Chicago’s Latino community contends with police killing of Adam Toledo: As many push for police accountability, some fear gang violence and prefer to stay silent
A mariachi serenaded Adam Toledo’s mother and grandfather as other Little Village residents surrounded them, mourning the death of the 13-year-old shot and killed by a Chicago police officer in late March.
His grandfather told someone in the crowd to ask the mariachi to play another song.
Obliging the grandfather, the mariachi kept playing as many embraced each other and marched through the streets of the Mexican American community, seeking healing after the tragic death.
That Sunday evening, support for the Toledo family and calls for peace and unity rang loudest in Little Village. But underneath, obscured by the vigils and speeches, ran an undercurrent of judgment of the 13-year-old and his family by some Little Village residents.
The release by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability of the video of Toledo’s March 29 shooting broke open a larger divide in Chicago’s Latino community. While many people denounced the Chicago Police Department, others in the Little Village community remained silent, some reluctant to say anything about Toledo’s death.
Even as neighbors, activists and politicians support the Toledo family and call for the prosecution of the officer who killed him, others believe the boy’s being out overnight with a man police say is a gang member and Toledo’s holding a gun led to his shooting by Chicago police Officer Eric Stillman. They also point to what they view as his mother’s lack of supervision. And while some residents want police reined in, others want a greater police presence in the area to deal with street violence.
At the same time, a desire for a more empathetic and culturally aware police force unifies the community.
‘We are tired of gang violence’
Well after Toledo’s shooting and the release of the video, many people in the neighborhood continue to voice their opinions, said Pascuala Santamaria, a longtime street vendor in Little Village, one of the most prominent Mexican and Mexican American communities in Chicago.
Santamaria, 74, has been selling elotes for more than 11 years on 26th Street, the area’s emblematic corridor.
She sets up shop outside a laundromat, talking to customers and friends. The Sunday Toledo’s family joined the march, she sat by her cart, observing.
The walk seemed nice, “but there’s always a lot of marches and nothing changes,” Santamaria said in Spanish later the same week.
“We are tired of gang violence; it’s sad what happened with the young boy, but he had a gun with him and his friend had been shooting, so the officer responded to the threat,” Santamaria added.
Elio Hernandez, 38, who had stepped out of the laundromat to speak with Santamaria, agreed.
Hernandez said he is bothered by how older gang members lure young kids into gang life.
“We can’t even go out safely because there are random shootings everywhere and you never know if a stray bullet might hit you,” Hernandez said in Spanish.
Gloria Sanchez, 59, an area resident for more than 25 years, says she holds out little hope of youths avoiding gangs.
“The only reason people are talking about (killings) now is that it was a police officer who shot and killed the kid,” said the grandmother as she ate ice cream on 26th Street.
On her block, Sanchez said, there are several kids in gangs.
“I sometimes look at them and say hello, but I mostly stay away from them,” as she also tries to avoid police, Sanchez said.
In the weeks since Toledo’s killing, at least three teens have been shot to death in the neighborhood. Most recently, Jorge Cruz, 17, a sophomore at Farragut Career Academy, was killed a little after 10 a.m. Monday while walking with a friend, according to police.
Maximina Ascension, 31, has three children, 2, 5 and 7 years old. Ascension said that though she feels the pain of Adam Toledo’s mother, Elizabeth Toledo, she is worried about the “innocent lives that could be lost due to gang violence.”
Ascension recalled Halloween night 2019, when a 7-year-old was shot while trick-or-treating. She was getting ready to leave her home when she heard the shots, only a block from her home, she said.
“It’s terrifying,” she said, “What if that had been my children?”
Hernandez, Santamaria and Ascension all said they would feel safer if there were a greater police presence in the neighborhood and said they feared that more protests will decrease police visibility in the area.
But many in Little Village, Hernandez included, also say parents need more resources to help keep their children safe and out of the streets.
More policing will not eliminate the violence and the pain some people are feeling, said Elizeth Arguelles, an organizer of the march Toledo’s family attended. The divide in the community is most clearly a generational one, with youths begging older family members to shift their attention to “the root of the violence ... rather than judging” she said.
The fear of gunfire from gang conflicts “is well-founded because people continue to see a lot of shooting taking lives in the area,” said U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, a resident of Little Village for more than 50 years.
While García issued a statement demanding police reform, he also said that “too many people are killed and wounded; traumatized by the violence, but people aren’t speaking about those deaths frequently enough” or pressing for the killings to be solved.
The unsolved killings provoke “older residents to seek a solution by demanding more policing,” García said.
Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, whose office is blocks away from where Stillman shot Toledo, said that police “need to be part of the solution.”
Rodriguez said that while “some individuals in the police force have to restore the harm that they’ve done,” in the Toledo case, there’s a need for “good policing” in the neighborhood.
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, said that what the Police Department and prosecutors released about the Toledo case influenced people’s response because of “the manipulation of the information and created a narrative that tragically put all the blame on the mother and the child.”
Some political leaders have sided with those who say they understand why Toledo died.
Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, said that though “Adam’s death was tragic,” he believes the shooting was justified and it should be Ruben Roman, the 21-year-old officials say Toledo was with the night of the killing, who is held accountable.
Adeena Weiss Ortiz, the lawyer representing Toledo’s mother, said conversations about Toledo’s supposed involvement in gangs and that question his mother’s care are “extremely hurtful to his family and part of a pattern that seeks to blame the victim and justify the shooting of an unarmed 13-year-old boy.”
Chicago police have not confirmed whether Toledo was in a gang and did not say the incident the night of March 29 was gang-related.
“Adam was a good kid. He was not involved in violence. He did not have a police record at all. He was in special education classes, and, as one teacher said in a published interview, was naive and trusting,” added Weiss Ortiz.
Weiss Ortiz also said the family does not know Ruben Roman and “has no idea why Adam was with him the night he died.”
Toledo “broke his family’s rules and snuck out without his mother’s knowledge,” she said.
For years the Chicago Police Department has touted its fight against crime and its attempts at community building through the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy program, which partners with neighborhood groups to work to lead youths out of street violence.
As a “long overdue” part of a 2019 federal consent decree, the Police Department is adding what it’s calling an affinity officer to each police district in the next month, said Cmdr. Angel Novalez, head of community policing for the city. The officers will learn the neighborhoods that the district covers to identify “marginalized communities” and serve as a liaison between them and police, Novalez said.
The department also is redoubling its efforts to recruit Black, Latino and other nonwhite officers, he said.
“Having an officer that speaks the language and understands the culture of the neighborhood, is going to help when making decisions how to handle a situation,” Novalez said.
‘Many of those guys need love’
Parents who have had to navigate trying to keep their children safe and out of gangs say more police presence won’t solve Little Village’s issues with gang violence.
As much as she tried, cried and prayed, Sonia Revollar, 45, hasn’t been able to keep her son away from gangs, she lamented.
Since Toledo’s shooting, Revollar has spoken out against blaming Toledo and his mother for his falling into a lifestyle that is “almost inevitable” in Little Village.
“Unless you’re a mother living under our circumstances here and understand everything that leads your son to the streets, don’t judge other parents or their children,” Revollar said. “There’s a lot of suffering.”
When she learned of Toledo’s shooting, “I felt it in my core, because I immediately thought of my son,” she said.
“Era un muchachito,” Revollar said. “He was a little boy, like my son when he started to sneak out.”
“I’m not denying that we have a gang problem here and we do need more police,” said Revollar, who relied on police to help discipline her son when he was younger. “But we need officers that actually care for us and know how to manage these situations.”
Nearly a month after Toledo’s death, Revollar gathered other mothers at a candlelight vigil for Toledo to ask mothers to unite against street violence but also to demand police accountability. The community should work together to protect children, stand up to them and guide them out of gangs and violence, she said.
The group prayed as the Rev. Thomas J. Boharic from Our Lady of Tepeyac Catholic Church, 3045 W. Cermak Road, blessed the alley where Toledo died.
Mayela Sanchez, 50, drove nearly an hour from Indiana to attend the vigil. She met Revollar through Facebook as they both defended Toledo’s mother, she said.
“Most don’t even know how hard it is to grow up in poor neighborhoods where we have no other options,” said Sanchez, who said she’s worked with police as a security guard but also has witnessed the suffering that leads youths to the streets.
Doris Hernandez, who publicly forgave a gang member who killed her son in 2012, said many immediately dehumanize troubled young men “because they’re an easy target to blame for the deeper issues that affect our impoverished neighborhood and the discrimination we live daily.”
Hernandez attended the vigil with Dolores Castañeda, a member of Padres Angeles, a group that helps parents guide their children out of street violence.
“It’s as if we are perpetually looked at as the other — the bad and poor ones — and therefore, we must accept the injustices that happen to us because some of us are used to that because we’ve never seen anything better,” Castañeda said.
Some parents can’t stay with their children all the time because they work overnight or have more than one job, she said. Most people living in Little Village are Mexican immigrants and many live in the country without authorization, which often keeps them from getting help or guidance in caring for their children, Castañeda said.
“And many of those guys need love,” Revollar said. “I can see the sadness in their eyes. We don’t know what they’re really going through or what they’re feeling and why they’re there.”
‘Immigrants must be perfect to deserve respect’
Little Village residents often fail to focus on the root causes of crime, such as a lack of investment in the community, discriminatory policing and police brutality, Castañeda said.
Most Latinos living in low-income neighborhoods like Little Village are immigrants from Latin America who moved to the United States seeking more economic opportunities and fleeing injustices in their home countries, Castañeda and others said.
Many “choose to stay at the margins to ensure their own security because they are used to the abuse of power, of government, and of police in their home countries,” Castañeda said.
Hernadez added that many people come from rural towns with strong conservative values that are reflected in their opinions about religion and policing.
Often those values also include an anti-Black bias that keeps people from noticing practices by police that overcriminalize Black and Latino youths, Castañeda said.
“There are some officers that are passionate about their job and want to help us, but the system is corrupt,” and should be reformed, Hernandez said.
Hernandez commended the children of immigrants for trying to change the narrative for their elders.
“Everyone and everything that lead to Toledo’s death should be held accountable,” she said. “This is a red light for everyone, the community, the police, even gang members; look at what is happening in our neighborhood.”
‘They want to put them in jail, we want to keep them out of jail’
A man at the vigil Revollar organized said he was a member of the Latin Kings street gang and lamented Toledo’s death. When he first met Toledo one night walking around by himself, he noticed how young he was and took him home to his mother, but he refused to stay, the man said.
So instead, he took Toledo to his home with his children. The six of them were at the vigil with the man, wearing T-shirts with Toledo’s photo. The man’s only daughter, age 9, cried as she recalled that Toledo was quiet and shy.
Toledo, the man said, was like another one of his sons. Standing by the fence where Toledo had fallen dead, the man wept quietly.
While numerous community leaders and organizations have proclaimed their support for Toledo’s family, a group of Latino men — outreach workers at the gang intervention program of New Life Centers — have been working with them for many years.
Although police point to renewed community policing as a way to diffuse gang violence, the outreach team said Chicago’s community policing collaboration with them has not been proactive. The team expressed doubt they could work “jointly” with police to address gang violence and its root causes.
When Toledo died, some of the men immediately were in touch with Toledo’s family and teens who knew the 13-year-old, said Paulino Vargas, an outreach worker for more than nine years. .
“People forget they are human too,” said Vargas.
The team works to support youths who are already a part of a gang by providing them opportunities and alternatives. To the outreach team, those others talk about as gang members are more than “at-risk” young people, said Aaron Rivas, another mentor.
“They are our little brothers, we know plenty of kids like Adam,” Rivas said. “But everyone fails to see the suffering, their traumas, and their needs until it is too late.”
Vargas said those blaming Toledo and his mother should “walk with us and the youths, instead of ignoring them, ask if they are OK or if they need anything, learn their pain and the reasons why they’re out in the streets.”
Following the release of the Toledo shooting video, the team was in pain. And angry.
Many officers fail to recognize the complex issues that lead young men to make decisions that harm themselves and others, he said.
Toledo’s killing shows the lack of understanding need for the Police Department to help create peace in the neighborhood, said Rivas.
“They want to put them in jail and we want to keep them out of jail,” said Benny Estrada, the director of the program.
The Chicago Tribune’s Annie Sweeney contributed.
