Ambushes in Chicago

On the side of Chicago's once elegant and fashionable Southmoor Hotel, the crudely lettered sign keeps reappearing, no matter how often it is removed or painted over. GATE OF THE BLACK P. STONE NATION,*signifying that the now bankrupt and boarded-up Southmoor is occupied by one of the city's most formidable black youth gangs.

Riding through a dark alley behind the Southmoor in an unmarked police car last week, three detectives of Chicago's Gang Intelligence Unit found debris blocking the drive. As their car slowed, at least six rapid shots broke the silence. "I'm hit," cried Detective James A. Alfano Jr., 30, as one slug ripped through the car's trunk and rear seat, piercing his liver. Alfano's condition was listed as critical.

Within minutes, sniper fire broke out all around the Southmoor. A police helicopter with a searchlight moved in to illuminate rooftops. Foot patrolmen and detectives rushed into the area. Police ordered all streetlights turned off in a four-block area of the Woodlawn neighborhood so they would be less exposed. "Out there, everything is the enemy," said one detective as he looked out toward Jackson Park. "The night, the park, the abandoned buildings, the people--everything."

Two black youths, allegedly gang members, were charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Police claimed that it was a deliberate ambush by the gang. Lieut. Aurelio Garcia termed the gang "money-hungry leeches, bloodsuckers of the community." Gang members protested that they believed in nonviolence and that recent shootings in the area were incited by police as part of a campaign to destroy the gang.

Alfano was the fourth victim of sniper fire in black neighborhoods of Chicago in the last nine weeks, creating a situation that threatens to escalate into open street warfare. Five blacks are facing trial for the murder of Patrolman Kenneth G. Kaner, who was killed by two shotgun blasts as he sat in his squad car in the Englewood neighborhood.

Sergeant James Severin and Patrolman Anthony Rizzata were shot to death by snipers in a public housing project on the North Side as they strolled through the area in a special "walk-and-talk" program designed to improve communications between residents and police. Four blacks arrested for those killings were identified for the police by black residents who are fed up with the terrorism. These gangs are "not Robin Hoods, helping the poor," contends one of their earlier but now disenchanted supporters, Holmes ("Daddy-O") Daylie, a local disk jockey. "They are just hoods, robbin'."

-The name originated with the Blackstone Rangers, a gang operating near Blackstone Avenue which merged with other gangs to form a larger group. The P stands for peace.

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