BY JOHN STUDER
CHICAGO - Chicago police rioted at the Cabrini Green public housing project here March 4, wounding three residents and nearly killing Fernanda Royal, the president of the tenants' association in one of the high-rise buildings at the housing complex.

During an argument with residents of the housing complex, a Chicago Housing Authority cop pulled his gun and shot directly into the crowd, hitting Royal. The cop fled and Chicago city police, including dozens of squad cars and a police helicopter, began to converge on the area, where they were joined by units from the Illinois State Police.

Claiming they were shot at by "snipers" from the housing complex, the cops fired dozens of times into some of the high-rise buildings. After the shootings, cops invaded the buildings, accompanied by police dogs, and used sledge hammers and battering rams to break down apartment doors.

The confrontation ended after hundreds of residents, overwhelmingly Black, gathered for over an hour to yell at the cops, protesting their harassment and brutality.

The police attempted to downplay their attack, but the local daily papers challenged the cops' story.

CHA police chief LeRoy O'Shield claimed the cops were not armed with shotguns. "Officers were observed carrying shotguns Tuesday night," the Chicago Tribune reported, "and were captured on television footage with those weapons."

The cops claimed they did not fire at the buildings. "Once again," the Tribune reported, "evidence at the scene - dozens of empty shell casings lying in the street and in front of the building - seemed to contradict O'Shield's account."

The cops claimed the incident was provoked by an officer being attacked in the course of a drug investigation. Annie Royal, the mother of the woman most seriously wounded by the police, told the Tribune the cop "took out his gun and shot right through the crowd. He shot my daughter for nothing."

"The police are out of order over there," Regina Stewart, a Cabrini resident wounded by flying glass from the police riot, said. "And everyone is letting them because it's Cabrini. It's our homes, and we're human beings."

The next day, the Chicago Housing Authority announced it would remove their entire police and security force out of Cabrini-Green, give them "sensitivity training," and assign them to other areas.

Edwin Eisendrath, CHA chairman, claimed the move was not a condemnation of the 28 cops, but a "fresh start." Other cops were rotated into Cabrini.

The outcry over the police riot has led to a public debate between cop agencies. O'Shield, the head of the CHA police, charged that it was city cops, not his officers, who fired into the Cabrini high-rises. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley responded by accusing the CHA cops of cowardice, claiming that when the shooting started they "went on the lam, they went south, they ran." He added that it was the CHA cops, not the Chicago police force, who "fire[d] the weapon that injured the other person."

This police riot erupted at the same time Chicago cops and Daley are demanding increased firepower and greater latitude in police spying. The authorities argue that these steps are needed to meet the threat of drug dealers and "gang bangers."

The mayor has called for relaxation of a federal consent decree the city signed in 1981, placing some limits on police spying and disruption operations. The court agreement led to the dismantling of the Chicago cop "Red Squad," which compiled files on an estimated 258,000 people in the 1960s and '70s.

John Studer is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 1011.  
 
 
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