Nobody—the press, the police, the prosecutors—was listening to the mothers in Englewood, all of whom looked at Isaac and Ricky and saw their own children. There’s no way, the mothers said, that boys that young could’ve done what they’d been accused of. They—and they alone—were convinced that the police did not in fact have Harris’s killer. No one heard them. No one listened. But four weeks after the boys’ arrest, the police found semen on Harris’s panties and quickly determined that children that young could not have produced this. All charges were dropped—and the DNA was matched to a twenty-nine-year-old man who at the time was in the county jail awaiting trial for allegedly raping three girls, two of them under thirteen. He had not been incarcerated at the time of Harris’s murder. A short time later Rush held a press conference outside the local police precinct and asked for the Department of Justice to investigate possible civil rights violations of the two boys. “Obviously, there’s a growing pattern of malfeasance, misconduct, and shoddy investigations,” he said at the time. The Ryan Harris case represented for Rush the topsy-turvy world of relations between his constituents and the police. The police, he believed, sometimes saw themselves as an occupying force, detached from the very people they were there to help.
Today Rush, dressed in an open-collared shirt and a brown blazer, chastised Kirk’s staff. “Why do you got him in a red tie and black suit?” he said, commenting on Kirk’s formal attire. “This is Englewood.” Rush then thanked Kirk for agreeing to come and asked for applause from the couple of dozen people gathered there. Kirk, his press officer, Rush and a staff person, and I loaded onto the party bus, the disco light flashing. “So this is a church bus?” Kirk joked, knowing that Rush is also a pastor. Rush laughed along with him, and asked the driver to turn off the laser lights.
We drove north up Racine Avenue, and it was apparent that there was little civic life here. It used to be that in the warm months adults would gather after work at a place called “the Hump,” a raised vacant lot across the street from two taverns. Those taverns are gone, and jobs are in short supply. What civic life remains seemed centered outside the small bodegas and currency exchanges and the storefront churches. They’re on every block, sometimes two to a block: Word and Holy Ghost Apostolic Faith Church, Life Giving Ministries Church, Travelers Rest Spiritual Church. Most of them are windowless, with locked gates pulled shut across their front doors. It’s as if even God takes precautions here.
“Bobby, what was the foundation of Englewood?” Kirk asked. Rush informed him that it had been the steel companies in the southwestern corner of the city and in northern Indiana, which in the 1960s employed 80,000 men and women and produced more steel than anywhere else in the world. Deindustrialization is a tired story, one told over and over again, and yet it has had a profound impact on vast strips of our cities. Work is the thread that holds the social fabric together, and without jobs that fabric begins to unravel. “You’re jobless, living in the land of plenty,” Rush later told me. “You’re constantly reminded that others have and you don’t.”
We passed boarded-up properties. Single-family homes. Small apartment buildings. Storefront businesses. Kirk asked about the large red X’s drawn across front doors, which looked as if someone had come in to metaphorically cross out the community. Rush explained that they were there to warn police and firemen that the structure was unsafe. His aide told Kirk that there were 3,500 vacant buildings in Englewood, that the community had never recovered from the 2008 housing crisis. “This is a despair tour,” Rush said. “What you’re going to see here is desperation, without real hope. How do you operate with individuals who don’t operate from a vantage point of hope?”
At one point during the tour we passed a fresh crime scene, where uniformed police officers were stringing yellow tape from telephone pole to fence to tree and back again. Detectives searched the ground for evidence, presumably for shell casings. Given the number of police and the presence of detectives and a police helicopter overhead, it appeared that someone may have been shot. It felt too ironic, so much so that no one really had anything to say.
Rush had designed the tour to drive by two elementary schools which had closed at the end of the year, among forty-nine the mayor deemed unworthy of remaining open because of declining enrollment, most in neighborhoods that are predominantly black and Hispanic and among the poorest in the city. It’s been a source of deep controversy, as many residents complain that the loss of a neighborhood school is yet one more brick pulled from the foundation of their neighborhood. Some argue, too, that it means their children will be transferred to schools controlled by rival gangs—though it hardly seems right that public policy should be conscribed by gang boundaries. (At the opening of the school year, just a couple of days earlier, the city was so nervous about families having to cross gang boundaries that they supplemented extra police with city workers driving up and down blocks in their street sweepers.)
The last stop was at the corner of 63rd Street and Racine, where in 1994 the city closed the El stop, which Rush sees as a kind of metaphor for the shunting aside of Englewood. He’s convinced that it’s contributed to the isolation of the community and the closing of numerous businesses which once made this stretch of avenue a place of bustling commerce.
Kirk, I’ve got to say, was a good sport. “I’m willing to play the role of the educable white guy,” he told me. “To come here with a sense of openness and humility.” Moved by what he saw, he told me at one point that he had once had a girlfriend who was Ghanaian, and, sadly, Englewood reminded him of conditions in Ghana. “I worry that this is America,” he said. “Nobody up on the North Shore [where he lives] knows about this.”
After the bus tour, Rush had arranged for a small town-hall gathering at the Englewood United Methodist Church, where members of the community—most of them activists, many of them parents of murdered children—could talk directly to Kirk, who opened it by declaring, “I don’t think we can economically survive if we’re known as one of the most violent places in America.” This drilled down to the core of their disagreement. Do you directly target the violence because it so discourages any kind of economic development? Or do you bring in jobs and rehab homes, knowing that with a sense of opportunity the violence will diminish? Those at the church told Kirk they wanted jobs and activities for the children and better housing. Deanna Woods, the aunt to Siretha White, the ten-year-old girl who had been shot at her surprise birthday party, the one Thomas had attended, wore a T-shirt that read “The Good Die Young.” Embroidered on her sleeve was the nickname of her niece: Nugget. “I am Englewood,” she declared. “When Nugget got killed we had so many cameras there. But when the cameras went away, nobody was there. All the resources we need don’t have to do with policing. Jobs is where we need to start. People need to be able to put food on the table. Put some money in these community centers.”
Kirk, who along with Rush sat behind a fold-up table, Kirk in his wheelchair, Rush in a folding seat, listening to residents, asked, “This plan of mine to destroy the Gangster Disciples, is there anyone here who agrees with what the Gangster Disciples do?” No one raised their hand. “Often times people say you cannot police your way out. I just say thank God Chicago didn’t believe that. We could’ve let Al Capone run the whole place, but our grandparents brought the feds in and we crushed the Capone organization.”
“This is the reason why we’re here,” Rush responded. “When he made that statement, I went ballistic, because I knew that wasn’t the problem. I wanted to disabuse Mark of the notion that the GDs are the root of the problem in Englewood.” Besides, Rush pointed out, the Gangster Disciples really didn’t exist anymore and instead had been replaced by the groups of young people who live on a certain block, many of whom knew that their only protection was to be identified with a particular clique or crew.
The crowd murmured. People started shouting, not so much out of anger but to agree with Rush. One
man rose and pointed his finger at Kirk. “They happen to be our uncles, our nephews, our brothers,” he said. And this may be the real heart of the issue. There is no real enemy out there, but instead a conflagration, a firestorm of forces which have led young people to make choices constricted and directed by the burden of circumstance. One woman at the town-hall gathering, Tonya Burch, who’s middle-aged with a hesitant smile, lost her son, Deontae Smith, who was shot at a block party he attended with his girlfriend. “I raised my kids in Englewood. My son died in Englewood,” she told both Kirk and Rush. “The first thing they want to do is stereotype our kids as gang members.” Indeed, in online comments to the Chicago Tribune story on her son’s murder, readers suggested that her son must have belonged to a street gang. “My kid wasn’t a gang member,” she explained. “He was nineteen, on the way to the Air Force. People just assume how the community is.” To that, others declared “Amen.”
In the end, Mark Kirk never pursued his initiative.
Chapter 18
The Witnesses, part two
AUGUST 30…AUGUST 31…SEPTEMBER 1…
In his first-floor bedroom, Ramaine Hill awoke to a late-summer thunderstorm, reached for his iPhone and his earbuds, lay back down, and disappeared into the beats of R. Kelly. He had his job that afternoon at Jewel, a local grocery store, where he worked in the meat department, but he didn’t need to rise for a while. His younger brother, Nijujuan, walked in, as he often does in the mornings, and plopped down on the white rocking chair at the foot of the bed. Nijajuan just liked being around Ramaine. He looked up to his brother and in his presence felt relaxed, like he could be himself. Nijujuan thought Ramaine seemed out of sorts this morning, more withdrawn than usual. Ramaine shared with him that yesterday he had gotten into a verbal altercation with another boy in the neighborhood, who at the end of their tiff warned him, Them boys gonna kill you. Ramaine seemed unnerved, and as he told Nijujuan about yesterday’s argument, he dropped his head into his hands. Unbeknownst to Nijujuan, his brother had told his boss at Jewel that he felt like someone was following him.
A quiet nineteen-year-old devoted to his longtime girlfriend, Kaprice, Ramaine had been the victim of a shooting by a fifteen-year-old on a bicycle. By most measures he had done the right thing: he had identified the shooter to the police. The shooter, Deantonio Agee, was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years. Because Ramaine had come forward, over the past two years the shooter’s friends had been threatening him, offering him money to recant his identification and once even trying to kidnap him. At one point he told Kaprice, “These niggas after me. They’re trying to kill me. I’m tired of this. I didn’t do nothing.” Kaprice begged Ramaine to stop walking with his headphones on. It’s too dangerous, she’d tell him.
To get to work, Ramaine walked south along a side street and then turned east toward a neighborhood which in recent years had turned from ghetto to glitz. Homes sold for as much as $2 million. A Starbucks opened, as did a Panera Bread. Moreover, the neighborhood had become predominantly white. The area’s anchor was Seward Park, which included a small but well-groomed lawn encircled by tidy rows of honey locust trees. In the summer the park district showed movies and held jazz concerts here. The four full-sized basketball courts attracted talented players. In fact, it was here that Kyrie Irving, the NBA star point guard, filmed one of his Uncle Drew’s Pepsi ads; in it, he enters a pick-up game disguised as an elderly, potbellied, bearded man, along with Nate Robinson and Maya Moore, each of them also looking well past their prime. The park sits just half a mile north of the city’s Magnificent Mile shopping strip and is adjacent to the high-priced apartment buildings along the lake known as the Gold Coast.
As Ramaine walked east, nearing the basketball courts, Kaprice, who was with a friend, spotted him in the distance. She stopped, because something didn’t seem right. She would’ve approached, but she and Ramaine had an up-and-down relationship, and in recent days they’d been arguing. Ramaine was smoking, which he did infrequently, and appeared to be pacing, walking in a tight circle, shaking his head. Kaprice told me, “I was being nosy. I stopped and looked at him for a minute to see what he was doing—if he was on his phone. But he wasn’t. Then we kept walking.”
To get to Jewel, Ramaine had to walk through Seward Park, and as he walked north past the fieldhouse, nearing the park’s manicured lawn, a young man briskly approached from behind. Across the street, Ramaine’s cousin, a member of the Jesse White Tumbling Team, sat in one of the team’s vans eating a croissant from Dunkin’ Donuts, but he looked up and saw Ramaine. He waved and Ramaine waved back. The cousin then got out of the van and in the parking lot bent down to tie his shoes; through the brush he made out a man in a red hoodie and red jogging pants, with a distinctive limp, advance toward Ramaine, raising his arm, a pistol in his hand. The cousin shot up and bellowed, Watch out! Watch out! but at that moment an El train roared by, drowning out his warning. Moreover, Ramaine had his earbuds in, listening to his music.
* * *
—
A short time later Nijujuan strolled past Seward Park on the way to visit his cousin’s tutor, who lived downtown. The street had been cordoned off. Police cars—lights flashing, sirens wailing—soared past, so many that Nijujuan assumed that President Obama was in town and that this was part of his motorcade. Nijujuan kept walking to his cousin’s tutor’s high-rise apartment.
Kaprice, who had heard the gunshots, ran toward the park, and as she got there she saw the paramedics lift a young man, his head hanging off the stretcher, into the ambulance. She lifted the yellow crime tape, but a police officer stopped her. I just wanted to see if it’s my little brother, she told the officer, figuring that if she was an immediate relative he’d be more likely to let her through. But the officer held her back. She then spotted Ramaine’s cousin, but he turned his gaze. “I don’t think he wanted me to know that he’d seen me,” she said. Kaprice collapsed on the sidewalk, and the officer asked again who she was to the victim. I’m his baby mama, she replied. The officer asked for Ramaine’s birthdate and his middle name. She supplied both. Is he dead? she asked. It’s not looking too good, the officer replied.
When detectives arrived on the scene, they discovered three, possibly four witnesses to the shooting. There was Ramaine’s cousin, who knew the shooter by his distinct limp. As the shooter approached Ramaine, a middle-aged woman, the mother of another Jesse White tumbler, sat in her Kia, waiting for her son to get across the street. She was so close to Ramaine that if she had opened her passenger door she could’ve touched him as he fell. She, too, saw the assailant. Ten yards down the street, a postal worker sorted his mail at the rear of his parked car. The shooter ran right past him. And across the street, a young man walked on the sidewalk on his way to work. This all happened at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Saturday, and so people were sitting in the park or out for midday strolls or driving to the grocery store or the Starbucks across the street or sitting on their terraces overlooking the scene, so the police are reasonably certain there were other witnesses as well. But no one else stayed around to talk with them. No one else came forward.
* * *
—
For nearly thirty-two hours Ramaine held on. He’d been shot four times: once in each shoulder, in his neck, and behind his left ear, a wound the doctors didn’t discover right away. After surgeons worked to stop the bleeding, doctors told the family that one bullet had destroyed his voice box and so if he survived, he might not speak again. They also worried that a nerve had been severed, so he might lose movement in his right arm. In the ICU, according to family members, doctors discovered the gunshot wound behind his ear and realized that he’d been hemorrhaging in his brain. When Nijujuan visited Ramaine, he found his breathing assisted by a tracheostomy tube, blood running from his mouth and pooling about his head on the pillow. Nijujuan did all he could to keep from crying and took Ramaine’s hand in his, trying to get a response, hoping to el
icit some movement in his fingers. I’m here. I’m here for you, Nijujuan assured his older brother. Nijujuan said Ramaine’s hand was limp, but he told me, “When I looked at him, I got this sense that he was there, that he could hear me.” Nijujuan left to get some rest, and while he was at home his brother died of cardiac arrest. Nijujuan and his sister chose to donate Ramaine’s organs.
Ramaine’s death has been hard on his family, but especially on Nijujuan. He tells me that the smell of the pooling blood lingers. It’s like concentrated vinegar, he says. It’s a nauseating odor that he can’t seem to shake. It follows him everywhere. He’ll try to brush it away, but then it’ll return, and with such power it’s as if he’s back in the hospital room with Ramaine. He wears his brother’s clothes—especially Ramaine’s Ruthless Art bright-red jacket with epaulets—and slept in his bed in the months following his death. Soon after Ramaine’s murder, Nijujuan dropped out of Trinity Christian College, where he was a freshman hoping to study microbiology. He has dreams, nightmares really, that he comes across Ramaine in the park after he’s been shot, but before he can speak to his brother he’s jolted awake, unable to get back to sleep. For a while he moved to live with relatives in Madison, Wisconsin, thinking the distance would help. But it didn’t. More than anything, Nijujuan feels secluded, like he’s on an island watching everyone paddle by. He tells me that he’s never spoken about Ramaine’s death—to anyone—until now. “I just feel like I’m always gonna feel this way, so it won’t do any good talking about it,” he tells me. “I know for a fact I’m not the same anymore. I put a smile on, but that’s not how I feel inside…It’s natural, but I don’t want to become bitter. I have to learn to cope with it. I don’t know how I cope with it, honestly. It’d be nice to speak to someone who’s been through the same thing. Nobody understands…I wouldn’t say it’s a hundred percent anger. It’s like I feel nobody cares.” Nobody? I ask. He gets more specific. “I honestly, genuinely feel the police don’t care,” he says, a notion that others in his family hold, as well.
An American Summer Page 26
