BEAT 1431 CAPS
Meeting Minutes
June 3, 2004

The next meeting will be July 1, 2004 at the Nazareth Church, 2500 N. Talman at 7:00 pm.

Officers Present: SGT Giambrone, PO Romero, PO Muniz of Community Policing, PO Ortiz, PO Hernandez, PO Singh, CAPS Community Organizer Liz Rios and two officers from Area 5 and other officers.

Stephanie Packard-Bell from CAPS Implementation was there, as well as Erica Hawkins from the Office of Problem Buildings. William Townsell from the CAPS Office attended to discuss Problem Buildings issue and how to address them.

Liz Rios said that a list of problem building on Bingham has been collected by Officer Torres who handles gang and drug houses. But Officer Torres was not there and no one present had the list. Jim Rhodes asked that we get a list of the buildings and their court dates.

William Townsell talked about how we can put pressure on property owners of problem properties. He said that one or two felony arrests have to be made before a building can be designated as a Drug or Gang house. But he said that the police can contact the owners of problem buildings and bring them to a meeting at the Police District. Other tactics can include working with the owner to solve the problem and also brining in other city service to do inspections of the buildings.

The two officers from Area 5 also talked about the difficulty of getting felony charges against gang members that assault CAPS volunteers. The law allows the charges to stay as misdemeanor if we can not prove that the victim was targeted because they are a CAP volunteer. Like hate crimes, the burden of proof is on us to show that the gang member knew the victim was a CAPS volunteer.

SECTION 1
1) Leno Quinn court date was held on June 3 and continued until July 6.
2) Greg Belke's hearing is scheduled for Monday at 1pm at Grand and Central/ Area 5/Branch 23- 5555 W. Grand.
3) Three Latin Kings were arrested on May 27 on Point and Francis. The Latin Kings are hanging out there in force.
4) The police are following up the car arson and talking to suspects of interest.
5) A walk through Section 1 with a police escort was held prior to the CAPS meeting.
action: Police and residents maintain current effective vigil and proactivity.

SECTION 2 & 3
1) The police reported that the Congress Theater is having another big event on June 4 & 5 with 1,000 to 3,000 people expected. They said the Congress Theater has been notifying the 14th District in advance much better.
2) Neighbors from the Campbell and Milwaukee area said that the Congress Theater events are still causing major problems in the area. They reported beer bottles all over the street, fights and people parking illegally on permit parking streets. They will be trying to get permit parking on Campbell. They also reported a robbery in that area and that tires were slashed two times recently.
3) A business owner from Milwaukee also reported problems with the Congress Theater events. He said that people attending the concert want to use businesses’ bathrooms and that the theater should provide those facilities since the Alderman does not want to put up port-a-potties for those events. He also reported fights in the streets and that there are cars selling drugs all around the area pretending to sell concert tickets. He also said that no parking signs were being put up on Milwaukee for the concerts and this is very bad for all the businesses in the area.
action: Follow up by the Police and Alderman's office on the Congress Theater concerts is still needed.

SECTION 4
1) Two groups of gang members were hanging out on the East side of Goethe School on June 2 in the late afternoon. One of the gang members asked a female friend to give him his gun which she was carrying in her purse. But she dropped it. Police were called.
action: Police need to monitor gang activity in this area. Weekday late afternoon and early evenings, and weekend evenings seem to draw increased activity.

SECTION 5 & 6
1) No progress has been reported on the Derek Tate, Jr., murder on June 6, 2003 at Fullerton and Artesian. On the first anniversary of his death, the police were asked to question witnesses again, particularly Joseph Zuniga. The Area 5 officers said they would get an update on his case for the next CAPS meeting.
2) Gang loitering on Artesian and Campbell has continued to be a problem over the last month.
3) There were also two women who were robbed at gun point during the evening hours in the last month – one on the corner of Artesian and Altgeld and the other in front of St John Berchman’s Church.
action: Police to monitor gang loitering on Artesian.

Recurring Problem Areas for BEAT 1431
1) The 2000 block of Bingham, continues to require attention.
2) Gang activity: all sections in BEAT 1431 are seeing persistent levels of gang activity, especially in sections 1, 4, and 6.
3) Graffiti


DISCLAIMER
Beat 1431 CAPs volunteers prepared these meeting minutes to the best of their ability.