A new group of women in Chicago are uniting to tackle the growing number of Black women being abducted in their city.
Rosie Dawson and Roberta Logwood have started a campaign, which they are calling “Stop Taking Our Girls” — a grassroots campaign to raise awareness of the growing number of missing African American women and girls in the city.
“It’s not an urban legend,” Dawson told WGN. “They are doing it.” co-founder Logwood then went on to make a shocking revelation.
“I was actually a victim,” Logwood said. “They backed up and got back in the van.”
Logwood told the local news outlet that she was just 17 when a man stole her cell phone. She says that when she gave chase, a vehicle pulled up, and she the man then opened his trunk and tried to encourage her to climb inside. He told her that they would look for the thief together. Logwood turned and ran away
“I did file a police report,” Logwood said. “The dispatch told me this had happened before, and they succeeded in kidnapping the girl.”
More than 50 missing African American women have been killed in Chicago since 2001, according to a report from the Murder Accountability Project. The number is suspected to be much higher. All of the victims were reportedly found strangled.
“I feel as though when it comes to Black women,” Dawson said. “We just don’t count enough for people to care.
“We hear a lot of different things in the streets,” Dawson said. “So we want to bring awareness to the elected officials, we want the police officers to know we appreciate them, but we need them to appreciate us in this community also.”
During a separate interview with BlockClubChicago, Logwood cited a DNA backlog as one of the reasons law enforcement is lagging behind.
“If they find a body… they have to wait for months before they can get a sample of the DNA to even determine who this person is,” Logwood said. “So we may actually have people that’s missing that are actually found already, but the families don’t know it yet because the DNA is delayed.”
