Calcutta, Illinois

The Chicago police swept into 219 North Keystone Avenue last Tuesday looking for drugs, and found children instead. There were 19 in all. Lying two deep on a pair of dirty mattresses. Or sprawled on the apartment's cold floor amid food scraps, cigarette butts and human excrement. Most were in dirty diapers or underwear; one boy, subsequently found to have cerebral palsy, wore bruises, belt marks and cigarette burns on his body. Two of the smallest children, reads the police report, were awake, sharing a neck bone with a dog. As the police removed the children from the residence, one pleaded...