If you are a regular of Chicago’s South and Westside, the rules are posted clearly on behavior expected. Most block rules make it very simple and the postings are clear, No Drugs, No gang activity, etc. Well the Heard family made an “investment” in the heart of one of Chicago’s worst crime zones. Ms. Jacquelyn Heard is Mayor Daley’s spin doctor, spokeswomen, and Press Secretary. The timing could not be worse as Chicago Clout and a host of Chicago webmasters have made a full frontal assault on Mayor Daley’s corrupt administration. These actions are destroying Mayor Daley’s greatest dream of being on stage like Hitler during the 1936 Olympics. The story never addresses why a well paid person like Ms. Heard would purchase a building in the hood. See it is one or many reasons, let’s explore. Many landlords like properties in the ghetto because the government pays the rent. Mayor Daley has a corrupt building department that does not inspect these homes; some inspectors take bribes, look the other way, or are afraid to enter this type of neighborhood. My suspicion is simple, most renters in the ghetto pay cash rent. Cash rent can allow a person to have loot on hand to play the part in Daley’s administration. The IRS should look into the accounting of the income claimed on this property. I also think the Federal Government should look into any conflict of interest obtaining property when an official is in a high ranking government job. During the Hired Truck Scandal, illegally obtained cash was revealed for acquiring property in Federal court records. The lesson here is simple; Heard will be covered by Daley because she knows too much. Heard should be fired and use her pension to get her job back like any other city slob with no clout. No matter what happens, the apple does not fall far from the tree, Daley has corrupted not only his city, he has corrupted his staff. Read the directions on your block Ms. Heard, and a freebie from Patrick McDonough, do not go to your investment at night, your type does not belong there. The Heard family property is located at 5319 West Adams. Do you think it was a move to make her the replacement alderman? I hope this lady never speaks ill about another fellow city employee again. Send the Olympic IOC to that hood at night, Daley needs to help the poor. Photo by Patrick McDonough
9 Replies to “Mayor Daley's "Carnival Barker" Jacquelyn Heard owns Drug House (reputed)”
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SIDE | Tenant evicted, but press secretary could face charges
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September 3, 2009
BY FRANK MAIN Staff Reporter
Mayor Daley’s most trusted aide — press secretary Jacquelyn Heard — and her husband own a West Side building that was targeted earlier this year by the Chicago Police as a drug and gang house, officials confirmed Thursday.
Narcotics officers had raided the house at 5319 W. Adams on May 7, making two arrests and seizing 10 plastic baggies containing marijuana and heroin, police records show.
» Click to enlarge image Mayor Daley and press secretary Jackie Heard, pictured in 2008.
(Jean Lachat/Sun-Times)
Police referred the property to the city’s Law Department for possible prosecution of Heard and her husband under the Drug and Gang House Enforcement program. The Law Department has not filed any action against the couple, but the case remains under review, Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said.
The case revolves around a female tenant who started renting a first-floor apartment in the house after Heard and her husband renovated the building in January.
The acting secretary of the block club for the 5300 and 5400 blocks of West Adams said she had stopped Heard’s husband, Henry Bassett, in the street in June and told him of neighbors’ suspicions that the house had become a hub for drug dealing.
“Young men were flagging down people on the street, obviously selling them drugs,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.
The woman recalled Bassett saying, “I am aware of it and am trying to get her [the new tenant] out.”
In an interview outside the house, Bassett said the tenant finally moved out Thursday. He said he had provided her with several months’ notice. Then on Aug. 5, he obtained an eviction order that gave the woman until Aug. 31 to leave, but Bassett said he gave her a little more time.
“We haven’t done anything unethical,” Bassett said. “When people come to rent an apartment, they don’t have ‘drug dealer’ on their foreheads.”
Heard said Thursday that she and her husband bought the house in October and had a background check done on the tenant, who lived there with two sons.
The tenant “seemed to be an upstanding individual,” Heard said in a telephone interview from Russia where she was traveling with the mayor.
Two or three months after the tenant moved in, Bassett noticed that there was not a lot of furniture in the apartment, but concluded that the tenant was probably just going through hard times.
But after residents notified Heard’s husband several times that they suspected drug activity around the house, Heard and her husband launched eviction proceedings against the tenant, Heard said.
“My husband and I have owned rental property for about 15 years,” Heard said. “It’s one of the pitfalls of property ownership. Sometimes you get a tenant who is not who they say they are. I am heartened that we have a police department with a Drug and Gang House unit that is so aggressive.”
Daley learned of the situation while he was flipping through a stack of reports on properties deemed drug and gang houses. He noticed Heard was listed as the owner of one of them, Heard said.
She could not remember exactly when that happened, but noted that the mayor meets with police officials about once a month to find out which areas of the city are experiencing drug and gang problems.
Heard said her husband manages the property and she’s only been there twice.
“Of course, I’d rather not be in this position,” Heard said, given her high-profile job.
hey Pat,
You did it again you made me laugh again, just keep playing it again!!!!!!!!! play that tune !!!!! let protest Heards house !!!!
Daley press secretary evicts tenant because of drugs
September 3, 2009 9:26 PM |
Mayor Richard Daley’s longtime press secretary and her husband evicted a tenant from a two-flat they own after narcotics officers raided the West Side building.
Jacquelyn Heard said Thursday she and her husband, Henry Bassett, received no special treatment and acted properly after learning of the problems from neighbors and police.
“As far as I’m aware, we did everything we were supposed to do,” Heard said in a telephone interview from Moscow, where she was traveling with the mayor. “I don’t want there to be any suggestion that we harbored drug dealers in a building that we own or that we looked the other way.”
Police raided the building at 5319 W. Adams St. on May 7, finding six bags of “suspected white heroin” and nine bags of what was believed to be marijuana, according to police documents. Police officials gave the documents to the Tribune but blacked out the names of the people they arrested, saying police did not have to release the information.
Chicago police brought the property to the attention of the Daley administration’s Law Department for possible legal action under an ordinance intended to target buildings used by gangs or drug dealers. Heard said she learned of the drug arrests from police at that time.
permits ?
Only electrical issued
| With decision a month away, here are pros, cons of hosting Games
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September 6, 2009
BY LISA DONOVAN Staff Reporter/ldonovan@suntimes.com
Chicago’s now in the final lap. Next month, we’ll find out whether Mayor Daley and his team cross the finish line first or go down as an also-ran in the race to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The Chicago 2016 organizing committee is in the midst of a last-minute phone and letter-writing campaign to the 107-member International Olympic Committee, hoping to allay concerns that Chicago’s transit system can’t handle the influx of just over a million visitors during the Games or that Chicago’s financing plans don’t provide an adequate safety net.
» Click to enlarge image Chicago 2016 chief Patrick Ryan has less than a month to make his case.
(AP)
RELATED STORIESThe Olympics would be good for us — really
Chicago 2016 chief executive Patrick Ryan said the bid team wants IOC members, who will select a host city Oct. 2 in Copenhagen, to know they’ve cleared several hurdles, including getting the City Council’s blessing for the mayor to sign the controversial host-city contract — which puts taxpayers on the hook if a Chicago Olympics ended up losing money.
The mayor’s announcement in June that he’d sign the agreement was a surprise, fueling criticism that the process was shrouded in secrecy. Even some of the aldermen were ticked off, and a ward-by-ward community meeting blitz followed. There, the Olympic bid team — minus the mayor — touted the jobs and tourism dollars that pour in to an Olympic city.
Still, some questioned whether the city could afford to host the Games.
Here’s a look at some of the pros and cons:
Finances
Pro: A “frugal” $4.8 billion plan to stage the Games, including an Olympic Village whose transformation from athlete dormitories to permanent housing is expected to help with costs. The Games would be bankrolled by private donors, and just under half of the planned venues are in existing facilities, touted as a cost-saver.
Con: Chicago has a history of missing deadlines and going over budget with its big projects — including the $480 million Millennium Park, which opened in 2004.
Allen Sanderson, a University of Chicago economics professor, said that while Chicago is making use of its existing facilities, “You’re still building the biggest venues — the village, the stadium, which are not only big-ticket items for Chicago, but for . . . London, too.” The Olympic Village is priced at around $1 billion, while the proposed Olympic Stadium in Washington Park is priced at $397.6 million. London is on track to spend $18 billion for the 2012 Olympics — more than double what it budgeted, Sanderson noted.
Jobs
Pros: Chicago 2016 has been touting that the Games would create 315,000 new job years, or roughly 31,000 jobs over a decade.
Cons: Just what “315,000 job years means” is a stumper. Tom Tresser, spokesman for the group “No Games Chicago,” said the figure doesn’t say whether this is long-term employment or for a single year. And Tresser said he remains concerned that the Olympic organizing committee running things — with City Hall entrenched in the process — will follow the tradition of trading jobs for political favors.
Tourism
Pro: With a projected 4 billion viewers tuning in to the Games and TV cameras panning across Lake Michigan and the dramatic skyline over Grant Park, Chicago could shed its image as a metropolis in flyover country and bump up its tourism numbers.
Con: Just how long Olympic fever can sustain that remains in question.
Legacies
Pros: The IOC’s evaluation team, in a visit here last spring, praised Chicago 2016 for creating a lineup of 31 venues that would leave behind no white elephants — like Beijing’s architecturally stunning but now-empty Bird’s Nest stadium. The city’s plan makes use of 15 existing facilities and calls for building six new venues that would all be scaled back after the games — including the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium.
Cons: The question remains, then, whether there’s a visual centerpiece that would be left behind. “Maybe the Olympic Village — I don’t know if it’s a grabber or not,” Sanderson said. “Depends on whether people want to walk through an Olympic Village.”
Transportation
Pros: The city and region are expecting, as other American cities have, millions in federal dollars to fix and upgrade the public transit system. That’s important, considering the IOC’s concern that Metra might not be able to handle a spike in demand during the Games.
Cons: Plans for public transit upgrades should be part of a 20-year plan and focus on regional and local needs. The concern, according to Sanderson, is that upgrades would be too tightly focused on July and August 2016 and not for the following years and decades. Also, during the Games, 366 miles of Chicago area roadways, including two lanes in either direction of Lake Shore Drive and single lanes of the Kennedy and Stevenson expressways, would be closed.
Whats the address of the house? I need to get an 8 ball!
The aldermen…
are not investigated by the Chicago Inspector General’s Office and no not have to answer to the Chicago False Claims act by the Chicago Board of Ethics. So turning anyone into an alderman has a purpose for clout
Mayor’s spokeswoman rips ‘unfair’ coverage
Calls report of drug arrest of tenant ‘vendetta journalism’
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September 9, 2009
BY ROSALIND ROSSI Staff Reporter/rrossi@suntimes.com
After lashing out at Sun-Times coverage of a drug raid at a rental building she owns, trusted mayoral aide Jacquelyn Heard said Tuesday that she didn’t alert Mayor Daley about the problem because “why would I involve him?”
“I didn’t have to tell him. Why would I involve him? My husband and I were doing what we needed to do,” she said, referring to eviction proceedings the couple initiated against the tenant.
» Click to enlarge image Jackie Heard is taking umbrage with a Sun-Times story.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
The Sun-Times reported in Friday’s editions that heroin and marijuana were seized in a May 7 police raid on an apartment in a West Side building owned by Heard and her husband. She had told the Sun-Times that the mayor learned about the case while flipping through a stack of reports on properties deemed drug and gang houses.
When a reporter asked Daley to clarify Tuesday when and how he learned of the incident in the 5300 block of West Adams, Heard strode to the microphone instead.
“This had the very real feel of vendetta journalism,” she said. “I don’t even think journalism is the word.”
As press secretary, Heard said she is the person “tasked with calling out the people at your paper who routinely write unfair headlines . . . and I don’t think they like it.”
She said the story’s headline “made it appear that I was harboring people, in a building I owned with my husband, who are selling drugs — or worse, that I, myself, Jackie Heard, the mayor’s adviser, was selling drugs. It is so ludicrous and unfair that I cannot believe it.”
Heard said the paper printed a “full retraction of the story” — on the bottom of page 19 — on Labor Day. Asked Heard: “Where is the fairness in that?”
Heard apparently was referring to a Sun-Times editorial about the drug raid.
Sun-Times Editorial Page Editor Tom McNamee said Tuesday the editorial was “in no way a ‘retraction’ of the earlier news story.” McNamee called both the story and the headline “accurate.”
“The news side of the Sun-Times, in my view, got it right,” McNamee said.
The editorial aimed to put Heard’s problem “into perspective — to say that this is the kind of stuff a landlord might run into” when investing in neighborhoods with crime problems, he said.
At the time of the Sun-Times story, the city Law Department had been reviewing the case for possible civil action under the Drug and Gang House Enforcement program, but it has since confirmed that the tenant has left the property, department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said Tuesday. As a result, no civil action against the owners is anticipated, she said.
Heard said she and her husband initially did a background check on the tenant, who “seemed to be an upstanding individual” but “sometimes you get a tenant who is not who they say they are.”
Heard said Tuesday: “It’s not as if we were dragging our feet. We followed the rules.”
After the May raid, one neighbor said she reported drug-dealing suspicions in June to Heard’s husband, Henry Bassett. An eviction order was issued Aug. 5 and after several months notice, the tenant finally moved out Sept. 3, Bassett said.
Contributing: Frank Main
thank you for hearing message i’m about to enter. first all drug houses in chicago area as we know in black high crime neighborhood. that ok because we as black’s feel on hope!!!!!!!!! thank you for poisoning us. no hope