Articles
Youths steal away to reach gangland's royal throne
Publication: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: September 14, 1987
Author: Bill Brashler
Section: SECTION 2
FEATURES
Edition: FIVE STAR SPORTS FINAL
Page: 35
Word Count: 1007
On the walls ouside Jack Hynes' office are 8-by-10 full-color glossies of mugs so grungy they would make a mother weep.
They are the portraits of gangbangers, the punks, hoods and sadists who populate Chicago's street gangs. As you might expect, the faces are bad-looking, as in mean bad. Yet they also are seedy bad, as if they just got out of bed. Pause while gazing at this sullen gallery and noting the gang affiliations and the felony convictions and you notice that there is a decidedly low representation of Anglos, even though the city has plenty of white gangs.
Hynes, an assistant state's attorney in the gang crimes unit, informs you that his office means no slight. A staff shortage has prevented the lineup from being updated and, he assures you, a lot of white gangbangers pinched in the last two years would merit display.
"On the other hand, these are the real violent guys," Hynes says, "and for a long time a lot of the city's white gangs were little more than professional victims." The Simon City Royals? you ask. Hynes nods.
Their names, to cite a few, are Bricis, Magro, Kazmierski, Dunn and Mikolajewski. Collectively they are part of the Simon City Royals, a white street gang heretofore known for hanging out on corners and scrawling initials on walls. They are all 23 or younger - some as young as 15.
Neighborhoods familiar with the Simon City Royals - not to be confused with the Kansas City Royals, or Paul, Carly or Seymour Simon - generally know them as the deadbeats of 7-Eleven stores and schoolyards, for getting drunk on cheap beer on Friday nights and sailing old 45 r.p.m. records at passing cars.
They were considered more of an irritant, a mutation of youth, than a problem.
Yet in the past few years a number of SCRs found a niche: They became dedicated, proficient thieves.
They became responsible for a few hundred extra bucks on your car insurance premiums.
They became convinced that BMW stands for "Break My Window." They became individuals prosecutors describe as "stone cold," with no qualms or fear of police whatsoever.
The only good thing to report about the Simon City Royals is that some of the worst of them now are in jail and probably will stay there at least until you can get your car stereo replaced.
Earlier this month, Chicago Police Gang Crimes detectives and state's attorney prosecutors put together 21 indictments against 19 gang members and two fences.
Detectives say the SCRs divided into three crews of six to 10 gang members, carved out territories, burglarized hundreds of homes and cars and fenced the loot. They did it 'round the clock, seven days a week.
During the day, usually between 8:30 a.m. and 3 p.m., two- and three-man teams cruised quiet residential streets looking for well-stocked but unattended homes. They usually broke windows - they seldom took time to jimmy a lock - and looted houses of VCRs, small TVs, jewelry, cash, photography equipment and firearms. The job was not particularly deft or cagey, just relentless and quick.
Often the crews hit two or three houses a day. They were seldom noticed, almost never caught. Stolen goods were fenced immediately.
In the dead of night, they smashed car windows and stole stereo systems. Last Memorial Day weekend in Lake County's sleepy village of Deerfield, they hit 13 cars in one neighborhood.
The indictments apply only to a handful of burglaries, but prosecutors say evidence and testimony point to as many as 500 jobs committed over a yearlong period in the city and suburbs as far-ranging as Berwyn, Addison, Elmhurst and Round Lake Beach.
A leader of one of the rings directed detectives to scores of car and home burglaries he said his crew committed.
The gang's total take, they estimate, amounted to $500,000.
Vital to most street gangs are things like colors and turf.
Walk through a rival gang's territory in alien colors and you are
asking for smoke. Gangs blatantly mark off their boundaries on walls, often adding "C/S," which means "Can't Say," a warning that no other gang should deface that wall.
The Simon City Royals also do some of this, especially when they are banged on by rival gangs in what they perceive as their neighborhood.
"Generally it's the younger members who are into gangbanging," said Bob DiTusa, a Chicago police detective who spearheaded the investigation. "The older ones are into making money." The indicted gang members originally hung out at Kosciuszko Park, on North Avers near Diversey on the Northwest Side.
But the SCRs, though not a large gang, are mobile and spread out. While the old neighborhood is still a base, the accused leaders of the three burglary rings listed home addresses in Arlington Heights, the Northwest Side of Chicago and Cicero, respectively. Accused crew members lived as far south as Blue Island, and one fencing suspect lived in Mount Prospect.
Detectives say that for obvious reasons these guys tend to move around a lot. They like to work areas close to expressways, as in quick-off-quick-on. That gives little comfort to communities that think they do not have a gang problem.
The key thing to this round of indictments, Hynes says, is that the ringleaders were nailed.
"Most of them are looking at substantial penitentiary time - anywhere from four- to 10-year sentences," Hynes says.
For Andy Bricis, accused head of the gang's North Side crew, that seems to be the only recourse if convicted. His record shows that he was released from prison only last December and was charged with burglarizing a few weeks later.
While he is away, detectives say, others will work his territory.
"They're still out there," DiTuso says.