Never a City So Real - Alex Kotlowitz [26]
Reed sells these for twenty dollars apiece, but he tells me that many want the projects painted on the walls of their new homes. “In the front room,” he tells me. “The first thing you’ll see walking into their house. Can you imagine? The first thing that pops into your mind is, You must have lived in the Robert Taylor Homes or known someone.” His laughter punctuates his thoughts. “And they want everybody to know this.”
But Reed prefers to dwell on his efforts to expand his customers’ horizons rather than re-creating the past, and so soon he’s pacing back and forth again, talking once more about his fantastical murals. “Go ahead on and give these people something that they could never have in their life,” he tells me. “Give it to them, and it will make them happy.”
26th Street
Chicago’s Criminal Courts building is a massive columned structure made of limestone; I’m told that it has the world’s largest collection of felony courtrooms (thirty-four) under one roof. Roughly forty thousand cases are heard here each year, an average of 153 a day. The rush of humanity is staggering. The central bond court, room 101, begins proceedings at one o’clock every afternoon, and it is so backed up with the newly arrested that defendants now appear on video from lockup in the basement. Court officials say that bringing all of them into the courtroom would pose insurmountable security problems, so friends and family members, often with young children, sit on the hard-backed benches and watch their loved ones appear on televisions hanging from the ceiling. The judge goes through the defendant’s past record, then sets a bond. It usually takes a minute, maybe two. One attorney commented, “You can’t help but be overwhelmed by the speed with which things happen here.”
But for some the wheels of justice turn a little more quickly than for others. Carved into the building’s stone exterior is a single word, VERITAS, and indeed while the truth more often than not eventually comes to light, it is not necessarily pursued with equal vigor in every case. Consider the tale of Police Commander Jon Burge. Over the course of eighteen years, ninety defendants—all of whom had been interrogated by Burge or by a small group of detectives under his command—appeared in various courtrooms here, accused of crimes like arson and murder. Over time, each claimed he had been tortured. Some said they’d been suffocated, a plastic bag or typewriter cover held over their heads until they passed out. Some claimed they’d been given electric shocks, administered by a cattle prod or a field-telephone-like device, their genitals the usual target. Still others said that Burge and his men had played sadistic games with them, placing guns in their mouths. But it took seventeen years before anyone paid attention to these claims, and then only after a dogged local journalist, John Conroy, wouldn’t let the story go. Burge, who has since been dismissed from the police force, is now—twenty-nine years after the first claim—under investigation; a special prosecutor has been appointed to see whether there are grounds to prosecute Burge or any of the officers under his command. Many of those who say they were tortured by Burge and his men remain in prison, though in January 2003 Governor Ryan pardoned and released four of the convicted who were on death row, arguing they were innocent of the crimes to which they’d allegedly given confessions. The goings-on in this building, like my father-in-law’s sculpture of the anvil hanging precariously over the birdfeeder, represent the ultimate juxtaposition of power and fragility.
The building is known among its regulars as “26th Street,” a nod to its location at the corner of 26th Street and California