But financially the team was a loser.

Exactly how much money was lost is something team executives will not discuss.

One consequence: Season ticket prices will increase by an average of 20 percent this fall, which is projected to rocket them from the second-cheapest in the National Hockey League three seasons ago to among the 10 most expensive, according to the team. And fans should expect “more modest” increases in the future, team owner Rocky Wirtz said.

Wirtz first revealed that the team was not profitable in private. “It’s going to take four (or) five years before we can actually get back in the black,” Wirtz said at an April 19 forum at the Economic Club of Chicago, according to a transcript. “And right now we’re still supporting the Blackhawks with our other Wirtz organizations.”

In a follow-up interview this week, Wirtz said that the Blackhawks ran out of cash several times last season. Each time, he received a memo, known as an internal capital call, in which the team requested money from Wirtz Corp., the Blackhawks’ parent company, to cover operating expenses. And at the end of the season, Wirtz said he double-checked that the playoffs did not cover those losses; the franchise remained in the red, the team’s accountant told him.

“We have multiple businesses and obviously we want  every one to stand on its own,” Wirtz said. “And what you don’t want to do is manage one business from the profit of the other one.”

But Wirtz pledged he would never revert to the penny-pinching ways of his father.

“We’re going to do everything we can to win,” team President John McDonough said. “We want this to be a destination for free agents. We want this to be a place where players want to play. … We’re going to charter our players (to away games) and we’re going to stay in hotels that are going to be synonymous with a first-class operation. When Rocky and I first met, we talked about this commitment.”

The team now typically lodges at the Four Seasons. Even last season’s interns will receive championship rings.

The Blackhawks and its parent company, anchored by a lucrative liquor distributorship, are privately owned, so the Chicago Tribune cannot access their financial data. However, the last time a member of Wirtz’s family discussed specifics, the numbers were not flattering.

Rocky’s father, Bill Wirtz, ran the team from 1966 until his death in 2007. Earlier in 2007, Bill Wirtz told the Toronto Star that he had lost $191 million on the team in the last 10 years, including $31 million in the 2006-07 season.

Rocky Wirtz said he knew the franchise “wasn’t doing well because I could see (Wirtz Corp.’s) consolidated tax return.” But in October 2007, on his second day in charge, he learned through an internal capital call that the team was short $6 million to $7 million for that month’s payroll.

“I was naive enough to think that if we filled the building up that we would be able to turn around economically the franchise,” Wirtz said. Weeks later he said he learned the team had close to the lowest average ticket price in the NHL for the 2007-08 season and the second-lowest attendance rate the season before.

Wirtz puts the responsibility squarely on his family; ticket prices were allowed to dip too low.  Last season, the Hawks’ average season ticket price was the 21st-cheapest in the league, according to the team.

Since he has taken over the franchise, the turnaround on the ice has been nearly unparalleled in the history of professional sports.

It also has been expensive.

One of Wirtz’s early moves as team owner was to professionalize management, hiring McDonough, then president of the Chicago Cubs. As Blackhawks president, McDonough has tripled front-office staff to 75. He has hired veterans to run business operations (Jay Blunk from the Cubs), ticketing (Chris Werner from Ticketmaster Chicago) and marketing (Dave Knickerbocker, also from the Cubs).

Last season the team upgraded accommodations, constructing a private locker room, workout facility and offices at Johnny’s IceHouse West, the Hawks’ practice facility. The team declined to say how much the addition cost.

But Wirtz said those costs paled in comparison to players’ salaries, which reached the NHL’s $56.8 million salary cap last season. The team is expected to hit its maximum again next season.

A 22-game playoff run had to have made a dent, right? Yes, but “it wasn’t enough,” Wirtz said during the interview at his office. “Every year has been a loss.”

But Wirtz said he can see “the light at the end of the tunnel” because the team “is losing less every year.”

Compared with professional basketball, baseball and football, the economics of hockey are difficult.

The league operates under a 2005 revenue-sharing agreement. The way it works is that the teams that rake in the most income, generally  regardless of expenses, subsidize the teams that generate the least.

A drawback is that it disqualified the Blackhawks, because of the size of the Chicago market, from receiving revenue sharing dollars.

The primary benefit is that it capped players’ salaries — an owner’s largest expense.

“The collective bargaining agreement has been a major help, but by no means did it create a league where all teams were going to be profitable from that point forward, or even most of them, quite frankly,” said Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp, a Chicago-based sports consulting firm.

Under the agreement, the more the Blackhawks earn, the more they have to share.

For instance, the Blackhawks keep ticket revenue from their regular-season home games. But for every playoff home game last season, the Hawks had to give the NHL at least 50 percent of what their gate receipts would have been at a regular-season United Center sellout.

And gate receipts are everything in hockey. Ticket sales typically account for up to half of a team’s income.

“You can technically lose money during the playoffs if you don’t raise your ticket prices” for them, Wirtz said.

While the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Football League also operate under revenue-sharing agreements, professional hockey has a tougher financial road because the sport lacks broad appeal and therefore doesn’t command lucrative television contracts.

The NBA, for instance, receives about $930 million per year from its national broadcasting partners.

In contrast, the NHL receives between $200 million and $300 million per year from Canadian and U.S. broadcasts. Split among the league’s 30 franchises, that equals less than $10 million per team per year.

Locally, Wirtz and McDonough have made progress in increasing broadcasting revenue.

During the Hawks’ worst years, the team bought airtime from WSCR-AM “The Score.” Wirtz quickly moved to put Hawks’ home games on Comcast SportsNet, reversing his father’s practice of not televising them. McDonough declined to renew The Score deal and instead signed ones in which WGN radio and WGN-Ch. 9 paid for the broadcasting rights.  (Both WGN stations are owned by Tribune Co., which also owns the Chicago Tribune.)

Unlike baseball, “where small market teams can get revenue from both television and Internet and a number of other sources,” in hockey, that isn’t there, Wirtz said. “You have your gate receipt, your local TV and radio package, and that’s about it.”

But the Blackhawks have been able to thrive because Wirtz provides a cushion.

Wirtz Corp. includes Wirtz Beverage Co., a five-state liquor distributorship, which Wirtz said has about $1.5 billion in annual sales; an insurance business; prime real estate; two banks; a 350-acre farm;  a stake in Comcast’s regional sports network; investments in Alberto-Culver, U.S. Bank, Sally Beauty Supply and The Sun-Times Media Group; and half of the United Center. The Bulls own the other half.

That means the Blackhawks’ rent payments end up right where they started: in Wirtz’s pocket.

And Wirtz has been able to mine all sorts of synergies between the liquor business and the sports franchise. For the coming season, the Blackhawks plan to add two more bars on the 300 level of the United Center, which are likely to include  Wirtz Beverage brands, in addition to the two bars they installed last season.

But some benefits are more subtle, such as offering clients free tickets to games and inviting them to spend intermissions at the Wirtz family’s private bar in the art deco Sonja Henie Room. Marketers call it the halo effect.

“Think about how many times Rocky Wirtz’s name has been in the newspaper because of the Blackhawks, and he doesn’t have to pay for it,” said Bill Brandt, chief executive of Development Specialists Inc. and a bankruptcy expert. “And I’m sure potential clients are going to agree to a meeting, just so they can tell their buddies they were hobnobbing with the owner who just won the Stanley Cup. Making money is the least of the Hawks’ worries.”

But Ganis, of SportsCorp, has a different take.

“Business people do not like keeping money-losing ventures on their portfolio,” he said. “It’s more than pride and ego. It’s a business philosophy.”

Wirtz said the plan is to increase sponsorships, the one traditional revenue source with room to grow; slowly raise ticket prices; draft well; and pay a premium for premium players so  the team can contend for the Stanley Cup every year.

But he admits that’s the hard way.

The easiest way to make money from an NHL franchise, Wirtz said, is to sell it.

And he has no intention of doing that. He said he plans to leave the franchise to his children “in better shape than I found it.”

–Melissa Harris

Reporter Melissa Harris talks about how she got this scoop HERE on Trib Nation.

The vote does not mean workers will strike. It authorizes the union’s negotiating committee to call a strike if it is deemed necessary.

Read more on chicagobreakingbusiness.com.

The rally, which was part of a “National Day of Action” with similar demonstrations opposing the law around the country, also celebrated a recently introduced Chicago City Council resolution that calls for a symbolic boycott of Arizona businesses.

But the group — led by immigration groups, elected officials and religious leaders — cautioned the fight isn’t over.

Mary Sullivan, left, is among those joining The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights at a news conference at City Hall in Chicago today to announce a City Council resolution against anti-immigrant laws. (Nancy Stone/Tribune)

“The architects of (Arizona SB)1070 and other vicious, hateful laws have not gone away,” said Leone Bicchieri, director of the Chicago Workers Collaborative. “They’re busy regrouping.”

Some see the resolution introduced yesterday as a way to fight back.

The resolution calls for a second symbolic boycott of Arizona in two months. Like a similar resolution endorsed in June, the one introduced Wednesday calls for Chicago to reject business from Arizona companies and to limit city employees’ travel to the state.

“We need to set the example for others in the country and I think this resolution does so,” said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), who spoke at the rally. “This country can do better than Arizona.”

– Becky Schlikerman

Complaining of “paralyzing” congestion and impatient with decades of state inaction, dozens of local leaders pleaded with Illinois Tollway directors to adopt the Illinois 53 extension.

They also made a strong pitch for a companion project, the Illinois Highway 120 corridor, which would cut east-west across the county.

“The state is broke, we all know that,” said State Rep. Sid Mathias, (R-Buffalo Grove). “We don’t have the money. The only way … to build Highway 120 or 53 is through the toll highway system.”

The cost of building both the Illinois 53 extension and the Illinois 120 corridor would be more than $2.2 billion, said Rocco Zucchero, the tollway’s deputy chief of engineering.

Lake County’s growth has far outstripped its roadway system, which lacks cross-county thoroughfares, officials said. But opponents urged caution, saying building more highways wasn’t the only answer to the congestion problem.

Tollway directors are in the midst of a months-long evaluation of several potential projects. Besides Illinois 53, they have discussed the proposed western access to O’Hare International Airport, upgrading the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway (Interstate 90) and constructing a new interchange where the Tri-State Tollway (Interstate 294) crosses Interstate 57.

Chairwoman Paula Wolfe said the agency was unsure when, if ever, it would expand the current 286-mile tollway system.

Wolfe and other directors stress that any new tollway would have to pay for itself, create jobs and spur the economy while treading lightly on the environment.

The Illinois 53/120 project is competing with other proposals, and Lake County must make its case that it should get top priority, said state Sen. Michael Bond (D-Grayslake).

The desire to extend Illinois 53 has been known since the early 1960s, and the project has been the subject of several studies. The General Assembly initially gave the tollway authorization to build the extension in 1993, but the project ran into considerable local opposition.

Foes include environmentalists who contend building a six-lane superhighway will wreak havoc on Lake County’s wetlands and endangered species. Communities such as Long Grove fear the project will degrade the quality of life.

Other opponents believe arterial roads ought to be upgraded, and that attention ought to focus on mass transit alternatives instead of concrete.

The solution to Lake County’s traffic congestion is “not just roads,” said Michael Sands, environmental team leader for Prairie Crossing, a conservation-oriented development in Grayslake.

“We need an integrated proposal that should address environmental concerns and impact.”

– Richard Wronski

She placed a hand on the unopened package containing the ashes when it was finally delivered to her South Holland home.

“Welcome home, Mom,” she said.

The urn with Mabel Bink’s ashes, and a locket left to her grandaugther, after they arrived in South Holland. (For the Tribune / John Booz)

The ashes of 89-year-old Mabel Bink had been shipped from the Phoenix, Ariz., area, where Bink had been living when she died of congestive heart failure on June 18. The 20-pound package was supposed to be in South Holland on July 19, in time for the family’s July 23 burial service.

But it didn’t arrive. The family reported it missing to Postal Service officials in South Holland and waited. Fromer and other relatives were starting to fear that Bink’s ashes would never be recovered, and she wouldn’t have a proper burial.

Postal Service officials found the package at a mail processing plant in Elk Grove Village on Thursday afternoon after reading a Tribune story about the missing remains.

A Postal Service spokesman said the South Holland office had never notified the Chicago office that the remains were missing, so other regional branches weren’t looking for the package. Managers at all the Postal Service plants in the Chicagoland area began searching for it after the story appeared online on Wednesday.

“How it got lost is something we’re still trying to solve,” said Mark Reynolds, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in Chicago.

He said the postal service is still investigating why the parcel wasn’t tracked properly and hopes to put measures in place so a sensitive package like this one isn’t lost again. The package was hand-delivered by six postal service employees who apologized several times to Fromer, 66.

“I do believe all the media coverage sped it up,” said Bink’s granddaughter, Beth Biancalana, 47, of Barrington. “This means the world to us.”

The package also included an urn with a gold plaque that reads “Beloved wife, mother and grandmother,” as well as a family heirloom: a locket Bink’s husband had given her when they were courting.

The family plans to reschedule Bink’s burial service. Relatives said they haven’t decided whether they’ll pursue any legal action against the Postal Service.

– Angie Leventis Lourgos

Two years later, another patient reported to Berwyn police that Arze had placed his hands on her breasts, breathed heavily on her neck and tried to touch her genitals, claiming it would help treat depression, according to a police report.

Not until 2007 — after at least four women had filed complaints — did police launch the investigation that led to Arze being charged with sexually assaulting patients and having his license suspended, records show.

By that time, the family physician had allegedly assaulted at least 21 women and girls at his Arze Doctors Center in Berwyn, according to criminal and civil complaints that outline attacks stretching at least to 2000.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office said it lacked enough evidence to prosecute Arze on the 2003 allegation and wasn’t informed of the 2005 complaint until years later.

The women who made the reports said law enforcement officials brushed them aside at the time.

“If they had listened to me back then, all of this could have been avoided,” said the woman who alleged assault in 2003, her eyes filling with tears. Prosecutors did charge Arze in the 2003 complaint five years later.

The case is the latest in a series of Tribune reports in which female patients have alleged that the system — law enforcement and state regulators — failed to protect them from dangerous doctors.

The newspaper has uncovered other cases in which physicians were allowed to continue practicing in spite of allegations of serious misconduct — and even convictions. Among them was Bruce Smith, a gynecologist who was not disciplined or prosecuted for years even as complaints of rape and sexual abuse multiplied against him. He was charged with sexual assault following a Tribune report in April.

The Arze case also reveals a disconnect between the criminal justice system and the state agency in charge of policing doctors. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation and its medical disciplinary board did not learn of the 2003 and 2005 allegations against Arze until 2007, said Sue Hofer, the department’s spokeswoman. State law does not require the department and police to share such complaints with each other, she said.

“It’s inexcusable that the medical disciplinary board and police aren’t sharing these allegations right away,” said Sidney Wolfe, a director at the Washington-based watchdog group Public Citizen, which has examined the handling of sex-offending doctors nationwide.

“They should be working much more closely and much more quickly,” Wolfe said. “People who engage in these behaviors are a menace to society, and it’s worse when they wear the white coat and have an ethical duty to do no harm. This is a classic example of how in the absence of early intervention more people get harmed.”

Berwyn police contacted state regulators in 2007 after additional complaints were made against Arze.

The Dallas-based Federation of State Medical Boards has issued guidelines instructing boards to “place a high priority on the investigation of complaints of sexual misconduct due to patient vulnerability” and making clear a single case is sufficient to proceed with a formal hearing, with or without corroborating evidence.

The guidelines support the use of undercover investigations, which were eventually used in the Arze case.

After his release on bond last year, Arze was rearrested and charged with practicing medicine without a license and aggravated fraud. After posting $1.5 million bail, he was released again and is awaiting trial on all charges.

Reached by phone at his Berwyn home, Arze denied he had resumed practicing and declined to comment on criminal charges of sexual assault, battery and unlawful restraint involving 14 patients. In court and state records, he has denied wrongdoing.

“I’m in the process of trying to survive,” he said.

A native of Bolivia, Arze was granted a physician’s license by the state in 1989. In addition to running his private practice, he served on the staff of Berwyn’s MacNeal Hospital from 1994 until his initial arrest in September 2007.

He said in court records he was treating more than 6,000 patients at Arze Doctors Center at the time of his arrest and that his practice had a “great emphasis on mental health” — including treatment for depression and other mood disorders.

The Chicago woman who made the 2003 report said she turned to Arze as a high school senior at the suggestion of her parents, who were already his patients. She was seeking help with depression that stemmed from sexual abuse by a relative, she said. (The Tribune does not generally publish the names of alleged sexual assault victims without their consent.)

Her mother said she always accompanied the teen into the exam room but that during an April 2003 visit Arze told the parents to wait outside.

“He said he wanted to talk to her one-on-one,” the mother said.

Once they were alone, Arze told the girl that he would try to stimulate her in order to help clarify her sexual orientation and determine the level of depression, she said.

He pulled off her clothes, tried to force her to masturbate, placed his fingers inside her and pressed his body against hers, according to court and state records.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I got mad at myself like, ‘How did I let this happen again?’ I froze. … I could feel my blood boil.”

The teen immediately told a friend about the incident but swore her to secrecy, fearing no one would believe her word against a doctor’s, she said.

But weeks later, she confided in her parents and then in a high school counselor, who called the state Department of Children and Family Services. She said she worried the doctor would hurt other patients if she didn’t report him.

The school counselor and a DCFS official accompanied the family to the Berwyn police station, where everyone was separately interviewed about the allegations, said the woman and her mother.

They said police gave them a chilly reception.

“They were rude — like, ‘Why did you let this happen?’” said the woman, now married with children and working as a receptionist. “They didn’t show any compassion.”

An investigator later interviewed the girl’s friend, but the family was unaware of any other actions by police.

An assistant Cook County prosecutor decided not to file charges against Arze because the doctor denied the allegations and there were no witnesses or physical evidence, said Sally Daly, spokeswoman for State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

“I called one time, and they said we need to wait,” the mother said. “But nobody ever called us back.”

In March 2005, Berwyn police received a similar report about Arze from a 20-year-old Brookfield woman.

The woman alleged that during treatment for depression, Arze removed her bra, placed his hands on her breasts and tried to touch her genitals, according to a copy of the incident report and a complaint filed by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. The woman told the doctor his actions made her uncomfortable.

“(She) asked how his actions would help her depression. Dr. Arze related that he was trying to see if she would get sexually aroused and if so, she was not depressed,” the police report said.

The woman, who came forward two days after the alleged incident, said doing so was difficult because, like the teen in the 2003 case and many of Arze’s other patients, she is from an immigrant family.

“In the Hispanic community we don’t like to make a big deal out of things,” she said. “Opening up about something like that is one of the hardest things you can do.”

The officer told the woman an investigator would contact her, but months turned into years with no word.

Police did not share the allegation with the state’s attorney’s office at the time, Daly said.

Jim Ritz, chief of Berwyn police, declined to answer questions about the cases.

There was no contact until fall 2007, when police arrested Arze on charges of sexually assaulting and battering patients. The state simultaneously suspended his license.

William Kushner, then chief of police, told reporters at the time the initial charges were the result of a two-month investigation by detectives and state investigators.

Patient complaints lodged with police in June and July 2007 were among the original battery charges, records show. In August and September, a Cook County sheriff’s officer posed as a patient at Arze’s private practice and encountered sexual advances from him, said sheriff’s spokesman Steve Patterson.

After Arze’s arrest made news, the charges against him multiplied — in court and with the state, painting a picture of a chronic sex abuser who allegedly preyed on vulnerable patients suffering from depression.

Among the allegations in court and state records:

Starting in November 2004, Arze allegedly fondled the breasts of a recently divorced patient seeking treatment for depression, forced his fingers inside her and kissed her neck. She screamed, but no one came.

In March 2005, he allegedly asked a patient to remove her clothes without providing a gown, fondled her, pushed her onto the exam table and instructed her to keep quiet while he raped her.

In September 2007, he pulled down his pants and exposed himself to a patient, asked her to touch him and made lewd comments as she left the room, according to court records.

The 2003 allegation resulted in a 2008 felony sexual assault charge against Arze. It and the 2005 allegation also were included in a 2007 complaint filed by the state.

The women said police gave no explanation for why they did not act on their complaints sooner.

“The detective was very apologetic about it,” said the woman who made the 2005 report, now 26 and living in Oak Brook. “It’s not something you just file away.”

That police had received allegations against Arze as early as 2003 came as a shock to one of the women who reported being abused by him in 2007.

“I am disgusted,” she said of law enforcement. “They should investigate why they didn’t do anything. They were accomplices.”

The women said they continue to suffer trauma from the incidents. They cannot see male doctors. One has recurring dreams about her alleged attack.

Arze, who is scheduled to be in court Aug. 16, won’t lose his medical license for good even if convicted of all the sexual assault and battery of patient charges.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has interpreted the state Medical Practice Act to mean that it cannot permanently revoke a physician’s license unless a doctor has been twice convicted of felonies involving controlled substances or public aid offenses.

A Tribune review uncovered 16 convicted sex offenders who have held Illinois medical licenses within the past 15 years. Not one had his license permanently revoked. One doctor convicted of sexually abusing a patient was never disciplined by the state in any way.

– Megan Twohey

If you have a complaint about a doctor, contact the police department nearest the doctor’s office and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation at www.idfpr.com/dpr/FILING/Complaint.asp or 312-814-6910.

In their first communication since deliberations began at midday Wednesday, the six-man, six-woman jury asked in writing for a transcript of only the government’s closing argument from earlier this week.

It’s impossible to read the tea leaves to decipher what that might mean, but it brought objections from the defense and smiles to the faces of prosecutors.

(Click HERE for updates during the trial and HERE for complete coverage)

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Niewoehner’s closing argument had been especially detailed and given in PowerPoint style on an overhead screen. He had walked the panel through the case count by count and provided legal definitions to words such as “bribery.”

U.S. District Judge James Zagel, who has presided over the two-month trial, guessed that was why the jury would want the transcript.

The judge said the government had essentially provided “a road map” for the 24 counts against Blagojevich. Blagojevich’s brother, Robert, also faces four counts.

But “because the closings are not evidence, I am not sending it to them,” he said.

If the request comes up again, Zagel would reconsider his decision, the judge said, but if he changed his mind, transcripts of the defense closing argument would go to the jury as well.

Neither Blagojevich brother was in attendance to hear the jury’s question after waiving their appearances for jury notes. The brothers are charged with trying to extort campaign contributions.

The jury has said it will work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on workdays — including Fridays — until a verdict can be reached.

Unlike high-profile juries of past cases at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, the Blagojevich jurors have been hard to spot since deliberations began. They have had their lunch brought to them, and only a small group has regularly been seen being escorted to an elevator, apparently for smoke breaks.

A large news media contingent remained camped in the courthouse lobby Thursday awaiting possible word that the jury had reached a quick conclusion. Reporters are being kept from waiting on the 25th floor outside Zagel’s courtroom. Rope lines cordon off most of the area.

The judge on Thursday told the lawyers that once the jury has announced that a verdict has been reached, he expects to wait about one hour to have it read publicly so all interested parties have time to make it to court. That group includes five alternate jurors, who informed Zagel that they want to be present when the verdict is delivered, the judge said.

– Jeff Coen

The report, in many ways, echoed what the outgoing director of the Department of Juvenile Justice, Kurt Friedenauer, has long said about the department: The state’s failure to support the department has made it nearly impossible to deliver state-of-the-art mental health treatment to some of the state’s most troubled youths.

The report noted “serious deficiencies” in mental health treatment at juvenile facilities across the state, and said that at one downstate institution the caseloads are “unmanageable and a barrier for meaningful treatment to occur.”

Friedenauer had requested the assessment following youth suicides in 2008 and 2009. It was carried out by the Models for Change Initiative and funded by the MacArthur Foundation.

The review team documented woes that have become well-known: the lack of involvement of youths’ families in their treatment and care, the lack of a system of aftercare for youths leaving the facilities, and the reluctance of some staff to embrace a focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment.

It also noted what it said was a failure to adopt more up-to-date tools; for instance, mental health workers used suicide risk assessments and substance abuse surveys developed for adults rather than adolescents.

The team’s report was based on one-day visits to the state’s eight facilities and interviews with employees and youths — what it termed a “snapshot” of the facilities’ operations. But the team did little in review of youth case files, which might have yielded more substantive and objective information about treatment.

Friedenauer said in an interview that he was disappointed the review team did not dig deeper. For example, he said he had hoped the team would evaluate the department’s psychiatric treatment and use of medication. But the review team did not include a psychiatrist, he noted.

He also said he hoped the report would provide specific solutions to the department’s troubles, particularly regarding employee training and mental health programs.

“I knew we needed more mental health staff and we needed more training,” said Friedenauer, who resigned amid plans by Gov. Pat Quinn to fold the agency into the Department of Children and Family Services. The juvenile justice agency was spun off from the Department of Corrections four years ago.

“I think a deep dive into files and clinical information … probably would have resulted in some of the more specific information that I had hoped for,” said Friedenauer, whose last day is Friday.

Ned Loughran, who led the team’s review, said he understands Friedenauer’s frustration with the findings.

“I can see a director saying, ‘I wish they went a little deeper. Don’t tell me what I already know. Tell me what I don’t know,’” said Loughran, executive director of the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators. “I understand that.”

But “when you bring in outside national experts, it substantiates and adds clout to what he’s been saying,” Loughran said.

In spite of his frustration with the report, Friedenauer said he hoped it would spur the state to invest in the youths.

“Once again,” he said, “we’ve had an external assessment that validates that we’ve been hamstrung since this department was started.”

– Steve Mills

Theresa Lumpkin is comforted by community activist Andrew Holmes on the 11500 block of South Perry Avenue where her son, 13-year-old Robert Freeman Jr., was shot multiple times and killed Wednesday evening. (Michael Tercha/Tribune)

The blasts, heard blocks away, interrupted a warm summer evening that had drawn children out onto their neighborhood blocks Wednesday.

In the 11500 block of South Perry Avenue in West Pullman, neighbors said they watched in horror as a gunman pumped bullet after bullet into a 13-year-old boy who was already down on the street.

And this morning, a stricken mother made frantic calls to loved ones, asking them to come be with her as she tried to adjust to her new world.

“I’m not going to see my baby no more,” Theresa Lumpkin cried. “How soon can you get here? Try to get into Chicago.”

Lumpkin’s son, Robert Freeman Jr., was shot and killed Wednesday in what family and neighbors say was likely a case of mistaken identity. No one was in custody as of late Thursday afternoon.

Police sources said it appeared the boy was mistakenly targeted.

Although initial reports indicated that Robert, who was most recently enrolled at Oglesby Elementary School, was riding his bike Wednesday, Lumpkin said her son was standing with friends near a car when he was shot by an assailant who ran out from a gangway.

Lumpkin was already surrounded by family and friends Thursday as she remembered her son. He loved basketball and had cut his forehead just weeks ago when the backyard rim came down on him during a dunk. He liked to tinker with machines.

He spent part of the summer cutting lawns with a mower his father gave him, spending earned cash on treats like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. He was new on the block, but he had made friends and rode his bicycle constantly.

But Lumpkin kept returning to the last image she had of her son — dying in the middle of the street.

“My baby was just lying there,” she said, crying. “He tried to get up. He tried to fight for his mama. He tried to fight for his life.”

Neighbors, who did not want their names published, heard the shots and came to the front of their house and saw the gunman standing over Robert, shooting repeatedly.

“I was running out [of] the door to say, ‘Stop shooting that baby,’” one neighbor said. The resident said he was incensed to see the young teen targeted.

“That boy’s young,” he said. “That’s a baby.”

Lumpkin said doctors told her that Robert’s body had 22 bullet holes. While it was not clear exactly how many times Robert was shot, the approximate number of bullet holes he suffered was confirmed by police sources.

Neighbors said Robert had a similar haircut, complexion and height as another boy in the neighborhood who they think was the target.

Police are also investigating a theory that the shooter targeted the wrong teen and that the motive for the shooting was a dispute over drugs or money, several sources said.

Robert was the fourth teen shot in the area in a week. In neighboring Roseland, a 15-year-old was shot Tuesday, a 17-year-old was shot Monday and a 14-year-old was shot Sunday. None of the injuries was life-threatening.

This latest round of gunfire sent one mother from two blocks away racing to Perry Avenue to find her own teen son.

After the resident, who did not want to be named, found her son, she took him straight home, where she tried to reassure him.

“I told him it was going to be OK,” the mother said. “He said, ‘You told me that before.’”

William Lee and David Elsner contributed to this report.

– Annie Sweeney and Jeremy Gorner

Robert Freeman Sr. (left), father of the slain boy, talks with community activist Andrew Holmes, who was distributing fliers in the West Pullman neighborhood asking anyone who saw the shooting to come forward. (WGN-TV)

With reward money for an arrest and conviction mounting – it currently stands at just shy of $130,000 – the Illinois Department of Corrections joined Chicago police Thursday on an early morning round up of parolees in the Park Manor neighborhood were Officer Michael Bailey, a 20-year officer, was shot and killed on July 18.

The round-up was part of a compliance check on the parolees, which are done regularly. But the state has started coordinating with local law enforcement agencies to address specific crime patterns and lend support to officers if they need it, officials said.

Last weekend three neighborhoods on the South and Northwest sides were the subject of similar parolee checks on account of rising violence.

“We are trying to get more target-specific,” said Mike McCotter, the newly-appointed public safety officer of the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Rounding up parole violators in Park Manor provided an opportunity to shake information loose from the neighborhood about Bailey’s shooting.  “We are hoping that something comes of it,” McCotter said.

Other law enforcement sources said the roundups should also send a message that no one has stopped looking for information on the officer’s death.

The sweep was welcome by longtime Park Manor residents who are also worried the case will go cold.

“We are not going to stop,” said Darlene Tribue, the president of the Park Manor Neighbors’ Community Council. “Let every law enforcement agency come and help us.”

The rewards that have been posted include large lump sums from the law enforcement community to $1,000 from the Park Manor organization.

“This is an historical community in the city,” Tribue said. “I can’t allow them to feel unsafe in their homes. … I am not going to say our peace is shattered. Your peace is shattered if you allow someone to shatter it. I can’t take that attitude.”

–Annie Sweeney