Gangs and politicians No account of city politics and gangs would be complete without mentioning the federal case against the former 20th Ward alderman Arenda Troutman. When Troutman pleaded guilty in 2008 to tax fraud and taking payoffs from developers, the case made for lurid headlines. It wasn’t necessarily because of her crimes—bribe-taking and tax-cheating aldermen have been a dime a dozen in the City Council. Rather, it was because of Troutman’s romantic relationship with Donnell Jehan, a leader of the Black Disciples, one of the city’s most ruthless and feared gangs, which ran a $300,000-a-day drug operation on the South Side.
Troutman’s case serves as a vivid example of how gangs and public officials can be a toxic mix. The six-year federal investigation unearthed evidence that Troutman had helped Jehan and the reputed king of the Black Disciples, Marvel Thompson, acquire properties and allowed them to rehab buildings without permits. She had also helped them get jobs for young gang members, either through city-run programs or by threatening builders to hire gang crews on job sites. Authorities further suspected that Troutman, or others in her office, may have alerted the gang to police operations. Thompson and Jehan, meanwhile, mobilized their members to do political work for Troutman. Records show that they had also given her thousands in cash, from drug profits and the gang’s street tax.
Through it all, Troutman insisted that she thought she was dealing with legitimate businessmen. “They talked like businessmen,” she told reporters. “They were dressed like businessmen. They had business to discuss.” (Chicago’s request for comment from Troutman, who is still incarcerated, went unanswered.)
Troutman was not the only politician to get into bed with the Black Disciples. Calvin Omar Johnson, a former gang leader and a friend of Thompson’s, who testified on Thompson’s behalf at his sentencing hearing, says every politician on the South and Near West Sides—from the aldermen up to the congressmen—tried to woo Thompson. “Everybody in that area, everybody in that neighborhood, every elected official in that community asked Marvel for help,” says Johnson. “And Marvel helped them.”
Further, three law enforcement sources involved in the federal probe of the gang confirm that two other local politicians besides Troutman—a sitting alderman and an unsuccessful aldermanic candidate—became ensnared in the government’s investigation. The two were interviewed by federal investigators but were never charged.
