Northwest Side apartment building owned by embattled landlord Gary Carlson raided by Chicago police

Two convicted felons were busted at the building owned by Gary Carlson, a landlord whose properties have been plagued by violence and code violations.

By Frank Main

The Chicago police made a drug raid Friday at this apartment building near Montrose and Francisco avenues on the Northwest Side where , a woman was shot to death last year, sparking a City Hall crackdown.

A Northwest Side apartment building owned by a landlord whose properties have been plagued by violence and building code violations — including a woman shot to death last year in another of his buildings — was raided Friday by Chicago police officers.

Karris Turner, 31, and Terrence Cole, 27, were arrested in an apartment in the building in the 4400 block of North Lawndale Avenue in Albany Park, where officers reported finding 26 grams of heroin, 13 grams of crack cocaine and $2,000 in a safe.

Both men are felons. Turner was on electronic monitoring while free on bail awaiting trial on weapon charges, including reckless discharge of a firearm, court records show.

Gary Carlson, who has dozens of rental properties in the area, also owns an apartment building in the 4400 block of North Francisco Avenue where Stephanie Brooks was fatally shot on Feb. 22, 2020.

A masked man entered the apartment during a home invasion, and Brooks was shot when at least one of her friends fired a handgun during the incident, according to a police report. The case was closed without any charges filed.

At the time, the police said they believed the incident could have been connected to a gang shootout that left a Chicago firefighter wounded in the leg outside another apartment building owned by Carlson. The firefighter was trying to put out a car fire outside the building in the 3300 block of West Wilson Avenue when he was caught in the crossfire.

Hollis Williams, 30, pleaded guilty to illegal gun possession in connection with the shooting and to aggravated battery of a peace officer for running over a police officer’s foot while trying to elude arrest days after the incident, according to court records. He was sentenced to three years in prison. A charge of aggravated battery of a firefighter was dismissed.

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Williams lived in Carlson’s building on Francisco where Brooks was killed, according to court records.

Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd) and Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) and Cmdr. Ronald Pontecore Jr. of the Albany Park police district met with Carlson in February 2020 about their concerns about violence connected to his buildings. In her ward newsletter, Rodriguez Sanchez said Carlson promised to secure his buildings.

The Chicago Department of Buildings’ Strategic Task Force conducted a series of inspections at Carlson’s buildings earlier this year.In March, the task force inspected Carlson’s apartment buildings on Lawndale, Francisco and Wilson avenues and found numerous building code violations, though most of them didn’t directly involve security issues, city records show.

In a 2016 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Carlson said he doesn’t like to be called a slumlord and said “I don’t rent no garbage.” He said he evicts troublesome tenants.