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By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
North Michigan Avenue merchants, joined by hundreds of nearby Gold Coast residents, today angrily marched in protest of a raid by heavily armed federal agents on a fake ID ring operating openly for months on the Magnificent Mile.
Asked why they weren't angered by the presence of the ring, headed by a murder suspect, operating so brazenly in their neighborhood, a spokesman for the posh shopping district explained: "Of course we didn't want the counterfeiters here. We're just objecting to the tactics [the feds] used."
Meanwhile, a similar raid on a gang of counterfeiters in north suburban Wilmette's lakefront Gillson Park drew similar howls of protest from hundreds of neighbors who stood in front of the swank Michigan Shores Club shouting, "No justice, no peace!"
"No, we didn't sanction the gang's operations, although we didn't mind undocumented immigrants coming here to be documented because we're open-minded," said a club member who, in his haste to join the protest, abandoned cherries jubilee to smolder, "We just don't want anyone with guns, much less big guns, in our community."
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Sorry, I couldn't help conjuring up those ridiculous images after some of those protesting last week's federal raid on the ring of ID counterfeiters in Chicago's mostly Hispanic Little Village neighborhood said -- predictably and irresponsibly -- that such a raid would never happen on North Michigan Avenue or in the suburbs. Which is to accuse the feds of something dark, something racist.
But would I be out of line here to point out that one reason that Michigan Avenue and Wilmette were not raided is because the counterfeiting rings aren't operating there? I'm just guessing here, but if the gangsters tried to set up shop there, they would have been turned in or, if you prefer, snitched out -- an act that has come into great disrepute among hip-hoppers and their fans.
Something tells me that the folks along Michigan Avenue and in Wilmette would not have tolerated the open sale of 100 high-quality fake driver's licenses, Social Security cards or green cards every day. I'm guessing that they wouldn't want to be in the place where "undocumented" persons from all over the Chicago area come to get documented.
This isn't something that happened surreptitiously in the dead of night. It happened in broad daylight and was well enough known to attract customers from well outside the community: not just Mexican immigrants, but from Pakistan, Poland and other countries.
If they heard about it, then people in the Little Village shopping plaza certainly knew about the high-stakes racket in their midst that allegedly was profitable enough to provoke a murder. Am I way off base here to suggest that such activities not only were tolerated but perhaps even condoned? Yes, maybe the gang terrorized the neighborhood with threats of violence for snitching, but then wouldn't the arms that the feds carried in the raid be reasonable for defense of self and the community?
As U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald tried to point out at a press conference defending the show of force and the raid itself, this story involves more than illegal immigration. It involves the easy availability of false documents, which, as we know, can give cover to terrorists. You'd think that Fitzgerald would get at least a little credit for doing exactly what should have been done before Sept. 11, 2001: helping to preserve the integrity of official documents.
By the way, fake IDs also threaten public safety and security in other ways. Here's another story, this time, not made up:
Six children, riding in a van with their parents on a Milwaukee-area interstate, died in a horrific blaze in 1994, after a heavy metal part fell from a truck, puncturing and igniting the van's gas tank.
Rev. Duane "Scott" Willis and his wife, Janet, escaped safely, only to watch helplessly as their trapped children suffered agonizing deaths in the conflagration. The truck was driven by Ricardo Guzman, who bribed employees of the Illinois secretary of state's office to get his illegal license.
Other truckers tried to warn Guzman on their CB radios that the metal part was dangling dangerously from his truck, but either Guzman didn't hear the warnings or, speaking only Spanish, didn't understand them.
