IF YOU LIVE in the inner city, it isn't difficult to imagine that you will become the victim of a crime. At least, it hasn't been difficult for Chris Schilling and Jeff Weaver to imagine it during the nearly three years that they've lived in the historic Story District, south of McDowell and right next door to the Papago Freeway. They have seen some of their neighbors preyed upon by burglars in this close-knit neighborhood of charming, restored houses that's close to the heart of downtown Phoenix, and they have known that they aren't themselves immune from the worst aspects of the Nineties.
What they haven't imagined was that, if crime came knocking, they would be completely defenseless.
They haven't imagined that they would be hit again and again by the same thief-a guy with a knife and a criminal record, a sizable grudge and a fixation upon their jewelry and stereo equipment.
They haven't imagined that, in the wake of the damage, they would not only be abandoned by the Phoenix Police Department, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the County Attorney's Office-the law officers Schilling and Weaver turned to for protection-but outright accused by them. They haven't imagined that, while the man who robbed them was set free, they would be nearly arrested themselves, instead.
Most of all, they haven't imagined they would be left feeling that the police and the prosecutor's office accepted the excuses and accusations of a convicted felon above their own story because they are gay.
That is how it happened last month, however, during a drawn-out conflict of confusion and revenge. And that is how Schilling and Weaver feel, at the end of another confrontation between the gay community and the police that has their Story District neighbors leveling discrimination charges at a police department that has been accused of it before.
Sharon Hunnicutt, the president of the Story Preservation Association, recounts a meeting that a group of neighbors called with the police in order to discuss the way Schilling and Weaver have been treated, and says, "We asked them if they have a different standard of protection for heterosexuals and gay people, and they said they didn't. But I think they must."
So this is also a story about the way the members of the gay community and their champions continue to perceive that gays are treated unfairly, because they have been unfairly treated in the past.
Based upon both documented and undocumented incidents, the Phoenix police through the years have been accused of keeping files on suspected homosexuals, of harassing them with threatening "walk-throughs" at gay bars, of arresting them on public indecency charges while ignoring "straight" offenders, and of paying too little attention when homosexuals are the targets of crime. Although the relationship between the gay community and the police department has improved slightly in recent years, gays usually react with earned paranoia when they're dealing with law enforcement agencies in Maricopa County. On that level, this is a story that should perhaps concern the supporters of civil rights.
But its most alarming message is simply not about equality. This saga of urban fear-of crime compounded threefold by the mishaps and misjudgments of prosecutors and police officers who are sworn to protect the citizenry and who engage in frantic finger-pointing when they do not-contains many elements that could have happened to anyone.
THE BAD LUCK of Jeff Weaver and Chris Schilling didn't begin last month, although it certainly worsened then. Their lives took the first radical downward turn about 18 months ago, when Weaver, who is 33, developed the symptoms of AIDS.
They have been together for eight years, and they took the hit together. Weaver, self-employed as a restorer of automobiles, was soon forced to stop working, and his tall body withered to 120 pounds. His friends and family members say that he was far from defeated, though. Both he and Schilling decided, with remarkable optimism, to enjoy to the fullest the time that they have left together.
"We are very, very proud of them," says Weaver's mother, Jean. "Not very many people would be handling it like this when they know they are going to die. Jeff has handled this very, very well up until this robbery."
They have simply gone on with their lives, not as though nothing has changed, but as though the changes haven't bankrupted them of pleasure. They have, for instance, continued to be active in the Story Preservation Association, opening their immaculate house filled with antiques as part of the neighborhood's home tour and spearheading the Story entry in Phoenix Art Museum's annual Festival of Trees. Their neighbors have taken more than casual notice of their continuing involvement. "They are very, very kind, considerate men, and everyone thinks very highly of them," says neighbor Hunnicutt. Which may be one reason the robbery was so upsetting to everyone.
The robbery in question, which occurred on January 2, came to the attention of the Phoenix Police Department when two men were observed in midafternoon on foot near the Story neighborhood, one of them pushing a wheelbarrow piled full of electronic equipment. This was 26-year-old Anthony Brown, who had been arrested twice on drug-related charges since '89, and convicted once of conspiring to sell crack cocaine. The first time he was arrested, there was found in his car-in addition to crack-a loaded 9mm handgun and some jewelry, both of which were stolen. At the moment three years later, when he was observed at the helm of the wheelbarrow, there still was a warrant out for his arrest, seeing as how he had failed to show up in '90 for sentencing.
The police apprehended Brown and discovered that the electronic equipment-and, for that matter, the wheelbarrowÏhad been stolen from the home of Weaver and Schilling. They loaded Brown, his accomplice and the booty into a squad car and ferried them back to the scene of the crime, to which Weaver and Schilling had meanwhile returned. They spread the loot out on the lawn-there was a lot of it-and they made Brown climb out of the car and remove much of his clothing, because it also belonged to Schilling. In the course of conversation with the officers, Weaver discussed his illness. And thus it was that the victims and the perpetrators got a very long look at each other and learned more about each others' lives.
Schilling says that, before Brown was taken away, he told Schilling clearly: "I'll be back."
It was a promise that motivated Schilling to check into Brown's background. Schilling can do that sort of thing because he is connected: He works in the Department of Corrections as a confiscation officer at Alhambra Reception Center. Before he was a confiscation officer, he was a prison guard. He says he telephoned an associate with access to the proper files and learned that Brown had a record.
The next day, he attended Brown's bond hearing and informed the judge of the burglar's threat. He asked that Brown not be released. Public records show that the judge declared Brown should indeed be held without bond, and that a bond of more than $1,500 was set for Brown's accomplice, Whaylen Hendrix.
Schilling was fairly well-satisfied. He returned home with a packet of information informing him of his rights as a victim, and with slightly more peace of mind.
He read that he and Weaver had the right to be notified if Brown was released for any reason, if they requested it. They did; a spokesman at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, which administers the jail, confirms this. Schilling says he telephoned the jail several days in a row as well, just to be certain that Brown was still inside it.
After that, he relaxed.
He thought it was over.
It wasn't.
SIX DAYS LATER, on January 8 at about 10:30 in the morning, Jeff Weaver let himself into the house as he was coming back from the doctor. He found Brown crouched down in front of the VCR, brandishing a 14-inch screwdriver. Weaver is frail now and easily bested, but he says that Brown engaged in bully tactics anyway-chasing him down the hallway at the point of the screwdriver, holding the screwdriver to his throat while threatening to kill him and ultimately tying him up on a bed in a manner that was a little ridiculous: Brown knotted Weaver's shoelaces together and bound his hands behind his back with a pair of socks. Weaver was terrified of Brown. "I was absolutely hysterical by the time the police got here," he says. "I thought he was going to stab me with that screwdriver and kill me because I knew who he was. I thought Chris was going to find a bloody mess on the bed."
Instead of killing him, Brown robbed Weaver. He took the rings from Weaver's hands and took $100 from his wallet; he snatched the car keys and careened away from the house at the wheel of an antique Cadillac that Weaver had borrowed from a friend. According to police reports, the car was found a couple of hours later, abandoned a few miles from the house.
Schilling and Weaver were more than irate that Brown had been released without their knowing about it, and they telephoned the police to complain. A startling thing happened then.
Detective Karen Parks, who had investigated the original robbery, arrived at the house in the late afternoon. Schilling and Weaver thought she had come in response to their call, but it quickly became clear that she wasn't there to make amends.
According to police reports, she separated Schilling and Weaver and read them their rights. She asked them if they had ever met Anthony Brown before January 2. She asked whether Weaver had AIDS and health insurance that covers his medical bills. She asked them to take lie detector tests.
And she informed Weaver that, according to Brown, he and Schilling had paid Brown to commit the original robbery so that they could defraud their insurance company.
"Those insinuations made me feel dirty again," says Weaver. "I was already a victim, and the police department was victimizing me again."
The police reports contain this account of Parks' interview with Brown, conducted about 90 minutes after his arrest on January 2 (Hendrix told Parks a similar story):
"This guy that I've seen around is asking my fence if he knows anyone who will burglarize his house, so he can file it on his insurance and get some money," said Brown. "He is gay and he is dying of AIDS.
"We walked in the house and the stereo was all unplugged and in a pile in the middle of the floor waiting for us."
Now, Brown is a fellow who, in the course of his relationship with the police, had already told them a great many things. For instance, when he was let out of jail on a drug charge in '89, on his own recognizance, he agreed to stay away from drugs as a condition of his release. Twelve days later, he was picked up for possession, and a probation officer noted in court documents that Brown's word was not reliable.
Nonetheless, he was apparently taken very seriously when he recounted his version of his arrangement with Schilling and Weaver. His statements appear to have led to the decision of deputy county attorney Michael Breeze not to press charges on the burglary, and subsequently to Brown's release on January 7, the day before he burglarized the Weaver-Schilling household for the second time.
It is impossible to know what else entered into prosecutor Breeze's decision, since he has not returned repeated calls from New Times. Schilling has also had difficulty reaching Breeze, although he did get through to him briefly after the second robbery. He reports that Breeze told him this of the reasons for Brown's release: "There was not enough evidence to hold Brown, and he did not have a violent history, and there was a `problem' with the police reports"-the latter probably a reference to Brown's accusations.
Officer Kevin Robinson, spokesman for the police department, theorizes that Breeze must have considered more than Brown's mere testimony when making the decision to release him. "We do not release someone simply because they say, `He put me up to it,'" he says. "Usually there is more to it than just that. What you need to consider is there may have been other corroborating evidence there." He says he cannot elaborate, however, because an internal investigation of all these events is under way.
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RECKLESS ABANDON CRIME VICTIMS' NIGHTMAR... v2-12-92
