Chicago House AC (4-2-6, 14pts) secured their second straight win at home as they kept a clean sheet against Chattanooga FC (3-2-7, 11pts) and held on for a 1-0 win at SeatGeek Stadium. Ian Cerro scored his second goal for the House in as many home matches. This is the club’s fifth match with a clean sheet this season.

Both teams played the possession game effectively in the first half. Chicago House AC attacked early in the first half to create some chances against the Chattanooga FC defenders. In the 9th minute, Matteo Kidd crossed the ball to Derek Huffman, but his header went across the goal, and Chattanooga FC was able to clear the ball. The drama started in the 21st minute when Daniel Jackson thought he scored a goal off a free kick for Chattanooga FC to give them the early 1-0 lead. However, the referee’s ruled that a foul occurred inside the box, and the goal was waved off. Shortly after that, Daniel Jackson was issued a yellow card. Chattanooga FC and the House had a few changes here and there but couldn’t convert on those opportunities. In the 41st minute, Chattanooga FC had another chance to take the lead with a shot from James Kasak, but his low shot changed directions, and goalkeeper Brandon Barnes was able to secure the ball. In the 45th minute, Derek Huffman made an excellent cross to Ian Cerro, who buried the shot for his goal just before the end of the first half to give the House a 1-0 lead, which was the score at halftime.

It was a more physical battle between these two clubs in the second half, Matteo Kidd gave the House the best chance to double their lead in the 48th minute, but his shot curved wide to the right side of the net. Chattanooga FC created an opportunity to score off a corner kick in the 55th minute with a header from Sean Hoffstatter but was saved by House goalkeeper Brandon Barnes. In the 66th minute, Chattanooga FC’s Damian Rodriguez tried to get an equalizer, but his shot hit the side of the net. Chattanooga FC had one more chance in the 88th minute from forward Markus Naglestad, but his shot went straight to goalkeeper Brandon Barnes. The House managed to redeem themselves after a flat performance last Saturday as they responded with a shutout, and for the first time this season, the House moved out the bottom-three in the 2021 NISA fall table.

After the match, Chicago House AC goalkeeper, Brandon Barnes shared his thoughts on what it was like for him to make his debut for the House.

“It was special and definitely an honor,” said Barnes. “I didn’t find out until the night before. I was happy to get the start and thrilled that we were able to pull a shutout, and that’s big.”

Barnes also discussed his reaction after Chattanooga FC had scored in the first half, but the goal was waved off.

“My heart sank for a bit, and when I looked up, and I saw the refs talking, immediately I knew it was not a goal,” said Barnes. “For me, that lifted me up a little bit higher because I know it was kind of our night. I knew it was going to go our way even though we had that fumble or that scare. I think the guys realized that and ran with it.”

Midfielder Ian Cerro not only just scored a goal but also captained his team to victory and gave insights on what wearing the armband means to him.

“I think it was a big honor,” said Cerro. “It was something I was not expecting, but I always wanted to lead the team by example. That was a little bit extra, but I’m just happy we got the win and go out there and play the way I play, and in the end, I was happy about it.”

Head Coach and Technical Director, C.J. Brown gave perspective on his strategy to setting up his starting XI and seeing how his players responded in getting a crucial three points at home.

“It’s a credit to the players, because those that haven’t had a chance to get on the field and finally got their chance, I felt they stepped up and played well,” said Coach Brown. “They’ve trained hard, worked hard every day, and not getting minutes that’s hard mentally to do. To finally get your chance, sometimes you think this is a make-or-break moment, so there’s a lot of stress and pressure. I thought Andrew Ribeiro and John Requejo, Jr. played very well. We’ve also had guys move around like [Michael] Kafari and [Nazeem] Bartman getting more minutes. I think we’re finding out who we really are, and it’s taking a little time but credit to the guys.”

With last night’s win, the House moved to 7th place in the NISA fall standings while Chattanooga FC dropped to 9th place. For Chicago House AC, they have now won three out of their last four matches, while Chattanooga FC remains on a three-match losing streak.

On Saturday, October 23, the House will have another home match against Maryland Bobcats FC at 7:30 PM CST at SeatGeek Stadium. Fans can purchase tickets by visiting www.chicagohouseac.com/tickets and tune in live by visiting www.chicagohouseac.com/watch-live. For team updates and information, please follow the team’s social media pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, @ChicagoHouse_AC for live updates and fan reactions. Enjoy the match. #OurCityOurHouse

Match Notes:

Head Coach and Technical Director C.J. Brown changed his starting XI in the match with three players making their debuts: GK Brandon Barnes, D John Requejo Jr, and D Andrew Ribeiro.
Goalkeeper Brandon Barnes made his debut and got his first win and a clean sheet for the House.
This was the House’s second win at SeatGeek Stadium.
Midfielder Ian Cerro scored his second goal of the season and is currently ranked second as the team’s top goal scorer only behind Wojciech Wojcik, who leads the House with three goals for the 2021 NISA fall season.
Chicago House AC now has recorded five shutouts during the 2021 NISA fall season.

Scoring Summary:

CHAC – Ian Cerro (Huffman) 45’+

Misconduct Summary:

CFC – Daniel Jackson (Yellow Card) 26’
CHAC – Michael Kafari (Yellow Card) 67’

Next Match: The House will have another quick turnaround at home on Saturday, October 23, against Maryland Bobcats FC at SeatGeek Stadium. The kickoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. CT. To get tickets, check out their website and get yours today. 

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Josh Ganal, co-owner of Grandstand Sports in Bridgeport, says despite calls every day from fans, he’s had a hard time getting Chicago Sky merchandise to stock his shelves. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

After the team’s WNBA championship win, and a downtown championship parade, fans are left with few options for gear they say is available for other major sports teams. Retailers say supply chain issues and a lack of distributors are to blame.

Chicago Sky fans are having trouble getting their hands on WNBA championship apparel, and retailers say supply chain disruptions, limited distributors and an overall lack of recognition for the women’s sport is to blame.

Across the city, fans have seen a scarcity of apparel celebrating the Chicago basketball team for their recent championship.

Brian Panganiban, who runs the social media fan page The Sky Show CHI, has even posted an online guide pointing fans toward their best bet at getting Sky merch in Chicago.

“Merchandise and shirts and all that type of stuff is such an important part of fandom,” said Panganiban, who started the social media hashtag #WNBAWeNeedMerch on Twitter to mobilize the team’s base to call for more apparel, especially after a championship win.

And online, the Sky’s online store is currently unable to ship out any merchandise. Because of a high volume of orders, fans can expect their merchandise to be shipped out as early as next week, the website said.

Meanwhile, sporting goods stores across the city say they are fielding multiple calls a day for merch but don’t have the supply in stock.

“There’s been a demand all year that they’ve been playing, it’s just companies getting back to us and then the shortage issues with everything going on in this world,” said Josh Ganal, 38, co-owner of Grandstand Sports in Bridgeport.

Ganal said pandemic-era disruptions have made it difficult for many sporting goods stores in the area to procure Sky merch. Ganal is still waiting to hear back from suppliers Nike and New Era to see if it’s still possible to put the Sky garb on his shelves.

But retailers also say sales reps from apparel distributors haven’t reached out enough.

“We really don’t get a lot of representatives calling us,” said Dan Hardman, the manager of Pro Jersey Sports in Bolingbrook. “I would honestly say the companies dropped the ball. I can turn around and get a White Sox Jersey in a heartbeat, but when it comes down to WNBA, there’s really only been maybe two companies that have even sent an email.”

There is at least one store where gear can be found. At Dick’s Sporting Goods store on North and Clybourn avenues, about 50 shirts are in stock, but there’s a strict one-per-person limit.

Smaller retailers like Ganal and Hardman are left to scrounge for Sky apparel amid the manufacturing delays. Hardman says that if he were to place an order for the merchandise, he wouldn’t receive the shipment until Christmas.

Jason Beeferman/Sun-Times
At Dick’s Sporting Goods on North and Clybourn avenues, one of few spots in the city with championship Chicago Sky gear in stock, there is a strict one-per-person limit.

“It’s months and months of waiting upon waiting; it’s just not worth it at that point,” he said.

For fans like Panganiban, the merchandise is important in helping the team gain the recognition it deserves.

“A lot of people aren’t in the know yet,” he said. “Wearing hats, wearing shirts out in public, people are gonna remember, like ‘Oh yeah there’s a WNBA team here. Oh yeah, that team won the championship.”

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Josh Ganal said the Chicago Sky are a “major team” in Chicago. He hopes next year he can sell the Sky’s merchandise alongside the other Chicago teams.

Despite the hiccups in getting the Sky championship shirts on fans’ backs this year, Ganal says he is confident the Sky shirts will find a place on his shelf next year.

“That’s not even a gamble. Still every day we get calls for Sky stuff,” he said. “It’s something that here in our store we like to carry at least something from all the major teams. And let’s face it, the Sky is a major team.”

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Sun-Times file

An attorney for the group also petitioned for a temporary restraining and preliminary injunction Thursday that would block the enforcement of city and state vaccination mandates and prevent his clients from being suspended or fired while the suit plays out.

Over 130 municipal workers, including a large group of Chicago Fire Department employees, filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming the vaccination mandates imposed by the city and state are unconstitutional.

Filed in federal court in Chicago. the suit challenges an executive order signed Sept. 3 by Gov. J.B. Pritzker requiring health care workers and certain state employees and contractors to be fully vaccinated. In addition to a host of Fire Department employees, the plaintiffs also include workers from the city’s Water and Transportation departments.

The complaint similarly pushes back against a mandate imposed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, which required all city workers to report their vaccination status on the city’s portal earlier this month. The conflict over Lightfoot’s vaccine mandate has already sparked a legal battle between the city and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 that’s playing out in Cook County court.

The suit filed Thursday holds that the mandates extend beyond the authority of Pritzker and the city and are thus both “null and void.”

Spokespeople for the governor’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Kristen Cabanban, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, declined comment after noting her office hadn’t yet been served with the lawsuit.

Jonathan Lubin, the attorney representing the city workers in the suit, also petitioned for a temporary restraining and preliminary injunction later Thursday that would block the enforcement of both mandates and prevent his clients from being suspended or fired while the suit plays out.

The latest flurry of legal action came just three days after the city announced that more than a third of Chicago Police Department employees and 28% of workers from the Fire Department could face disciplinary action after defying Lightfoot’s mandate to report their vaccination status. Those were the lowest numbers for any city departments, with most reporting compliance above 90%.

By Tuesday, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown acknowledged that 21 cops had been placed in a no-pay status for refusing to report their vaccination status to the city’s portal. FOP President John Catanzara had urged members of the union to ignore the requirement to report their vaccination status — a move that ultimately prompted a temporary court order in a pending case in Cook County that has blocked him from making similar public statements.

The city has sought to extend that ban — which expires Oct. 25 — while fighting off another suit filed by the police union seeking a court-ordered suspension of the city’s vaccination policy pending further bargaining and arbitration. An order issued Thursday by Judge Moshe Jacobius sent both those cases to Judge Cecilia Horan’s courtroom.

During the hearing, Jacobius bemoaned the “sensationalization” of the ongoing vaccine mandate beef.

“Without commenting on anything specific, there’s been some comments about lowering the volume and lowering the flames and working in commonality for the people of the city of Chicago, both sides, and I think these parties should take that to heart,” he said.

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The Secretary of State Driver Services facility in Naperville. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Privacy protections must be in place before digital IDs join a host of other post-9/11 changes that create a more complete record of where each of us is at any given moment.

Digital driver’s licenses need some rules of the road before they are placed on more smart phones.

Some states allow motorists to put electronic versions of their driver’s licenses on their phones. Other states, including Illinois, are thinking about it. The digital IDs would come in handy for people caught in traffic stops who have their phones but absent-mindedly left their plastic driver’s licenses at home in their gym bags.

If created properly, the digital IDs could tell a bouncer whether someone was old enough to get into a bar — without letting the bouncer get a peek at the person’s birthday. Underage people would have a harder time creating fake IDs. Many people are already comfortable with putting their airline boarding passes and theater tickets on their phones.

But as a police officer in a traffic stop might say: Not so fast.

Putting driver’s licenses onto phones presents an array of thorny problems that must be resolved.

Could a police officer ask for a driver’s license as a pretext for scrolling through texts or other personal information on someone’s device? It could happen. Phones contain all sorts of private data, including texts, restricted social media posts, emails and photos — information that people assume will remain private. Once the phone is in someone else’s hands, that data is no longer private.

Under some systems, police use a special scanner to get just the driver’s license information without grabbing the driver’s phone. But what if police officers ask a motorists to hand over a phone because their scanners aren’t working or they don’t have one?

Could digital IDs join a host of other post-9/11 changes that create a more complete record of where each of us is at any given moment?

Could scanning an electronic driver’s license create a permanent record that is captured when someone flashes a plastic license to, say, buy alcohol, enter a casino or go to a nightclub with an age requirement?

What if a state government, through one of the usual bureaucratic mix-ups, mistakenly revokes your digital ID from your phone? You might not know it until you need your license.

On Oct. 12, Mississippi Commissioner of Public Safety Sean Tindell said his state is developing a way for people to have their driver’s licenses, vaccination cards and other state-issued documents on their phones, perhaps as soon as November. Last month, Apple announced Arizona and Georgia will soon let users add driver’s licenses or state IDs to the Wallet app on their iPhones or Apple Watches. Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah will follow, Apple said. Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana and Oklahoma already have driver’s license apps.

In theory, people who don’t like the idea of putting their driver’s licenses on their phones could continue to use their plastic counterparts. It’s possible, though, that businesses and others might find the electronic versions to be preferable for their own reasons. Try to display a plastic driver’s license, and you might be shunted to the slow line while others hurry through, or find you can’t use it all.

As we have seen giant tech firms build online profiles of each of us, we have to ask what whether anyone is going to collect and store even more information about us when we use electronic IDs.

As the steady drumbeat of data breaches plays in the background, governments at the state and federal level should dial up their vigilance. Strong policies to prevent digital fraud and protect privacy must be in place in every state.

Any time a new system like this comes along, we should examine what the unintended consequences might be along with the benefits.

Send letters to [email protected].

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Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 President John Catanzara | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file

As the vaccine mandate standoff continues, the police union’s City Council allies are flexing their legislative muscle.

A Cook County judge on Thursday harangued the city and police union over the “sensationalization” of their vaccine mandate battle.

Judge Moshe Jacobius’ voice began to rise shortly after an attorney for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 expressed his sense of frustration with the legal proceedings.

“You speak of frustration, I think there’s enough frustration to go around,” Jacobius said during the virtual hearing.

“There’s been some comments about lowering the volume and lowering the flames and working in commonality for the people of the city of Chicago, both sides, and I think these parties should take that to heart,” he said.

He added that “when you see what’s going on and you see the sensationalization of this, people need to really consider, everybody that’s involved here is in public service.

“I think if people have goodwill and they approach it from consideration and a humanistic point of view, rather than a litigious [one] … then everyone’s going to be better off.”

Police union attorney Joel D’Alba assured Jacobius both sides were in discussions away from courtrooms, trying to resolve differences.

Jacobius’ mini tirade was an aside to the main order of business in his courtroom.

He granted a motion by attorneys for the city to have a single judge handle the two pending cases related to the vaccine mandate.

One case filed by the city seeks to extend a 10-day ban on police union President John Catanzara’s use of social media to discourage his members from reporting their vaccine status to the city and place similar restrictions on other union leaders. The next hearing in that case is scheduled for Monday, the same day the current 10-day ban — in the form of a temporary restraining order — is set to expire.

A separate lawsuit filed by the police union seeks a court-ordered suspension of the city’s vaccination policy pending further bargaining and arbitration.

Under Jacobius’ order, both cases will now be handled by Cook County Circuit Judge Cecilia Horan.

The order comes a day after Horan denied a request from the police union that she recuse herself.

Attorneys for the union had questioned her impartiality because the firm she was a partner at prior to becoming a judge, Hinshaw & Culbertson, created a report about police reform for the city’s Police Accountability Task Force that contributed to the creation of a federal consent decree the Police Department is still currently under.

Horan said the firm had more than 400 attorneys and she did not know about the report at all and had nothing to do with it while she was a partner at the firm.Horan further said she doesn’t know Mayor Lori Lightfoot and has never represented any of the parties involved in the case.

Later Thursday, more than 130 municipal workers, including a large group of Chicago Fire Department employees, filed a lawsuit claiming the vaccination mandates imposed by the city and state are unconstitutional.

Filed in federal court in Chicago. the suit challenges an executive order signed Sept. 3 by Gov. J.B. Pritzker requiring health care workers and certain state employees and contractors to be fully vaccinated. In addition to a host of Fire Department employees, the plaintiffs also include workers from the city’s Water and Transportation departments.

The complaint similarly pushes back against a mandate imposed by Lightfoot. The suit filed Thursday holds that the mandates extend beyond the authority of Pritzker and the city and are thus both “null and void.”

Meanwhile, some City Council members also are jumping in to the vaccine standoffs.

Ald. Silvana Tabares (23rd) and Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st) plan to introduce an ordinance Monday that retroactively requires Council approval of “all policies, rules and regulations governing discipline” of city employees.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of the city code to the contrary and subject to the terms of any applicable collective bargaining agreement approved by City Council, any new policy rule or regulation that provides for placing city employees on non-disciplinary, no-pay status requires City Council approval,” the ordinance states.

Lightfoot’s mandate that city employees report their vaccination status on the city’s data portal took effect Oct. 8. The ordinance “shall be retroactive” to Oct. 1.

Also on Monday, indicted Ald. Edward Burke (14th) plans to introduce an ordinance requiring the continuation of health care benefits for the dependents of city employees for the duration of the dispute.

“Many of these beneficiaries are being treated for life-threatening diseases, mental health illnesses and are receiving hospital and in-patient treatment which will be at risk. … Humanitarian interests demand the continued care and treatment of these current dependents,” the resolution states.

“No provision of the municipal code authorizes the mayor of Chicago to take this Draconian action. And furthermore, no action of the municipal code requires city employees to submit the information” on their vaccine status.

Lightfoot later Thursday called the Tabares-Napolitano ordinance “foolishness” and plans to do “everything I can to stop it.”

Catanzara “has demonstrated over and over again he’s racist. He’s a misogynist. He’s xenophobic. He hates immigrants and refugees,” Lightfoot said. “I think people in her ward need to ask why [Tabares] is carrying the water for a guy like that.”

Lightfoot said the city is seeing a “significant increase” in compliance with the vaccine mandate at both CPD and the Chicago Fire Department. The city has said the number of police complying has rise from 64.4% to 68%.

“They don’t want to lose their job. They don’t want to lose their health care. Over what? Saying yes or no? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not rational,” she said.

“People just need to sign up and be in compliance. And I’m confident that the numbers will continue to rise, as they have all week long and that people are gonna wake up to the reality that they are being led over a cliff by someone who has already destroyed his career. I urge our young officers, our firemen not to follow that example. Make your own decisions.”

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Linda Harllee Harper was appointed the first-ever gun violence prevention director for Washington, D.C., on Jan. 28. | Getty Images

Linda Harllee Harper’s most powerful tool is the ‘s Building Blocks initiative whose workers go to targeted communities to form relationships and connect high-risk residents to violence interrupters.

After four people were killed in one week in early September in the same Washington, D.C., neighborhood, residents made a plea for help.

“We’ve been at funerals all week,” said Janeese Lewis George, a Washington City Council member who represents the neighborhood. “What can we do as a community?”

She was speaking to dozens of people at a vigil site, a tree adorned with Teddy bears and candles along a street lined with rowhouses.

According to the police, the area, known as Brightwood Park, has been plagued by several dozen violent, gun-related crimes in the past year. When Lewis George asked whether the crowd had known anyone who’d been shot, most people raised their hands.

Earlier that day, five council members had joined her in asking Mayor Muriel Bowser for assistance — not in the form of more police but from the city’s first-ever gun violence prevention director, Linda Harllee Harper.

Amanda Gomez / KHN
Janeese Lewis George, a Washington, D.C., City Council member who represents Brightwood Park, addresses dozens of people at a vigil site. “We’ve been at funerals all week,” she said. “What can we do as a community?”

Harllee Harper knows Brightwood Park, having grown up near the heavily Black and Latino neighborhood, which recently also has begun to attract white residents. She knows the local stories, both good and bad. Some families have lived there for decades, witnessing generational poverty and government neglect. During the 1990s, parts of it were considered a “war zone” because of rampant drug- and gang-related activity. She still lives in the same ward with her husband and son, who plays basketball at a local recreation center with the children of a recent murder victim.

Her investment in finding a solution is clear.

“It’s not a new development,” Harllee Harper said. “My view of gun violence is shaped by how much loss I’ve experienced. I’ve had friends who have been killed. And I also have had young people that I have worked with be killed.”

D.C. began 2021 with two crises: the coronavirus pandemic and an epidemic of violence involving guns.

To respond to the latter, Bowser advanced plans to draw on lessons learned from the former. She started by creating a position, one that anti-gun violence groups had long requested and which became too urgent to ignore: gun violence prevention director.

Enter Harllee Harper, who was appointed Jan. 28.

About three weeks later, the mayor declared a public health emergency over gun violence and created an “emergency operations center” that mirrored the city’s COVID response. No part of the United States. has been spared from an increase in killings during the pandemic. And in the nation’s capital the murder toll is outpacing last year’s, which reached 198, a 16-year high. Per capita, that’s about 29 killings per 100,000 residents.

The D.C. City Council has directed unprecedented funding to support the efforts.

Harllee Harper, 56, started her 20-plus-year career at the D.C. Public Schools as a substance abuse prevention and intervention coordinator. Recently, she was senior deputy director for the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, where she helped overhaul the agency.

“I’ve run programs before, but this was a different level of limelight” than something she would have signed up for on her own, she said.

Nine months into this role, Harllee Harper’s most powerful tool is the mayor’s Building Blocks initiative. Drawing on public health strategies to contain the spread of violence, it’s designed to treat the symptoms and root causes of community violence.

Its workers operate almost as contact tracers, whose methods have become familiar during the pandemic. They enter targeted communities to form relationships and connect high-risk residents to violence interrupters, who are trained to de-escalate conflict.

They also arrange for resources, like drug addiction treatment and housing assistance.

The idea is to reach the small number of people who engage in dangerous behavior and invest in them and their neighborhood.

“Hopelessness combined with a gun, combined with substance abuse is a really bad combination, and I think that’s what we are seeing right now,” Harllee Harper said.

Building Blocks is up and running in about one-third of its targeted 151 blocks — 2% of the city — that were connected to 41% of last year’s gunshot-related crimes last year. Brightwood Park isn’t on this list but is included in the city’s fall crime-prevention initiative, run by the police department.

These diverse neighborhoods are home to people who tend to be poorer and lack access to resources and opportunities. Statistics among COVID and murder victims look similar: The same neighborhoods were hit hardest by both, and the vast majority of deaths have befallen Black people.

D.C. stemmed the spread of COVID far more efficiently than the nation as a whole, in part through government action. The city’s crash course on public health during the pandemic could mean it’s better situated to address gun violence.

“We can explain certain things through this public health lens, and people can understand it a bit better,” said David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform.

Muhammad said D.C.’s approach is unique and that Harllee Harper’s position is rare.

“If you claim to want to reduce gun violence in your city, prove it,” he said. “Whose full-time job is it in your city to do that? In most cities, it is zero. Don’t tell me the police chief. That’s a small portion of their job.”

For the few dozen cities that have some sort of anti-violence czar, the position is relatively new. Richmond, California, is an exception, with an agency dedicated to reducing gun violence since 2008. Richmond’s Office of Neighborhood Safety has been heralded as a model. By 2013, Richmond went from more than 40 homicides a year to 16, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence — its lowest number in three decades.

Harllee Harper’s position is housed not within the public safety agency but in the city administrator’s office, presumably affording her more authority and oversight of government programs.

And Building Blocks created a mobile app with which its employees can flag requests during walk-throughs of select neighborhoods. An employee could make a request using the city’s 311 service line to repair a streetlight that is out, for example, and the agency responsible would prioritize it because it came from Building Blocks.

There’s no guarantee these interventions will work, though multiple studies have shown positive outcomes of violence interrupters or infrastructure improvements, such as cleaning and transforming vacant lots and abandoned buildings.

But Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy in Baltimore, said it’s important to track successes and failures because efforts like the one Harllee Harper is spearheading don’t “always work in all places,” and there are lessons to learn when they don’t.

“We can’t expect the workers to just perform miracles,” Webster said.

While expectations are high, Harllee Harper’s success depends on whether government and business leaders respond with the same urgency as they did when the health director requested action.

“The biggest hurdle really is getting all of government to buy into a new day and a new way to get things done,” said council member Charles Allen, who chairs a committee that created Harllee Harper’s position. “Bureaucracy is not nimble.”

“My colleagues in the sister agencies across the city, when Building Blocks calls, they are very, very responsive,” Harllee Harper said. “We’re working together to create performance metrics for agencies related to gun violence prevention.”

Some remain skeptical. Residents of the first Building Blocks neighborhood said the follow-up continues to lag.

Jamila White, an elected member of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, said she had several conversations with Harllee Harper and gave her a tour to point out the needs, including quick fixes like adding or fixing streetlights and regular street-sweeping. White said she has yet to see expedited results but respects Harllee Harper and knows that no one alone could address all of the issues, many of them rooted in poverty.

“There’s a lot of shared agreement,” White said. “But, you know, having a shared agreement and having political will and power to do something is a different thing.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues.

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Jerome Boykin, 30, of St. Louis, is accused of trying to sell these 22 guns in exchange for what he thought was 6 pounds of marijuana on Oct. 8 in the Chicago area, according to federal authorities. | Provided

The supplier was a Missouri retiree, Robert Narup, who’s accused of illegally selling firearms he bought at gun shows across the country, officials say. Asked why he sold guns that could be used in violent crimes in Chicago, he said, “I like dead presidents” — referring to cash, according to court records.

A St. Louis-to-Chicago gun trafficking network began with a relationship that was kindled on an online sneaker marketplace, federal authorities say.

Two men who met on a Facebook specialty sneaker group started trading guns for marijuana about a year ago, authorities say.

Over the past week, Chicago police and ATF agents arrested those men and their supplier, a 71-year-old Missouri retiree who’d traveled the country to buy weapons at gun shows, according to affidavits filed in federal court by an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The alleged supplier, Robert Narup, was arrested Oct. 15 in a Walmart parking lot in Washington, Missouri, after he sold 18 guns and two silencers to an undercover ATF agent for $14,000, authorities say. He’s charged with dealing firearms without a license.

After he was arrested, Narup was asked why he sold guns that could be used in violent crimes in Chicago and he said, “I like dead presidents” — referring to cash, according to court records.

Also arrested in the sting were Jerome Boykin, 30, of St. Louis, who’s accused of buying guns from Narup and selling them to Rogelio Mancera, 27, of Schaumburg, in exchange for marijuana. Boykin and Mancera met on a Facebook sneaker group about three years ago, officials say.

Rodolfo Ortega, 26, of Chicago, was a middleman, selling guns on the street for Mancera for a cut of the profits, authorities say.

On Oct. 8 in the Chicago area, Boykin provided undercover agents 22 guns for what he thought was 6 pounds of marijuana, according to an ATF affidavit. He cooperated with investigators and identified Narup as his source, officials say. He’s charged with possessing a firearm during a drug trafficking crime.

Boykin was freed in lieu of $4,500 bail. Narup was released on his own recognizance. Ortega was arrested Monday and charged with illegal possession of firearms.

Mancera was arrested Tuesday and charged with dealing firearms without a license. Both men remain in federal custody.

Mancera admitted he provided Boykin high-grade marijuana in return for at least 40 guns in at least 10 separate deals, federal authorities say. The price was three guns per pound of pot, officials say.

On Tuesday, investigators found 27 guns, including two machine guns, in Mancera’s storage locker in Schaumburg and about 10 pounds of marijuana in his “trap house” near Armitage and Kimball avenues in Logan Square, according to court records.

The Chicago Police Department’s new Gun Investigations Team made the arrests along with ATF.

Contributing: Jon Seidel

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Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady has plans for the Bears. | Rich Schultz/AP

Is Tom Brady preparing to take his own ownership share in the Bears?

Tom Brady awaits, and Patrick Finley and Mark Potash wonder if the Bears are in for a butt-kicking on Sunday in Tampa.

New episodes of “Halas Intrigue” will be published regularly with accompanying stories collected on the podcast’s hub page. You can also listen to “Halas Intrigue” wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Luminary, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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