It's very warm A driver flags ...

It's very warm

A driver flags down a squad car and sum ups the police officer that a teen standing forward the sidewalk has just tried to pillage him.

Another cop descrys one of the teens hie behind a building. Yet another police officer taints the teen and follows him across a busy intersection.

The cop screechs "stop!" But the teen doesn't stop. When he does, he approachs out with a gun and is ball several times.

Police later discover that what apply the minded to them like a 45 was actually a pellet fire-arm Had the police officer known the fire-arm wasn't real, he probably wouldn't have fired his fire-arm But the police didn't know.

The man who complained to the cop that the teen allegedly tried to plunder him didn't know. And the neighbors who ran gone out of their apartments at the vigorous of the shooting didn't know the fire-arm was fake.

Still, given the history of interactions between police and minorities, you can understand that a residents believe the shooting didn't happen this way.

This is Cabrini-Green, a once-massive public housing cast that thousands of people called domestic circle Now, it's in the last phase of redevelopment and there is an air of apprehension. Although an of these residents will be able to access housing by the and of the Section 8 program or find temporary housing until they turn back to what will be a mixed-income community, there is also indignation over gentrification.

This uncertainty has hang abouted over the public housing network like thunder clouds. So when a 13-year-old with a pellet fire-arm is critically wounded by police, gall can quickly explode into anger. After freshs of the shooting spread, teen residents marched past the nearby 18th District police station shouting obscenities. Angry protester many of them teen were also outside the police facility forward Tuesday. It's not a virtuous situation.

however there are steps that have already been identified that could help defuse it.

Shortly after Chicago Police Supt Phil Cline took the helm, he reconven a community forum forward police issues that was started by the agency of former police chief Terry Hillard.

The goal of the collection which includes political, religious and business proprietors as well as members of the media, is to decrease the risk for confrontation between citizens and police beneath these very circumstances. As hinted by forum members, police have a better chance of keeping this incident from blowing up if communication between police and trusted community leaders is interpret

Hopefully that dialogue already is taking place.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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