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| Off. Angelo Wells touches the back of a car he has stopped for a traffic violation, a police tradition designed to put a fingerprint on the back of a vehicle. (Photo by Ashlee Rezin). |
For years, I've been asking the Chicago Police Department to let me write something about what happens to an officer after being shot. Nothing. Silence. Then I met Angelo Wells. The Northbrook Police Department invited Ashlee Rezin and myself in, allowed us to sit in on roll calls, go on ride alongs, and were completely proud, open and candid. Meanwhile, the CPD couldn't even issue a comment, or put me in touch with someone in the department who could talk about what wounded officers go through. Transparency is a value in any organization. The results speak for themselves.
"I am God!" the big man screamed out the window of an apartment in the 1300 block of South Lawndale Avenue. "I am the man!"
Then he started singing.
What the Chicago Police Department calls a "domestic disturbance." A particularly dangerous situation for police to walk into, accounting for nearly a quarter of the murders in Chicago.
Officer Angelo Wells Jr. and his partner had just come off a call and were leaving the District 10 station. They headed to the scene. Four more officers arrived. It was just after 3 a.m., Aug. 5, 2020.
"Why don't you come down and talk to us?" Wells called up, framing the 33-year-old man in his flashlight beam. The man, on PCP, stopped singing, and started spitting at them.
"Are you guys going to come up and help me?" a woman yelled from somewhere inside the apartment. A Chicago Fire Department ambulance arrived. Wells walked over to brief the paramedics on the situation.
Five shots, in quick succession. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. Wells took cover behind the ambulance.
"Get down," he yelled, "Get out. Go go go." So the ambulance did, toward Douglas, leaving Wells exposed. Thirteen more shots were squeezed off. In two years on the force, Wells had previously been exposed to gunfire six times. The seventh proved unlucky — as he ran for cover, one bullet entered his right thigh and shattered his femur.
"I'm hit," Wells shouted.
Making him one of the 2,587 Chicagoans shot but not killed that year — including 10 police officers -- and changing the direction of his life.
Rebuilding a leg, and a life
About 25 miles and a world away from District 10 lies the leafy suburb of Northbrook, where the police department is holding 5:30 p.m. roll call for five uniformed officers, Wells is one of them. The events of the past 24 hours — a beautiful early June day in 2024 — are reviewed. A woman locked out of her house. A man who thought people were following him committed himself to a mental hospital. An iPad disappeared from an office. A car blocking a driveway.
How did Wells get here?
"After the incident happened I had to figure out what my purpose was," he said. "I had to reevaluate a lot of things with my life, especially with my oldest two kids. Because they were old enough at that time to realize what happened to me. My son, my 11-year-old, was 8 at the time. To hear him crying over the phone, thinking something was going to happen to me. My son didn't want me to do this anymore. I told him to trust my decision."
To continue reading, click here.
Then he started singing.
What the Chicago Police Department calls a "domestic disturbance." A particularly dangerous situation for police to walk into, accounting for nearly a quarter of the murders in Chicago.
"Why don't you come down and talk to us?" Wells called up, framing the 33-year-old man in his flashlight beam. The man, on PCP, stopped singing, and started spitting at them.
"Are you guys going to come up and help me?" a woman yelled from somewhere inside the apartment. A Chicago Fire Department ambulance arrived. Wells walked over to brief the paramedics on the situation.
Five shots, in quick succession. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. Wells took cover behind the ambulance.
"Get down," he yelled, "Get out. Go go go." So the ambulance did, toward Douglas, leaving Wells exposed. Thirteen more shots were squeezed off. In two years on the force, Wells had previously been exposed to gunfire six times. The seventh proved unlucky — as he ran for cover, one bullet entered his right thigh and shattered his femur.
"I'm hit," Wells shouted.
Making him one of the 2,587 Chicagoans shot but not killed that year — including 10 police officers -- and changing the direction of his life.
Rebuilding a leg, and a life
About 25 miles and a world away from District 10 lies the leafy suburb of Northbrook, where the police department is holding 5:30 p.m. roll call for five uniformed officers, Wells is one of them. The events of the past 24 hours — a beautiful early June day in 2024 — are reviewed. A woman locked out of her house. A man who thought people were following him committed himself to a mental hospital. An iPad disappeared from an office. A car blocking a driveway.
How did Wells get here?
"After the incident happened I had to figure out what my purpose was," he said. "I had to reevaluate a lot of things with my life, especially with my oldest two kids. Because they were old enough at that time to realize what happened to me. My son, my 11-year-old, was 8 at the time. To hear him crying over the phone, thinking something was going to happen to me. My son didn't want me to do this anymore. I told him to trust my decision."
To continue reading, click here.
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| Off. Angelo Wells at the 5:30 p.m. roll call at the Northbrook Police Department (photo by NS) |
CPD, like so many other police departments has a very unhealthy secrecy problem. They believe everything they do should be a secret, like the new move to encrypted radio channels. Over the years there have been patterns of various crimes they kept secret, until somehow, people were able to put them together & force them to go public. Serial rapists were probably the worst, but now at least, citizen websites manage to get the info out there to us.
ReplyDeleteI often get to see CPD in action, or more accurately, inaction, as what I see is appalling arrogance & a lot of cops just standing around doing nothing, but yelling at us for gawking at whatever is happening. There is also a general level of incompetence, which is why the arrogance is so annoying.
European cops get about two years of training, while here it's a couple of months. They seem to be far more professional over there, not just better trained, but a far more rigorous approval process as to who they hire. Far too many bullies get hired here!
Its heartening to know officer Wells recovery from his wound has allowed him to return to work. Getting shot can often lead to permanent disability. He's fortunate to have found a position in a less dangerous environment.
ReplyDeleteDoes Northbook have a residency requirement for its officers?
I would be very interested in a piece about a ride along with CPD officers. Keep trying
No, Northbrook doesn't have a residency requirement. Off. Wells lives by Logan Square.
DeleteMy Cleveland neighborhood, at the outer edge of the city, has a high number of first responders living here. Or at least it did, until the residency requirement was overturned in the courts, a number of years ago.
DeleteAlmost immediately, many of the Cleveland cops sold their homes, claiming they wanted better schools for their kids, and bugged out for the leafy green suburbs. My motorcycle cop neighbor was among them. They also quit the force, in record numbers, especially after 2020 and the George Floyd riots.
Now the city is desperately short of replacements. Cleveland needs hundreds of new LEOs. The class sizes at the police academy have become pitifully small. Many of the cops who quit were hired as police officers in the suburbs. So this story is not unique to Chicago. It's happening all over the country. Kudos, Mr. S, and thanks.
I suspected that the officer didn't live in Northbrook. The demographic of that suburb of some 36,000 people is overwhelmingly white. Less than 1% African American
ReplyDeleteThe only African American on the force, huh?
How is it that he was the subject of this piece?
I was looking around for a Chicago cop who had been shot to write a story on his recovery and a CPD officer pointed me in Officer Wells' direction, since he was no longer on the force, and the CPD brass would not agree to such a story, nor even offer a remark on the topic. You'd have a hard time getting a CPD officer to talk about saving a kitten from a tree. That's why I always laugh when people talk about a CPD code of silence regarding to misbehavior. The code of silence covers EVERYTHING.
Delete"Five shots, in quick succession . . . Thirteen more shots were squeezed off."
ReplyDeleteEighteen shots, one gun, from a guy on PCP.
Data suggests that 20% of Americans at any given time suffer from mental illness. Add to that people having the worst day of their life, people with anger issues, people on drugs and so on.
The GOP and NRA and the Supreme Court insist that everyone have access to battlefield weaponry on demand in spite of the reality of daily malignant irresponsibility by a huge section of the populace.
"A well regulated militia" is right there in the 2nd amendment as a condition of gun ownership. Instead we have a weaponry and lunacy free for all.
Life? Not if you cross paths with a sinister soul with a gun.
Liberty? Not if your streets are filled with battlefield weaponry.
Pursuit of Happiness? Not if a loved one is butchered by a bump stock.
The country is being held hostage by "conservatives" who willfully misinterpret the only clause in the Constitution that emphasizes regulation.
Madness,
So why the tradition of putting a fingerprint on the car?
ReplyDeleteI believe its so if — for instance — the driver shoots him and drives away, there is something tying him to the vehicle. I pointed out that the whole thing is being recorded on his dashboard cam, but traditions die hard.
DeleteNever knew that, Mr. S. Thanks for the heads-up. It's definitely about leaving a clue after a shooting. Guilty until proven otherwise. Next time I get stopped, I'll be going straight to the car wash after I get my ticket. I am what I am.
DeleteFocusing on Corey and Trevor and leaving aside the possibility that they were advance scouts for some kind of burglary gang, they remind me of an experience I had in San Diego, when I was stationed there around 1963 or so. I went for a walk in a sunny afternoon, wandering off the main drag to take a look at what California houses looked like. A squad car pulled up and stopped me: "What was I doing in this neighborhood? " I should have been amused, but I was struck with a ferocious anger and resentment, and while the cops were unfailingly polite, I was more than a bit antagonistic: "Why did they care what I was doing? Wasn't I free to walk down any street I wanted to without being hassled by cops?" Knowing that if I talked to Chicago cops that way, I would have gotten a nightstick upside the head San Diego 's pretended respect for my person made the experience worse...and unforgetable.
ReplyDeletejohn
Were the city cops or San Diego County sheriffs? The later were arrogant assholes when I was there, the only time I've ever been in San Diego in my life, five years after your experience. I spent the summer of '68, at 21, thumbing around the country. Eight thousand miles in six weeks, from eastern Canada and New England to SoCal. My first time ever out West.
DeleteAnd now, i was heading back East, after a huge (100,000 people) rock festival in Orange County. Back to Chicago for the Convention, via Texas and the Gulf coast. The car owner threw a cigarette butt out the window. We were pulled over immediately. A '54 beater in yellow house paint, with Ohio plates, gets attention in California..
In '68, I was shabby and hairy, and when I made the mistake of bending down to tie a shoelace, I soon found the muzzle of a service revolver a couple of inches from my nose. That's how people die, I was told.
We were searched and threatened and asked a lot of questions. I had already been put up against walls four times that week by the LAPD and other LEOs, just for being a pedestrian in "nice" neighborhoods, and I had already had police weapons pointed at me in Chicago that year, so I was compliant and cooperative and said "sir" a lot, in order to GTFO of San Diego in one piece, and without any jail time.
The worst part was the way the sheriff's deputies toyed with us, and how much they seemed to be enjoying themselves. But I was royally pissed. I also had run-ins with LEOs during my brief residency in SoCal, some years later. But those are other stories for other times.
Great article! Agreed that CPD and officers need to communicate and engage--as Neil has pointed out before. Yet the police-community relationship is, like most things, a two-way street and vicious cycle. Cops have valid reasons for being careful about speaking candidly, especially by name. Each side needs to take steps to repair the relationship. Seeing officers as real people is a vital part of the process, including pieces like this one. We all know the CPD's sordid history, we know about the Jon Burge and police torture era, the Laquan McDonald killing and cover up. It's still a department made up of people who are mostly good, putting their lives on the line daily to protect Chicagoans. Pieces like this one remind us what officers are up against. There's a reason we're down 2,000 sworn officers, and it's not just the budget.
ReplyDeleteSorry Cate, but they're not mostly good cops1
DeleteThe claim is that only 55 are bad cops, but then the other 95% are always covering up for that 5%, so all of them are bad!
It's not whether they're good or bad. To me, it's that they are such snots. I won't bore you with the various circumstances when I was stopped by Chicago cops over the last 60 years - all fairly innocuous stuff like a burned out light, accidental illegal turn, missing a stop sign - they treat you like you're Al Capone when they pull you over. They were moderately less snotty when I was young and very pretty, but only moderately. Even asking a question or making a comment to a cop in a store, they were snots. One example: My sister and I (in our 40s at the time) were having dinner at Valois when it must have been cop dinner time because the place was suddenly flooded with police. As we were walking out, I said to one of the cops in line "Gee, looks like a good time to stick up a 7Eleven". An obvious joke, but he looked at me like he was going to arrest me on the spot. I have had a few positive interactions, but only a few. There is a noticeable difference with cops in the suburbs or northwestern Indiana where the police treat you in a much more professional, almost polite manner. I did have a very positive interaction about 5 years ago, so there's that.
DeleteYou made a mistake. Yeah, that was a joke to me and you, but to a cop, it's snarky and stupid. They're always on edge. Part of the job.
DeleteWhen I was a kid, I remember hearing about a guy who visited his buddy, while he was working in a gas station, He walked in and jokingly said "Stick 'em up!" Sadly for him, a cop was taking a whiz in the toilet, and came out shooting, and splattered the guy's brains all over the wall.
And one day, after a good night's sleep, a hearty breakfast, and a hot shower, I casually told a medical professional that I was completely "clean and sober"--not a good idea. Started getting interrogated about substance abuse and past drug use and suicidal thoughts. I was schooled that day.
And I've also learned never to even hint about dark thoughts in a joking manner. You might get locked up. And don't ever jokingly say "I'll kill you!" while camping in a tent in a state park. A passing ranger questioned my wife, and almost arrested me. Law enforcement people are different from you and me...they don't have the same sense of humor that civilians do.
An interesting column.
ReplyDelete