang element into the fold and build up her voting base. “It’s what I like to call the exchange game,” says Sandra Reed, who twice lost elections to Shiller, in 1999 and 2003. “She protects the kids, even when they are doing wrong. She helps the parents. They think she is going to protect them, so they all work for her.”

Some speculate that Shiller helped Aqueela Ali fend off multiple attempts to have her and her sons evicted from their apartment at 920 West Lakeside Place, where rules prohibit criminal behavior by residents. (Shiller acknowledges she helped Ali with “housing issues.”) While it’s not entirely clear what her role was in Shiller’s political organization, Ali served as a poll watcher, an election judge, and a Shiller campaign worker since at least 2002, campaign records show. Records also show that she gathered petition signatures to get Shiller on the ballot in 2003 and 2007.

So yes...the gang members help these people get elected......

 

[2aguy]

What do you mean it doesn't sound so evil.......vicious street gangs who are responsible for the gun murder rate you keep complaining about are selecting candidates for alderman......this is why chicago has such a high murder rate, they have their minions in the Chicago City council vote against more police, use their influence to get light sentences for gun crimes, and then you say....yeah, but we need to make it harder for law abiding people to get guns...as if they are the problem....

The gang representatives conducted hourlong interviews, one after the other, talking to as many as five candidates in a single evening. Like supplicants, the politicians came into the room alone and sat before the gang representatives, who sat behind a long table. “One candidate said, ‘I feel like I’m in the hot seat,’” recalls Baskin. “And they were.”

It is statements like the one above..."...it doesn't sound so evil:" that make me take you less seriously brain....

Do you think the concerns of these gangs were better schools and lower taxes....?

The gang representatives were interested in electing aldermen sympathetic to their interests and those of their impoverished wards. As for the politicians, says Baskin, their interests essentially boiled down to getting elected or reelected. “All of [the political hopefuls] were aware of who they were meeting with,” he says. “They didn’t care. All they wanted to do was get the support.”

Baskin declined to name names, but Chicago has learned, through other sources at the meetings, the identities of some of the participants. They include: Aldermen Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward), Walter Burnett Jr. (27th), Willie Cochran (20th), and Freddrenna Lyle (6th). Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd) attended a meeting; upon realizing that the participants had close gang ties, she objected but stayed. Also attending were candidates who would go on to win their races, including Michael Chandler (24th) and Roderick Sawyer (6th). Darcel Beavers, the former 7th Ward alderman who would wind up losing her race, and Patricia Horton, a commissioner with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District who lost her bid for city clerk, also met with the group.

only a lefty/statist would turn these vicious monsters into noble community activists...and you wonder why Chicago is a shooting gallery....?

Based on the examples of the questions asked they don't sound so evil.
The former gang chiefs then peppered them with questions: What would they do about jobs? School safety? Police harassment? Help for ex-cons?

School safety is evil to you?

Lots of politicians have gone to jail for being crooked from both parties.

I can't imagine gang support does much to get one elected.

Again brain....you are either really stupid or really naive........yes.....the gangs murdering children in these neighborhoods are vitally concerned about school safety...........just fucking unbelievable.......

That is what YOUR article says. If you don't believe your own article why did you post it? Point out the evil in your article or find one that has it.

Did you read the whole article brain......at all.....? You have lawyers who are relatives of these alderman just appearing at the arrest of violent gang members..........

I read through and was surprised by the questions.

If they are protecting gangs that is evil.

Brain, there is no "if" about it.........these gangs can get guns whenever they want, they have the money and the power to make it happen, but John Q. Citizen.......has to go through an entire process and fight to get "permission" to own and then carry a gun..........

Law abiding citizens are not why the gun murder rate in chicago is so high....corrupt democrat politicians and their gang allies are....

 

[2aguy]

Actually, "liberal" is what American Conservatives actually are, they believe in the principals in the Constitution, the bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, individual liberty, and limited government hemmed in by separation of power and checks and balances......

Today, "liberal" is a word taken by big government, tax, spend and borrow lefists/statists to hide who they really are...since they represent nothing that is actually "classical liberal."

And criminals in these communities when they vote vote for democrats, not republicans which is why the democrat are pushing so hare to allow convicted felons to vote.

I really don't think any significant number of them vote.

Oh yeah......right now convicted felons can't, but they still do in chicago, and the democrat want to make it legal for them to vote....

And here is a look at gangs and politics in Chicago...and don't tell me they are helping republicans....

Gangs and Politicians in Chicago An Unholy Alliance Chicago magazine January 2012

Baskin isn’t a slick campaign strategist. He’s a former gang leader and, for several decades, a community activist who now operates a neighborhood center that aims to keep kids off the streets. Baskin has deep contacts inside the South Side’s complex network of politicians, community organizations, and street gangs. as he recalls, the inquiring candidates wanted to know: “Who do I need to be talking to so I can get the gangs on board?”


Baskin—who was himself a candidate in the 16th Ward aldermanic race, which he would lose—was happy to oblige. In all, he says, he helped broker meetings between roughly 30 politicians (ten sitting aldermen and 20 candidates for City Council) and at least six gang representatives. That claim is backed up by two other community activists, Harold Davis Jr. and Kublai K. M. Toure, who worked with Baskin to arrange the meetings, and a third participant, also a community activist, who requested anonymity. The gang representatives were former chiefs who had walked away from day-to-day thug life, but they were still respected on the streets and wielded enough influence to mobilize active gang members.


The first meeting, according to Baskin, occurred in early November 2010, right before the statewide general election; more gatherings followed in the run-up to the February 2011 municipal elections. The venues included office buildings, restaurants, and law offices. (By all accounts, similar meetings took place across the city before last year’s elections and in elections past, including after hours at the Garfield Center, a taxpayer-financed facility on the West Side that is used by the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.)


At some of the meetings, the politicians arrived with campaign materials and occasionally with aides. The sessions were organized much like corporate-style job fairs.

The gang representatives conducted hourlong interviews, one after the other, talking to as many as five candidates in a single evening. Like supplicants, the politicians came into the room alone and sat before the gang representatives, who sat behind a long table. “One candidate said, ‘I feel like I’m in the hot seat,’” recalls Baskin. “And they were.”


This is also why you have rampant gun crime in chicago...not law abiding citizens owning guns.....

Thanks for sharing. Not really surprising in a state where like 3 governors have gone to jail? A republican in there I believe. From the article it doesn't sound so evil:
The former gang chiefs then peppered them with questions: What would they do about jobs? School safety? Police harassment? Help for ex-cons?

I don't see in the article where it's democrats only doing this.

What do you mean it doesn't sound so evil.......vicious street gangs who are responsible for the gun murder rate you keep complaining about are selecting candidates for alderman......this is why chicago has such a high murder rate, they have their minions in the Chicago City council vote against more police, use their influence to get light sentences for gun crimes, and then you say....yeah, but we need to make it harder for law abiding people to get guns...as if they are the problem....

The gang representatives conducted hourlong interviews, one after the other, talking to as many as five candidates in a single evening. Like supplicants, the politicians came into the room alone and sat before the gang representatives, who sat behind a long table. “One candidate said, ‘I feel like I’m in the hot seat,’” recalls Baskin. “And they were.”

It is statements like the one above..."...it doesn't sound so evil:" that make me take you less seriously brain....

Do you think the concerns of these gangs were better schools and lower taxes....?

The gang representatives were interested in electing aldermen sympathetic to their interests and those of their impoverished wards. As for the politicians, says Baskin, their interests essentially boiled down to getting elected or reelected. “All of [the political hopefuls] were aware of who they were meeting with,” he says. “They didn’t care. All they wanted to do was get the support.”

Baskin declined to name names, but Chicago has learned, through other sources at the meetings, the identities of some of the participants. They include: Aldermen Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward), Walter Burnett Jr. (27th), Willie Cochran (20th), and Freddrenna Lyle (6th). Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd) attended a meeting; upon realizing that the participants had close gang ties, she objected but stayed. Also attending were candidates who would go on to win their races, including Michael Chandler (24th) and Roderick Sawyer (6th). Darcel Beavers, the former 7th Ward alderman who would wind up losing her race, and Patricia Horton, a commissioner with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District who lost her bid for city clerk, also met with the group.

only a lefty/statist would turn these vicious monsters into noble community activists...and you wonder why Chicago is a shooting gallery....?

Based on the examples of the questions asked they don't sound so evil.
The former gang chiefs then peppered them with questions: What would they do about jobs? School safety? Police harassment? Help for ex-cons?

School safety is evil to you?

Lots of politicians have gone to jail for being crooked from both parties.

I can't imagine gang support does much to get one elected.

this is how they get people to vote.....

But it may have been Ali’s choice of residence that provided her with the most political firepower. Her building is one of the largest Section 8 facilities in Uptown, home to between 800 and 1,000 residents.

Ali had clout and the ability to sway public opinion. She was the leader of the building’s tenants’ association board and, perhaps most important, the mother of Rahiem and Rahmon. “You’re talking about the mother of the most well-known gangbangers in the neighborhood,” one officer says. “When she knocks on someone’s door, do you think those people are going to say no?” (Ali did not respond to requests for comment.)

In a ward where the difference between winning and losing can be a few hundred votes, an election can turn on a campaign’s ability to win particular blocks or buildings. For example, when Shiller was first elected alderman in 1987, she won by just 498 votes. In 2007, her last election, she beat the challenger, James Cappleman, by a mere 700 votes, fewer than the number of residents living at 920 West Lakeside.

 

[2aguy]

And here is another way the get their political minions elected...

A Latin King, interviewed at Cook County Jail, recalls how the top leader of his gang, the Corona, ordered every member in his area to vote for Ricardo Muñoz, the 22nd Ward alderman. “Every chapter had to vote for that guy, anyone who was eligible to vote,” says the Latin King. “That was a direct order. That means you can’t say no. If you do, you face a violation”—typically a beating, or worse.

He estimates that the gang delivered hundreds of votes, maybe even a thousand or more, in one of Muñoz’s elections in the 1990s. Moreover, he says, members were also directed—under the threat of punishment—to pass out campaign flyers for Muñoz and walk around carrying his signs. They were instructed to wear their Sunday best: ties, khakis, trench coats. “No thug clothes,” he recalls.

 

[2aguy]

And this is why there is so much gun violence in Chicago....the political minions of the gangs blocking police efforts...and you can bet they vote against hiring more police officers....

Indeed, crime in the heart of Little Village is higher than in much of the rest of the city. Statistics show that the police district that covers 26th Street and nearby parts of the 22nd Ward had the ninth-highest number of reported violent crimes and the fifth-highest number of homicides citywide in 2011.

But, as Montes points out, there are no surveillance cameras posted anywhere along 26th Street. He blames Ricardo Muñoz, the alderman for Little Village. Muñoz, an admitted ex–gang member, has served on the City Council since 1993. Critics cite the alderman’s well-established ties to the Latino gangs in Little Village and also note that Muñoz’s father and his nephew were, on separate occasions, arrested for trafficking fake IDs.

Montes, a gadfly who frequently holds protests to focus attention on the lack of police blue-light cameras in his ward, suspects that Muñoz has intentionally kept cameras out to help protect the gangs—a position shared by several law enforcement sources and Muñoz’s various political opponents. (The installation of surveillance cameras at high-crime corners, according to police figures, has cut drug-related crime by 76 percent and so-called quality-of-life crime by 46 percent. Aldermen can pay for the cameras out of the more than $1 million in discretionary funds they receive every year. Muñoz, however, hasn’t bought one.)

Over time, Montes has gathered more than 1,500 signatures of Little Village residents and business owners supporting the installation of cameras on 26th Street. “My question is: Why does [Muñoz] oppose cameras so much?” Montes says. “Why would you oppose these cameras when you have high crime in your area? You’re the alderman. You see crime going on. Why does he ignore it?”