Posted on 03/20/2002 9:02:11 AM PST by nemo
March 20, 2002
BY FRANK MAIN, FRAN SPIELMAN AND ANDREW HERRMANN STAFF REPORTERS
Henry A. Wolk didn't like strangers.
He was 77 years old, lived in the same Northwest Side home since he was 2 and often spoke to visitors through a vestibule mail slot close to the floor.
This was the reclusive world that officer Donald J. Marquez walked into Monday night to arrest Wolk for failing to answer a housing court subpoena.
About 10 p.m., Marquez knocked on the door, then pleaded with Wolk to go peacefully. Finally, he broke down Wolk's apartment door with a sledgehammer. He was immediately greeted with gunfire, wounded and fell in the front vestibule. By the time it was over, both Wolk and the officer were dead.
"Officer Marquez was an honest, hard-working cop whose efforts made this city a safe place," Chicago police Supt. Terry Hillard said Tuesday, tears welling in his eyes. "He was another officer doing his job and tragically taken away from us."
Marquez and his partner were trying to arrest Wolk because he ignored a subpoena they served him Jan. 5 to appear in court for a housing case.
The plainclothes officers and an upstairs tenant spoke to Wolk through his apartment door for several minutes, urging him to give up.
"He made a comment to the neighbor that he was not going to go to court, no matter what," said Phil Cline, chief of detectives for the Chicago police.
Marquez, who identified himself as an officer, smashed Wolk's door and Wolk fired a handgun at Marquez, Cline said.
Marquez, 47, and a father of four, was shot three times in the chest and once in the head.
As the 20-year police veteran collapsed into a pool of blood near a pile of magazines outside Wolk's first-floor apartment in the 2400 block of North Avers, Marquez's partner and the tenant scrambled upstairs.
A gun battle raged for at least 10 minutes. No other officers were killed, but Wolk was found dead inside.
Cline said officers from the Grand Central District and the Special Operations Unit worked heroically under fire to remove Marquez from the house and put him into an ambulance that took him to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Wolk fired a total of 10 shots and officers fired 24 at him, hitting him several times, authorities said. Police recovered two .22-caliber pistols they said Wolk had used; another .32-caliber handgun was found in his apartment, Cline said.
A neighbor, Jaime Rodriguez, 40, said he was returning from dinner and shopping with his family when he heard at least three shots from Wolk's home. Rodriguez, who said he was looking for a parking spot for his van, pulled around the block and crouched while he listened to the gun battle.
"There were six rapid shots, then I heard on the police radio, 'He is down, he is down; we have him now!" Rodriguez said.
Marquez, who was detailed to the Chicago corporation counsel's office several months ago, was responsible for serving subpoenas for people to appear in court. Marquez was not wearing a bulletproof vest when he was shot, officials said.
The department policy is for officers on patrol or street duty to wear them, said John Thomas, first deputy superintendent. The department will review its policy on vests in light of Marquez's shooting, he said.
Marquez's job involved administrative work as well as the kind of enforcement duties he and his partner were carrying out Monday, Thomas said.
Earlier, they had arrested two other people for failing to respond to subpoenas, said Corporation Counsel Mara Georges.
"Don was the kind of police officer who dealt with his heart as well as his head," said his brother, Dan Marquez. "He was known as a compassionate officer even when making these kinds of arrests. He would bend over backwards to make sure there was no confrontation. But he did what the warrant said. He knew the situation could turn deadly. He was always prepared."
Wolk's case dates to July when the city found 29 violations of the housing code at his two-story brick home in the 2400 block of North Avers, records show. After neighbors complained to the city, inspectors found a rotting porch, missing stairs, missing gutters, torn siding, a collapsed porch and other dangers.
Wolk was fined $14,500 on Oct. 16. He failed to show up for six court hearings. On Jan. 15, a judge issued a "body attachment" calling for police to take him into custody and use force if necessary.
Ald. Vilma Colom (35th) said her office tried for more than a year to deal with Wolk. She said she tried to tell him about city programs that could have provided money for repairs.
"He wasn't very cooperative," she said. "He said we had no business telling him what he could or could not do. He wouldn't come out of the house."
Colom said she checked up on Wolk once, bringing him a fan.
"He grabbed it, said 'thank you' and slammed the door," she said. "It's sad."
Marvin Cruz, who owns other buildings in the neighborhood, said he offered Wolk $100,000 for the house and would let him live rent-free for the rest of his life.
At first, Wolk would only talk to Cruz through a mail slot in the door about a foot off the ground.
Cruz lay on the porch while Wolk crouched behind the storm door.
Eventually, he was allowed inside.
"It was a mess, with piles of paper. It smelled like old pizza," Cruz said.
Wolk was guarded, but Cruz eventually learned that he moved into the home when he was 2. After his parents died, they left Wolk the home.
He did not appear to have physical disabilities, Cruz said.
"I think it was more in the head," he said. "But this made me so sad. I was eating breakfast when I saw it on the news. My spoon just fell, and I started crying.
Cruz thought he and Wolk were close to a deal. He intends to continue with his plans to buy and rehab the property.
And when he sells the house, he plans to donate up to $50,000 to Marquez's widow, Maria, and the couple's four children.
"I don't want to make any money on this," Cruz said. "I just want a little good to come from this awful tragedy."
He wasn't rich, he was simply not keeping his house up. So your apparent hatred of wealthy homeowners has little relevance to this argument.
Second, the fact that property rights in this country have, as a matter of fact, been greatly eroded by creeping socialism doesn't mean that, in theory, this creeping socialism is a good thing.
The main issues are these: why do Mr. Wolk's neighbors get to decide how he deals with his own property? Why do their personal preferences outweigh his own preferences with regard to his property? Do the terms of his deed impose upon him a condition to repair his property? If not, why is he compelled to do so? Why is this a criminal and not a civil offence? What is the standard, and who decides, which house is in an acceptable and which house in an unacceptable state of repair? Was it necessary to smash down his door?
The government doesn't exist to make sure your house is pretty.
Mr. Wolk, I salute you. Live free or die.
If the government doesn't recognize private property rights then the whole system fails.
Two observations:
(1) We live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy. A perusal of the U.S. Constitution and The Federalist will make it abundantly clear to you that we do not live in a democracy and why that is a good thing in the eyes of our Founding Fathers.
(2) The rule of law is a fine concept - but what does it mean in practice? If it means that a police officer can smash into a private citizen's home and threaten him with violence, then there is no difference between the rule of law in the U.S. and in North Korea.
Two questions:
(1) Up to what point is it permissible for the government to violate the right of private property?
(2) If someone said to you: "arm958, I have nothing but contempt for the court system and government bureaucracy" would it be acceptable to smash into his home at that point to punish him for his contemptuous attitude?
I don't forgive a cop just cause he was "dooing his job". Everyone man follows his conscionce and every man is responsible for his actions. How much evil do we allow into the world in the name of just doing your job?
Absolutely. Unfortunately, in this case, the death warrant was handed out by the state. I am amazed that anyone here on FR would side with the state on this one ... they should have never been involved, and even once they were it was handled in a piss-poor manner. There is no justification for sledgehammering an old man's door in at 10PM at night over 'housing violations' ...
And I bet its looks good in writing. Immigration law! LOL!
Add two more to the growing bodycount of government run amok.
That said, the slaves do have a free choice: they can either serve the people, or serve unbridled power. There is no middle ground. They must choose to aim their weapons against the people as a show of force, or aim them at the heart of the bureacrats as a somber warning.
And in case the bureacrats haven't noticed, we've a lot more guns than they do.
Even if we pretend that this home invasion was morally or constitutionally acceptable (which it was not), it was done in the stupidest and least professional manner imaginable.
A friend of mine in LE has done forcible evictions before - he tells me SOP is to wait for the evictees to leave the apartment and then station an officer to prevent reentry.
Failing that, home entry is done via locksmith with at least two vested officers.
The idiotic concepts of the 'housing authority' had contempt for this old man who did nothing but live in a run down house. How did he have contempt for his 'fellow citizens' when all he wanted was to left alone to live out whatever few years he had left? And by the way, I have contenpt for this particular set of laws ... you want to try to sledgehammer in my door?
As to your ideas about 'our democracy'-- "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin
I'm glad to hear that local entrepreneur Mr. Cruz will be helping the dead officer's family. The State had no problem sending him to his death for no good reason, but just wait and see how tough it will be for his family to pry assistance out of the City of Chicago. His children shouldn't be made to suffer just because their father worked for the most corrupt city government in America (I lived in Chicago, not too far from Mr. Wolk, for six years - don't even get me started).
Some community - I wonder how many of his neighbors bothered to try and befriend this lonely old man? How many times they had invited him into their homes for dinner? Offered to pick him up something at the store? Offered to help him fix up his place?
Apparently, their idea of "community" was to gang up on him and get the government to seize his home. Real neighborly.
Since they had city money for such repairs, why didn't they just repair the porch, instaed of breaking down his door at 10 pm ?
I moved next door to a house that had falling gutters, peeling paint and a half finished porch. The only time I was a little bit upset was when the kids started tearing down my fence because they didn't understand that some people like to keep their house nice. Later on, the police hauled the guy away in handcuffs. His crime was that he had a pile of wood in the backyard. In my opinion, my concerns of how someone wants to live ends at my property line. The government wanted to steal this guy's house and they're doing it.
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