Tracy, the police crime-control strategy chief, says O Block remains one of his major challenges. When you eliminate all those things from a community - men not in the household and education failing - it will be a drastic difference than what the first lady of the United States and her family experienced.” “The environment was family-focused,” he says. He points to Parkway Gardens and says the difference between the mid-1960s, when the first lady’s family lived there, and today is drastic. “You have kids on both sides who are fenced in because of their conflicts with each other,” he says of O Block. Gang members from the Parkway Gardens side of King Drive still risk getting shot if they cross Vernon Avenue two blocks to the east or venture north past 63rd, says Brooks, who raised more than $450,000 with his rooftop campaign, bought and demolished the motel and plans to build a community center in its place. But gang factions continue to battle there, he says, with homemade rap videos posted online often fueling the violence. Corey Brooks became famous as the pastor on the roof when he camped out for months on top of a boarded-up motel nearby, in the 6600 block of South King Drive, to draw national attention to the rampant gunfire in the neighborhood. In “52 Bars (Part 4),” Chicago rapper Lil Durk lamented the violence and gave a nod to Sheroid Liggins, a reputed gang member shot and killed in February 2012 when he walked out of a store on O Block: “Askin’ why they took Sheroid. Sheroid Liggins, a reputed gang member shot and killed in February 2012 when he walked out of a store on O Block. Since 2012, the number of shootings in Beat 312 is down by 59 percent through September, the police say. O Block sits in the midst of the Chicago Police Department’s Beat 312, which stretches east from the Dan Ryan Expressway past Cottage Grove, roughly between 63rd and 65th streets. Shootings are also down in the general area. They point to figures that show most of the shootings on O Block the past three years happened in the first two years of that span and that no one has been shot to death in two years. Preacely - already on parole for illegal possession of a gun - is now charged with attempted murder.ĭespite the violence, things are actually better now around O Block than they’ve been, the police and politicians say. Gerald Preacely, 22, is accused of shooting at a group of people standing outdoors on O Block on June 3 - then firing at two police officers who saw him do it. The number of people shot would have been even higher, the police say, if not for one shooter’s bad aim.
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