A Northwest Side apartment building owned by a landlord whose properties have been plagued by violence and building code violations — including a woman shot to death last year in another of his buildings — was raided Friday by Chicago police officers.
Karris Turner, 31, and Terrence Cole, 27, were arrested in an apartment in the building in the 4400 block of North Lawndale Avenue in Albany Park, where officers reported finding 26 grams of heroin, 13 grams of crack cocaine and $2,000 in a safe.
Both men are felons. Turner was on electronic monitoring while free on bail awaiting trial on weapon charges, including reckless discharge of a firearm, court records show.
Gary Carlson, who has dozens of rental properties in the area, also owns an apartment building in the 4400 block of North Francisco Avenue where Stephanie Brooks was fatally shot on Feb. 22, 2020.
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A masked man entered the apartment during a home invasion, and Brooks was shot when at least one of her friends fired a handgun during the incident, according to a police report. The case was closed without any charges filed.
At the time, the police said they believed the incident could have been connected to a gang shootout that left a Chicago firefighter wounded in the leg outside another apartment building owned by Carlson. The firefighter was trying to put out a car fire outside the building in the 3300 block of West Wilson Avenue when he was caught in the crossfire.
Hollis Williams, 30, pleaded guilty to aggravated battery of a firefighter and illegal gun possession in that case and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Williams lived in Carlson’s building on Francisco where Brooks was killed, according to court records.
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Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd) and Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) and Cmdr. Ronald Pontecore Jr. of the Albany Park police district met with Carlson in February 2020 about their concerns about violence connected to his buildings. In her ward newsletter, Rodriguez Sanchez said Carlson promised to secure his buildings.
The Chicago Department of Buildings’ Strategic Task Force conducted a series of inspections at Carlson’s buildings earlier this year.In March, the task force inspected Carlson’s apartment buildings on Lawndale, Francisco and Wilson avenues and found numerous building code violations, though most of them didn’t directly involve security issues, city records show.
In a 2016 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Carlson said he doesn’t like to be called a slumlord and said “I don’t rent no garbage.” He said he evicts troublesome tenants.
“I don’t like the police coming to my buildings,” he said.
Carlson couldn’t be reached for comment Saturday.
