‘White and Black Don’t Mix’

Take one stripper with California, golden-girl looks. Lock her up for acting crazy.

One day later, release her into the most dangerous ghetto in Chicago — dressed only in short shorts and a bikini top. At night. Still acting crazy.

Deny her pleas for help because “white and black don’t mix.”

Then try to figure out what happened when a group of black people take her into the nearby projects, where she is raped and thrown from a seven-story building. Or went willingly — and jumped.

Put them all together and it adds up to one of the messiest, murkiest, most expensive cases of racial violence in the country.

Whatever happened, the city of Chicago agreed earlier this month to pay Christina Eilman $22.5 million in damages after her ordeal left her physically and mentally damaged.

The jury never heard about Eilman’s life as a stripper. Or from an expert witness about how the bizarre and sexual and violent behavior she displayed — first at O’Hare Airport, then while in jail — fit a pattern of methamphetamine abuse common among those in the exotic dancer trade.

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All the jury heard about — and most news accounts followed along — is how police abandoned a then 21-year-old troubled coed who studied religion at UCLA in the housing projects of Chicago. Alone. Befuddled.

Which even Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson said was a bad idea because of RAT: Routine Activities Theory. The judge explained RAT by saying Eilman “was a white female in a predominantly black, poor neighborhood (and) she had a much higher risk of predatory victimization.”

Judge Frank Easterbrook went on: “She was lost, unable to appreciate her danger and dressed in a manner to attract attention. She is white and well-off while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and, thus, a potential target for crime.”

The city said RAT was thinly disguised racial profiling and had no business at trial. But at the trial, RAT and race were everywhere — no matter how hard the city worked to keep it out. {snip}

Easterbrook said the situation was so transparently dangerous that Chicago police “might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo.”

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But everyone who came into contact with her in May of 2006 trying to get a flight back to California, knew something was wrong.

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{snip} When police showed up, she told one officer she was going to take his gun and shoot him.

They took her to Wentworth, a lock-up for women seven miles from O’Hare, right in the middle of the ghetto.

The predominately black staff — as the court papers note — did not know what to do with her: Whether she was mentally ill, or like everyone else, just did not want to be in jail.

Knocking her head on the bars for hours did not really convince anyone either way. Neither did telling fellow inmates she was Wonder Woman. Nor did her crying, yelling, screaming, silence, and demands for attention.

But when she started smearing various, shall we say, bodily fluids on the walls of her cell, even the tough women in Chicago’s toughest jail begged to be separated from her.

By now Eilman’s parents in California were trying to warn police that their daughter was bipolar and needed help. But no one seemed interested: Jail is full of crazy people.

Court documents say “numerous officers and detention aides described Eilman’s behavior as ‘nutty,’ or ‘erratic.’” However, they never reported Eilman’s behavior to a desk sergeant or watch commander. Instead, the lockup personnel harangued Eilman by telling her to: (1) “shut the f — up”; (2) “shut the hell up, white b — -, you got the blood — you got the blood all over the cell.” “you crazy white b — -, you nasty b — , get that nasty s — off my walls.”

It did not really get any better. There was some talk of a mental evaluation, but no car was available to take her to the facility. Some police are reluctant to take inmates there because so many are faking it, and the process takes two days.

Finally, 29 hours after her arrest, she walked out of the Wentworth jail wearing only white “short-shorts” and a bikini top. First stop was JJ Fish restaurant a few blocks away. Where dozens of patrons saw her and “knew she wasn’t right.”

She made some new friends, showing some how much she liked rapper Notorious B.I.G. by reciting lyrics from his songs. Just as she did in jail. She accompanied two men to buy beer, then visited one of the men’s grandmother.

“Eilman then accompanied several young men into the Robert Taylor Homes, to Apartment 702,” court documents say, “which was a vacant apartment where people went to sleep or hang out and where a number of people had congregated that evening.”

Court documents do not say this one of the most notorious high-rise, high-crime subsidized buildings in Chicago.

Along the way, she knocked on at least one door, asking for help. According to the local ABC News affiliate: “A long-time resident at the Robert Taylor Homes — who did not want to be identified — said earlier Monday evening, she saw the young woman in the courtyard and again outside her own apartment. ‘The woman got on my floor and tried to get in apartment. I said, ‘No, white and black don’t mix.’ ”

According to the Chicago Tribune, “One resident, Melene Jones, said she repeatedly told Eilman to leave because the building was not safe for her. Several men asked Eilman to perform oral sex, but she refused, at one point saying she would jump out the window if anyone laid a hand on her, witnesses said.”

Jones said she tried to persuade Eilman to leave because she feared something bad would happen.

“First off, because, I mean, there was nobody there with her. And second off, because she was a white girl and, I mean, it’s really unusual for a white girl to be in the building and especially by herself,” Jones testified.

Soon after, Marvin Powell showed up. Powell “told everyone to leave,” and said he was going to “show this b — – who the real killer is.”

They left. Everyone except Eilman, who was sexually assaulted, before she was pushed — or she jumped — out of the window.

She survived. Powell was convicted of abducting Eilman, but not assaulting her. He was released in April 2012.

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