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| photo by inventorchris / creative commons |
By Dennis Robaugh
A web of deception, crime and misery covers the city of Harvey. At the center, doing the spinning, is Mayor Eric Kellogg.
Emblematic of the myriad problems now plaguing this community is the strange tale of a .45-caliber Remington handgun. Today, the gun is securely in the hands of the Illinois State Police. But its connection to an assault on a police officer and the shooting of a child speaks volumes about the abuse of power taking place in this city.
Once, the gun was evidence.
Harvey police confiscated the weapon from Anthony Reynolds, who's accused of pointing the gun at a cop.
Then it disappeared from a detective's desk.
Its loss as evidence last July jeopardized Reynolds' prosecution and prompted Cook County prosecutors to question police practices in Harvey.
The Daily Southtown already had revealed understaffing among rank-and-file officers, questionable spending practices, abusive behavior and thievery in the city lockup and lawless conduct among the mayor's hand-picked police commanders. After these reports, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. called for outside authorities to intervene, saying a "dire public safety debacle" was under way.
"The idea that a gun which is material evidence ... can go missing from a detective's desk is unbelievable," Jackson said.
In October 2005, bullets from this gun tore into 10-year-old Alex Covington as he crouched on the floor of a small, yellow bungalow in Harvey with his sitter, baby brother and father. The slugs ripped into the flesh of the boy's thigh and bit into his skinny rib cage.
"When the first bullet came in through the window, I had the baby in my arms, I shouted, 'Get down, get down,' " said the sitter, Lachaunda Scott. "The house got shot up, pap, pap, pap."
In the panic, Alex didn't realize he'd been shot.
Then the blood came.
And the tears.
And the anguish of an innocent too young to know the law means nothing to the people in charge here.
"Daddy, I'm hit," he sobbed.
Police quickly concluded Reynolds pulled the trigger.
If you believe word on the street, Reynolds was seeking vengeance. Weeks earlier, he'd been shot. He thought the shooter was in the house where the baby sitter was looking after the Covington boy and his baby brother.
The cops went looking for Reynolds. They found him. He pointed his gun at them. A scuffle ensued, the gun dropped to the concrete, Reynolds was arrested and his gun taken into evidence.
Had detectives tested the weapon, they could have linked it to the Covington shooting. They might have solved that crime. But like so many other crimes in Harvey, detectives couldn't close the case. Instead, sources tell the Southtown, the gun was given to the thug's stepfather on orders from Kellogg. The gun was sold back onto the streets.
Meanwhile, a grand jury was convened. A detective accused of stealing the gun from evidence was indicted. And the mayor was identified as Public Official A - the man who gave the order.
About five months after the gun went missing, the .45 resurfaced through a confluence of circumstance - and the pressure of outside police agencies.
Metra police officer Thomas Cook was shot to death in September while staked out in a crime-plagued train-stop parking lot where many commuters say they've been harassed and robbed. To hear some in Cook's family tell it, Cook was there, in the dark of night, because Harvey's force couldn't put a stop to these crimes. The 43-year-old father of two who dedicated his life to being a good cop died that night because Harvey doesn't have enough good cops.
The South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force - a group of investigators that has excluded Harvey police because of the questionable practices and conduct of top police commanders - took on the challenge of finding a cop killer. Pressure to find the shooter and the murder weapon led someone to turn in a gun to the Robbins Police Department - the missing gun once wielded so menacingly by one Anthony Reynolds, as it turned out.
Six months have passed since Jackson asked for police duties to be taken over by an outside force.
The city council voted in favor of doing so. The mayor ignored them. No one has stepped in. Residents have told the Southtown they must solve their own crimes, as Marice Wall did when her son, a young college student, was attacked in a city park and robbed of his laptop computer. She found the perpetrators herself when Harvey police turned a deaf ear to her pleas.
In those six months, a Metra cop has been murdered.
A Harvey detective has been indicted.
The mayor has become a suspect known as Public Official A.
The city has been sued by the Southtown for access to public records about municipal finances and the dozens of federal lawsuit settlements regarding the conduct of its police force. It appears Harvey could be broke, and many financial documents the city is required to keep are missing.
And Kellogg, who has stacked the upper echelons of his police force with cronies and relatives who hold little regard for the law and have even less ability as police officers, became a sworn police officer in his own city.
With a retinue of bodyguards even a U.S. senator might envy, this disgrace to the rule of law and good government now carries a gun and a badge.
On Monday, Barack Obama comes here. The senator will speak at St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church. Public Official A may even be at his side.
Mr. Obama, thousands will hear what you say that day. They will listen with rapt attention. Maybe you'll tell us you're running for president.
But will you have the audacity to bring hope to Harvey ?
Will you slake their thirst for justice?
You brought a helping hand to the poor of Kenya. You brought a helping hand to the poor of Sudan. You've been an advocate for the best of American democracy.
A disgrace lurks in your own back yard, where democracy has been hijacked.
A sorry plight has descended on this city.
Deception.
Crime.
And misery.
The poor people of Harvey need help.
What will you do?
Epilogue: After taking office, President Obama's Justice Department would quietly begin a wide-ranging investigation of the mayor and the city, which years later would result in criminal charges.