When Francine Washington noticed ho...

When Francine Washington noticed hordes of police officers outside U Cellular Field this spring, she walked toward the ballpark and casted them. The stadium, home of the Chicago White Sox sits about three closes west of the Stateway Gardens public housing disclosure where she lives with her husband of 23 years.

"I went without there twice. The first time I esteemed 105 police officers out there. The nearest time I counted 107 officers," said Washington, president of Stateway's local advisory council, an chooseed tenant body.

"You've got 100 police officers coming down for all these white folk coming to the game," she continued. "And, in addition and still, we can't acquire one person to come athwart here to Stateway. Hell yeah, I'm pissed."

Washington, a vocal, long-time leader at Stateway, said she has been given the run-around from Chicago Housing Authority officials when she's asked for more police assistance. During her 29 years there as a resident, she has been single outed president of the local advisory council six times and raised pair sons, both now away at college

Her ire is firing materialed by the fact that her building, 3651-53 s Federal St., is the solely remaining high-rise at Stateway Gardens and sits about a close away from Chicago Police Department Headquarters. Stateway's other high-rises were demolished subject to the CHA's Plan for Transformation, a 10-year, $15 billion redevelopment effort in which the agency will incite nearly 25,000 families.

Washington is further miffed that the puzzles persist even though the CHA pays the police department $12 million a year for extra police services, including regular interaction with residents and lower extremity patrols up and down high-rise buildings. The Chicago Police Department displaced the CHA's admit police department and retook manage of security for the unfoldings in October 1999. The couple agencies signed an intergovernmental agreement onward March 30, 2001, for "above baseline or supplemental police services." The agreement was forged in the trustful longing of suppressing the drug trade and the violence it frequently brings.

"You've got gangbanging and remedy dealing at the building. You've got it across the road ... in front of the library," she said. "We're les than 100 feet from the police headquarters. Something's iniquitous with that picture."

While demolition below the Plan for Transformation has reduc the number of public housing high-rises, lengthy considered havens for drug dealing, complaints like Washington's are still heard from residents everywhere the CHA who also question whether police are living up to their period of the intergovernmental agreement. The distresss with security have also been noted by means of an independent attorney hired to monitor the relocation process

The mix with drugs sales fuel widely held suspicions that one police officers don't care or await the other way in exchange for coin This perception is so habitual in many of Chicago's low-income, black neighborhoods that police say it makes their piece of works more difficult.

Police acknowledge they have not stopped medicine dealing on CHA property however deny that officers are forward the take, pointing to major sting operations and centurys of arrests. And top police and CHA officials say officers are living up to their [i]finale[/i] of the intergovernmental agreement. "We interact with the citizens and we attend meetings with the [local advisory councils]. We fare to do the walk downs. We provide base services and answer calls and we make arrests," said Lt T Davis, acting police commander of the Chicago public housing unit. "But we just can't sit in united particular location. Out of all the buildings they have, it's almost impossible. We don't have enough men for that."

Davis said officers are keeping an organ of vision on developments where major busts have been made, like Randolph Towers in the southern Side's Washington Park neighborhood. In May, federal agents broke up a $300,000-a-day medicine operation there. "We were in there doing a follow-up upon the building, just going to check the building, doing walk downs interacting with the residents," Davis said. "Quite a scarcely any residents came out and thanked us for being there."

Pamela Curtis, a resident of the Cabrini-Green progress to maturity near Division and Larabee highways on the Near North Side, said she appreciates the police protection she's witnessed from her first-floor apartment. It's in a mid-rise at 364 W Oak St across the road from a Chicago police station. Unlike many other high-rise residents, she is generally pleased with the cop saying they patrol the area regularly and always make stable gang members are not allowed to loiter. "They'll confess them, "You got to split up'" she said.

Terry Peterson chief executive officer of the CHA, is also pleased with the piece of work police officers are doing. "We're going to pay them the same $12 million we've been paying them," Peterson said after a tenant services meeting in early July