Posted on 03/20/2002 9:02:11 AM PST by nemo
March 20, 2002
BY FRANK MAIN, FRAN SPIELMAN AND ANDREW HERRMANN STAFF REPORTERS
Henry A. Wolk didn't like strangers.
He was 77 years old, lived in the same Northwest Side home since he was 2 and often spoke to visitors through a vestibule mail slot close to the floor.
This was the reclusive world that officer Donald J. Marquez walked into Monday night to arrest Wolk for failing to answer a housing court subpoena.
About 10 p.m., Marquez knocked on the door, then pleaded with Wolk to go peacefully. Finally, he broke down Wolk's apartment door with a sledgehammer. He was immediately greeted with gunfire, wounded and fell in the front vestibule. By the time it was over, both Wolk and the officer were dead.
"Officer Marquez was an honest, hard-working cop whose efforts made this city a safe place," Chicago police Supt. Terry Hillard said Tuesday, tears welling in his eyes. "He was another officer doing his job and tragically taken away from us."
Marquez and his partner were trying to arrest Wolk because he ignored a subpoena they served him Jan. 5 to appear in court for a housing case.
The plainclothes officers and an upstairs tenant spoke to Wolk through his apartment door for several minutes, urging him to give up.
"He made a comment to the neighbor that he was not going to go to court, no matter what," said Phil Cline, chief of detectives for the Chicago police.
Marquez, who identified himself as an officer, smashed Wolk's door and Wolk fired a handgun at Marquez, Cline said.
Marquez, 47, and a father of four, was shot three times in the chest and once in the head.
As the 20-year police veteran collapsed into a pool of blood near a pile of magazines outside Wolk's first-floor apartment in the 2400 block of North Avers, Marquez's partner and the tenant scrambled upstairs.
A gun battle raged for at least 10 minutes. No other officers were killed, but Wolk was found dead inside.
Cline said officers from the Grand Central District and the Special Operations Unit worked heroically under fire to remove Marquez from the house and put him into an ambulance that took him to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Wolk fired a total of 10 shots and officers fired 24 at him, hitting him several times, authorities said. Police recovered two .22-caliber pistols they said Wolk had used; another .32-caliber handgun was found in his apartment, Cline said.
A neighbor, Jaime Rodriguez, 40, said he was returning from dinner and shopping with his family when he heard at least three shots from Wolk's home. Rodriguez, who said he was looking for a parking spot for his van, pulled around the block and crouched while he listened to the gun battle.
"There were six rapid shots, then I heard on the police radio, 'He is down, he is down; we have him now!" Rodriguez said.
Marquez, who was detailed to the Chicago corporation counsel's office several months ago, was responsible for serving subpoenas for people to appear in court. Marquez was not wearing a bulletproof vest when he was shot, officials said.
The department policy is for officers on patrol or street duty to wear them, said John Thomas, first deputy superintendent. The department will review its policy on vests in light of Marquez's shooting, he said.
Marquez's job involved administrative work as well as the kind of enforcement duties he and his partner were carrying out Monday, Thomas said.
Earlier, they had arrested two other people for failing to respond to subpoenas, said Corporation Counsel Mara Georges.
"Don was the kind of police officer who dealt with his heart as well as his head," said his brother, Dan Marquez. "He was known as a compassionate officer even when making these kinds of arrests. He would bend over backwards to make sure there was no confrontation. But he did what the warrant said. He knew the situation could turn deadly. He was always prepared."
Wolk's case dates to July when the city found 29 violations of the housing code at his two-story brick home in the 2400 block of North Avers, records show. After neighbors complained to the city, inspectors found a rotting porch, missing stairs, missing gutters, torn siding, a collapsed porch and other dangers.
Wolk was fined $14,500 on Oct. 16. He failed to show up for six court hearings. On Jan. 15, a judge issued a "body attachment" calling for police to take him into custody and use force if necessary.
Ald. Vilma Colom (35th) said her office tried for more than a year to deal with Wolk. She said she tried to tell him about city programs that could have provided money for repairs.
"He wasn't very cooperative," she said. "He said we had no business telling him what he could or could not do. He wouldn't come out of the house."
Colom said she checked up on Wolk once, bringing him a fan.
"He grabbed it, said 'thank you' and slammed the door," she said. "It's sad."
Marvin Cruz, who owns other buildings in the neighborhood, said he offered Wolk $100,000 for the house and would let him live rent-free for the rest of his life.
At first, Wolk would only talk to Cruz through a mail slot in the door about a foot off the ground.
Cruz lay on the porch while Wolk crouched behind the storm door.
Eventually, he was allowed inside.
"It was a mess, with piles of paper. It smelled like old pizza," Cruz said.
Wolk was guarded, but Cruz eventually learned that he moved into the home when he was 2. After his parents died, they left Wolk the home.
He did not appear to have physical disabilities, Cruz said.
"I think it was more in the head," he said. "But this made me so sad. I was eating breakfast when I saw it on the news. My spoon just fell, and I started crying.
Cruz thought he and Wolk were close to a deal. He intends to continue with his plans to buy and rehab the property.
And when he sells the house, he plans to donate up to $50,000 to Marquez's widow, Maria, and the couple's four children.
"I don't want to make any money on this," Cruz said. "I just want a little good to come from this awful tragedy."
No, it only affects the dollar value. You can still dispose of your property (nobody has taken that from you) but probably not for what you think it is worth.
In a free market capitalist society what you are free to do is:
If you think your neighbor is driving the price of your property down, you simply buy his property and then you can do with it as you see fit. Otherwise, you have no right to impose your will on him for your benefit.
This is incorrect. The value of any good on the market is exactly what the buyer is willing to pay. Value is completely and utterly subjective. Some people will refuse to buy a beautifully kept-up house in a safe neighborhood because their prospective neighbor owns several large dogs or has a number of young children. Are the neighbors violating your property rights by having a family? In no way.
Your property rights are an objective fact: no one may intrude on your property or take it from you by either force or fraud without violating your rights. This is objectively ascertainable: is someone on your property without your permission?
Value is entirely subjective - is the neighbor's house too pink? Have too many children in it? Have too many cheesy lawn ornaments? Have an extremely ugly car parked in its driveway? There are far too many variables to judge. No one can draw a definitive line as to what constitutes the erosion of property value in the mind of each and every prospective buyer.
But you can draw a physical line between where your property ends and another's begins. If your house is worth $25,000 or $250,000 it's still your house.
Not according to me. According to the law in Chicago (the quality of upkeep on someones house is enough to have the courts and police involved.) ... We can argue about the specifics of this particular case; however, the underlying point is beyond reasonable dispute. (snip) I have a responsibility to take into account how my actions -- even on my own property -- will affect the neighbors. (snip) The man clearly had no compassion or understanding for his neighbors.
You are correct in that you do have a responsibility to consider how your actions on your property affect your neighbors ... There are laws about noise, firing a gun, operating a business in a residential area, etc. that are valid concerns for the community and it is reasonable that these sorts of disputes are handled by the courts and police. But an old man living as a recluse in a dilapidated house is pushing the boundries of what is proper for the law to be involved with. Your property's value because of proximity to such a person is not a valid concern of the law. If this is the way the law in Chicago is written, then it is wrong. Further, the involvement of the courts and the action of the police in this matter were improper at best, and plain stupid at worst.
The old man may have had little compassion or understanding for his neighbors, but he didn't have to, so long as he kept to himself, didn't play his stereo too loud, shoot a gun in the front yard, or try to open a used car lot in his front yard. The right to live in peace, secure in one's possessions are fundamental principles of this republic ... at least they used to be ...
Who EVER guaranteed you that you would be free from the vagaries of the real estate market?
Are you suggesting that you have a "right" to recoup any loss in market value that might result from your neighbor's house burning to the ground?
Are you going to sue your city for "lowering" your property values by not being as not being as glamorous and popular as New York City?
Are you going to tell us next that you have the right to decide to run off and kill those property value lowering rag-heads infesting the neighborhood?
You don't have any natural right whatsoever to another person's property. You only have LAWS passed by THIEVES upon which to rely. The fact that you support killing this old man because his siding, gutters and front porch weren't up to snuff clearly identifies you as the enemy.
You aren't a member of the Henry Bowman fan club by any chance are you?
From now on, I recommend just pumping Zyklon-B directly down through the roof vents when a criminal such as this "property owner" refuses to comply. We try to be nice to these CATTLE and this is how they repay us?!
That says a lot right there.
You PISSANT "it affects my property value" types make me sick to my F'ing stomach! What makes you think for an instant that you are ENTITLED to any value that a "good neighbour's" proximity might add to your property? If a bad neighbor is dragging your property price down, you think he should have to pay the difference. However, if good neigbour is inflating your price, you should be entitled to keep the increase without sharing in the cost of his property. You thieving commie scumbag.
Yup. So any way you slice it, my neighbor imposes costs on me. Of course, the fact that his exercise of his property rights might qualify as an imposition of his will on me and his other neighbors, is of no import.
This illustrates the problem with property rights absolutists. The exercise of property rights can and does impose costs on others. The unasked-for imposition of costs is a violation of my property rights.
It's beyond ludicrous to suggest that my neighbors and I have no legitimate claims to recourse if some guy on the block decides, say, to open a biker bar or brothel in his house. Clearly it's within his absolute property rights to do such things. And just as clearly, his actions will affect the rest of us -- not just our property values, but also things like our quality of life, and even safety. He has imposed definite costs.
As is typical with libertarian solutions, those behaviors that are detrimental to the community must be allowed at all costs, whereas community standards cannot be enforced, because it's "legislating morality."
The basic premise of those who advocate absolute property rights is that we can pretend to live in isolation from those around us. In real life, the pretense does not stand up to serious scrutiny.
Many on this thread have staked out a libertarian (i.e., indefensible) position on property rights. Here in the real world, it's better to recognize that there are in fact legitimate constraints to the exercise of property rights, and to lay out a defensible position on how to maximize property rights, and keep the constraints to a minimum.
I'm hoping you forgot the < /sarcasm> tag. Otherwise I'd have to peg you as an idiot.
OTOH, if he can buy it for $100k, fix it up for another $50k, and sell it for $200k, then it's worth it.
I suspect it's that sort of situation -- a trashed house in a neighborhood that's on its way up. It explains not only the offered price, but also the complaints.
All this while our government encourages and supports the *MILLIONS* of illegal aliens that fill our jails, choke off our social services, drive down our wages, while driving up the taxes, standing room only in many big city ERs, while packing them into our already overcrowded classrooms etc etc etc.
If the risks (what you're calling "costs") become greater than your return on your investment in property, you can sell it for property which has a more acceptable risk profile.
For example, if you can't handle having neighbors who use their property as they see fit, you can always invest in housing in a community where property owners have agreed to abide by certain conditions.
In a free society there is only one constraint (and it's not on property): you cannot trespass against or appropriate anyone else or their property without their consent. All other constraints are constraints on property and freedom.
As far as "the real world" is concerned, if conditions are unjust they should be made just. No small number of men told Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Samuel Adams that they should just "accept reality". Thankfully, they refused.
They wouldn't have acknowledged such unconscionable violations of life, liberty and property, and neither should we - no matter what the CHD decides is best for us subjects.
Lest we forget, Mr. Wolk was the one who started the killing, after having defied a variety of legally constituted authorities.
We can argue about the particular law. However, Mr. Wolk was very much in the wrong in this case.
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