Beat 1431 CAPS Meeting This Evening (5-19-11)

Good evening, everyone. I attended 1431's CAPS meeting this evening. This was my first visit to that meeting, and because I really liked this meeting, I may come back for more. The first thing we did at the meeting was introduce ourselves, than we went to old problems that came up at March's meeting. Those problems were...

* 2608 W. Fullerton - Complaints of noise but nothing resolved.
* 2042 N. Stave and 2700 W St. Francis - Drug and gang activity; no new incidents reported.
* Bingham St. and 2139 N. Point - Numerous crime and disorder issues; no new incidents reported.

Moving onto the new problems:
* Congress Theater (2169 N. Milwaukee) - Lot of parking issues.
* Gunshots on April 25th @ 11pm on the 2400 block of W McLean. CPD responded within 3 minutes and found nothing. Numerous residents reported this incident to the local listserve that serves that area.
* Altgeld and Campbell - Men, most gang members, by the names of "Goss", "Pink Step", "Ray Ray", Ivan Morales, and others are starting all kind of problems in this area, mostly gang disturbances. A resident thinks they may be trying to start the Imperial Gangsters over there. Addresses where they hang out are include 2513 N. Artesian, 2418 N. Campbell, 2457 N. Campbell and 2449 N. Campbell.

Other observations:
* This meeting had a pretty large amount of residents in attendance (about 20). This group seems to be really involved and they seem to really care about their community. I honestly was impressed with what I saw. I haven't seen this much community involvement at a Beat meeting since 1412's back on April 7th.
* There was a community meeting for this Beat area last month. Minutes of it were passed out at tonight's meeting. Of course, no CPD came to the meeting [because it wasn't an official CAPS meeting]. At this meeting, one of the things discussed was of reported "shots fired" on March 22nd, 2011, at 5:22pm and 8:20, at Bingham and Stave. Also discussed was numerous gang graffiti and activity sightings, V-Live issues, gang activity on Milwaukee, Tini Martini applying for a late liquor license, a group of five to six teenage males "suspiciously" loitering behind the annex building of Goethe Elementary @ Lyndale and Talman on April 5th during the late evening, and the infamous homeless male named Daryl Chambers, who was loitering under the Kennedy Expressway between Artesian and Western.
* The most common crimes on Beat 1431 were theft (35 reported incidents), battery (20 reported incidents), and motor vehicle theft (15 reported incidents).

For this Beat meeting post, I ask for those residents who read the blog but don't come to the meetings (because they don't want to), please, go!

Next "official" CAPS meeting: July 19th, 2011 at 14th District Station (2150 N. California) at 6:30PM.

Thank you,
Timmy