Shoot-first culture stalks streets of murder capital

Poverty, value system erosion spark persistent gang violence

February 01, 2004|By Rex W. Huppke and David Heinzmann, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporters Manya A. Brachear, Glenn Jeffers and Carlos Sadovi contributed to this report.

The new year was about 43 hours old when Joseph Budakovic turned his mother's Ford Escort north onto Avers Avenue in Logan Square, following a street lined with well-kept two-flats still draped in garland and strands of Christmas lights.

He double-parked outside a friend's house and waited, seemingly secure on a block just south of bustling Fullerton Avenue, a block that would blend in seamlessly in any working-class Chicago neighborhood.

Shortly after 7 p.m., two bullets shattered the car's rear driver's side window, pierced the seat cushion and hit the 23-year-old Budakovic in the lower back. The factory worker's head slumped on the steering wheel and the assailant vanished into the night.

Budakovic's murder was, in the coldest of terms, statistically significant--his was the first homicide of 2004 in a city that ended last year with the most murders of any U.S. metropolis.

But beyond statistics, the details of this murder highlight the petty and unpredictable nature of violent crimes in Chicago, the danger of entrenched neighborhood gangs that recklessly pursue vengeance, and the ease with which a person--even innocent--can drift into harm's way.

Before Budakovic turned onto that street, a pair of Spanish Cobra gang members had been ordered to cross turf borders and shoot a rival gang member in retaliation for earlier violence, police believe.

The block Budakovic was on--the 2200 block of North Avers--is in the heart of Latin Disciples territory. When the two Spanish Cobras approached his car they assumed he was the enemy. Investigators say the men flashed gang signs, Budakovic told them he wasn't in a gang, and they shot him anyway.

Budakovic didn't belong to any of the several factions of the Latin Disciples, or the Imperial Gangsters, or the Latin Lovers, or the Latin Kings, or any of the other gangs that vie for turf in the Logan Square and Humboldt Park neighborhoods.

He belonged only to his family.

"He was gentle in nature, he really was," said his mother, Darlene Budakovic, still struggling to comprehend how her son's life could be halted so casually.

"He didn't really even speak loud. He had that grin about him that I'll remember for the rest of my life."

Joseph Budakovic died because he crossed the invisible boundaries of a gang territory and parked on a street where violence was waiting to erupt. He died because his killers--like so many others--inhabit a world where the barrier dividing right from wrong was broken down long ago.

City problem

The 598 murders of 2003 aren't so distant as Chicagoans far removed from the city's most violent streets and neighborhoods might think, and Budakovic's death is a painful reminder that this is everyone's problem.

These homicides exact an immeasurable human toll: young lives lost; families fractured; a new generation of Chicagoans scarred, doomed to grow up in an environment where a life is regarded as shockingly cheap.

Police have long recited the mantra that most murders are the result of a deadly trinity that runs rampant in Chicago: street gangs, guns and drugs. Concerned citizens, from parents and priests to social workers and professors, lay heavy blame on a violent culture that has gone unchecked, nurtured by poverty and a collapsed social structure.

Reformed gang members say the city's strong sense of neighborhood identification fuels territorial battles and allegiances to gangs. Others even point to the city's colorful history of gangsters and rampant corruption.

Chicago lagging

The bottom line is homicides in U.S. cities have been falling for a decade after the bloodbaths of the crack cocaine wars in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But Chicago has seen a slower decline in the number of murders compared to other large cities, especially New York.

Police Supt. Philip J. Cline and his command staff are firm in their belief that the answer to turning the corner toward "making Chicago the safest big city in America" lies in superior technology. They want to use intelligence to stop gang-related retaliatory violence before it happens and constantly keep after gangbangers, doing everything possible to disrupt the economic cycle that keeps them going.

"Guns and dope and money all go together in the gang's arsenal," Cline said. "The more dope they sell, the more guns they buy so they can sell more dope."

According to police data, guns were used in 80 percent of last year's homicides.

New approach

Since June, police have been pursuing several revamped strategies, tracking violence through cutting-edge computer analysis coupled with gang intelligence from investigators and officers on the street. Most of the violence in Chicago stems from one gang fighting another or internal disputes within a gang, so police are trying to keep step with the shootings, sending teams of officers into neighborhoods where violence is brewing.