For thousands of Chicago's poor, getting to their homes will seem like entering a top-secret government installation.
Under measures spurred by the sniper slaying of a 7-year-old boy, tenants of the city's high-rise public housing projects will receive ID cards to get past turnstiles and will have to walk through metal detectors and past armed guards.The ground floors will be cleared out and the tenants moved.
Many of the ideas have been used in some of the buildings before, but beginning Tuesday they will be adopted in all 160 high-rise complexes in a public housing authority that ranks among the nation's largest with 200,000 tenants.
Mayor Richard M. Daley also ordered more frequent police sweeps of the buildings to crack down on drug dealers and gang members.
"If we don't do those, we're going to have war," he said.
Daley announced the measures on Monday, six days after 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed as his mother walked him to school in Cabrini-Green, a violence-ridden 70-acre project with 33 high-rises.
The mayor ordered four nearly empty buildings sealed at Cabrini-Green, including the one that may have been used by the sniper, who police said was aiming at teenagers. A man has been charged in the slaying.
The 50 to 75 tenants of the four buildings will be moved. There was no immediate estimate of how many people will be affected when ground-floor apartments are emptied. Each high-rise has about 150 apartments.
Betty Minor, a 20-year tenant at Cabrini-Green, was upset at having to move.
"They give you a box and tell you to move, but they haven't assigned us a new apartment," she said. "Where are me and my two children supposed to live?"
The mayor said $500,000 will be spent for 270 off-duty police officers to sweep Cabrini-Green for weapons.
Daley was criticized as slow to react to the 7-year-old's death, the city's 782nd slaying this year. Last week, Vincent Lane, head of the housing authority since 1989, called for National Guardsmen to patrol buildings.
Daley ruled that out on Monday, saying they could not be trained quickly enough.
Cabrini-Green tenant Antoinette Mitchell said of the mayor's plan, "I don't think it's going to work because what they have done in the past has not worked."
Some tenants complained that gang members learn of the sweeps in advance and clear out before police arrive, only to return later. And the sweeps do nothing to stop drive-by shootings.
Lane said 100 sweeps have been conducted over the past 18 months. Even so, police counted 35 firearm murders last year in the projects.
In the past eight months, three children, including Davis, have been shot and killed at the elementary school in Cabrini-Green.
Officials have the authority to search apartments based on reports a tenant has a gun, and gun owners can be evicted.