When my editor, Salem, asked if I’d write a column on rats in Chicago, I said, “Hell, yes!” I immediately created a top-three list of Danny Solis, John Christopher, and William O’Neal.
Then I realized—wait! Salem meant rats of the four-legged variety. Which, by the way, I could write a book about, having encountered one, two, or three on any given nighttime walk as they madly scurry across alleys, streets, and sidewalks.
But by then it was too late to retreat from my investigation. So sorry, Salem.
The first thing I wondered is why are rats synonymous with tattletales. That led me to the distinction between “snitches” and “rats”—the former being people with more or less benevolent intentions of preventing a crime. As opposed to the latter, who betray a trust to get something in return—for example, a lower prison sentence for a previous crime.
Then I thought, what is it about rats that’s earned them, you know, a ratty reputation? So I googled rat behavior and wound up reading testimonies from rat lovers about how rats make loving pets. Guess it really does take all kinds in this big old world.
Turns out the deceitful reputation of rats comes from the notion that they are deceptive creatures always looking out for number one. The first to flee a sinking boat, and all that.
So, let’s get back to the Big Three, starting with . . .
Danny Solis, former 25th ward alderperson, handpicked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to chair the council’s zoning committee.
In 2018, when Solis announced he wasn’t running for reelection on the grounds that he wanted to spend more time with his family, Mayor Rahm thanked him for his service and . . . oh, let’s just quote the former mayor . . .
“Danny Solis deserves the thanks and congratulations of our entire city after a lifetime of public service. . . . I will forever look fondly on the eight years Danny and I served this great city together and while the simple view may be that he was an ally on the City Council, the reality is much more. Danny is a friend.”
A few weeks later the story broke that Solis, having spent several years wearing a wire for the feds, had surreptitiously recorded conversations with powerful politicians, including former Alderperson Ed Burke and House Speaker Michael Madigan.
According to the Sun-Times, Solis “agreed to cooperate . . . after investigators confronted him in 2016 with evidence of his own wrongdoing.”
That evidence included swapping favors for “Viagra, prostitution services, the use of a multi-million dollar farm and campaign contributions.”
Solis’s recordings formed the backbone of the federal corruption indictment against Burke which ultimately drove him from power. Though I’m not sure that’s not what Mayor Rahm meant when he thanked Danny for his service.
Next on the list is John Christopher, the wired-up informant in the federal corruption investigation known as Operation Silver Shovel. (If you want to know more, check out Robin Amer’s excellent podcast The City.)
To get an idea of Christopher’s character, consider a few quotes from the Tribune story about him taking the stand in 1998 to testify against a few of the pols he’d bribed.
“Christopher said he pulled off robberies and thefts as a teenage gang member, played cards instead of filling potholes as a City of Chicago employee in the late 1960s . . . ”
And “bribed bankers to obtain . . . improper loans.”
And, “. . . after pleading guilty to trying to cheat the city out of $100,000 with phony snowplowing work in the big blizzard of 1979 . . . bribed guards at one minimum-security prison camp so he could roam free during bed checks.”
The feds convinced him to wear a wire, in which he recorded about 1,110 conversations while taking about $150,000 in bribes, in exchange for a lower sentence in cases regarding tax fraud and other crimes.
But I contend Christopher’s worst crime is the one for which no one was indicted, much less convicted. And that’s the one where, according to the feds, Christopher paid former 24th Ward Alderperson William Henry $5,000 a month to look the other way while he illegally dumped garbage and debris on vacant land at Kostner and Roosevelt in North Lawndale.
The dump—nicknamed Mount Henry—was in open operation for several years with piles of garbage rising six to eight stories high. The piles stayed there for years—long after Christopher had testified.
Christopher’s alleged payoffs to Henry took place before the feds forced him to wear his wire. I’ve always suspected the feds kept the garbage piles in place so as not to blow Christopher’s cover.
Ultimately, Mount Henry says much more about federal and local attitudes. Specifically, they don’t give a damn about poor, Black, west-side communities. I suppose we can thank Christopher for helping bring that revelation to light, as if we already didn’t know it.
Finally, there’s O’Neal. In exchange for not getting prosecuted for stealing a car, O’Neal became an FBI informant, spying on Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton in the late 1960s.
It was O’Neal who gave the feds his drawing of the layout of Hampton’s apartment at 2337 W. Monroe.
And it was O’Neal who allegedly drugged Hampton the night before the predawn raid on December 4, 1969, when Chicago police officers killed Hampton and Mark Clark as they were sleeping.
After the murders, O’Neal went into hiding in a federal witness protection program. In 1989, he resurfaced to give an interview for Eyes On the Prize II, the PBS documentary series.
O’Neal denied he drugged Hampton, but acknowledged he supplied the FBI with drawings of the apartment.
In 1990, O’Neal committed suicide by running onto the Eisenhower Expressway, where he was hit by a car.
All in all, when I consider the legacies of Solis, Christopher, and O’Neal, and the secrets they revealed about Chicago’s corruption, cynicism, and racism . . .
Well, I have to conclude that the four-legged rats might not be so bad after all.
The Latest from the Ben Joravsky Show
