Gangs and Politicians in Chicago: An Unholy Alliance
LAWBREAKERS, LAWMAKERS: In some parts of Chicago, violent street gangs and pols quietly trade money and favors for mutual gain. The thugs flourish, the elected officials thrive—and you lose. A special report.
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The police officers were in a squad car in October 2007, patrolling a section of Uptown some call a walking pharmacy, where drugs are sold openly. When they saw a silver Chevy Cavalier roll through a stop sign, they ran a check on the plates and discovered that there was a warrant for the arrest of the owner. They approached the car. One passenger turned out to be Rahiem Ali, a 29-year-old Gangster Disciple with a criminal record dating back to 1995 and a rap sheet with nearly 40 arrests. Ali and his twin brother, Rahmon, were well known to police. The two ran a lucrative Uptown drug spot and were notorious for being among the biggest, baddest gangbangers in the neighborhood. According to the officers’ report, they saw Ali shove a hand into his pants pocket and pop something into his mouth.
When they ordered him out of the car, Ali shoved the police aside and ran. It took four officers to subdue him. One suffered a cracked tooth when Ali hit him with his elbow. Two officers doused Ali with pepper spray before he coughed out two plastic bags filled with 23 smaller bags containing what was suspected to be crack cocaine.
Later, at the police station, two lawyers arrived to see Ali. In any other neighborhood, the officers might not have noticed them. But not in Uptown, not when one of the lawyers was Brendan Shiller, the son of Helen Shiller, the 46th Ward alderman.
The 46th Ward is one of Chicago’s most diverse communities, home to the well-heeled and the downtrodden. Throughout her career, from 1987 until she stepped down last year, Helen Shiller was known as a fierce advocate for the latter. Few aldermen on the City Council have been more resistant to gentrification or more likely to embrace social welfare programs. In Uptown, large public housing complexes were a source of pride for Shiller, who trumpeted how they added diversity to the ward and provided a rare commodity on the North Side’s lakefront: affordable housing.
Her critics, meanwhile, argued that the complexes bred and fostered a criminal population, and they accused her of not doing enough to stop the drug and gang violence that dominated specific buildings. During meetings with the police department’s command staff, says a high-ranking police source, Shiller “never [made] a big push to go after any kind of organized narcotic operation.”
Officers working in the 23rd District say Shiller and her chief of staff, Denice Davis, frequently came into the station after certain Uptown residents were arrested to try to defuse things. Police say Davis’s interference on behalf of gangbangers and the Alis—whose mother, Aqueela, was part of the alderman’s political organization—had a chilling effect on their policing efforts. What was the point of making an arrest when it brought trouble from the alderman’s office? “Certain officers would get the message: ‘Maybe I shouldn’t make this stop’ or ‘Maybe I shouldn’t investigate this,’” says Joe Cox, a veteran officer from the district who retired in 2010.
Shiller says she “didn’t have a relationship” with either of the Ali twins, nor did she offer any assistance to them. “My relationship was with their mom. I knew she had sons that had difficulties. I didn’t interact with them. I didn’t know them.”
As the Ali brothers collected thousands a week running the drug spot around Lawrence Avenue and Sheridan Road, word spread among the police to treat the two with kid gloves. A police source says that during arrests, the twins would say, “I’ll have your job. Do you know who my lawyer is? Do you know who his mama is?” The source adds, “They would mention the alderman by name. They would mention Brendan Shiller by name.”
Police and Shiller’s political opponents suspected that the alderman deliberately turned a blind eye to gang activity in order to bring the gang element into the fold and build up her voting base. “It’s what I like to call the exchange game,” says Sandra Reed, who twice lost elections to Shiller, in 1999 and 2003. “She protects the kids, even when they are doing wrong. She helps the parents. They think she is going to protect them, so they all work for her.”
Some speculate that Shiller helped Aqueela Ali fend off multiple attempts to have her and her sons evicted from their apartment at 920 West Lakeside Place, where rules prohibit criminal behavior by residents. (Shiller acknowledges she helped Ali with “housing issues.”) While it’s not entirely clear what her role was in Shiller’s political organization, Ali served as a poll watcher, an election judge, and a Shiller campaign worker since at least 2002, campaign records show. Records also show that she gathered petition signatures to get Shiller on the ballot in 2003 and 2007.
But it may have been Ali’s choice of residence that provided her with the most political firepower. Her building is one of the largest Section 8 facilities in Uptown, home to between 800 and 1,000 residents. Ali had clout and the ability to sway public opinion. She was the leader of the building’s tenants’ association board and, perhaps most important, the mother of Rahiem and Rahmon. “You’re talking about the mother of the most well-known gangbangers in the neighborhood,” one officer says. “When she knocks on someone’s door, do you think those people are going to say no?” (Ali did not respond to requests for comment.)
In a ward where the difference between winning and losing can be a few hundred votes, an election can turn on a campaign’s ability to win particular blocks or buildings. For example, when Shiller was first elected alderman in 1987, she won by just 498 votes. In 2007, her last election, she beat the challenger, James Cappleman, by a mere 700 votes, fewer than the number of residents living at 920 West Lakeside.
Rahiem Ali died on March 23, 2010, after ingesting a plastic bag of narcotics during an arrest and falling into a coma. (As he lay in the hospital, Brendan Shiller represented him in court on charges of aggravated battery to a police officer and resisting arrest.) Ali’s death was ruled an accident by the Cook County medical examiner. Helen Shiller, still the alderman of the 46th Ward, reached out to the family, giving $200 to his mother the day before services were held at a West Side funeral home. The official record categorizes the expenditure as “community outreach–funeral expenses” from Citizens for Shiller, her campaign fund.
This article appears in the January 2012 issue of Chicago magazine.
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Gangs should not be a part of the politcal process - no criminal should. The last thing we need is politicians owned by criminals.
Why didn't anyone bring up Convicted felon (operation Silver Shovel)? He had Satin Disciples, Latin Counts, and Bishops threaten residents! He did this to get the vote for Bambi jr!
Another Candidate was Temoc Morfin who used the Bishops on the east end of Pilsen because one of his key volunteers is a former Bishop.
This article makes me really wish we had laws preventing convicted felons from voting.
Nothing new here. Even the article speaks about the criminal history and intertwined alliances between criminals and Chicago politicians which seem to be synonymous with each other.
Sadly, Chicago is the city of my birth. Equally as sad is that it doesn't seem as if Chicago will ever clean up their act, or for that matter, even has the desire to clean up the trash that permeates the windy city.
It's too bad that the rest of Illinois can't just divorce themselves from the cesspool called Chicago. Illinois wood be better off for it.
You didn't have to publish an elaborate report. We knew about this for years.
This story is older than both my grandmothers!!! There's too much money involved for Chicago to ever clean up its act.
I agree with both A Wink & A Nod & So Cal COP!
Both are dead on target!
Where are the FEDS in all this ???
I am to assume that all who have commented are do gooders without ANY indiscretions as a youth or adult. This political system is no different than any system in the U.S. The relationships between politicians and street organizations be it in pasing or by association has NO relevance. YOU cannot change our street culture, the police cannot and the government cannot! so yes you MUST use what you have and be able to adapt and overcome the enviornment to be successful.
It will never be corrected as long as Chicago has controll of it's own progress. The US Government,DOJ, current ran by the same Chicago cesspool overflow politicians will look the other way and leave Chicgo to their own control.
However, there is a far more better way to deal with such corruption. Thereby, being in the opposite of the cause and just as illegal as the situation that has a history in Chicago.
" A well regulated Miliita, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" Second Ammedment.
Think about it.
Gray Ryder
This is what "sanctuary" is all about. Cicero passed the "Safe Space" Act that supposedly protects Latinos for being harrassed about being US citizens and in the US illegally, but in fact it makes second class citizens out of all other races in the town of Cicero. It also protects individual Latino gang members from being picked up from all but the most serious felonies because they could always claim they are being harrassed for being Latinos.
The town is now being run by Latino "community groups" that are receiving American taxpayer funds from Cicero and Cicero is acting like the US State Department when it comes to getting citizenships for Latin American criminals that now live in Cicero.
this article is a joke, conjecture, and no real stats or proof of wrong doing except for a community meeting in which gang leaders were at. Not saying that gang don't have an influence....but there was no actual "reporting" here to support that claim. And why would you stick to democrats because they are the ruling party? Looking at the gang map, there are gangs all over this city. Step it up tribune.
I am a formerly convicted person. I once was afiliated with one of the largest street gangs in Chicago. Because of the services offered to me upon my last conviction, i have managed to stay out of stgreet gang life, drug usage and a life of crime for the past 28 years. I have obtained an associate degree, a bachelors degree, a masters degree and currently seeking my PHD. How long will i and thousands of others that have turned our lives around conteue to be looked upon as a threat when we try to clean up some of the corruption we were once part of.
Benny Lee
National ALliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incacerated
First of all....I hate the way media and reporters beef stories up to make things look and sound worst that what they actually are..Gangs have not had any relevance since the feds did the big sweep and rounded up all them gang members in the 90's! The youth today are not being told what to do by any gang leaders, nor are they listening to anyone! so all this is just spit in the rain! how long will we judge ex-convicts?? they supposely paid their debts to society when they became "Ex-Convicts" but yet they are still viewed and displayed like some kind of plague that destroys or is bad...come on now...The real criminals has yet to pay their debts, because of their political positions or
the who you know syndrome!! this article is just another drop of spit in the rain!! I know several peoplel that have served time, or were involved in gang activities and has turnt their life around with educational degree's but because people want to be so judgemental, and because of articles like this, it makes it difficult for them to function or get the jobs they desire...I worked with a gentleman that had served time, he was my supervisor, he kept us in good spirits and inspired to do a good job, he was great for the company, but because someone found out he did time and allowed jealously to come in, they reported him as a exconvict and they let him go, and this company has been going down hill every since, I say Get the hell over it!! then look at all the innocent people that was locked up by dirty cops, never committing a crime, but yet they are considered Ex=convicts....puh=leeze....Chicago is full of political criminals!! they just havent did the time!!!
I wonder if this state of affairs is the reason gangsters seem to be killing cops with such impunity? Corrupt pols, you have blood on your hands.
Yeah, nice hard-hitting reporting. Uh-huh. I watched The Chicago Code, too. EVERYBODY here knows this.
Even so, I'm just wondering why this is being published AFTER Ms. Shiller stepped down...
The hypocrisy of this article is mind blowing the biggest and most well organized gang in the city of chicago is CPD. Who have engaged in intimidation,shakedowns,drug dealing, torture and murder. But what's worse they operated with impugnity and full sanctioning of the press including this newspaper, the elected officials most notably our corrupt former mayor and his father who are part of an Irish Mafia that has been in control of both the police department and City politics since the early 40's. Who consistently aided in them keeping their secrets and protected them from prosecution. Jon Burge was just doing what he learned coming through the ranks of the CPD was acceptable behavior as long as you only victimized minority citizens. But now that same influence is being wielded by Black gangs all of a sudden its an outrage! Please spare me the rightous indignation you do not have the moral integrity to have it. I'd to see a story on the Irish Mob that really controls this City.
Wow! thank you for the fascinating article!
One only has to look at the office of munoz to see the truth bout this article and his gang ties. Every time I pass through that office there's always Latin Kings repping in his office.
The article isn't at all shocking! Chicago is known for politicians to seek help from the gangs to boost votes. While, the politicians meet and sell gang members "dreams". I have personally witnessed several meetings and once the politicians was elected they could care less about the "ills" of the community. In my opinion they should get rid of the aldermans due to the fact they are always a no show when it comes to real issues that affect impoverished communities. They reap the benefits allowing foreigners to open more liquor stores on every corner but as an individual trying to open a legitmate business they tell you about "zoning laws". Zoning laws must apply to lifelong residents only. You inquire about a lot they come up with all sorts of "stories". It's all about money at the end of the day.
Did you expect anything different? All these politicians want today is MONEY!!! They don't care where it comes from or who has to die for them to get it. If you take the perks out of politics you may well get people that genuinely care about the everyday citizen, but until that's done expect things to carry on as they have for years.