Englewood Residents Skeptical Of City's Claim That Demolitions Will Lower Crime
CHICAGO (CBS) -- It's the city's latest crime-fighting effort: demolition of abandoned buildings. If it sounds familiar, it's because City Hall has been doing for decades.
CBS 2's Jim Williams found people in Englewood who don't believe it'll have much impact.
As an excavator carved through the abandoned house in Englewood, Keisha Owens, who lives across the street, was skeptical.
"That's not really going to do anything cause people are still going to do what they want to do," said Keisha Owens.
"They" being the gangs who Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson says hang out at abandoned buildings and homes.
"When buildings are left vacant, they become targets for gangs to use as gathering places and centers of illegal activity," he said.
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It was the same argument former Mayor Richard M. Daley made two decades ago when his administration tore down abandoned buildings in Englewood.
"What's new about this is we never prioritized working with CPD to target the ones that attract the most crime," said Judy Frydland, commissioner for the Department of Buildings.
But when we asked officials to describe what criminal activity had occurred at the home being torn down today.
"So if you're asking for specific crimes, this location in and of itself was not the subject of crime, but the block is," said Johnson.
A block in a neighborhood already with countless vacant lots where homes once stood.
Owens says people are still "Going to stand around…still going to be gangbanging."
The city says its new demolition program has torn down 100 buildings since it began earlier this year and boarded and secured a thousand others.
City officials insist it's better because they're moving faster to tear down the structures.
