UPDATED: Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021 at 3:35 p.m.
A man who barricaded himself in a Riverside apartment building on Sept. 8 and surrendered peacefully after a three-and-a-half hour standoff with police in the 100 block of East Quincy Street has been charged with two felonies.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved charging Frank Glowacki, 71, with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, both felonies, in addition to two misdemeanor counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Officers responded to the apartment building at 100 E. Quincy St. about 11:30 a.m. and located a man who was bleeding from the forehead. That person reportedly told police he was moving out of his apartment when his landlord pistol-whipped him and then pointed the weapon at the victim’s girlfriend and threatened her.
At no point were shots fired, said Matthew Buckley, Riverside’s director of public safety and emergency management. According to Buckley, the altercation stemmed from a dispute over the tenant owing Glowacki money. Glowacki reportedly both owns and lives at the building.
When police arrived, Glowacki was inside the building and officers set up a perimeter around it, blocking East Quincy Street from just east of the downtown to Herbert Road.
A SWAT team from the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System (NIPAS) arrived to secure the scene. Police repeatedly called to Glowacki by name over a loudspeaker, ordering him to come out with his hands up, eventually adding a warning that they might force entry, which “could result in serious injury or death.”
Glowacki reportedly surrendered without further incident at around 3 p.m. Police later obtained a search warrant for Glowacki’s apartment, according to Buckley, and recovered a loaded handgun and a shotgun from the residence. The handgun, said Buckley, was the one Glowacki used to strike the tenant.
Schools in Riverside were placed on soft lockdown during the incident as a precaution. The lockdown was lifted when the incident ended, right around school dismissal time.
At the time of his arrest, Glowacki was also wanted on a felony warrant by Cook County Sheriff’s Police for manufacture/delivery of methamphetamine. Buckley said he wasn’t certain where the initial arrest in that case occurred.
The online news source Patch reported in January 2020 that Glowacki had been charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, as well as possession of meth and drug paraphernalia.
Police reportedly found the drugs inside Glowacki’s car which was parked in the lot at Walgreens, 4101 First Ave. Officers responded to the location for a well-being check on a man, later identified as Glowacki, who was unconscious inside a vehicle there.
