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Antoinette Tate, Tammy Hunt, Rolanda Jackson, Marcia Jones, Tomika Jordan, Tawana Washington, Shantell Boyd,
On the night of March 22, Anna Green was allegedly hustling on the 4600 block of
“What you about?” Green shouted as she inched toward Chicago Police Officer Michael Yzaguirre, according to the arrest report. He wondered out loud if she was working. The question puzzled Green. After 299 arrests, she apparently had learned to be suspicious of prospective clients so she said: “Are you the police?”
The undercover officer was quick to deny any police affiliation, and Yzaguirre hardly needed to court her.
“How about a blowjob for $20,” Yzaguirre said, according to the arrest report. Green allegedly agreed and the couple started to head toward an alley when she was arrested and read her Miranda rights.
Not that this was the first time Green has faced felony prostitution charges. According to hundreds of pages of court records, Green had been arrested at least 300 times and had been convicted multiple times. She has served multiple prison stints over the last 10 years, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site.
But she keeps landing back in Uptown and some community leaders want her off the streets.
As Anna Jackson, she paid her debt to society after an aggravated assault conviction in 1997. Two years later she was Vernoica Tate and back in court for battery. Justice reveled in its seemingly endless string of victories: convictions for solicitation, and possession of drug paraphernalia, among other offenses
For as many records that exist inside court computers tied to Green’s fingerprints there are innumerable other depraved acts witnessed by Uptown residents, said Richard Thale, vice-president of the Public Safety Committee for the Uptown Chicago Commission.
“I don’t want there to be an arrest number 301,” said Thale, the leader of Uptown’s court advocacy group.
Thale works to keep the public abreast of high profile criminal cases in the area, and wants to deliver a silent message to the trial judge in her current case with a display of force – community members filling the court room gallery to persuade the judge or jury that Green belongs in prison. Verbal threats, drug use and wanton harlotry have beleaguered residents since last spring, when Green’s behavior caught the ire of Uptown.
She has been a constant topic at community policing and court advocacy meetings, and has been written about on Uptown Update, the neighborhood’s blog.
Green has been living on the North side for about 17 years according to Donlee Thomas, who says he has been Green’s boyfriend for six or seven years. Most recently, she had been staying on and off at the Cornerstone Community Outreach homeless shelter. But even there, her behavior was disruptive, said Sandy Ramsey, Cornerstone’s director. She characterized Green as one of the chronically homeless, the kind of person with shredded boot straps still struggling for a way out of their situation.
“She couldn’t behave herself,” Ramsey said. “We put her out, the D.A. asked us to take her back.”
Her address listed on the police report is the shelter’s North Broadway and
Thomas, though, said he was with her when she was arrested and this time, she didn’t do anything wrong.
“She just asked for some change to get on the bus. A guy called her over to the corner and he was talking to her.” The next thing Thomas knew, Green was being arrested.
Harold Pollack, co-director of the
“The system is geared to that,” he said, noting, however, that a sex worker can have any number of run-ins with the law and never end up in serious trouble.
“Prostitution is a totally different situation than hitting someone with a bottle,” said Pollack, who did not know the specific details of Green’s case, but said her story is a familiar one.
Her boyfriend, Thomas, added: “Jail ain’t the answer for her. She has been in jail before. She’ll stay clean for awhile and then she’ll fall. I’d rather see her in a drug rehabilitation program.”
