Good morning, this is The Smoke Eater for Tuesday, April 20, 2021, and I’ll never get it right.
Quick Hit
* A history of violence * A sitcom cliche * $8 beer night * A bus full of riot cops * And a mosh pit *
NOTE: I'm sort of cheating again and posting a photoessay from my Patreon. There's another 30+ photos that go along with this story, if you're interested and/or want to help me pay some bills. The story was initially supposed to go up over the weekend, but I was knocked out after the second COVID-19 vaccine, and needed help editing. I reached out to a number of people to check my facts, minimize personal biases, and get different viewpoints. There's more I'd have liked to add for the sake of context and perspective, but I felt waiting another day would have defeated the news value on a story that's already several days late.
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Thousands of protesters marched through Chicago's trendy Logan Square neighborhood Friday evening in protest of the police shooting of 13 year-old Adam Toledo.
Security and body camera footage of the shooting on March 29 shows Chicago police officer Eric Stillman and his partner responding to a call of shots fired in an alley of the South West side Little Village neighborhood. Toledo and 21 year-old Ruben Roman begin running through the alley, and Stillman and his partner engage in a foot pursuit.
Stillman’s shadow appears to show him draw a weapon while chasing Toledo. Upon cornering Toledo at the opening of a large wooden fence at the other end of the alley, Toledo appears to throw an object behind the fence before turning around to face Stillman with his hands raised, per Stillman's request -- but Stillman fires a single shot into Toledo's chest.
Stillman immediately stands over Toledo’s body and lifts his shirt to search for the entry wound. Stillman can be heard asking Toledo where he’s shot as two more officers arrive on scene. They apply a chest seal over the wound so that Stillman can begin administering CPR. As Toledo gasps, an officer engaged in emergency first-aid mentions that Toledo has a "sucking chest wound," suggesting the bullet penetrated one of his lungs.
Camera footage from Stillman, his partner, and other officers on the scene show Stillman applying CPR to Toledo for several minutes until being relieved so another officer can take over before an ambulance arrives. Stillman walks behind the fence and discovers a Rueger pistol roughly six feet from Toledo's body. He informs another officer, and then sits silently on a parking bumper in the abandoned parking lot on the other side of the fence as radio dispatch tells him to switch off his body camera.
The foot chase and shooting both happen in less than 30 seconds and the total length of footage is only 10 minutes long. Most media outlets are only showing the still image of Toledo with his hands raised, some show the foot chase and freeze on a frame of Toledo with his hands up a second before the shooting, and others are deliberately not showing anything due to the very graphic nature of the videos.
Footage from Stillman's partner shows a superior officer asking if Toledo and Roman were involved in an earlier shooting, and if they were members of the Latin Kings street gang. The superior can be heard asking if that shooting was "retaliation."
A prosecutor who initially spoke about Stillman’s footage in court proceedings before its release to the family and public was suspended Saturday, according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, for failing to “fully present the facts.” The prosecutor told the judge Toledo had a “gun in his right hand” at the time of the shooting. A spox for State’s Attorney Kim Foxx says the prosecutor didn’t have all the facts before making the statement in court, and that an investigation is underway.
From a purely objective perspective, it's very difficult to see if Toledo is holding a weapon in the seconds before the shooting. The footage is grainy, shaking, and there’s no audio until after the foot chase begins. Reports say that Roman's hands tested positive for gunshot residue, and footage from Stillman's partner shows cheap, rubber-palmed gloves on the ground next to him when he’s apprehended. Security camera footage from the far side of the parking lot does show Toledo throwing an object behind the fence just before he’s fatally shot by Stillman.
I know from my own reporting on gun violence in Chicago that for decades gangs have had people under the age of 18 hold firearms as the punishment for felony possession of an illegal firearm is less severe for minors.
I also know police are trained to fire into a subjects' chest without hesitation when they feel threatened, how to administer emergency medical treatment for gunshot wounds, and how to apply CPR to infants, children, and adults.
And everyone knows that Chicago has a blood soaked history with police, gangs and gun violence that dates back over a century.
Prohibition-era criminal empires are celebrated in 21st century Chicago as tourist attractions. Current and former police officers celebrate their violent assaults on protesters during the 1968 riots and the 2012 NATO summit just as quickly as musicians brag about crimes. The mayor used emergency federal aid for COVID-19 to pay for police overtime, and has moved to kill her own policing reform measures in the city council. And the police department has refused even modest efforts to better itself, like a simple database of police misconduct, despite a federally mandated consent decree to reform its well-documented pattern of corruption and violence.
The phrase "Chicago Politics" is synonymous with corruption at the highest levels of city government. "Crime Is Down" is a running joke among journalists, scanner jockeys, and statistics nerds due to the city and CPD’s routine use of the phrase when hiding the true number of violent crimes (robberies, muggings, car jackings, murders, random assaults, etc.). And every weekend in Chicago there’s at least a dozen shootings and a body count.
Stillman killed a kid. Regardless of whether or not Toledo had a gun, everyone does stupid shit at 13, and people get killed because police are trained to shoot first.
Flyers for Friday's protest in Logan Square started appearing on Thursday after Rabbi Michael Ben Yosef and the political cult, RevCom, were able to get a decent crowd for a protest on a Wednesday evening at Federal Plaza downtown. The flyer noted that the Logan Square protest would be a coalition between 12 different neighborhood groups and activist collectives, including Good Kids, Mad City.
Drama between competing activist groups has been simmering since last summer. Arguably, the possible turn out for most events has been depressed because of this bickering. This has left objective journalists, members of the greater activist-press collective, livestreamers and shitposters guessing at which events are worth covering and/or attending due to limited time and resources.
For months there'd been chatter on social media from people begging GKMC to stage another large protest. Founded in 2018, they rocketed to the forefront of Chicago’s activist scene last year, drawing large crowds and media attention that they were able to parlay into community outreach programs. The social media savvy leaders (many of whom would object to being described as “leaders,” and argue that they are an autonomous group) spit fiery rhetoric on-and-off line. They often hold major intersections, sometimes for hours, by simply having over 100 people blocking entrances and exits. Inside the human barricade would be a large dance party that, more often than not, featured free snacks (and, occasionally, weed and booze).
Because new Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown had issued an order not to use force to disperse protesters, cops usually just let people march/party themselves out - a historically standard tactic in Chicago, but one that was never really put in writing. Taken together, one could argue that this created a feeling of superiority among protesters, that they were winning their fight, until August 15, 2020.
That’s when CPD, under Brown's direct supervision, chased, beat, and pepper sprayed retreating protesters and press through the Loop, kettled them, and unlawfully searched everyone. CPD then rushed out selectively edited security footage to the media to suggest the police didn’t deliberately start a fight with peaceful protestors, and spend three hours gassing and beating people while wiping their collective asses with the First Amendment.
That day seems to have changed everything.
People familiar with the internal drama of various activist groups tell me some became hesitant to stage protests downtown in fear of a large police response. This seems to have led to a pervasive feeling that neighborhoods were safer, even though police riot and SWAT teams can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the city. But everyone knew the protests would be big. Chicago’s Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, lives in Logan Square. Pissed off activists and teenagers from across the city and surrounding suburbs wanted to hit the streets before Stillman’s body camera video was released. GKMC can bring a crowd. And the story of Toledo’s shooting was drawing national attention from legacy mastheads and the cable news chattering classes.
The protest was scheduled on Friday at 5:30pm at the Logan Square Memorial, a small 500ft long park and oblong traffic circle that sits across the street from the Logan Square “L” stop. Dozens of people began streaming towards the park with cardboard signs at around 4:30. A few even popped into the bar I was working at -- just up the street -- for a pint and a few roadies.
(People won’t pay for honest journalism, but they’ll spend $8 on a beer without a second thought. Go figure.)
At 5:40pm, Chicago Sun-Times photographer Tyler LaRiviere tweeted that there were “hundreds” gathering in the park with more coming. About 20 minutes later, LaRiviere tweeted that there was somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000. I showed LaRiviere’s photos to my coworkers at the bar, and they were already concerned when one of the owners called to suggest shutting down the bar as people continued to stream towards the park.
Being a dirty street rat, I assured them that everything would probably be fine, but cautioned things could get a little weird. When protesters began marching towards the bar, I told my colleagues I was taking a break and would be back in about 15-20 minutes. I stripped off my button-up, untucked my t-shirt, threw on my leather jacket, grabbed my camera and bag, and ran down the street straight into the protest.
A few of my colleagues were immediately confused to see me suddenly racing around like a rodent who discovered gutter coffee.
“Where the hell did you come from?” LaRiviere asked when I caught up to him.
“Work,” I replied, squinting my eyes to convey a smile from behind my mask. “I’m on break. Pulled a Clark Kent!”
A few of my other photographer colleagues were warning me to be careful, but I didn’t really listen as I was more concerned with getting my shots and getting back to the bar. As I weaved my way between a few cars near the McDonald’s, a protester tried to grab my camera and shove me to the ground. I jumped back just as he screamed, “No white media!”
I didn’t have time to think too much about the comment. Instead, I raced ahead, snapping up whatever scenes I could. After helping Jonathan Ballew climb up a power box at the intersection of Diversy, Kimball, and Milwaukee, I ran to the alley behind the bar and lit a cigarette. The front door was impenetrable, so I texted my coworker to let me in through the back.
“What are you doing,” a young guy leaning out a window three stories up shouted down.
“Working,” I said. “It’s too crowded to get in the front, so I was texting my colleague to let me in through the back.”
“What’s with the camera?”
“Still working! I’m also a photojournalist. I took my break to try and cover this shit.”
He leaned out the window a little further, looked up and down the alley, and whispered, “I’ll let you up on the roof for a cigarette.”
“You got a deal,” I shouted.
A young guy with a crutch led me upstairs into a sparsely decorated bedroom of their alcoholic roommate. He opened the window and told me to climb out onto the roof, run north along the building, climb up two ladders, then run south along the ledges until I can’t go any further. He warned me to be careful and not take too long.
His instructions were spot on: I ran out, climbed up and crouched along on a ledge to get my shot. Once a police helicopter began circling the massive crowd pushing north on Milwaukee and turning South on Kimball, I decided to get the hell out of there.
Besides, technically I was still working the bar.
When I got back in, my bar colleagues and I decided to close up. They were worried the protest -- which had been fairly peaceful -- could turn sour with so many people present.
“It’ll be fine,” I said, “But it’ll probably get weird if they stay out and the night drags on.”
It was just before 8:00 pm, but we’d already been telling customers for two hours that we may close early due to the protests. Interestingly enough, most of the customers understood and weren’t upset. A number rolled their eyes and made comments critical of the bar, the protests, or all the safety precautions bars and restaurants have to take in order to stay open during a global pandemic.
“I’m not worried about going back to ‘normal,’” one customer told me. He turned to his wife, grabbed her hand, then looked at her and said, “That’s why we have certain items locked up in a safe at our home around the corner.”
It was the kind of speech that rolls off the tongue in the way that a roller coaster operator tells guests to keep their arms and legs inside the car at all times, but jumbled and haphazard, as if he’d gone over it in his head a million times and never actually said it out loud.
We locked the doors and I ran out the back and through the alley to save myself from running a few extra blocks. A few colleagues texted me the location of the protest, but I was still a couple blocks away, so I missed the spats between some of the international wire photographers and protestors. I was later told that the correspondent, who’d been present for countless violent uprisings and protests all over the world, was pissed that these kids were blocking shots and attempting to damage camera gear because they were taking photos of faces. According to one account, a protestor sprayed WD-40 on the lens of a camera.
In response to a member of the activist press criticizing professional journalists who “parachute” into cities and towns, the head of the local National Lawyers Guild noted that a number of reporters were complaining directly to NLG members on the scene, not the police.
A man smoking outside of a barber shop stopped me to ask what the hell was going on as a bus full of police in riot gear passed his shop.
“Protest,” I gasped trying to catch my breath. “Did you see where they went?”
“Shit, no,” he said, craning his head as a bus full of riot police began marching single file into the side street. “You think they’ll fuck anything up? I just opened this shop. This is my business. I can’t afford riot bullshit.”
I told him that the owners of my bar had closed early over similar fears, but I doubted anything bad would happen. I passed him my card, we traded bald jokes, and he wished me luck as I darted across the busy four lane street after the riot cops.
After stumbling into the wrong end of the police riot line, I met up with a few colleagues who shoot for news wires. I told them about the bus load of riot police, and they informed me that the march was moved deeper into the neighborhood side streets, but people seemed to be peeling off. They were headed home home to file and eat.
Another colleague and I resolved to stay out for a bit to try and catch any late night weirdness, and because both our homes were within walking distance. The police helicopter’s flight pattern suggested that the protest had begun turning back towards the Logan Square Memorial, so we headed over there to catch around the last of the protestor’s speeches.
With the crowd breaking apart, a few other photographers and I had gathered to joke and catch up with one another. A couple of them ribbed me for working both jobs simultaneously like a sitcom cliche. I was fishing for a cigarette when I heard someone ask, “what’s going on over there?”
***
The whole lot of us darted across the monument and ran to the scuffle in the middle of Milwaukee and Kedzie. A couple dozen police were trying to push back a couple dozen protestors. Someone was screaming that a kid had just been arrested. More police and more protestors quickly joined the chaos and pulled their respective comrades into friendly arms.
The next morning, a local newspaper reported the “dust-up” started after the kid on a bike hurled insults and spat on a cop while riding past. The local Fox affiliate ran a stringer’s video of the “clash,” framing it as a violent altercation. Personally, I witnessed a bunch of cops and teenagers falling on top of one another in an accidental mosh pit that broke out in the middle of a busy intersection at 10:00 o’clock on a Friday night when tempers were hot.
Because of this circle-jerk, nobody wanted to leave. Disorganized pods of protestors spent the next hour yelling at equally disorganized pods of police. When police began forming a long riot line to clear the intersection of people and patrol cars, there was a real fear the police might kettle and arrest everyone.
Protesters began screaming about a "trap" as the police moved around them in an awkward grouping. Having learned my lesson from August 15, I positioned myself to escape North on Milwaukee, if necessary. I figured I could duck into a bar, or cut across the parking lot behind Cafe Con Leche as it empties into the curbed dead-end of Spaulding Ave. by the Logan "L" station's North entrance.
The cops eventually fell back to barricade the Southbound traffic circle entrance of Kimball Ave., most likely so nobody would be tempted to carry what’s left of the protest back near the mayor’s house.
Reporters, photographers, activists, protesters, and everyone in between continued milling about the intersection. A few trucks and vans peeled their tires to create noise and large clouds of smoke. Someone lit a large sulfur-filled smoke bomb and fired off roman candles.
I turned to a photographer for the Chicago Tribune and joked, “At least we’re wearing masks,” but they didn’t seem to find it very funny.
Teenagers were smoking blunts, others were hitting up the local liquor store for tallboys. Shit had officially gotten weird, and a number of professional journos decided to leave. Experience has taught us that when the cops retreat and protesters get wasted, the only story likely to unfold is the one you’re in.
As I walked my colleagues to their car, there was a kid awkwardly dangling from some construction scaffolding outside the “L” station. He was nursing a tallboy and cursing out anyone walking below.
“Sorry you didn’t get your story,” he said condescendingly. “Fuck you. This ain’t your neighborhood. Fuck the media.”
OK, here's a cute critter video: BABY GOATS!
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