A quarter century passes, but some things about Chicago don’t change

My mind turns back to the time a quarter-century ago when I lived the life of a crime reporter – and let myself become absorbed by the tales of every slaying that occurred in Chicago.

Back in the late 1980s when I was at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago, there were times when I felt like my car (a bright red Ford Escort that was the most expensive vehicle I could afford on a City News salary) WAS my office.

IT WAS IN those days that I developed a habit that I find I still have. I walk into a strange place, and I find myself looking for a pay phone – in case I have to call the office to report details for a possible story.

Even though I now carry one of those Smartphone thingies, it seems so natural to look for a phone, and I find myself disappointed at the lack of public telephones.

But that’s an issue for another day.

The point being that back during my first year at City News when I was one of the reporters who only briefly checked in with the main office in the morning, I was among the people who hung out in the places most likely to result in crime and criminal activity – which means stories.

KEEP IN MIND that the old City News Bureau was the place that covered every single homicide in Chicago and Cook County, and tried to keep up with the violent activity in the rest of the Chicago area – back in the days when the homicide total in Chicago could get ridiculously close to 1,000 per year.

City News was also the entity that kept in daily contact with the Medical Examiner’s office. I remember when I was the reporter who made the daily trip out to the Near West Side every 5 a.m. – just to see if any of our countless other calls throughout the day had managed to miss something.

This is all scut work. As in the miniscule, often mind-numbing, activity that one has to do in order to be able to stumble across the crime that becomes the heart-warming tale of sadness.

While also quickly learning that most homicides are droll enough that they’re rarely worth more than three paragraphs. And for fear of sounding callous and crass, many of the people whose slayings I wrote about 25 years ago were not pleasant people.

THE WORLD PROBABLY is, and has been, a more pleasant place without them.

If there is a lesson I learned from those days, it is that man is incredibly capable of being callous and cruel toward their fellow man. And under certain circumstances, people can be made to do things they find to be repulsive and would NEVER do otherwise.

But the way you learn all of this is by doing the footwork – getting out into the neighborhoods to see daily activity. Heck, there are some parts of Chicago that I know primarily from having seen them when they were the site of a crime scene a score and five years ago.

There’s nothing new about any of this. You learn about the world by getting out and seeing it.

WHAT INSPIRED ME to write this particular commentary was the DNAInfo.com website, which is including among its reporting an attempt to get at the reality of the just over 200 murders that have occurred in Chicago this year.

They literally have sent reporter-type people out to the homes of every single victim – letting them get at details more than just what caliber firearm was used.

It’s nice. I’m sure they have many interesting stories as a result of their work. And those youthful reporters are gaining some experiences that they will look back on fondly later in life.

But it’s nothing new. It sounds a lot like the dispatches that used to turn up in newsrooms all across Chicago – many of which were used by the broadcasters and newspapers of the city to determine which slayings were worth covering. Some things just never change.

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Overnight in Chicago is its own world

I never saw anyone watching “Bruce Lee” films while on the job. But then again, it certainly wouldn’t be out-of-character for the kind of people who keep this city alive while most of us are trying to get some sleep.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday on their website about how an inspector general earlier this year decided to conduct “midnight raids” – which consist of just showing up at government offices that are open around the clock.

THEY WANTED TO see just what kind of work – if any – those people were actually doing in exchange for their government-funded salaries.

According to the newspaper, they found one staffer of the medical examiner’s office engaged in the cliché act of any overnight-shift worker – she was asleep at her desk.

Two others were watching Bruce Lee use his martial arts skills to wallop away at a cast of bad guys while speaking very poorly dubbed English.

And yes, they were watching it on a computer monitor that was a part of the Cook County inventory of property.

IN FACT, THE county inspector general’s report indicated that when an investigator showed up at 2:35 a.m. one early morning, they found no one working. Although it would seem that the particular moment was one of those lulls in activity when there wasn’t anything that specifically needed tending to.

Which is what seems to have caused these workers to think they could get away with taking a nap, or watching a film!

Now my own first-hand experience with this kind of life is nearly a quarter-of-a-century old. I was once a reporter-type person with the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago who worked the overnight shift.

For me, 1988 was the year that I rarely saw daylight. And for a few of those months, I was the City News “kid” who showed up at the very same medical examiner’s office five days a week – just to check up on things and see if anything occurred overnight.

ALSO, IT WAS a way to check up on final details of ongoing crime and violence stories.

But the lasting memory in my mind of visiting the county morgue five days a week at 5 a.m. each day was the sight of a pair of guys at the front desk who would while away the slower hours (I almost wrote “dead time”) by watching a portable black-and-white television.

I wonder how many collective hours of bad overnight television those guys watched while staying awake to process the bodies that would come in to the morgue from the urban violence that cares less about the clock.

I know some people are going to argue that the guys who got caught watching a martial-arts film were engaged in some sort of egregious act that wasted county tax dollars.

YET I’M NOT sure if I buy that whole-heartedly (and not just because, according to the Sun-Times, the two employees immediately turned off their computer and quit watching the film when they realized the inspector general’s people were present).

To be honest, I can remember moments working an overnight shift when I napped for a few seconds. One really does develop a sense that jolts them back into consciousness when something happens that warrants their attention.

I didn’t sleep through any news stories while covering crime from midnight to 9 a.m. A part of me wants to give the benefit of the doubt to the morgue workers – that they would have suddenly become alert if a fresh corpse had arrived on the premises and needed to be dealt with soon.

Besides, if a Bruce Lee flick is the worst thing the inspector general’s office can find, then perhaps our county government is fine. Somehow, I doubt that is true!

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Burial for two dozen of the indigent deceased. Too bad we can’t do more

I’m not much of a fan of the “Star Trek” series of programs and films, but there are times that I wonder if the Klingons are on to something we could all learn from.

Klingons, for those who don’t know, are a species of warriors who are prepared to, if not all too eager, to fight to the death, and find great honor in such activity. But as for the corpses themselves, they are merely “empty shells” with the essence of what made that individual unique having been removed.

THE IDEA IS, that while they have their rituals related to death, they don’t put much stock in the idea of the body being all that important – once life as we know it is complete.

I’m not saying that corpses in that television world get disposed of like trash. But there are times I wonder if we put too much attention on the rituals related to our own deaths.

I couldn’t help but think of this when I read the stories being published about how some two dozen bodies of indigent people who died with no one to claim them were finally given a burial on Wednesday.

Those bodies were among the nearly 400 that were backed up at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, with some allegedly being stacked in the halls because the giant freezers meant to slow decomposition of the flesh while the bodies are in county custody were over-packed.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, the Chicago Archdiocese of the Catholic Church went so far as to offer up to 300 graves at Catholic cemeteries so that the bodies could at least be put into a proper grave.

Like I said, that offer was made months ago. Yet it is only now that only two dozen were actually buried – specifically at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery on 111^th Street near the Mount Greenwood neighborhood, the first cemetery meant to service the South Side.

Cook County government officials would have liked to have taken up the offer much sooner, and for many more of the bodies that were never claimed – or where the next-of-kin were too poor to afford the cost of a funeral.

But it literally came down to the concerns among Cook County officials that they would be attacked in the future by putting indigent people into graves at a Catholic cemetery.

WHO’S TO SAY some indigent Protestant (or maybe Muslim) wouldn’t have some family come forth at a later date, all upset that they weren’t with their “own kind” in the after-life?

County officials literally had to spend time checking, as best they could, into the religious beliefs of these people – many of whom were so cut off from the mainstream of our society in life that I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to try to verify now if it would be acceptable that they were put into a grave next to Catholic people.

Now I respect the idea that some people have very intense religious beliefs that extend to the specific circumstances under which they want their dead treated. I’m not, in any way, looking to violate the concerns of such individuals.

But those are the people who do come forth and claim their deceased loved ones.

I CAN’T HELP but think that in cases where there is no one, accepting such a plot is only too practical for county government. It also sounds so much more respectful than some of the practices that have occurred at African-American-oriented cemeteries on the South Side – where there are people who literally don’t know if their loved one’s graves truly contain their remains, or those of somebody else!

So I can only think it encouraging that Cardinal Francis George was able to take the time to lead a graveside service for two dozen people whose remains should have been put to rest months ago. It’s only a shame we don’t know, in some cases, whose minds those dead individuals continue to live on in.

Because I honestly believe that the dead live on in the memories of the living – just as there are times when I can hear my own mother admonishing me if I’m about to screw something up (or offering her praise if I get something right).

All the rants about ritual just seem so trivial in that context.

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