They knew the cops wouldn’t come when called. So starting in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the tenant leaders at Robert Taylor Homes came up with alternatives. “Police ain’t interested in coming here for every little thing that was going on,” Lucille Rick told sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh. “So me and Edith and Caroline and [other elected Local Advisory Council officers], we just tried to, you know, make sure that they came when really bad stuff happened.”
In the 1960s many resident leaders had joined informal “Mama’s Mafias,” keeping an eye on each other’s kids and challenging the youth gangs that caused trouble and committed occasional crimes. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, these leaders were taxing their ingenuity to deal with situations when they couldn’t expect any police help. They found resources wherever they could. For instance, many men lived at Robert Taylor “off the books,” spending their days in public areas away from their apartments, because welfare recipients weren’t allowed to have a man in the house. Wyona Wilson (Venkatesh changed the names and addresses of the residents) found a way, soon adopted in other buildings, to turn this problem into an asset. She agreed not to turn the men in, provided that they locate and punish burglars, wife beaters, and other troublemakers as she directed.
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Robert Taylor residents’ “indigenous enforcement efforts,” as Venkatesh calls them, varied with the problem. “Group patrols and watches were typically more suitable for locating incidents of fire, theft, and sexual abuse inside buildings; tenant leaders called public meetings to gain information on the whereabouts of suspected criminals; a phone call to a broker who had connections with police officers was the preferred strategy for rapid response to violent crime.” Both the residents and Venkatesh agree that these strategies were an “imperfect substitute” for mainstream law enforcement. But given that mainstream law enforcement wasn’t coming anyway, being able to do something gave people self- confidence. “There may have been crime and vandalism during [the 1970s],” writes Venkatesh, “but individuals also expressed a deep sense of control over their local habitat.”
“Oh yeah, and you had [Louisa] Lenard making African-style clothing, and then Mary Watkins was making clothes for babies on the same floor, and every weekend you could just walk up and down that damn floor and go clothes shopping. See, that was nice because lot of us didn’t have cars so we couldn’t drive to the stores. And people who stole stuff, like shoes or shirts, they’d bring their shit to that floor too, so you had like the Maxwell Street Market going on right here.” In a nearby building, Paulina Collins hired women to help her make and sell “baked lunches” to tenants, janitors, construction workers, CHA management, and police officers.
Just when the residents needed outside help more than ever, they got less. The Reagan administration cut the federal housing budget by 76 percent. The CHA’s operating budget declined by 87 percent, and the agency’s priorities for what money it had left shifted away from maintenance and community involvement. In the late 1980s CHA chairman Vincent Lane favored “gang suppression” policing techniques that gave low priority to prevention or community involvement. These techniques, Venkatesh writes, included heavy surveillance, unannounced apartment searches, stop-and-frisk actions, and dispersing gang members from public spaces. They didn’t include any kind of community policing. “Neither the CHA nor the Chicago police were adequately incorporating preventive policing in which the police patrolled on foot to interact and become familiar with residents, street-corner dwellers, and storeowners. When foot patrols were incorporated, as in the 1994 Building Interdiction Team Effort (BITE) program, they were used in a largely token manner, in the form of occasional discussions by law enforcement officers with tenants who happened to be nearby.” As a result, “the gulf between tenants and the law enforcement community widened” just at the time it needed to be closed. Police became less willing than before to carry out their part of the long-standing brokered arrangement.
“‘I didn’t shoot him,’ said Anthony, lowering his head and walking over to the couch.
“‘Yeah, well, you can get the fuck out, nigger. Get the fuck out of my house, you bitch. I’m bringing home money around this motherfucker, you ain’t making shit. You can’t even feed your own family, shit. You just a bitch.’
