My name is Eliza D. Ankum and this story is personal.
Not because I know any of the women who have been killed on the South and West sides of Chicago, but because I’m a 4 decades long victim of stalking. And when I called the Police for help, no one came.
My stalking got so back, I was forced to leave the State of Illinois otherwise, I’m sure I would have been killed like so many others.
When I was forced to return to Chicago in late 1991, because the persons stalking me had found me in Louisiana, there were two stories about women that very much caught my attention and gave me an inkling into how Chicago Police and Suburban Police were still responding to women, either Black or White.
The first case, naturally, concerned a young Black woman. She called 911 in a panic reporting that someone – she assumes it’s her former male friend – was breaking into her home. And that she was afraid because she knew that her former male friend owned a gun. She tells the 911 dispatcher all of this and the Dispatcher tells her help is on the way. Five minutes later, after barricading herself in the bathroom, the woman calls again, asking where are the Police?
She’s pleading for them to hurry, when shots ring out. Then all you hear on the rest of the call is the Dispatcher saying, “Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you alright?”
It is later reported by the News media that the two Policemen dispatched to the scene had stopped to get hamburgers.
I remember thinking, as I listened to the News report that I hope they got cheese on those burgers. The News never reported that they were fired.
The second case, even though I think it happened in Naperville, felt very close to my own situation.
A young 40 year old woman was walking down the street, the News said, doing errands, when a man came up to her and they started arguing. The woman pushed the man away and proceeded on down the street.
The man then took out a gun and shot her dead.
I remember my step-mother and I were in the kitchen preparing dinner and she remarked, “I wonder what she did to him that made him shoot her?”
I was stunned! How could another woman think like that? It took me a minute to answer, “Probably nothing. She just probably said NO.”
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