Cicero Says New Gangs Are Personae Non Gratae

Once upon a cowboy time, gangsters had until sundown to get out of Dodge.

Now, they have 60 days to get out of this town.

Lollygaggers face a $500-a-day fine. And regardless, they can’t come back--not even for a visit.

This gritty Chicago suburb--once a haven for Al Capone, now in the midst of a federal investigation into corruption at Town Hall and led by a town president whose late husband was an admitted mobster--is cracking down on organized crime. Organized street crime, anyway.

After a unanimous vote by the Town Council on Tuesday, Cicero is working to evict about 600 “known gang members,” including minors and people with no criminal records but whom officials believe are involved in criminal gang activity.

It doesn’t matter where they go, so long as it’s somewhere else.

“My concern is protecting the residents of the town of Cicero,” said Betty Loren-Maltese, the town president whose false eyelashes, bouffant hairdo and frequent spats with federal investigators have made her a colorful area politico. “I can’t worry about the residents of Chicago or Berwyn or Naperville.”

The ordinance is the latest in a string of novel measures designed to rein in street gangs, and it is loosely based on laws in Los Angeles and other California cities that in some cases prohibit gang members from congregating on certain streets, or bar them from flashing gang signs and carrying baseball bats, flashlights and other would-be weapons.

Cicero’s law, however, is considerably stricter than any now on the books--and is certain to face a host of legal challenges.

“You can send people to prison, you can send them to the gallows, you can make them pick up trash by the interstate wearing orange jumpsuits--but you can’t exile them,” said Northwestern University law professor Daniel Polsby. “This is so out of the legal box.”

With 64 shootings and 15 homicides in 1998--most of them gang-related, according to city officials--this blue-collar suburb of 70,000 has tried a host of measures to reduce street violence. Most have had little impact, town officials say. Others, including Loren-Maltese’s proposal to dress gang members in pink outfits and make them paint over their graffiti, have gotten nowhere at all.

So in November, the tough-talking Loren-Maltese--who has fired nearly one-third of her 135-member police force for alleged corruption even as investigators probe her own dealings with city contractors--proposed giving gangsters the boot. And earlier this month, Cicero voters passed a nonbinding anti-gang resolution by 96%.

But the resolution “was one of what I like to call ‘Do-you-like-fuzzy-kittens?’ ordinances. Of course you do,” argued Maria Valdez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It’s like asking, ‘Do you want safe streets?’ Everybody wants safe streets.”

Cicero’s eviction process is designed to work in a fashion similar to that of an administrative hearing, town officials say, rather than a criminal proceeding.

Police already are beginning to gather evidence against gang members suspected of engaging in criminal activity, said Town Atty. Barry Pechter, chief architect of the ordinance. That evidence could then be used to summon the suspect to a hearing.

If the hearing officer finds the suspect guilty, Pechter said, the suspect has two options: Cease criminal activity or hit the road.

The accused gang member would have the right to an attorney--although the city will not provide public defenders--and to appeal the hearing officer’s finding to the Cook County Circuit Court.

“It’s no different than what we do to revoke a liquor license . . . no different than when administrative charges are brought against a police officer, but with a few more safeguards,” Pechter said. “We put in every avenue of due process we could think of.”

The city’s burden of proof, Pechter said, would not have to rise to the criminal level of beyond a reasonable doubt, but to the civil minimum of a preponderance of the evidence.

Although the ordinance appears to provide for due process, “it’s their due process, not a recognized due process,” said Jay Miller, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s gobbledygook. It’s a kangaroo court.”

Opponents also contend the ordinance is likely to work along racial lines.

For years, Cicero was overwhelmingly white, and had a reputation for racism that prompted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to dub it the Selma of the North. In recent years, however, the town has seen a massive influx of Latinos--and Latino gangs. Some estimates say upward of 65% of Cicero residents are Latino.

“We, like everyone else, understand there’s a gang problem,” Valdez said. “But this kind of ordinance will bring in innocent people who look like a gang member, or live where gang members live. And the majority that get pulled in are going to be Latinos.”

Although many civil libertarians and scholars predict the ordinance will be ruled unconstitutional, they also say the pendulum has swung slightly in other anti-gang cases from individual rights toward community safety.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a San Jose law that forbids gang members to engage in a host of otherwise legal activities, from gathering with friends on certain streets to climbing fences and wearing pagers.

A Chicago law that gave police the authority to arrest suspected gang members if they refused to leave the area--and which resulted in thousands of arrests in the early 1990s--was declared unconstitutional by an Illinois court in 1995. It is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Cicero, where officials also plan to file a $10-million civil suit against 17 gangs to pay for graffiti removal and more police officers, the ordinance already may be working.

“We’ve already had three families move out,” said Loren-Maltese. “And I think a lot of families see the handwriting on the wall and will leave.”

If not, she said, the town may fence off some troubled neighborhoods and set up police checkpoints in others.

“If this is unconstitutional,” she declared of the ordinance, “then somebody ought to look at the Constitution.”