Two middle-aged men sat in a red Hyundai Sonata with the license plate “RUF,” idling in a back alley parking lot along Farwell Avenue in Rogers Park. When I pulled in and parked, the white man behind the wheel nodded at me. I went to my friends’ first-floor apartment to pick up some belongings and when I came out a few minutes later the men were standing, maskless, in the gangway in front of the back staircase of one of the neighboring buildings that shares the alley. A third man who was wearing a mask and holding some papers stood a few feet behind them.
“Come on out!” the driver barked. “Come on out! Police! Out, now!” He swung the gun from the door and in the direction of the stairs as the tenant emerged with his hands up. “Put your hands behind your back,” the driver ordered as he marched the man down the stairs, gesturing with his gun. “Get out.”
“Don’t threaten me again,” the driver then said to the tenant as he descended the last flight of stairs.
“Get out, I’m telling you,” the driver repeated. “Are you on the lease? Are you on the lease yes or no? The answer is no. We know that and management’s here,” he indicated the third, masked man who was watching from a few steps away.
“Help!” the tenant shouted again and again. “I can’t breathe! Help! Look he’s got my fucking helmet around my neck!”
“I never said I was the police,” the driver of the Hyundai said to Cunningham. A chorus of neighbors’ voices rang out saying that he had, indeed, claimed he was police and that the tenant was telling the truth.
