Chicago grandmother Hester Scott went to great lengths to help the boy charged with her murder

(CBS/AP) CHICAGO - The family of police officer Hester Scott who was allegedly murdered by her grandson on Sunday had begged the woman to commit the troubled teen to an institution.

When the boy, who she'd taken in from a drug-addled daughter ran away, she kept taking him back. He made allegations of abuse - none of which were proven - that forced her to hand over her badge. It was that devotion that may have led to her death.

Prosecutors allege that 15-year-old Keshawn Perkins beat his grandmother with a lamp, then stabbed the 55-year-old women with a kitchen knife and then dumped her body in the backyard. All of this happened after she caught him skipping school and confronted him.

He has now been charged as an adult with first-degree murder and robbery.

On Monday, as Scott's relatives planned her funeral, they also set out to give something back to the 25-year police officer: Her badge.

"We want the police to do right by her, so he (her son) and the grandchildren will have something so they can believe in our city," said her sister Marlene Scott-Pittman. "They need to see the city is showing them, 'We made a mistake and we're going to fix this the best that we can.'"

The president of the police union that Scott belonged to said he asked Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy that Scott's badge be reinstated in time for her funeral.

Even after she lost her police powers and spent four years in a call center - the police department's version of limbo - Scott kept caring for the boy and his three siblings.

"She did it because she loved them and they didn't have a home," said Scott-Pittman. "She felt a responsibility to take her grandchildren and keep them together."

Scott was known around her Chicago neighborhood for her commitment to the children, whom she had taken in seven or eight years ago when her own daughter started seeking treatment for drug abuse. Scott added a second level onto her brick home to make more room for the children.

She lobbied to get Perkins into Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, a reputable high school, and drove him to his train stop each day, neighbors said.

"She was a good mother to those kids," said Jessie Bell, 61. "She devoted all her time to them."

Scott was especially known for her efforts to help Perkins. Neighbors and family members painted a picture of a troubled boy suffering from mental illness, who would repeatedly run away and lie. According to neighbor Nora Powell, the teenager used Scott's credit cards without permission and spent her money - once to buy a BB gun - and spent so much that she had trouble making a mortgage payment.

"She loved him and she didn't want anything to happen to him," Powell said. "She did what she could."

Perkins was denied bail Sunday.

Neighbors believed Perkins struck his grandmother on more than one occasion and then told authorities that it was Scott who was the abuser. In 2007, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigated her while her sister took care of the children.

"I kept the children for two months and they were confused, running away and fighting each other," said Scott-Pittman. "This is what she had been dealing with. These were damaged children that she was trying to restore."

State workers ultimately dismissed the allegations, family members said. Agency spokesman Jimmie Whitelow declined Monday to give further details, citing the "legal rights of the accused minor."

The children came back to their grandmother's, but Scott was stripped of her police powers and put on desk duty pending an investigation by the Independent Police Review Authority.

Prosecutors said Scott confronted her grandson on Friday about skipping school. They said he grabbed a lamp and allegedly struck Scott "until she shut up." He then allegedly stabbed her with a kitchen knife, took her purse and wrapped her body in a blanket before dumping it in the backyard.

Neighbors said they knew something was wrong. Bell said he saw Perkins moving something in the backyard and came out holding a purse. Another neighbor, Earl Ware, called police after he spotted blood on the sidewalk outside the house.

"It was so upsetting," said Ware. "I didn't think it was that extreme."

Hours later, her body was found by police in a sewer trap.