About 30 blocks west of the United Center, members of the 15th police district council — covering Mayor Brandon Johnson’s neighborhood of Austin — held a sparsely attended news conference Wednesday, hoping to remind those attending the Democratic National Convention of the violence that is all too common on the city’s West Side.
The three council members addressed a group of fewer than a dozen residents in the chapel of Pickett Funeral Home, with the three district council members addressing the small gathering from a lectern behind a gleaming white — and empty — casket.
The setting was symbolic, said district council member Carmelita Earls, who ticked off a list of three fatal shootings in the 15th District that had occurred since conventioneers began arriving last weekend, as well as a 5-year-old boy who was shot in the leg about 10 a.m. Wednesday.
The DNC “has an inner perimeter, they have an outer perimeter, they have a hot zone, they have a warm zone, they have a cold zone and all of these zones are basically guarded by copious amounts of policing resources from multiple law enforcement agencies,” said Earls, a retired Chicago Fire Department deputy district chief. “This is not a knock on you, this is a cry to say give you the resources that we deserve, like what they have down there at the DNC.
The collective theme from our legislators is protecting our democracy,” she said. “Our message to our elected officials is that protecting basic humanity is what [the] Austin community wants.”
Austin, the second-largest neighborhood in the city by population, has had the most homicides this year among Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods. So far this year, shootings in the 15th District have declined nearly 10% from the total in the first eight months of 2023, according to CPD statistics, though the number of homicides remains flat year-to-year.
Last year, voters elected three district council members in each of the city’s 22 police districts, the first time the positions appeared on the ballot. The district councils are intended to add a layer of democratic governance to policing, with council members charged with holding monthly public meetings to engage and inform community members around public safety issues, and also nominate candidates to the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, a civilian oversight body.
Earls and fellow 15th District council members had initially announced the meeting would take place on Monday, the opening night of the convention, with the news conference to be held at the scene of a daylight shooting in which three gunmen opened fire on three men walking in the 5200 block of West Chicago Avenue, killing a 31-year-old man. Owners of the business where the shooting occurred did not want the publicity, Earls said, delaying the press conference, Earls said.
The announcement also noted the preparations for the DNC and the “stark contrast between the city’s polished image and the harsh reality on our streets is a tale of two cities — one of pomp and circumstance, the other of real human suffering. We cannot allow the spectacle to overshadow the urgent need to address the violence that is tearing our community apart.”