Neighbors Worry About Rise In Violent Crime In Ravenswood Manor; One Woman Found Bullets In Her Bedroom

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Ravenswood Manor neighborhood woman recently woke up with a bullet next to her pillow.

We found the shooting is part of a rise in violent crime in the community -- where people are fed up with safety issues.

CBS 2's Tara Molina on Tuesday brought concerns to city and state leaders.

Some Ravenswood Manor residents near Manor and Lawrence avenues found dozens of bullet casings over the weekend. Two of the bullets hit even closer to home – actually inside of it – for that one woman.

Behind shattered glass, a bullet that pierced a home in the neighborhood left a hole above the headboard for the woman's bed – inches from where she slept.

"I heard a really loud crack," the woman said. "Lying right there next to where I was sleeping was a gold indented bullet. There behind the mirror was a second bullet."

The woman was left shaken and she did not want to show her face. But she did show us the shades and the curtain the bullet went through before hitting the wall and landing on her pillow.

The woman said the Chicago Police officers who responded told her it was gang related – something we're told has become more and more concerning in the area.

"There are other wards that have specific task forces for gang activity, and we don't have that here," the woman said.

At the time of this report, she had not heard back from Ald. Rossana Rodriguez (33rd). She told us the office left her husband a voicemail Thursday. But state Rep. Jaime Andrade (D-Chicago) has been part of a call for more police officers in this part of the Albany Park (17th) police district for months because of an uptick in violent crime.

"It's terrifying," Andrade said. "Ravenswood Manor has never seen anything like this before."

Andrade said there are fewer officers here to handle the problem.

"I've never seen it this bad," he said.

We looked into the issue. The latest district-wide crime statistics for the Albany Park police district – bounded by the city's northern boundary which runs primarily at Devon Avenue in that area on the north, Belmont Avenue on the south, the Chicago River's North Branch and the North Shore Channel on the east, and Cicero Avenue on the west – show increases all across violent crime categories.

CBS 2 isolated more specific crime numbers for two police beats, 1713 and 1724, that encompass the Ravenswood Manor area, on the eastern edge of the greater Albany Park community.

Those areas' violent crime numbers are up slightly compared to last year, with 68 total violent crime incidents so far in 2020 compared to 60 in 2019. Violent crime is defined by the CPD as homicide, robbery, sex assault, aggravated assault, and aggravated battery.

The data do not allow separation of homicides caused by gunshots versus homicides by other means, but it does allow separating out non-fatal shootings. The table below shows shootings in which someone was struck (aggravated battery with a firearm), incidents in which someone was shot at or had a gun pointed at them but was not struck (aggravated assault with a firearm), and all homicides. It does not include incidents where bullets struck a house, which I would also need to FOIA for.

This category – shootings and all homicides – in beats 1713 and 1724 are also up slightly: 23 so far this year compared to 18 during the same period last year.

The map below shows shootings and homicides in these beats in 2020 only. The red marker is Manor and Lawrence avenues.

In all, we found violent crime is up more than 13 percent and shootings and homicides are up more than 27 percent in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood.

Molina asked Chicago Police about the issue and how they're handling it. This is what they said:

"We also do not have numbers of officers assigned to that specific area."

All District staffing levels remain sufficient to ensure public safety throughout Chicago. Building on the more than 1,100 police officers and detectives that were deployed back into Chicago's communities as part of the January reorganizational announcement, just this past spring, the Department permanently reassigned more than 100 officers into police districts across Chicago. On top of that, the nearly 300 officers within CPD's new citywide, Community Safety Team (CST) are designed to supplement manpower in police districts that may need additional support at any given time."

But the woman who woke up to find the bullets in her bedroom said she'd like to see more than sufficient moving forward.

"This is a real threat not only to us, but to everyone in this neighborhood," she said.

Molina reached out to Mayor Lori Lightfoot's office with the neighborhood's concerns. A spokesperson deferred to the CPD, who wouldn't share specific staffing numbers with us without a Freedom of Information Act request.

Ald. Rodriguez's office directed us to a notice on Facebook that specifically mentioned the woman who found bullets in her bedroom.

In:
• Shooting
• Chicago Police Department