Since November, local media have been running celebratory stories about Chicago Police Department lieutenant John Garrido’s efforts to help Anthony Johnson, a homeless veteran. Garrido, who met Johnson at a dilapidated newspaper stand in Jefferson Park, launched an online fund-raiser that collected money to help him find a place to live and pay for a renovation to the shack. None of the television or newspaper reporters who covered the story, however, noted Garrido’s involvement in a push against an affordable-housing development in Jefferson Park that would prioritize veterans. The site, at 5150 N. Northwest Highway, would be just steps away from the shack Johnson used to sleep and sell papers and across the street from the 16th District police station where Garrido works.
ABC 7, meanwhile, did manage to get Johnson on camera, noting that he only makes about $125 per week selling newspapers, and that he wants to get a job at the hospital where he worked after getting out of the service. “In the meantime, he’s grateful for his new friend,” reporter Evelyn Holmes said over shots of Garrido and Johnson walking in the Loop.
“Our alderman is actually turning on the community and trying to play the race card to make us look bad,” Garrido told WTTW last May. “If this was a four-story bulding . . . or five-story, we wouldn’t be having this battle.”
