Carol Sauseda still cries for her son, a former Marine who was gunned down at a Cicero tavern on New Year’s Day 2006.
“My son had three children and a family who loved him,” said Sauseda, 54. “[The killer] took our happiness away and he is still able to live a normal life. It’s not fair.”
Witnesses said someone wearing a ski mask shot David Sauseda, 35, three times while he and his girlfriend were drinking at the It’s About Time bar in the 3100 block of South 53rd Court. Sauseda, who raised her son and two daughters in Cicero, said he had gone to the neighborhood tavern with his girlfriend to celebrate the holiday with friends.
“I won’t rest until the killer is caught,” said Sauseda, who said she was told by Cicero police just months after the slaying that her son’s case might go cold. “I don’t want [the police] to forget about him. I don’t want his life in some file cabinet.”
For decades, solving homicides has proved to be a challenge for Cicero law enforcement officials. The town has 92 cold cases since 1970, officials said.
After Cicero Town President Larry Dominick took office in May 2005, he started a Cold Case Task Force, which consists of one full-time detective and other officers who help out when needed, Cicero spokesman Dan Proft said. Since the task force started, four cold cases have been solved.
There have been 23 homicides in the near-west suburb since Dominick took office. Only five of those have been solved, giving the town a homicide clearance rate of 22 percent during that time.
The national murder clearance rate is 62 percent, according to 2005 data from the FBI. The clearance rate in Chicago has hovered around 50 percent recently, Chicago Police statistics show.
Statistics also indicate a steady increase in homicides in Cicero recently. After five years of single-digit killings — a total of 32 from 1999 to 2003 — Cicero saw 13 killings in 2004, eight in 2005 and 11 in 2006, state police statistics show.
There have been eight homicides so far this year, with only one solved, the beating death of a baby.
“We are not happy with the results,” Proft said. “We need to do a better job with public safety and President Dominick has been trying to address that issue since he took office. Everybody in the police force is under rolling evaluations right now.”
Cicero, which has had a colorful history of gangs dating to Al Capone, has new gang problems that make it difficult to solve crimes, Proft said.
Of the eight homicides so far this year, six have been classified as gang-related, Proft said. There are 25 to 30 gangs in Cicero, he said.
“We have organized crime in Cicero,” Proft said. “That’s what gangs are. And we also have particular demographics that are different than other towns. We have a large youth population, and we border Chicago and Berwyn. But our main problem for solving homicides is getting witnesses and residents to talk.”
Criminal justice researchers and law-enforcement officials agree, saying that gang slayings are among the most difficult to solve because they often involve strangers killing strangers for reasons that aren’t apparent outside gang circles, and witnesses aren’t always willing to cooperate.
Sauseda knows there’s a “code of silence” in Cicero, a suburb of 82,252 that borders some of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods. She said Cicero detectives have their hands tied.
“I understand people don’t want to get involved,” said Sauseda, whose son served in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and was honorably discharged in 1993 with the rank of lance corporal. “But someone was killed. He could kill somebody else. We need brave people to talk so the police and state attorney can help build a case against the killer.”
In spring, Cicero officials turned to former Chicago Police Supt. Philip Cline to help solve their gang problem. Cline resigned from the Chicago Police Department April 2 after two incidents in which off-duty Chicago police officers were caught on tape allegedly beating civilians. Rumors circulated around Cicero town hall that Cline might become the chief of police, but Proft said Cicero officials had just “had a conversation with Cline.”
Dominick’s call for help from Chicago officers has a familiar ring. His predecessor, Ramiro Gonzalez, hired Wayne Johnson, former chief investigator for the Chicago Crime Commission, to serve as Cicero’s first inspector general.
Johnson was asked to root out corruption in town government while acting as police superintendent. Dominick called for Johnson’s dismissal during his campaign against Gonzalez. In April 2005, Johnson was granted nearly $90,000 as part of a negotiated resignation.
Proft said Cicero police had a meeting with Cook County state’s attorney office officials earlier this year to address frustrations about gathering enough evidence to make an arrest.
“There was just a general frustration [with the state’s attorney] that the amount of evidence we need to gather for cases were unrealistic,” said Proft. “We spend hundreds of man hours working on these cases. We would love to get people on video surveillance, but that often doesn’t happen.”
Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney office, said her office doesn’t treat the Cicero Police Department differently from other suburban police agencies. “The police provide us with the information [for the case], and we review the information. If there is sufficient evidence, we charge. If not, we will not charge.”
