If you are new to this series, please be sure to read these segments and chapters in the proper order, as they appear in the Set "Chicago Cop: Tales from the Street." You might also want to read the introduction that accompanies the Set's front-page.
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Alonzo is the polar opposite of Mitch: moody, brooding, and paranoid, with evil black eyes. He reminds me of a cobra, coiled and ready to strike at the slightest provocation.
He comes into the store all the time, buying one or two items, but his favorite hangout is Valois, where he'll usually eat two meals a day. During the winter months, he'll camp out there all day long, usually hogging a table by the windows that look out on 53rd Street, the busiest thoroughfare in the area.
He has his own little clique of bums and losers, who laugh at all of his jokes. Whatever his problem may be, I read his danger signals loud and clear, and always give him a wide berth.
August 12, 1983:
The call that puts them on a collision course comes into the University dispatch-center from a faculty-member. He reports a suspicious man, lurking about the south-east corner of 56th & Harper. The dispatcher assigns Mitch to investigate, and a second officer to back him up.
When they arrive on the scene, they don't see anyone who is remotely suspicious, just a neat little row of well-kept townhouses. Mitch rings the doorbell of the corner unit, which corresponds to the address given out by the dispatcher. Meanwhile, the back-up officer, a CPD Captain who works for the University on his day-off, covers the back-door. Neither officer realizes that the man who answers the front door of the corner townhouse, is in fact the suspect they are looking for: Alonzo Turner, and the townhouse in question belongs to his mother.
I can picture him standing there, gaunt and crazy-eyed as usual, but I don't know if he looks that way to Mitch. Perhaps Alonzo somehow manages to mask the danger signals he usually gives out, to draw his prey in closer to him.
When Mitch asks him if he has seen anyone suspicious lurking around in the area, Alonzo replies that he has not, all the while clutching a large knife behind his back.
No one knows exactly why, but at some point Mitch turns his back to Alonzo, who then grabs him from behind, holding Mitch in a choke-hold, as he plunges the knife deep into Mitch's chest. The back-up officer hears Mitch scream out in agony, and runs around to to the front. There he encounters Alonzo, who is now also armed with Mitch's service revolver. There is a brief but ferocious exchange of gunfire, at nearly point-bland range, and both men are hit multiple times, leaving both critically injured.
In a matter of seconds, dozens of UCPD and CPD units converge on the scene. Alonzo, now out of ammunition, continues to resist, but is eventually subdued.
Mitch is still alive on his way to the hospital, only a few blocks away. He is still conscious, clutching the hand of the UCPD officer who accompanies him in the ambulance, pleading with him not to let him die, not now that he has so much to live for.
Nitch does die that night, and the officer who accompanied him on that final ambulance ride, quits the job the following day. Alonzo and the CPD Captain both survive their injuries, the former to stand trial for murder, the latter to rise rapidly through the ranks to the upper echelon of the Command Staff. Ultimately, however, he falls from grace for attempting to shield some of his officers from disciplinary action over some bullshit rule that just happens to be the pet-peeve of the idiot-in-charge at the time.
Mitch's funeral will be the first of many police funerals I will attend over the years. It is a beautiful morning and Rockefeller Chapel has never looked more magnificent, as hundreds of police officers from all over the state come to pay their respects.
He is the first University of Chicago police officer who is killed in-the-line-of-duty, and many of his fellow oficers can't hold back their tears. Neither can I.
It is then and there that I vow to pursue a law enforcement career. Not that the thought had never crosses my mind, but Mitch's death steels my resolve, turning a maybe into a certainty.
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Back in '83, the University of Chicago hospital was a Level One trauma center, something they subsequently decided was not profitable enough, given the large numbers of uninsured people who flocked to their ER.
Right now, in the middle of a gang war on the South Side that has claimed hundreds of lives over the past few years, the University stubbornly refuses to re-open its Level One trauma center. Thus, while the University spends hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand its highly profitable Advanced medical facilities, dozens of ambulances carrying critically injured gun-shot victims from the South Side battlefield, are forced to bypass the U of C and travel the extra 10 miles or so, to Mount Sinai, Northwestern, or Stroger Hospital.
Needless to say, this doesn't just affect the survival chances of critically injured gangbangers, but anyone else who is seriously injured on the South Side, whether they be innocent bystanders, car accident victims, or police officers...
