West Garfield Park

A father and son teamed up to operate a violent narcotics and sex trade operation from a West Side basement, using beatings, threats, and extortion to control victims, prosecutors say.

A 20-year-old man was found critically wounded with a gunshot to the head on Chicago’s West Side early Saturday, and police say there were no calls of shots fired before he was found — a scenario that has become familiar since Mayor Brandon Johnson disconnected the city’s gunfire detection network nearly two years ago.

A Chicago man who told investigators he works as a security guard for prostitutes chained a customer to a metal pole in a basement apartment for a week, forced him to liquidate his stock portfolio and withdraw more than $32,000 in cash from two banks, then beat him so severely he suffered broken ribs and a punctured lung, according to prosecutors.

Chicago police are asking the public to help identify a young girl who was abandoned on the West Side on Monday evening.

A 29-year-old woman was found shot to death in a West Side alley Friday morning, becoming at least the 79th shooting victim who might have received faster police and EMS response had Mayor Brandon Johnson not disconnected Chicago’s gunshot detection network 18 months ago.

Chicago police arrested Johnny Allen four times in the same West Side neighborhood for alleged drug dealing, and prosecutors dropped every case. Within a month of the last dismissal, Allen shot a man who refused to declare a gang allegiance. This week, a Cook County judge sentenced him to 29 years in prison for attempted murder.

Prosecutors say a late-night dispute during a sex work transaction escalated into a shooting that left a man dead and a woman injured on the West Side.

For the first few seconds, the home surveillance video looks like most any other: a parked car on a quiet street in West Garfield Park. But that’s all about to change. Inside that parked car, five men are waiting. Each of them is armed.