Rivers of Blood
Banned
SPRINGFIELD — Both Jermalle Brown and Douglas Bufford were gang members hired to play a small role in helping combat violence on the South Side through a program hatched by Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration.
Paid $8.50 an hour with taxpayer funds to hand out anti-violence pamphlets in their South Shore neighborhood, the two low-income teens were part-time foot soldiers in the governor’s $54.5 million Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, a program he once described as “a comprehensive and concerted effort to keep our young people safe, off the streets and in school.”
But instead of embodying a bold new way to fight bloodshed on the South Side, Bufford is now dead, and Brown is charged with his murder, putting a dramatic and deadly new blemish on the one-time Quinn showpiece, which was pilloried last week in a report by Auditor General William Holland.
“The South Shore community [has] some fine outstanding young adults and youth who are not criminals. Why aren’t these kind of people selected to represent the South Shore Chicago?” Olson wrote in the email, which was obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
http://politics.suntimes.com/articl...ogram-accused-teens-murder/fri-03072014-106am