South Side mall workers where police are accused of lounging on the job question ‘sense of respect for the community’

Standing outside their barbershop in a South Side plaza Thursday, LaShawn Patton and Derrick Noel said they watched a video where Chicago police officers appear to be sleeping and eating popcorn while chaos erupted around them.

“That’s just proof of what most of us seen anyways,” Patton said, referencing the police response — or lack of it, many Chicago residents have said — while civil unrest erupted throughout the city following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Their barbershop, Hair Experts, is a short walk from U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush’s campaign office, which is now at the center of a controversial video showing several Chicago police officers that appear to be resting amid the chaos of people breaking into businesses and destroying many. The office is in the middle of the plaza, which has two entrances.

“You put on that badge and say you’re for the people, then be for the people,” Noel said about the officers in the video.

By Thursday, many businesses in the shopping plaza in Fuller Park, at 5401 S. Wentworth Ave., remained boarded up or closed. “Black Lives Matter” was spray-painted on one business. Noel and Patton said they were hoping business would pick up, though many customers are still scared to return. During the days of unrest, they lost 15-years worth of equipment after their windows were smashed.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Like other workers in the plaza, Noel and Patton expressed frustration that more wasn’t done to stop the looting, especially because they can see a police station from their parking lot. The men said they think the officers should be fired just like anyone else would be if they were caught sleeping during work hours.

“You’re supposed to wear a badge with a sense of respect for the community,” said Patton, who said his father was a former police detective.

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Quella Whitehead, manager of a Boost Mobile store at the mall, is just starting to reopen her business after it was vandalized.

She hadn’t watched the video released by Rush, but she said hearing about it left her puzzled. She thinks the officers’ presence could have deterred some of the destruction.

“Maybe they were scared as well,” Whitehead said. During the hours of looting, Whitehead did see some officers at the mall, but they didn’t get out of their cars. When she tried to file a police report for stolen merchandise, an officer never came out. She, instead, went to a nearby police station.

“You don’t have words for it,” Whitehead said, throwing up her hands in the air.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Dr. Stephanie Johnson-Brown, of Plano Vision Center, said she saw two officers the night most of the looting took place who told her they were there to protect firefighters who had been dispatched to the shopping center. Like Whitehead, Johnson-Brown hadn’t seen the video.

“It’s terrible,” she said about the news. “Why would you be sleeping?”

Johnson-Brown said anyone would get in trouble for sleeping on the job. She thinks police had a hard time keeping up with the amount of activity that happened during those days.

“I pray they figure out a system so everyone is equally safe,” Johnson-Brown said.

Elvia Malagón’s reporting on social justice and income inequality is made possible by a grant from the Chicago Community Trust.