J-Fed's Initial Proposal

This is the information we were talking about last night. It comes to us second hand, but the source is 100% trustworthy. If they say it happened, it happened. It seems that J-Fed was having a meeting with an individual who shall remain nameless, but this individual wears more than two bars on their collar. During the conversation, J-Fed told this person that it was his intent to get rid of the Round Table process completely.

Now we know that earlier this year or late last year, the Cook County State's Attorney was looking to pull out of the Round Table process because of the political heat. Some reporter and his tame professor were insisting that the Round Table was nothing more than a cover up of all the involved parties and in the midst of a hotly contested State's Attorney race, even the hint of a scandal could sink a campaign. Besides, it's easier to say that the State's Attorney's office might be prosecuting a police shooting one day, so it didn't make sense for them to be there in case it compromised the investigation, regardless of the fact that if at any time there was an allegation of criminal wrongdoing, the Round Table process (Administrative) would stop and another investigation (Criminal) would begin.

The reason that J-Fed wanted to do away with the Round Table?

• All Officers involved in a shooting were to be indicted the following day by a Grand Jury.

You read that correctly. J-Fed wanted officers indicted. We don't know if this was to circumvent Administrative investigations. We don't know if this was to abrogate contractual protections. We don't know if this was to be some half-assed attempt to remove CPD entirely from the investigatory process of police shootings.

But if this doesn't tell you exactly what type of Department the mayor wants and exactly what type of Department that J-Fed is attempting to give him, we don't know how to make it any clearer.

Obama Sinking...Fast

(Examiner cartoonist Nate Beeler)

We certainly have the pulse of the national elections this year:

• A few weeks ago, after his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, first drew headlines for his fiery sermons, Barack Obama responded with a graceful speech on race in America. But Rev. Wright has decided he isn't about to shut up and launched a series of provocative remarks over the weekend and on Monday. On Tuesday afternoon, Obama denounced Wright, saying "His comments were not only divisive... but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate." The candidate added, "Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this."

We can hardly wait for the Democratic Convention. In a perfect world, the so called "super delegates" throw this thing into a tizzy, either by nominating Hillary despite her trailing in the popular vote or they toss it to someone not even on the ballot, like Gore. And Jesse, Al, the NAACP will attempt to take their ball and go home with it, throwing the entire democratic party into an all-out war.

Hopefully, this is the end result:

• The ultra leftists who hijacked the party in the 1960's will be marginalized the way they should have been years ago. They die out in 30 years along with the hippie remnants.
  
• A moderate Democratic party, albeit a much smaller party, apologizes to Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller and attempt to reconnect with the "Reagan democrats" who deserted the part in droves circa 1980.
  
• The Green Party, headed by Nader makes some strides as a viable third party, but end up going the way of Libertarians - just a "little bit too out-there" for normal people.

We can dream, can't we?

Uniform Infractions

Anyone want to let Doty and Crump-Hales know that in their official Department photos published on the website, they are wearing the Democratic National Convention pins upside down?

And if the Inspection Division could start SPAR proceedings tomorrow? We know you guys are looking for a couple of cheap movers, especially BB. Thanks.

Just Wondering...

Why would J-Fed move the head of Management and Labor Affairs Section in the middle of negotiations?

Hahahaha. Yeah, we know. J-Fed doesn't have the authority to move anyone. We mean, the mayor moved the guy J-Fed was bragging was the Best Man at his wedding. Public emasculation?

But seriously, are negotiations going that badly? Perhaps we should tell Mark and the boys to file for expedited arbitration? After all, we're coming up on what? Ten months? Eleven without a contract? We're sure we can safely assume that negotiations are at a complete standstill and we might as well get the Arbitrator involved.

Hey look! Rifles! And all those new Tahoes!

What's Felony Review For?

This is from the comments section:

• Memo out tonight to all districts: any P.O. arrested for ANYTHING, felony review is to contacted IMMEDIATELY to see if charges will be upgraded to felony!
  Watch yourselves out there officers.

This may or may not be true. We're looking for more verification.

However, it tracks along with a little tidbit of info that we acquired. We are attempting to get this info to our readers without burning the source. It involves a high level conversation that we have to disguise the source of and we hope to have it done by tomorrow. But we feel it is important enough to bring to the attention of our readers.

It will change the entire way you approach your job. At least it should.

Quick Hits

Taking credit for Mother Nature:

• There was a big drop in shootings and a dip in homicides this past weekend in Chicago compared with the misery inflicted here a week earlier.

We just got off the phone with Mother Nature and man is She pissed! She said you better be ready for a couple of warm weekends soon and She'll show everyone what's what. She even threatened to pull out the nine and light up a few fools that pissed her off.

----------------

There go our rifles. And Tahoes. And computers. And radios.

• City officials agreed Monday to pay $50 million to victims of a fatal fire in a Loop high-rise, ending years of litigation over firefighters' response to the blaze and pushing the total settlement to a landmark $100 million.

When you have firefighters sending people back into a burning building, not evacuating properly, and having "merit" lieutenants who can't even organize a stairwell search, we guess $100 million isn't out of the ballpark.
----------------

Wrigley/M&M Mars merger:

• There will still be candymakers occupying the fabled Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue, and the name on the chewing gum will remain Wrigley, but one of America's most famous business families is selling control of its empire in a stunning $23 billion deal that reshapes the world's confectionary industry.

$23 billion in cash. Does Wrigley Field stay Wrigley? We'll think Cubs fans better get used to change, though the change from being "lovable losers" is probably still a few centuries away.

----------------

It'll never pass in Chicago, but in the rest of the United States, it's good to see sanity prevails:

• The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.
  
  In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud.

We don't see what's so bad about being required to show ID to vote. After all, you wouldn't want illegal immigrants, criminals and dead people voting, would you? But the Machine has lived too long on the votes of the dead, the missing and the moved-out-of-state to actually run an election legit.

Wright Transcripts

Anyone following the media blitz the past few days? The attempted media spin on "reverend" Wright's words is that they have been taken out of context by right leaning persons to smear Obama's sitting in the pews for twenty years listening to this bullshit.

A couple of commentators came here telling us to listen to "reverend" Wright's words. We did even one better. Hugh Hewitt at Town Hall has not only put up audio clips, he has transcripts up so you can read Wright's "sermons" and make your own judgments.

We've listened and read the sermons and we've revised our opinion that Wright is a racist and a conspiracy nut. We are now of the opinion that he's a liar, a revisionist, an ignoramus and, to put it simply, bat-shit crazy.

And now Joe Klein, resident leftist at Time Magazine, writes how every time Wright opens his mouth, Obama's campaign dies a little more. Klein is a big time Clinton apologist and indicative of how the media is turning on Obama more and more. The Democratic convention is going to be way more fun than usual.

Congratulations Hector!

It used to be that bad news was released on Friday afternoons. Most of the reporters have gone home, the press release was basically printed verbatim in the Saturday editions of the papers, and pretty much everything related to the bad news died an ignominious death.

We don't know why a promotion was hidden away in the Friday afternoon bad press releases section of the AdMin faxes. We always thought promotions were a cause for celebration.

• Hector Rodriguez was promoted to the spot of Commander of Investigations at IAD (or some similarly named spot)

Of course, since the Department HAS NEVER HAD a Commander of Investigations or whatever they're calling it, this would mark the third exempt spot created since J-Fed took over the Department, the other two being Chief of CAPS and Chief of Strategic Deployment (or the "Check Everything Shields does Office")

So much for trimming the fat, eliminating bloated bureaucracy and streamlining the command structure, eh? Three more exempt spots sucking how much "gold braid" pensions out of our woefully underfunded offering.

Look!! Slightly used rifles!

Waste of Space Removed from Earth

Always nice to wake up and hear that the police came out on the good end of a shooting. Excellent job by all parties involved:

• Chicago police shot and killed a man Saturday night on the Southeast Side after authorities said he took three people hostage in a robbery attempt at an auto shop.
  
  Officers were called to the parts store on the 9600 block of South Ewing Avenue at 7:50 p.m., police said. When they arrived, the suspect refused to come out and took three people inside hostage. The Hostage and Barricade team and SWAT responded, and the man fired several shots at officers, police said. Police returned fire about 9:30 p.m., fatally striking the man
  

Channel 2 also covers.

So...What's She Saying?

Sneed is saying something. We just don't know what:

• Sneed's letter bin has been stuffed with mail about Chicago's new top cop -- former FBI agent Jody Weis -- and Mayor Daley's anger at the rise in violent crime.

  Our e-mail messages suggest police officers have found a new way to vent; readers want to kvetch. Without taking sides, here's a peek at their parlance.

Ok, she's getting letters. Cops "have found a new way to vent" - is she speaking of the website?

She then quotes four letters and at least one of them is making a simultaneous appearance in our comment section. First up is an allegedly retired deputy chief:

• "Lose the 'Fed' attitude toward crime; local law enforcement must be quick and agile. Feds are used to picking and choosing which crimes to investigate. Doesn't work that way in a city. [...]
  
• "Finally and most importantly, don't tell the line officers they will be scrutinized and held accountable in every aspect of their lives [from wearing seat belts to their relationships with their neighbors], without offering them some vision of a better work life. The officers can easily handle their radio calls with blinders on . . . [by] not noticing the suspicious group on the corner or the dice game in the alley. Preventible crime will go unchecked!"

Yet again, that implication that cops will do less if morale is low. Where could anyone possibly be getting that impression? Then she quotes a anti gun nut, a "more punishment" type and finally, a "lock the parents up with the kids" crazy person. It's almost like a blog, but it's on paper. And it's days behind.

Senora Sherlock - Contact SCC

Whoever is writing the stuff, e-mail us. We might have some work for you writing a series of adventures. Especially if you are the same guy who wrote the long article way back in 2005.

Comments closed for this post.

Let's Count So Far

From a posting on 01 April:

• Has anything that has come out of J-Fed's mouth been even remotely true yet? Or close to reality? Let's review:
• fitness standards
• uniform standards
• same gun for everyone
  
• 12 hour shifts
• new cars
• working computers
• capable radios

And now we're supposed to get rifles? Has anyone actually seen this "order" yet?

Don't get us wrong, we'd love to see heavy weapons in the hands of trained coppers on the street each and every day. But let's look at a few of the stumbling blocks in our way here:

• How many rifles? One per car? Five per district? Stored where? Transported where and how?
• One comment said "15 years on and 90% or better on your ratings." All well and good - except under 20% of the Department has 15 years or more. And the last rating card we signed was years ago - they haven't rated anyone except civilians in at least 6 years, maybe more.
  
• Are they training sergeants? Almost pointless - they better make a few hundred more so the rifles have a 50-50 chance of actually being on the street.
  
• Tact and Gangs? Besides not having 15 years, what happens when Tact and Gangs are detailed out of the district to the west and south sides? Or to the parades? Or training days? Or sting day? Or they're wrapping up a bunch of warrants?
• Only Specialized Units or Area Teams? Again, a waste of time if these teams are being detailed out. Plus, these teams have other jobs to do. Many times they aren't even reachable by radio.
  

We know that we're going to get a bunch of comments saying crap like, "Give Jody and chance!" or "You're such a pessimist - this is the greatest thing in the world!" We're completely willing to give this a chance to work, but we've been here long enough to know how the City works and how the Department works. We haven't even covered the City bidding and City purchasing nightmares (this would be for new weapons, not refurbished M-16's or used M-4's).

If the Department and the mayor wanted to give us some equalizers, there are at least five shotguns in each district already. One or two of them might actually work if you dust them off. Why not get those out? Of course, during the recent inventory, it was discovered that there were only 5 boxes of shells, each about 7 years old.

UPDATE: As was pointed out in the comments - where do we train thousands of cops on rifles? The FBI range SWAT uses was shut down in February or March by either a judicial order or the feebs themselves after an activist brought in a bunch of "fragments" that he allegedly found at a nearby playground. Call us pessimists again, but we don't think the FBI range is long for this world in the current Illinois political climate.

A Time to Worry

Al Gore must be crapping bricks:

• THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

  What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

  Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

  All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

And we get to use this cool photo:

A completely blank solar disk. Precursor to an Ice Age? Good thing the mayor has been stockpiling salt.

This Sounds Like Fun

Up north:

• 014 meeting with the new commander l martinez wants everyone on tact/gangs with a bump card to go back to the watch! also wants 3% increase on all activity (sounds like a quote to me) anyone in the media reading this? are we in a union or not?

And down south:

• Here is how Commander Crump-Hales is responding to the increase in shootings.....
  
  She issued an order that says... (this is verbatim)
  
  "All Watch Commander's and Tactical Lieutenant will notify the Aldermen's office on all shootings that occur in their Ward,and in the event of a Homicide, they will bw notified immediately. Attached is a list of the Aldermen's office and their Ward break down."
  
  WTF. Since when are aldermen part of the command structure and need to be notified of shootings?

Looks like we have a summer's worth of material starting already.

Crime Down!

Looks like everything is working:

• Heading into the weekend, police hit the streets of a jittery Chicago rocked by violence. By any measure, this is an emergency. And the response is coming from all directions.
  
  [...] Mayor Richard M. Daley called a summit Friday to tackle gangs and guns, spurred by 40 shootings and 12 dead in seven days.
  
  Police Supt. Jody Weis personally inspected his troops Friday night before they hit the streets on the South Side, kicking off the first weekend of beefed up patrols to combat the recent wave of violence.

We'd like to personally take credit for doing our part in reducing the weekend casualty totals. We wrote three parkers, two contact cards and a curfew. We'd also like to thank this guy, too:


Saturday: High of 59, Low of 40

Sunday: High of 48, Low of 33 and a chance of snow?

Maybe we can get Tommy a Department Commendation?

Show of Farce

Yes, we meant "farce" in the title. Following Daley's "anti violence summit"

• Chicago police were gearing up to fight the weekend's violence with a planned outdoor roll call Friday night. SWAT and other specialized units were expected to patrol the city's streets through the late-night hours.
  
  The public show was expected to be part of the department's push to stem the violence that has erupted in the city in recent weeks. While the department has deployed SWAT in past years as a response to summer violence, the move comes earlier this year because of the recent spate of violence.

Oh yeah, this will show the gang bangers what's what:

• Those who attended the meeting also offered some suggestions. Tio Hardimon of anti-violence group CeaseFire said, "We need to meet with the business community out here and try to find employment for a lot of these young men and women. We need to go to the corners and find out what some of these young men and women want to do, identify some employers that are willing to hire maybe 30 from this neighborhood... and try to get them hired somewhere and get them off the corners."

Didn't these Ceasefire bozos lose their funding? In any event, taking highly trained SWAT officers and having them wander the neighborhoods with unloaded rifles is sure to make a difference.

Anyone remember September 2001? The old HBT squad was ordered... ORDERED! ... by the mayor to leave O'Hare and Midway airports because the sight of big bad scary rifles was "intimidating" to the citizenry. Within days of 4 airliners being hijacked and flown into buildings, this mayor wanted all the guns under wraps. We give this a day and the mayor will want all the scary guns put back out of sight again.

How Pathetic is This?

Tiny brained thinking:

• Parents of some students in the Roscoe Village neighborhood are meeting Friday morning with authorities to discuss an unusual threat that stemmed from the fatal shooting of a cougar by police nearby recently.
  
  The principal of Audubon Elementary, at 3500 N. Hoyne Ave., said someone was upset over the shooting of the cougar on April 14 on the next block south, and wrote a threatening letter to the school.
  
  [...] Officers shot the cougar dead after it reportedly charged at them. Police Supt. Jody Weis and Mayor Richard M. Daley both defended the officers' decision to use deadly force.
  
  But some neighbors complained the police officers were overzealous, and claimed that s many as two dozen shots were fired on the residential street. They said the cougar could have been dealt with using a tranquilizer instead.

CPD shoots a cougar and some nut job threatens a school fair because... because....

Sorry, we're at a loss here. A 150 pound predator that could have carried off any pet in the area, any child in the area, more than a few of the adults in the area and the only two things that got shot were (A) the cougar and (B) an air conditioning unit. What's the problem?

And then to threaten a school over what the police did? Do a lot of people in Roscoe Village suffer from brain damage or just lead poisoning?

Too Precious

His words were taken out of context gosh darn it! You media folks really have no right to go around quoting the words that come out of "reverend" Wright's mouth:

• In one clip, Wright says, "God bless America? No, God damn America!"

It's really hard to see how that could be taken "out of context." Pretty straightforward blame-America first leftist bullshit. And this quote just begs for some sarcastic retort:

• Wright, who'll retire from Trinity in June, also said that being "a target of hatred" was "something very new and something very, very unsettling."

Yeah, we guess when you've been dishing out the hatred for 20 and more years from the pulpit and no one has challenged your racist crap and conspiracy spewing rhetoric, being called to account all of the sudden instead of being enabled by fellow travelers can be "unsettling."

Quick! Don't Blink! You are witness to one of the most interesting sights in all of leftism - the attempt to whitewash a story and save a political campaign - because at this point, Obama is toast.

More Bad Publicity

But not of our making:

• Chicago Police are warning seniors about a financial scam involving phony law enforcement officers.
  
  In the scam, offenders call victims saying they are in law enforcement, such as a Chicago Police officer or FBI agent, according to a release from Belmont Area detectives.
  
  Various ruses are uses such as asking the victim's assistance in helping catch counterfeiters who have scammed one of the victims' relatives. They ask the victim to provide serial numbers of U.S. currency they are in possession of. Offenders also claim someone is using the victim's credit cards and ask the victim to participate in a sting operation, the release said.

People like this really just ought to be shot as a matter of course and their bodies left on display as a warning to others. Just like that sub human excrement drowning her own child.

Union Busting

We know the new Superintendent is pretty much in the dark when it comes to contracts and such, seeing as how the feebs don't have to work within the framework of labor agreements. But you'd think that other people close to him might have the tiniest little grasp of labor law?

Last Change Day, we noted that a bunch of Sergeants that had been listed on the Transfer Order as moving from cushy north side Districts to the far south side (003, 004, 005, etc), we're suddenly the subject of a Personnel Order canceling their reassignments.

Evidently, another Personnel Order came forth late Wednesday, effective Thursday (Change Day), rescinding another batch of transfers from the north side to Area 2 and beyond.

What's going on? And furthermore, is anyone paying attention? So far it's only white shirts being messed with, but if the Department gets on over on the PBPA, they're coming after the rank and file right afterwards. Give the City and inch and they'll take a yard, call it "precedent," and get some arbitrator to take away the bid system.

Amazing

Wow. You want to hear some Grade A Prime bullshit served up by a De Paul professor? Then we are your supplier:

• CLICK HERE for your fix

Don't go after gangs - it only fractures their territorial boundaries and forces them to fight for more space? Most if not all the guns in the ghetto come from white middle class gun dealers in downstate Illinois and rural Indiana? The upper middle class white guys working in the Financial District of downtown Chicago are supplying TONS of weed and narcotics to the west and south side gangs?

So we have a civilian who claims to have worked with gangs, ridden with "tactical officers working midnights," and even participated in some sort of capacity tracking down these upper middle class white dudes and he thinks that we shouldn't be hassling the guys on the corners. As the more sarcastic among us might say, "Way ahead of you there, brainiac."

And he's a professor. Wow. How do people like this even manage to breathe on their own?

Another Voice of Reason

Out of Rogers Park no less:

• Maybe now Mayor Daley and the Chicago Shitty Council will shut the hell up. We're long sick of hearing them chant "crime is down." Sure, it's down alright, and I'm the King of Prussia.
  
  Mayor Daley, the dumbest asshole to ever be the mayor of a big city, has personal bodyguards who are armed to the teeth. With guns, folks, guns. Are YOU allowed to carry a gun for personal protection? No sirree, Asshole Daley and the Shitheads on the City Council say that you aren't qualified to own a gun in Chicago, let alone carry one. Heavens, if people carried guns, why, something bad might happen! We wouldn't want the good guy to shoot the bad guy first, would we?

Just scanning some of the posts on this blog, we're highly amused:

• Crime is Down (Not) in Chicago
• Obama's Liberal Fascism
• We need more guns, not fewer (from which the first paragraphs come from)

A kindred soul? Definitely someone to keep an eye on.

RogersParkBench.blogspot.com

Hmmm. What's This?

An interesting take on the current situation:

• A top level authority on police attitudes told “The Chicago Daily Observer” yesterday that “there’s a good chance that murders are rising in Chicago because police are demoralized and intensely dissatisfied with conditions at the very top of the department. That doesn’t mean they’re lying down on the enforcement job, but what’s the point of pursuing a rigorous enforcement and deterrence when the department is in the hands of the civil libertarians—and punitive penalties are meted out against officers for doing their jobs effectively?”

  He said that Jody Weis’ appointment…an FBI agent who never wore a uniform nor patrolled a beat…signaled a mayoral disapproval of the department that is ruining morale. He contrasted this with the record of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani who stood by his department and beat off civil libertarians who tried to super-enforce infractions that hobbled the New York police.

The article appears in the Chicago Daily Observer. The author touches on a bunch of stuff that's been appearing in the comments for months now. We will remind people that even speaking in support of a job action such as described in this article is grounds for termination. Be careful who you voice your opinions to.

A very interesting read nonetheless.

UPDATE: post corrected for spelling

Mitchell Column

We were paging through the Sun Times archives today. As readers know, we refuse to pay for that paper and have encouraged everyone we know to cancel subscriptions. And we ran across this Mary Mitchell column:

• Truth be told, the war going on in our streets is a black and brown war.

  Most whites can escape the war.

We were bracing ourselves for another of her infamous screeds, but it never materialized. She quoted studies, statistics and other info that paints a pretty bleak picture. And that picture is damn bleak for minorities:

• According to the latest statistics put out by the U.S. Justice Department in 2005, blacks were six times more likely than whites to be victims of a homicide. And African Americans were more than seven times more likely to be perpetrators of the violence.

Cold hard facts. And since they're pointed out by a black woman, knee jerk reactionaries can't cry "racism!" as they are wont to do. We will take issue with her call for more gun laws. Gun laws only affect the law abiding, seeing as how criminals disregard the laws constantly. We don't know why liberals insist on legislating more victims, but Mary is what she is, so no big deal. Here's what we have a problem with though - her solution:

• Love is not a dirty four-letter word. [...]
  

  But we need love even more.

Love wasn't the answer back in the 60's or 70's and we doubt it's the answer now. Case in point:

• A South Side teenage mother who authorities said no longer wanted a baby because she couldn't go to parties was held on $600,000 bond Wednesday on charges that she drowned her 5-month-old daughter in a bathtub earlier this month.
• She later told authorities that she drowned the child because she no longer wanted to be a mother, officials said.
• Rodgers told police "she didn't want to be a mom anymore because she couldn't go to parties if she had to take care of the baby,"
• Planey said that Rodgers placed the baby in a full bathtub on the afternoon of April 4. When the child slid under the water, Rodgers sat and watched for several minutes

Read that last sentence again:

• When the child slid under the water, Rodgers sat and watched for several minutes
  

What woman, what mother, what human being could just place a child in a tub, watch her slide under the water and sit idly by as their own flesh and blood drowned? We've been harsh on Mitchell in the past, deservedly so for some of her more insane rantings. She seems to have turned some sort of corner in her writing as of late which is a hopeful sign. But this delving into "love" as a solution doesn't even being to address this problem of mothers drowning their children. How can you even pretend there is anything worth saving in a person that far gone?

Two-Fer, Three-Fer

A Five-Fer?

• Five people were fatally shot Wednesday afternoon inside a home in the Chatham neighborhood, police said.
  
  Deputy chief Eugene Williams says all five victims -- three men and two women -- were in their 20s. Williams also says the house showed signs of forced entry.

Reports were also that the neighborhood was looting the house while the bodies were slowly cooling off. Not a good middle of the week following a violent weekend.

And to the people who keep demanding a body tally "meter" on our front page, if you have a program that can keep up with the BS coming out of HQ, have at it. Otherwise, we have no objections to you posting a running count in our comment section if you can keep it to once a day. As always, multiple entries will be deleted.

Olympic Dream Dying?

Channel 2 picks up on the vibe:

• Supporters of Chicago's Olympic bid are concerned that the city's recent rash of deadly violence could end their dream of seeing the games here in 2016.
  
  [...] there's also concern among many South Side residents that the violence may be spiraling out of control.
  
  "With all the violence going on, who's gonna want to come here when people are getting shot left and right?" said South Side resident Erica Williams.

After all, the Olympic Village and not a few sports venues are supposed to be on the southside. Yellow and red crime scene tape might be a over the top unless we can somehow get red, green blue tape to match the Olympic colors.

J-Fed on the Radio

From the comments:

• Superintendent Jody Weis will be interviewed by Roe Conn on WLS 890AM on Thursday,April 24,08 from 2:00PM-7:00PM. I would imagine that he will be on in the early portion of the show.
  
  Encourage your friends,family and coworkers to call in and ask some tough questions while he is on the air and with anonymity.
  
  1. Why doesn't the city hire police officers? We are dangerously low,below 10,000 sworn members when it should be 13,500.
  
  2. Why is the city unjustly stripping and firing Chicago police officers?
  
  3. Why do we have to wait years for a contract and then receive a paltry 1% cost of living raise?
  
  4. Ask the Superintendent to define MERIT,this should be interesting.
  
  5. Why does MERIT exist and could the percentage be reduced to 10%.
  
  6. Ask about the nonexistent morale problem and how he will address it and boost it.
  
  7. Ask why we are still working 6 days in a row and why we don't have the ten hour day like he promised.
  
  
  Please,circulate this information to everyone and call in. Be sincere,well mannered, courteous, polite and prepared. They will screen callers to avoid this situation so you may have to fabricate a story for the call screener to get on the air. There should be thousands of calls on Thursday, jamming up WLS's phone lines for hours. This is OUR chance to present our side to the citizens of the USA. WLS is a nationally broadcast station and the show is also simulcast worldwide on the internet.

Imagine if all the calls he got were from cops. This is doable. If nothing else, it'd be entertaining as hell.

Police Memorial Week Warning

We had heard rumors of this, and in light of current events, we can believe it:

• IAD will be sending designated teams to the National Police Memorial Week in Washington DC and Illinois State Memorial in Springfield,Il to observe rule violations or G.O. infractions. Do not drink in uniform or get hammered out of uniform. Hint,stay out of Georgetown!!! You don't want to get stripped remembering a fallen brother.

When we last attended the National Memorial, some NYPD brothers told us that their IAB had sent a number of representatives to Washington after a bout of overly rambunctious behavior. A trip from New York to Washington isn't that expensive and you can drive it in a few hours.

Chicago to Washington would seem more expensive, but we don't doubt this is in the works. It's the best of both worlds for IAD - a free trip and a chance to screw cops having fun. And don't think they don't already have their own list of hotels, motels and trip itineraries all lined up for some "surveillance."

Alert 019

Here we go again:

• A week after Chicago police shot and killed a cougar in the Roscoe Village neighborhood, the possibility of another cougar roaming the western suburbs has people on edge.
  
  [...], police have taken reports of people spotting a big cat, but there's no real proof yet.
  
  "We were all kind of freaking out because we were scared it could jump over the fence or something," said softball player Cassie DeLuna.

Perhaps we should have R&D set up a "train the trainer" program so they can spread cougar killing knowledge throughout the city.

Daley Angry

From the always reliable Sneed:

• The police blotter: Sneed hears Mayor Daley, who is fit to be tied over the escalation of violent crime, has replaced new top cop Jody Weis' own right-hand man.

  • • Translation: Mayor Daley wants his own eyes and ears at the police department.

Business as usual. And this:

• • • Question No. 1: Why wasn't a plan put in place to face the predictable escalation of gang violence when the weather got warm? The violence has brought Mayor Daley's temper to a boiling point?

  • • Question No. 2: Why did Mayor Daley dismiss gang crimes specialist extraordinaire Mike Cronin, his hand-picked consultant, in the wake of his new top cop's police purge?

CRONIN CAN SAVE US!!! Looks like whoever was feeding Sneed info from the previous Administration has resurfaced.

And finally, this from the Department:

• And police plan to respond with gun, tactical and gang teams -- even SWAT officers in battle gear.

  Police Supt. Jody Weis planned to deploy SWAT as part of summer patrols, but the department is accelerating the plan because of the weekend's shootings.

SWAT? Pulling tact and gang teams from their regular assignments of keeping a lid on stuff? Robbing Peter to pay Paul once again. Except Peter is broke, destitute and living in a box under Wacker Drive.

The Patrol Division thanks you.

Statistics Say What Now?

No wonder no one can keep anything straight around here:

• Sun Times: 37 shot, 7 fatalities;
• Tribune: more than 20 wounded, 6 fatalities;
• Channel 2: 36 shot, 2 stabbed, 9 fatalities;
• Channel 5: 38 shot, 8 fatalities and 13 of the wounded were CPS honor roll students;
• Channel 7: 37 shot, 8 fatalities;
• Channel 32: 38 shot, 2 stabbed, 8 fatalities and a quadruple shooting (1 dead) at a southside McDonald's continuing the streak of violence plaguing the city since Friday.

Can't everyone get on the same page? Call the hospitals, call the morgue. And let's all agree on a specific time frame to narrow down the variations. School dismissal on Friday until midnight Sunday would seem fair.

Observations

Take them with a grain of salt:

• As noted by numerous commentators, having the bosses work weekend evenings sure cleaned up a lot of crime, didn't it?
  

• One of the wildest theories we've seen on this site, noted by a number of commentators and conspiracy theorists, could Cease Fire be using "undue influence" to fan the flames of conflict in order to restore their $12 million budget? We doubted they had that much impact on stopping the violence before - we doubt they could muster any sort of support for increasing it.
  

• Does anyone think the lack of an SOS, Gangs South, West, North or Task Force type unit going out and sweeping the corners has anything to do with the recent up-tick in aggravated batteries? TRU is not that unit, never was that unit and in light of the downsizing coming up, won't be that unit.
  

• Event numbers are NOT police work, no matter what downtown says.

Discuss.

Daley Reverses Course

What a difference a few days makes:

• Whenever disaster strikes Chicago, Mayor Daley’s knee-jerk reaction is to defend the city’s response.

  He did it after the Loop flood, the E2 nightclub disaster, the Lincoln Park porch collapse and after a downtown high-rise fire where six people died, in part, because of mistakes made by the Chicago Fire Department. He did it again last week after a minor mechanical problem turned into a four-hour service breakdown on the CTA’s Blue Line.

  On Monday, the mayor changed his tune -- big time.

And what a tune it was. Last week, the CTA did everything right, responded appropriately and promptly, professionalism all around.

Then the stories of passengers waiting for over two hours in the tunnels and 911 not being notified for an hour started popping up all weekend and Daley was forced to respond. Now there's supposed to be mandatory one day training, new policies, etc. Sound familiar? It should since it's the same old song and dance long time Chicago political watchers have been hearing for decades.

And did anyone notice that this is the exact same section of track where the 2006 derailment and botched evacuation occurred? One hundred and fifty people went to the hospital that fine day. The NTSB found that neglect of infrastructure and safety oversight was to blame. You'd think that maybe ... oh we don't know ... FIXING THE DAMN TRACKS in that section of tunnel might be a priority. Not in Richie Daley's Olympic City though.

Someone tell Huberman he has to report to the mayor's office in his ass-less chaps for his spanking.

Border Enforcement Works

Even here in Chicago:

• The number of illegal immigrants apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border is falling steeply, an indication that the economic downturn and beefed-up security could be deterring unauthorized crossings.
• Francisco Lopez, a 43-year-old illegal immigrant and the parent of two U.S.-born children, earned about $50,000 a year transporting construction material, but the work dried up and he now drives a taxi to make ends meet. "To live in America these days is to suffer," said Mr. Lopez, who lives in the Chicago area. "I'm not recommending to my friends back home that they come here. I'm thinking of leaving myself."

And the best (funniest) part?

• The U.S. border state leading the battle against illegal immigration with unprecedented tough laws has received complaints from Mexico’s government that too many Mexicans have been repatriated and the country is overwhelmed with demands for housing, jobs and schools.
• It turns out that enough illegal immigrants have either fled the U.S. or been deported that officials in the Mexican state of Sonora, which shares an extensive border with Arizona, have complained that too many of their fellow countrymen have returned. They miss the remittances sent from the U.S. as well as smaller class sizes in local schools.
• One baffled Mexican legislator, Leticia Amparano Gamez, asked in Spanish “how can they pass a law like this?” She went on to explain that Mexico is not prepared for the “tremendous problems” it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and sending money to their families return to hometowns in Sonora without jobs.

We guess they'll just have to deal with it.

Scandals in the Making

A picture has surfaced, taken from a nearby apartment building. Looks like Steinberg might be on to something:

And speaking of scandals, how about this one?

• A CNN reporter was arrested Friday in Central Park with a small amount of methamphetamine in his pocket, but he avoided jail time by agreeing to undergo drug counseling and therapy.
  
  Richard Quest, 46, was arrested around 3:40 a.m. on a count of possession of a controlled substance -- a misdemeanor that usually refers to a personal use amount of a drug. He was also charged with loitering; the park officially closes at 1 a.m.

Gee, a CNN reporter caught with dope breaking curfew in New York. The Tribune covers all the angles...or do they? Here's the New York Post take on the whole incident:

• CNN personality Richard Quest was busted in Central Park early yesterday with some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot, law-enforcement sources said.

  Quest, 46, was arrested at around 3:40 a.m. after a cop spotted him and another man inside the park near 64th Street, a police source said.

Well, for starters, it looks like the Tribune left out a whole bunch of info, but that's par for the course when the media is covering something a reporter may have been caught doing. Kind of like when that local guy with the fondness for nose candy was caught with the "lady" of the evening. Or another famous name was arrested numerous times for DUI and dope. Or another... well, the list goes on. Don't expect anything like fair reporting and you'll never be disappointed.

Secret Command Shake Up

Well, not really secret. There was a Personnel Order about it. But no one is saying much about the moves.

• Pat Daly - retired FBI - J-Fed's Chief of Staff for mere weeks is dumped (or promoted) to the new position of Chief of Strategic Deployment, effectively becoming Deputy Superintendent Shield's number two man.
• Michael Masters - civilian, Project Administrator in the Office of Budget & Management - becomes the new J-Fed Chief of Staff.

Questions:

• "Chief" of Strategic Deployment? We've had a Chief of Detectives and once upon a time a Chief of Patrol. Now we're suddenly seeing a Chief of Strategic Deployment and someone else pointed out a new Chief of CAPS that we're trying to track down. Have we been saddled with a new layer of bureaucracy that no one mentioned? A layer that seems to be numerous retired feebs?
  
• Wedging a "Chief" spot in under Shields...has he just been "Starks-ified"? Why else throw a buffer in there unless it's to stop Shields from exercising any real power?
• A civilian from OBM as Chief of Staff? If there's one thing the current mayor learned at his father's knee, it's keeping an eye on the purse strings so you know who gets what. Mr. Masters is here directly from the mayor's most closely watched domain which means he's politically reliable. Anyone think that the mayor put him there to keep a close eye on J-Fed?

More and more business as usual at the top.

Weekend Fallout

An emergency press conference?

Sun Times:

• In an especially violent weekend, no less than 31 people have been shot in Chicago -- six fatally -- and two people have been stabbed since noon Friday. The shooting victims range in age from 12 to 65.

  On Friday, 15 people were shot -- four fatally -- between noon Friday and midnight Saturday, police said.

Tribune:

• The shootings came as police announced that murders and shootings in Chicago had declined slightly this year compared with the same period last year.
  
  Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis scheduled a Sunday 3 p.m. news conference to discuss the shooting statistics and the weekend violence that left six dead and several others injured.

Are we mistaken or are they comparing the number of shootings to the same one week period as this time last year? We understood the actual aggravated batteries were up...way up. That's the trouble with lies, damn lies and statistics. No one is actually keeping track of what comparisons are being made - they just take what the government gives them and don't even think for a second that they might be manipulated.

Where's the Outrage?

We figure since CPD is taking the rap for all sorts of crap lately and everyone gets painted with the same brush, how about we spread the pain around?

• An FBI agent based in Waco has been arrested and charged with animal cruelty.

  Agent Lovett Leslie "Les" Ledger, Jr. was arrested and booked into McLennan County Jail and has been released on $3,000 bond.

  According to Arrest Affidavits, a county investigator dispatched to Estes Road in reference to a dog that was shot and killed.

  The affidavit mentions that on February 29, Ledger shot a Chihuahua that was walking in front of his house. After being shot, the dog ran into a neighbor's yard where it died.

Whoa. Big bad FBI sniper kills a Chihuahua. And you know those all those FBI guys just love to shoot helpless animals. We figure J-Fed keeps cats around just so he can kick them when he gets home. And how do we know they're the same cats?

Even the Media Notices

Channel 2:

• It was a violent night all across the city, with no fewer than 20 people shot on the streets from Friday afternoon through early Saturday. The shootings have sent more than a dozen to area hospitals and three to the county morgue. Nine of the shootings happened in a period of less than two hours on Friday night.

Channel 5:

• The weekend has gotten off to an especially violent start, with no fewer than 19 people shot on the streets of Chicago, three of them fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Saturday.

The Sun Times and Channel 5 use the same story. People are starting to notice the south and west sides are a bit... out of control? So when do they start asking Daley and J-Fed questions? Are the gangs feeling less pressure? Are the cameras failing in their stated mission of reducing crime? Why are there less guns being confiscated but shootings are up way over last year's numbers?

We're only down two homicides from 2007. If these gangsters start shooting even a little bit straighter, all the doctors at Stroger aren't going to save as many as they have been. One or two warm weekends and this town is seeing violence unlike anything since the 1990's.

Real Man of Genius

They just don't raise them the same way in Wisconsin:

• A Wisconsin man claims he was following his in-car navigational system when drove onto railroad tracks in southwest suburban Oak Lawn and got stuck. The empty car was struck by a Metra train at 94th Street and Cicero Avenue before he could move it.
  
  Oak Lawn police responded to a 911 call of a car stuck on the tracks. When they arrived, they found a 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse facing eastbound and the driver and his female passenger standing nearby, Oak Lawn Division Chief Mike Kaufmann said.
  
  [...] Kaufmann said the 24-year-old driver was obeying his GPS system when he took a right turn onto the tracks and his car's undercarriage became lodged on the rail.
  "GPS will tell you something, but you still have to pay attention to what's going on," he said.

We'll bet he sues the programmers of the GPS unit who thought that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line.

Cops OK, Bystander Hurt?

Our money would be on the goof with the AK-47:

• A 35-year-old man was hospitalized Friday evening after being shot just blocks from a police-involved shooting on the South Side. A man was shot in the 11300 block of South Emerald Avenue before 7 p.m., according to police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli. As responding officers investigated the shooting, shots were fired at the police in the 11000 block of South Union Avenue, Mirabelli said. No officers were injured. Officers recovered an AK-47 assault rifle from the Union Avenue address, Mirabelli said. A 35-year-old man was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in "trauma" condition from the Emerald Avenue address, Fire Media Affairs spokesman Joe Roccasalva said. It was not clear whether the man was shot by police or another individual.

Shot just blocks away? Our ammo can barely make it to the end of the block, even with a decent tailwind. And when it gets there, it's isn't about to do any damage.

UPDATE: This is what the front end of the unmarked Corwn Vic looked like. Think you'll see this pic in the media?

Thank god no coppers got killed.

Rumors Rumors Rumors

A few good ones:

• Captain Cynthia "the rat" White, the only person in recorded CPD history who parlayed wearing a wire into not one, not two, but three merit promotions moving from 005 to 021? What did 021 do to deserve this?
• IAD is actually going to beef up the integrity checks, flagging down officers on the street, planting dope and money in squad cars, calling in fake disturbances to see if people show up at jobs. Be very aware of who's watching.
• One-hundred people dumped from TRU? But, but, but...these were our elite! Maurer said so! Many times. We guess that these one-hundred just aren't elite enough
  

Any truth to any of this stuff? Who's got a transfer order?

Another Bloody Weekend?

What a way to start it:

• Two people were shot and killed in front of a church on the South Side on Friday night.Chicago police have begun investigating a deadly shooting that left two people dead in front of a church at 76th and Philips.

A double. Tally so far for the weekend?

What the Market Will Bear

Extreme times call for extreme measures:

• The family wanted something simple for John Mendoza -- the chance to see the 16-year-old one final time and then to say goodbye.

  But two Chicago funeral homes told the grief-stricken Mendozas this week they couldn't help, and a third offered only an abbreviated service -- all because John Mendoza had been beaten to death and the funeral homes feared gang retaliation, the Mendozas say.

  "It's crazy," said Jose Mendoza, 48, the dead boy's uncle. "Here we are trying to bury our poor nephew so he can rest in peace, and these people are being boneheads."

• Richard Modelski, owner of Modell Funeral Homes, denied that the Mendozas were refused service.

  But any time someone dies violently, Modelski takes precautions, he said, including requiring a $2,000 fee to pay for extra security.

We've been checking various constitutions, and there is no right to a funeral and burial listed that we can find. And we don't blame the funeral homes in the least for charging extra for security and whatever else they need to run their business properly and safely.

We would certainly hope the courts see it that way also.

Secret Compartments Legal

This is amusing:

• The Illinois Supreme Court declared Thursday that a state law banning secret compartments in cars is unconstitutional.
  
  A unanimous court said the 1999 law meant to discourage gang members from hiding guns from police was too broad and penalized innocent conduct.
  
  Justices ruled on two cases in which police stopped cars with empty air bag compartments. During one, in Cook County in 2004, police found a BB gun. The other, a 2006 stop in Grundy County, turned up a large amount of money.
  
  [...] "Just as citizens are not required to display their worldly possessions to the general public, neither are they required to exhibit them for the plain view of law enforcement," Karmeier wrote.

So the compartments themselves are now legal. What does this do to certain "trap experts" jobs? As it's legal to have a trap in your vehicle, it logically follows that it must be a constitutionally protected space, subject to search only by warrant or consent. New directives anyone?

Pride Goes Before the Fall

This is just a bad set up:

• The tree-eating beetle led to the removal and destruction of more than 1,700 trees in the state.
  
  Five years have passed without a sighting of the black and white insect and now federal and state officials have declared they are all gone.
  
  The last infestation was detected in Chicago's Oz Park in 2003. The first infestation broke out in Ravenswood in 1998.

We give it under 3 years and someone spots another one.

It's only a matter of time. We're better off breeding a tree that's immune to the beetles.

Another Dumb Idea

This goof passed law school?

• You would automatically go to jail if convicted of carrying an unregistered gun within 1,000 feet of a Chicago school, park, courthouse or public housing development, under a plan unveiled by Mayor Daley on Wednesday.

  Calling it a "common sense" gun law, Daley wants to stiffen city codes for such offenses by hiking the misdemeanor penalty from a $300 to $500 fine to a $1,000 to $1,500 fine. He would also impose a jail term of 90 days to six months.

"convicted of carrying an unregistered gun"? But no common citizen has been allowed to legally register a gun in Chicago since the early 80s. You can't convict someone for failing to do something that you never allowed them to do in the first place.

Once again, criminalizing the citizens who just want a chance to defend themselves against armed predators. Not in Daley's Chicago!

Oh No He Didn't

Think the mayor and J-Fed will be taking up our defense in this portion of the cougar case? From Neil Steinberg's column:

• Is it true that after the police shot that cougar in Roscoe Village, a Chicago cop knelt by the animal and was just planting a handgun next to its limp paw when another officer whispered, "Now Bill, there's no need for that here."
  
  Sorry, cheap shot.

Oh, that's OK Neil. We understand you have a column to write. By the way, can you find even a single example of a Chicago cop planting a weapon at a crime scene in the past 10 years? 15? 20? Didn't think so.

How are those AA meetings going? Beat your wife lately? Those bruises healing up? Can she come out from the house to do a bit of gardening anytime soon or is it a bit soon for that? Have you finally conquered the alcohol driven demons caused you to beat the living crap out of a woman you pledged to "love and honor"?

Sorry, cheap shots.

Fuck you, you sanctimonious piece of shit.

Another Cougar?

More sightings reported up north:

• Police and wildlife biologists hovered low in a helicopter over the Skokie Lagoons Wednesday in a futile search for a second cougar after a police officer, two joggers and another person reported seeing a large mountain lion Monday, hours after a 2-year-old cougar was shot and killed by police in Chicago.
  
  The sightings prompted vigorous searches on foot Monday night and Tuesday of the 1,500-acre lagoon between Willow Road and Lake Cook Road in northeast Cook County, near the lake, said Chris Anchor, a wildlife biologist with the Cook County Forest Preserve District who participated in Wednesday's air search.

Through some of our suburban sources, SCC has been able to get one of the fliers that local police are passing out to residents and volunteer spotters:


Someone let Bruce Willis know.

More Indictments

How much more do we have to be smacked around before everyone completely gives up doing any police work for this mayor, this superintendent and this town?

Shortcuts wouldn't seem to rise to the level of "Official Misconduct" and certainly not to the level of 5 to 10 in the joint.

Read the Sun Times article if you care. We're rapidly losing our ability to care at all.

UPDATE: We didn't endorse lying. Stop thinking we did. But if you want cops to follow every single procedural nicety written by someone who has no idea what actual enforcing the law entails, you're going very shortly have no cops on the street. Or at least none doing any proactive police work.

Bloody Tues Night / Wed Morning

At least eleven shootings?

Two dead?

And one of them in 016?

It's going to be a wild summer.

And where's that contract?

Cougar Comments

You can hop over to the Tribune or the Sun Times and check some some truly ignorant comments. Ignorant not just from the standpoint that we (the police) should have snuggled the cute little pussy cat, found it a nice warm saucer of milk and maybe a small yuppie child to sate its hunger prior to finding it a fully furnished condo in Lincoln Park zoo, but ignorant in how the City and its different departments operate. A few points:

• One of the comments asks why Animal Control wasn't called to take the cougar into custody. Animal Control is lucky to have two trucks up at any given time. Response times in our experience run from 5 hours to 3 days. And even if they show up with a tranquilizer gun, there's only one dosage for the dart - FATAL. You read that correctly. Animal Control only uses one dosage because to do otherwise might aggravate the animal beyond all control or unduly inflict pain. So to keep it simple for the Animal Control idiots, they only overdose animals. Daley's first round of budget cuts destroyed Animal Control years ago, leaving them undermanned, under equipped and full of incompetent political hacks - but who's going to complain? The dogs and cats?
• Someone else bitched that after the recent pit bull attack of a woman by five strays, those dogs are in the pound and why aren't the police killing those dogs? Newsflash! CPD kills upwards of fifty, sometimes more dogs a year on the street, all without incident, news coverage or wounded bystanders. A certain new Captain was famous for it in a number of districts. Isn't a situation that ends with no civilians hurt, no cops hurt and only a completely replaceable air conditioning unit damaged something that ought to be chalked up as a win?

This is the public we've sworn to serve? That we're supposed to protect from not only four legged animals, but the two legged ones that will rob, rape, steal and kill them without a second thought? No wonder Daley is in a stuttering panic - his media puppets are raging out of control over a freaking cougar and it's making the citizenry edgy.

Obama Digs a Hole

Beginning of the end maybe?

Pennsylvania
Democrats	Mar 7-8	Mar 26-27	Apr 5-6	Apr 11-13
Clinton	52%	51%	45%	57%
Obama	41%	39%	45%	37%
Someone else	1%	2%	4%	2%
Undecided	6%	8%	6%	4%

April 5-6, Obama and Hillary tied.

Then the small-town, bitter, unemployed, religious gun nuts of Pennsylvania hear the gospel according to Obama and he's in a 20% point hole seven days later.

Anyone else wonder how this is going to play out in the small towns of Indiana and Kentucky that have their primaries next? There aren't too many places left that aren't made up of anything but small towns. Oh, and they like their flag lapel pins, too. And they usually stand with their hands over their hearts for the Pledge and National Anthem. Just thought we'd point that out to the junior senator from Illinois.

Go read the whole article over at HotAir.com.

Hypocrite, Thy Name is Obama

You think Obama doesn't know what a pile of shit he stepped in ragging on small town Americans? Does anyone remember this comment about not wearing a flag pin?

• "I decided I won't wear that [lapel] pin on my chest," he said in the interview. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testament to my patriotism."

And what magically appears on Obama's suit today?

This guy is toast in Pennsylvania. And he's going to have a load of explaining to do in Kentucky and Indiana. In the meantime, the Rezko trail continues and Obama's name appears every so often, usually at dinners and assorted fund raisers.

Will Hillary catch up? Probably not. But if she strings together a set of late primary victories, the super-delegates are going to have a hard decision to make - nominate Obama who has more votes, but is a wounded and fading candidate or nominate Hillary who would appear to have momentum, but trails in every single poll, has negatives over 50%, and will galvanize the Right like no other candidate in history.

God help us, we love this stuff. Thanks to redstate.com for the photo.

SCC Exclusive

Lawsuit to be filed this afternoon.

Cougar Shot, Killed

Photos from the Sun Times and Tribune.

Coverage at the Tribune, Times, Channel 2 and Channel 5.

No word on protest marches and reverends shrieking about specie-ism on the part of the Police, though we expect the comments to be quite lively today.

One of the quoted individuals says the cat was untagged, leading to speculation this could have been an exotic pet. If not, and as evidenced by a booming coyote population, we might just be seeing a resurgence of medium sized predators returning to the area.

UPDATE: This quote is great:

• "It concerns me that this many shots were fired with children present and in close proximity to children," said David Cerda, resident.

No word about how concerned he is that a 150 pound killing machine is running around loose in a neighborhood filled with children and pets, restricted only by 6 foot high fences.

Give College Kids an Inch...

...and they'll run like hell with it.

Example #1:

• St. Xavier University has closed until further notice after two threatening graffiti messages were found at a freshman dorm. The latest promised people would die on Monday.

Resulting in Example #2:

• Malcolm X College on Chicago's West Side has been evacuated after a written threat was found on campus.
  
  Chicago police explosives experts and their bomb-sniffing dogs raced to the West Side campus late Monday morning. A threatening message found inside a bathroom stall had prompted the action, along with the evacuation of some 900 students who were attending classes.

And resulting in over reaction here:

• Threats of violence on one college campus have left several other Chicago schools closed for the day.
  
  [...] school officials say closing the schools is a matter of security; they'd rather be safe than sorry.

  The schools closed Monday are Mother McAuley High School, Brother Rice High School, Queen of Martyrs Elementary School and Evergreen Park Southwest Elementary.
  

Where do we find a middle ground?

Thanks CFD

Anything to take the spotlight away is appreciated!

• The Chicago Fire Department has banned all personal computers at fire stations amid an investigation into whether a firefighter inappropriately used his at work, an official said Monday.
  
  The department issued a general order to all firefighters on April 2 that personal computers could no longer be used at stations.
  
  While officials said the prohibition had been in the works for months, it was just issued after an investigation was launched into the firefighter's allegedly inappropriate use of a personal computer.

Look for Daley to use this as another hammer to try to take away the 24 hour schedule.

Obama Pro Gun?

Hahahaha. From a blog called "mainehuntingtoday" we get this gem:

• [I]n 1996, Obama filled out a candidates’ questionnaire. In that questionnaire, he was asked if he was in favor of legislation to, “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.” Unlike most politicians who never come right out and answer a question, Obama’s answer was one three-letter word.

  “Yes”

Obama supports the Washington DC gun ban - the one that's about to be struck down by the US Supreme Court:

• “There is an individual right to bear arms, but it is subject to common-sense regulation just like most of our rights are subject to common-sense regulation.”………….“I think that local jurisdictions have the capacity to institute their own gun laws . . . the City of Chicago has gun laws, as does Washington, D.C.” He went on, “The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can’t initiate gun safety laws . . . isn’t borne out by our Constitution.”

Rights are "subject to common-sense regulation"? Since when? They are Unalienable Rights granted by the "Creator" according to the document we read. The state is not entitled to regulate them out of hand.

And from PajamasMedia:

• Obama said in the 1998 Illinois State Legislative National Political Awareness Test that he favored a ban on the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
• The semi-automatic firearms Barack Obama would like to see banned include rifles and shotguns commonly used for defense, hunting, and many forms of target shooting.

Anyone who thinks Obama is pro gun is simply an idiot - a useful idiot as Lenin would say.

UPDATE: post corrected for attribution

The Daley Way

Anyone who forgets who actually runs things in this city, county and state really ought to read Kass from last Friday:

• You might think the mayor is going ahead with his plans over the objections of his citizens because clout heavy rich people like Gigi Pritzker want it so. You'd be wrong. If Sorich stood next to Pritzker, she wouldn't know him. She might even flip him the keys to her car and tell him to be careful.
  
  But without Sorich, Daley wouldn't be able to defy his city and the local alderman by pushing for the museum that no one wants.

He owns the courts, the governor, the next governor, the county board, etc. Go read the whole thing.

New Rumor and Debunking a Rumor

This one has popped up once or twice now:

• sat morning 3rd district desk sergeant gets a call from a PO due to work day shift. PO needs 8 hours, desk Sgt asks why? PO says he s sick. Sgt says you sound fine to me. Sgt says you might have to come in. PO says I can't I'm sick. Desk Sgt refers him to watch commander. Someone is sent to his house and he answers door and they smell alcohol from him being hungover. They make him blow and hes stripped. There might be more to story but that's what I got.

BS? Or not BS? We're looking for info.

The following rumor however, isn't getting any traction:

• suburban departments have been contacted by J-Fed and been requested to call CPD Internal Affairs when an officer is suspected in any sort of wrong doing

We've reached out to a few people in the surrounding jurisdictions who in turn reached out to a few other people and everyone comes back with the same report - no such contact has been made with their departments at this time. But let's face it - why would anyone put their own careers in jeopardy in light of the way the winds are blowing at the moment? Continue to watch yourselves and your partners.