Chicago Sun-Times
Standing up to death threats
By Raymond R. Coffey
Like any solid stand-up citizen, Willie Burrell could do, thank you very much, without death threats from gang-bangers and drug dealers.
Because he is an uncommonly courageous do-right kind of guy in his Uptown neighborhood in the 46th Ward, community activist Burrell finds his life on the line.
And Jovan Truss, 18, an alleged affiliate of the Harrison Gents street gang suspected of dealing drugs in Uptown, finds himself in jail under $ 400,000 bond and facing four felony counts of intimidation of a witness and harassment. Burrell is resident manager of a Chicago Housing Authority scattered-site subsidized housing property at 4700 N. Magnolia, a volunteer in his neighborhood CAPS (community policing) program and a well-known foe of rampant drug trafficking in Uptown.
As a CAPS volunteer, Burrell recently supplied Chicago police with valuable information on drug dealing in the building, where he has been a resident for 10 years, and at other neighborhood sites.
That led to three arrests earlier this month. And that led, in turn, to Truss, one of those arrested, returning two or three times to confront Burrell and allegedly threaten, "I'm going to kill you. You'll end up missing."
Police originally -- and properly so, out of concern for his safety -- did not want to identify Burrell, whom I have come to know in writing several columns about Uptown. But Burrell, with 22 community supporters, turned up for Truss' court appearance at which the felony charges were filed Wednesday, and I spoke to him by phone afterward.
He had no objection to being named here -- "Everyone knows who I am." And he wanted to talk about Uptown and the anti-drug battle he has waged for years.
Uptown has a large proportion of CHA scattered-site subsidized housing, and under federal law non-residents are barred from such property and residents are responsible for their visitors. But some of these properties, including his at 4700 N. Magnolia and the building next door at 4706, are overrun with drug dealers who, when arrested, Burrell said, get off by claiming to have "a godmother at 4706, an aunt at 1262 W. Lawrence, another aunt at 4650 N. Malden," etc.
"You check to see where they are hanging out," Burrell said, and invariably it turns out that these claimed relatives are precinct workers" for Ald. Helen Shiller's political organization. Truss, who lives in Oak Park and is accused of making the death threats, claims to have a relative at 4706 N. Magnolia, Burrell said. He doesn't.
Again, according to Burrell, the people who show up to get drug dealers off the hook are generally "political people" from Shiller's organization. "I fault these political people for keeping us under siege," Burrell said, "We've got to have lease violations prosecuted. . . . We need help to rid our community of this rampant drug plague."
Beyond the death threats against him, Burrell believes the drug problem in CHA properties in Uptown is an attempt to interfere with a federally funded Housing and Urban Development Department program that's intended "to empower subsidized housing residents to become self-sufficient."
Along with his job as president of the North East Scattered Site Resident Management Corp., Burrell is secretary of the Citywide Central Advisory Council. The program to shift management control to residents had been moving along toward the point where residents would soon get a federal contract to run their own ship, he said. But the drug problem has become so large and so confounding, with the residents feeling "really intimidated," that the program has come to a stop, Burrell said.
Burrell's personal protection, I'm assured, is getting special police attention, as it should. But the police alone cannot solve the problem. They need the help of more stand-up citizens like Burrell.
