The Foundation: 033
Kids, guns, and kids with guns
The time I would normally spend at night on creative pursuits, like reading or writing, I’ve been working instead. When I knew I wanted to be a city reporter. This is what I envisioned. Was too young to know specifics, obviously. But this kind of work. Still much to do. I’ve been apart of three stories over the last month or so.
001
The first, concerning the DCFS’ failure to produce legally-required reports into the deaths and serious injuries of certain children. The state itself wrote:
“DCFS conducted reasonable inquiry and could not locate any records created to comply specifically with (the law) and … therefore, no records pursuant to (the law) were provided because none could be found.”
These reports are required by law, as is their public disclosure. They’re different than the reports required by the IG’s office, different from the death review team reports, and different from other internal reports the agency completes during investigations.
This was a difficult process because DCFS played hide-the-ball for months with its record release process and communications. The story is out now.
002
In December, a colleague at the Sun-Times heard a gun went missing from a buy-back event at a church and was found at some later date. That was the extent of what we knew. There were tangents, but everything needing to be run to ground.
Over a few weeks of reporting, we learned it had been stolen from a police station office while it was full of officers, and then went missing for a year.
There was a theft report for the missing gun, the police department listed as the location. And an internal affairs investigation into the sergeant who supervised the 006th District officers working the event. By the time of the gun’s recovery - a year after it’s theft - both investigations had been effectively closed. (One suspended, one finished pending dispute of discipline.)
003
The gun came back into police custody via arrest. Police said they spotted someone pulling door handles one night, they gave chase and found the gun being carried by a 16-year-old boy. At the time it was just a gun; when checked against police databases it was found to have been the one stolen from the police station.
But then. After it was test fired, and compared against shell casing evidence from other crime scenes. Police learned it had been fired at least three times since it had been stolen. A shooting a couple blocks from the church where it’d been turned in and the police station from which it was stolen, then a shooting a couple miles east. Casings from the gun were found in a stolen car near the church, and the car appeared to have been used in a shootout.
We didn’t know this when the first story ran. Once the police department’s lab knew it had been used in other crimes, a sergeant there notified his supervisor, internal affairs, and the detective investigating the theft.
What’s more: federal investigators, on whom the police department relies for some of its shell casing data, remarked upon the mess that had crossed their desk.
Whale
Dmitry Samarov’s work is one of my favorite things about living in Chicago. It makes it feel like home. He had a book release Saturday night at a wonderful store in Bridgeport. I couldn’t go, but: there’s a recording.
