Neighbors on the 900 block of Wesley Avenue are expressing concern over a large amount of gang graffiti in an east/west alley on either side of their street.
Graffiti tied to the Unknown Vice Lords street gang was discovered around July 4. The graffiti extends along a three-block span from a telephone pole in the alley behind the Oak Park Conservatory to the apartment building on Garfield Street between Wesley and Euclid.
An apartment building at 921-901 Wesley was extensively marked with gang signs on its west and south sides. A house on the alley off Wesley was sprayed painted with a 7-foot-long collection of gang signs, including “UVL” and the numbers “21-22-12.” Those numbers are the 21st, 22nd and 12th letters of the alphabet, i.e., “UVL.”
Another spraying, “UVLN,” or Unknown Vice Lord Nation, is on a low concrete wall along Garfield overlooking the Eisenhower Expressway between Wesley and Euclid.
Oak Park police arrested a Cicero boy for criminal defacement to property last Friday afternoon. Later that day they arrested two more juveniles, both from Oak Park, and charged them with same crime. The two Oak Park boys avoided charges by agreeing to community service in the TIME program.
The presence of the graffiti is particularly disturbing, two residents said, when coupled with concerns that one or more gang members may have moved into the building at 927-901 Wesley in the past month or so.
One man, who asked to remain anonymous, said he spotted “eight or nine” men walk into a building entrance located on Garfield just west of Wesley. All the men, aged 16 to 23, were dressed in red and black, known Vice Lord colors, and white do-rags.
“They were walking down the street like they owned it,” the man said.
The graffiti appeared to be done by at least two people. The faux-Playboy bunny popular with the gang is drawn two different ways, one smiling and one more classic.
“The guy who did the condos appears to be a better artist,” said the man.
The residents of the block say they have observed fights between some of the men in the street, though neither called police at the time.
The Unknown Vice Lords are a violent street gang formed in the early 1960s by notorious gang leader Willie Loyd. He reportedly chose the name as a joke after noting that many police reports noted “unknown” in the box to identify the perpetrator of crimes.
The gang, which traffics in drugs and weapons, has been a major player in criminal street activity in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, as well as in Maywood and other western suburbs.