Woodridge

People often have a choice nickname for Woodridge and that is “Hoodridge,” and this is based upon gang and drug activity in the suburb; however, the nickname is not very fitting if you want to get technical about this Du Page county suburb.  Not all of Woodridge is bad presently or in the past, in fact, the vast majority of the suburb is extremely safe and middle class, there are actually only two small areas of town that have had higher crime, drug trafficking and heavy gang activity over the years and both are apartment complexes.  The first area is the (pictured below) and Waterbury Apartments (pictured below) that are located right next to each other on Janes Road so that counts as one area, the second area of focus are the Timber Creek Apartments (pictured below) near Route 53.  We will mainly be focusing on the Timber Creek apartments as this is has been the main hub of criminal and gang activity over the years.

Woodridge is one of the first Du Page County suburb to have known gang activity from Chicago based street gangs back in 1979 or 1980.  The arrival of street gangs in this community can somewhat coincide with the construction of Timber Creek, Waterbury and Emerald Courts apartments in the year 1977 and the Timber Creek apartments that were built in 1974.  By the late 1970s and early 1980s lower income families from Chicago began settling these three apartment complexes in order to get away from the crime and gangs in Chicago; however, some of their children held onto their gang ties, one of those gangs was the Black Gangster Disciples who first caught attention in 1982 when a member of the gang shot another teen in the leg then ran off shouting “Disciple!” (Chicago Tribune page 3 July 6, 1984).  The Black Gangster Disciples were not the only ones that infiltrated in the apartment complexes in town there was also the Vice Lords and Black P Stones.  Gang related beatings began happening in the suburb in 1982 as there was clearly a major rivalry going on, but Woodridge residents were cooperating with police whenever they witnessed gang activity (Chicago Tribune Daily Suburban March 15, 1983).

I am not completely sure if Woodridge gangs came to the community before 1982 but I would almost bet on it because in the neighboring suburb of Bolingbrook, Chicago gangs arrived as early as 1979 and as late as 1980.  Woodridge gangs have always been connected to Bolingbrook gangs, especially Gangster Disciples; therefore, I firmly believe the Chicago gangs moved to Woodridge by 1980.  In any case, whether it was 1980 or 1982, Chicago based gangs have been in this village a long time.

By the 1990s, more gangs had arrived in the suburb among the Latino population such as Latin Kings and Satan Disciples as examples, and the Latino gangs were mainly located within the apartment complexes especially in Timber Creek.  The violence and shooting incidences had greatly increased in the 1990s and it made the entire village look bad even though the crime was all centered within three complexes.

Waterbury apartments and Emerald Courts are located in an area bounded by ponds that divide Emerald Courts from Natural Falls apartments on the north, Waterbury Drive on the south, Janes Avenue on the east and Echo Point Park on the west.  Timber Creek is bounded by 83^rd Street on the north, Joanne Lane on the south, David Drive to Andrea Drive on the east and Highway Route 53 on the west.  These small zones are where most of the troubles for the community have occurred over the years.

In 1991 Woodridge set up a task force to fight street gangs in the community, and even though this same news article interviewed Woodridge police that were saying they had everything under control and there was not a whole lot of gang problems, the reality was there was plenty of gang activity in the three troubled apartment complexes, but they could boast it was not a big community wide problem because the issue was mainly confined to these small areas of town (Chicago Tribune Ann Piccininni July 31, 1991).  A few months later in December of 1991 a major shooting incident occurred in the village that made everything the Woodridge police said in the July 1991 article about having things under control look unfounded.  On December 28, 1991 ten Bolingbrook Gangster Disciple gang members piled into cars and drove to Woodridge to a party being held at the Timber Creek Apartments’ clubhouse on Foxboro Drive that had a gathering of about 50 to 100 people likely for a holiday party.  The Gangster Disciples crashed the party or maybe they were invited, but showed up with a 12 gauge shotgun and fired three rounds into the crowd striking two party goers down that were said to be in rival gangs, the shooters were screaming gang slogans.  The ten gang members then refused to leave the party and continued to hang around possibly looking to finish off the victims, I am not exactly sure why they did not leave because this allowed police to arrest all ten of them and charge them.  According to the newspaper article nine out of ten of the gang members arrested were from Bolingbrook while the other was from the Fairmont part of unincorporated Lockport on Luther Drive (Chicago Tribune Ann Piccininni December 31, 1991).

The 1990s continued to see heavy gang and drug trafficking activity in Woodridge’s’ troubled three apartment complexes.  There were even rumors that postmen would even get robbed in Waterbury and Emerald Courts, one thing for sure is many residents complained over the years of gang activity, drug trafficking and having their apartments or cars broken into.  Narcotics agents and unmarked squad cars began heavily patrolling all three complexes and by the later part of the 2000s decade the complexes cleaned up significantly and became renovated.  Timber Creek greatly improved and no longer became the main crime hotspot in town and actually became one of the safer areas in the village.  Emerald Courts and Waterbury also fell out of the main crime ridden areas and became one of the lower crime parts of the village as well.