Beat 2524 CAPS Meeting Tonight (7-15-10)

Good evening, everyone. I attended 2524's CAPS meeting tonight. This was my first and only visit to that meeting. This Beat is night and day compared to Beat 2523, let me just say that. 2523's meetings usually has a considerable amount of people at them (30-40 people), while this meeting only had five or six other people. It's attendance is VERY poor, and that's not good, considering that this Beat seems to have more problems than 2523.

The old issues that were talked about from last month's meeting were the ones at 2417 N. Ridgeway (an abandoned building), 36XX W Schubert, Monroe School (3651 W. Schubert) and 3643 W Diversey (another abandoned building). The problem the Ridgeway building was that it had gangbangers and other people going in and out of it. The problem on Schubert was gang recruitment, along with shootings and guys passing stuff around. The problem Monroe School had were with gangbangers hanging out on school property and going in one of the parking lots. There was also a problem with gangs recruiting the 7th and 8th grade kids from the school (which is very, very true, I'd like to say. I went to that school for 4 years, I should know). The problem on Diversey was that the property was open. However, Officer Ortiz from CAPS told us that he went by there and it's now closed. Also, that building will be boarded up.

New problems:

• On the 2700 block of N Monticello, someone keeps opening the hydrant.

There were search warrants done to a building on the 2600 block of N Harding, and another one somewhere on Springfield. Drugs were found in the buildings.

Not sure if I should post these, but I have the list of foreclosed buildings from this Beat. Does foreclosed mean that they'll be vacant? If so, I'll post the addresses.

Other observations:
> Like I said before, this meeting was poorly attended. Very poor. Way different from 2523's meetings.
> The shooting from 3701 W. Fullerton was gang related. 28 yr old man was shot exiting from a vehicle.
> This meeting is ran very differently from 2523's. Our meetings go overtime often. 2524's ended at about 7:45. If a woman who wasn't misinformed about where her Beat meeting was (someone from CAPS, or something, told this woman to come to this meeting. She was supposed to go to 2534's meeting), I'd bet this meeting would've ended by 7:30. Also, we spend time talking to each other at 2523's meeting. At this meeting, nearly everyone took off when the meeting was over. Can't really blame them, though. Gang activity was beginning to build up in the area as we were leaving.
> The most incidents took place in the 2400 block of N Kildare and in the 3900 block of W Fullerton. The most crimes were battery (20 reported incidents), theft (14 reported incidents) and narcotics (13 reported incidents). The most incidents took place on Fridays (22 reported incidents) and Tuesdays (19 reported incidents). Most incidents took place in apartments (22 reported incidents) and on the street (22 reported incidents). The most incidents took place in the 7am, 3pm and 8pm hours.

For this Beat meeting post, I'd like to say thanks to the few residents for being involved in this meeting. Lots of work needs to be, however. I ask for those residents who read the blog but don't come to the meetings (because they don't want to), please, go! They need all of the help they can get.

Thank you,
Timmy