West Town community group, alderman, ask mayor and police leaders to give specifics on plan to confront rash of street robberies

As a citywide spike in robberies and carjackings continues, West Town area residents and a Northwest Side alderman gathered Wednesday to call for Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago Police Department Superintendent Larry Snelling to lay out specifics for combating the violent crime surge.

CPD records show that robberies and motor vehicle thefts have surged more than 60% and 90%, respectively, in the Shakespeare and Near West districts, the two that cover the greater West Town area.

“We need to hear what the plan is around public safety,” Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), said Tuesday morning at a news conference at the Ukrainian Cultural Center with the Greater West Town Community Coalition.

“We know that there’s a strategy around addressing the root cause. Everybody supports that, we all support getting to the root cause (of violent crime),” Villegas said. “But what are we doing today? What are we doing today to send a message to criminals that there’s gonna be consequences?”

One longtime Ukrainian Village resident, who only gave her first name as “Erica,” recounted how she and her boyfriend were robbed at gunpoint near her home last year.

“I was three houses from my home, and I just remember being on the ground just hoping they would just take (my things) and leave and not shoot us or hurt us,” Erica said. “What was most surprising for me was how young they were, I don’t think these gentlemen could’ve been more than 17, 18 and how calm they were and how smooth it went.”

The area also has seen its share of high-profile “smash-and-grab” burglaries involving cars being driven into buildings so those involved can quickly run in and take merchandise. Just on Tuesday, would-be robbers drove a Jeep through a wall at a high-end shoe store on Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, though they apparently failed to get into the building.

There was no immediate information on whether the mayor’s office or CPD had responded to the request. Villegas and Sam Royko, who ran unsuccessfully for City Council against 1st Ward Ald. Daniel La Spata, have asked Mayor Johnson and Snelling to meet with the community on Nov. 14.

Villegas said his staff analyzed police data and found “a direct correlation between what’s occurred with the closure of the Wood Street police district and the uptick in crime over the last decade.”

The alderman did not mention that over the last two decades West Town’s population has shifted dramatically, drawing far more affluent, white residents as the area’s long-standing Latino population moved elsewhere. The Wood District was one of three CPD district stations to close in 2012.

Villegas, whose recently redistricted ward now snakes through much of the Northwest Side, also suggested the CPD reopen the Wood District station or establish a satellite CPD office in the Goldblatt’s building near Chicago and Ashland avenues.

Both options are likely long shots, as the former Wood District station is now occupied by the Cook County sheriff’s office, and the Goldblatt’s building houses the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, an agency that investigates alleged misconduct by CPD officers.