Neighborhood News

Published April 27, 2018 By Justin Kerr

The 12th Ward office is preparing for forcible entry and inspection of a designated gang house at 3629 S. Wood St. after a court hearing on Thursday, April 26, resulted in another no-show of the property's owner, said 12th Ward Chief of Staff Samie Martinez. "I hope the owner will show up after they break down the doors, then we can talk," Martinez said in postings in the McKinley Park Neighborhood Watch group on Facebook.

On May 11, City of Chicago officials will enter the home to inspect it, with "break-in authority," Martinez said. Chicago Police Department officers from the 9th District will accompany them. This follows extensive unsuccessful efforts to contact the property owner, listed in public records as Julio Zamudio, who has failed to show up to court dates and has been unreachable and unresponsive, despite multiple contact attempts at several addresses, Martinez said.

The court-approved action follows a string of problems reported in and near the property, including drive-by shootings, gang graffiti and vandalism to street lights. The latter includes multiple incidents in the summer of 2017 when power was cut to the entire block of street lights by breaking into a street light pole across from the property.

The only attendee at the court hearing representing the property was a banker from Chase bank, who attested that the mortgage on the property was in good standing, Martinez said. The pending inspection "should definitely get the owner's attention and help to evict the tenants," he said.

In the Facebook message thread, other users noted the possibility that evicted gang members would simply rent elsewhere in the neighborhood. Martinez said this has been a recent problem, and that the 12th Ward was able to prevent one known gang-connected family from renting near West 34th Place and South Wood Street by communicating with the property owner. However, "those success stories are few and unlikely," Martinez said.

Gang activity in the McKinley Park neighborhood was also represented within data from the Chicago Police Department resulting from a compelled release of information thanks to reporting by Mick Dumke of ProPublica Illinois.

As noted by Dumke's reporting, the data set comprising Chicago's "gang database" — part of the massive Citizen and Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) data warehouse — contains numerous and obvious inaccuracies, and is inevitably adversely impacting innocent individuals who are incorrectly listed within it.

The City of Chicago fought release of this information and continues to refuse to provide specific information about how it is used, who is on the list, what standards are used to get someone on the list and how innocent listed individuals can get off the list.

ProPublica Illinois released a redacted version of this data set, including gang database listings for Beat 912, which covers the McKinley Park neighborhood. More information is available in the online ProPublica Data Store. Keeping the above caveats and an understanding of the inaccuracy of this data in mind, these entries in Chicago's gang database for Beat 912 are presented here:

In the data set, for race, "WWH" means white Hispanic, "WHI" means white, "BLK" means black and "WBH" means black Hispanic.

In this article, the coverage of the gang database release only relates to coverage of 3629 S. Wood St. by virtue of its gang-related topic: There was no indication that the 12th Ward action against the property has a connection with CLEAR gang data or access to it.