Chicago’s 911 center received multiple calls of suspicious activity, a fight, and even a man with a gun in the nearly 40 minutes that preceded the fatal shooting of a man on a troubled Lincoln Park bar strip late Sunday night, CPD radio transmissions show. But the local police district was in a “backlog” for nearly two hours, meaning dispatchers did not have any patrol units available to handle incoming service requests, and those calls did not generate a police response until it was too late.
The radio activity shows dispatchers in the Near North (18th) District had been in backlog, officially known as Radio Assignment Pending or RAP status, since at least 10 p.m. on Sunday. While not uncommon at any time of day, RAPs are particularly common during shift changes, one of which was underway as calls stacked up before the shooting. Contributing to the problem: The district’s manpower has plunged in recent months, falling from 387 officers to 324 in June, a 16% decline, according to the Chicago Office of Inspector General.
About 38 minutes before the murder, a caller reported a suspicious situation involving people in a car a few doors north of where the shooting later occurred in the 2200 block of North Lincoln Avenue. No other details about the situation were shared on the air.
About a half-hour later, the dispatcher reported another call of “40 to 50 males” fighting at the exact address where 30-year-old Malik McCorkle would soon be killed. The request for police service, while read out on the air, was not assigned to a patrol unit.
Two minutes later, the dispatcher, following protocol, read out a list of all 911 calls awaiting a police response in the district, 19 assignments in all, mostly minor. But three of them were within a block of where the shooting would occur: the suspicious auto, the 40 to 50 males fighting, and an auto accident.
Two minutes after that, the fight call became more serious. A 911 caller reported the battery in progress had become a person with a gun, and that a Black male wearing a white shirt had a gun at the scene, radio recordings show. Once again, while the call was read out on the air, no CPD unit was assigned to handle the matter.
Finally, four minutes after the “man with a gun” call went unassigned, the dispatcher announced they had received “multiple calls” of shots fired, that a fight from a bar had spilled onto the street, and that someone had been shot. Suddenly, a flood of units announced they were headed to the shooting, and a tactical unit reported within seconds that it was on scene with a person shot.
Surveillance video obtained by WGN-TV shows three men had firearms on the sidewalk, including one man, apparently McCorkle, wearing a white shirt. The video shows two of the armed men side-by-side, facing McCorkle, who was several feet away, in a standoff of sorts. Suddenly, one of the two men standing together appears to fire a shot, then the second man fires.
Officers found McCorkle lying on the sidewalk outside a bank. He had been shot in the head and throughout his body. Police also recovered a gun at the scene, possibly McCorkle’s. Both shooters fled before police arrived, but one of them, a concealed carry holder, returned about 45 minutes later and surrendered to CPD. Police said charges were pending as of Monday evening.
On Monday morning, Ald. Timmy Knudsen (43rd) said his office has been leading an “aggressive push for further restrictions on late night bars on this stretch of Lincoln Avenue” since another shooting left a 39-year-old woman critically injured just steps from Sunday’s shooting scene on June 7.
“I am hopeful and confident that the Department of Business Affairs & Consumer Protection will view this homicide as sufficient evidence of the need to support specific restrictions on this stretch,” Knudsen said. He added that CPD would add “a permanent patrol on weekend hours” to the Lincoln Avenue bar strip.
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