Um...Duh? Welcome to Reality

About goddamn time someone started asking these questions:

• A City Council committee held up a $195,000 payment to a Stateway Gardens man who made a ''Scarface''-style claim that Chicago Police officers who detained him during a 2004 drug raid threatened him with a running chain saw, downloaded pornography onto his computer and used racial epithets to insult him.

  Finance Committee members withheld the settlement to Lloyd Haywood after questioning why the Law Department would agree to settle what aldermen said was one of the weakest cases to come down the pike in years.

  Only two of the 15 witnesses supplied by Haywood responded to certified letters from the Police Department's Internal Affairs Division -- and neither supported the plaintiff's allegations.

Almost $200,000 for a case that even aldercreatures can see is full of holes. We're surprised they had the balls to actually hold up the settlement in committee. And Fran Spielman must be going to night J-school finally in case the Sun Times goes under and she actually has to look for a job. How weak was this case?

• Haywood initially sued nine police officers, then dismissed his claims against six of them. Of the two officers he was able to identify, one was on vacation at the time of the raid and the other was in a different district.

  "Everything was inconclusive. There's no evidence of any injuries. ... This is probably one of the worst [cases] I've ever seen come before this body," said Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th).

  "Are we giving the shop away every time we're threatened?" asked Ald. Ray Suarez (31st), who noted that the chain-saw allegation sounded like a scene from the movie "Scarface."

THESE QUESTIONS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ASKED YEARS AGO! If someone does a little digging, they can come up with 30 other cases in the past 5 years that have been settled for hundreds of thousands, even millions that had no basis in reality, starting with that lying asshole and the screwdriver.

Follow the money people. Find out which connected firms get this BS steered to them, find out how often the City settles and for how much, then see who contributes back to the election funds of aldercreatures or pet reverend projects or politically heavy causes that otherwise would never get a dime.

How does anyone think Rezko got things done? Shady real estate, bundling contributions, illegal reimbursements, connected contracting - and he's one step removed from a viable presidential candidate.