He watched as the white guy climbed into the trunk and the car took off down the alley, and then called the cops. The perpetrators were eventually arrested, and now Brewer worries about the prospect of having to testify in court. The final straw came when Brewer got shot with a pellet gun one day while skateboarding down 26th Avenue. The couple is now looking to move out of Jordan, though they say they intend to stay on the North Side.
Not all residents of the 2600 block of James Avenue have that option. Kenya Benson, for instance, has been trying to move for the better part of a year. She lives just two doors down from Aaron Brewer and Kelly Phillips, and across the street from Sam Garrett. She's a black, 30-year-old single mother of four. Benson's 17-year-old brother also lives in the house. Even though the house was the best she could get for the money, she says, "I would love to leave."
Michael Dvorak
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But she adds that every time she tries to sell her house, prospective buyers are scared away by the bands of drug dealers circulating out front. Earlier this year she had the two-story home on the market for five months. Now she's decided to wait until the weather turns colder, in the hope that some of the dealers will go into hibernation then.
"I'm just tired of the hanging out," Benson sighs, sitting on her front stoop on a recent weekday evening as three of her children play nearby. She's dressed in rolled-up blue jeans and a white blouse. The yard is strewn with toys: a foam football, a Frisbee, a plastic basketball hoop. "I'm tired of the gunshots. I don't even let my kids outside when I'm not here."
Since buying the house two years ago, the Illinois native's been engaged in a running battle with local pot peddlers over the turf in front of her property. She arrived in Jordan right before the infamous riot on Knox , which started after a police bullet ricocheted and hit a boy in the arm. It happened just behind her house, but already seems like a distant memory.
Last summer, her repeated requests that the teenagers ply their trade elsewhere--Benson understands the allure of fast money--went largely unheeded. At one point she got into a fight with an older woman who was dealing on the corner and refused to move along. The cops had to be called and the woman was eventually arrested on an outstanding warrant. Benson got a bloody lip for her trouble.
Each morning Benson leaves the house at 4:00 a.m. to work as a driver for Metro Transit. "Lately I've been kind of spooked," she admits, "so I've been carrying a knife with me."
As if on cue, four distinct pops that sound like firecrackers fill the air. They come from behind the house directly across the street. A few seconds later, a black male dressed all in black runs down the alley behind the place. "Those weren't fireworks," Benson says, visibly tightening. She sits pat on the stoop, but her eyes keep darting toward her kids. Her brother comes outside and offers a detailed description of some of the smaller turf battles going on.
About five minutes later, a lone officer rolls up in a squad. On his second trip down the block, he cracks his window and asks no one in particular, "Did you call?" When Benson says no, he rolls up the window and drives away.
