Pull Out of Area One

That's it. We're done. We are calling for the unilateral withdrawal of all Coalition Forces from the country of Iraq... oh wait, sorry, that was the Democratic acceptance speech.

We're calling for the withdrawal of all Chicago Police Department forces from Area One. The neighborhood does not want us there, they don't appreciate what we do and they don't want us in their business any more.

• Chicago police have been involved in at least eight shootings in the last two weeks, including five that were fatal.

  Saturday's marchers claimed the deadly force has been unwarranted.

  "Enough is enough. If you cant' do the job, you're scared to come to our neighborhoods, maybe you need to find another profession," said Ashanda Harrison, the aunt of a shooting victim.

  "You expect them [children] to get shot, growing up in the city, by some thugs on the streets, but not by the Chicago Police Department," said another woman attending the march, who was identified as a shooting victim's mother.

You expect your children to get shot? That's funny, because we don't expect that at all where we live. Why would that be? Wait a minute - we're having a revelation here. The spirit of enlightenment is coming down upon us! Lawd have mercy!!!!!!

• YOU ARE FUCKING MORONS!

Maybe the reason that your precious children keep getting shot is that you have no control over them, you don't know what they're doing, who they're hanging out with and what caliber pistol they're packing. And if you aren't going to raise junior properly and tell him that pointing guns at people is bad, and pointing guns at someone else who has a gun is really fucking bad, then we are just going to have to withdraw from your neighborhood and let the inmates run the asylum - after we kill your idiot spawn, of course.

Hey auntie and mama? Fuck you both. We'd love to get other jobs where the chance of going home each and every day to see our family was a certainty. Because we love them, cherish them and don't see them as expendable commodities to the dope trade and, god forbid, a fucking lottery ticket.

Fuck Area One. Now and forever. If anyone does a lick of work for people like this...

One Full Year

Today at midnight will mark one full year without a contract.

Has anyone else seen realistic progress in the contract talks? Neither have we. All we see is J-Fed and his cronies attempting to circumvent agreements, protections and precedent.

Arbitration anyone?

Smug People (Southside Version)

This is a broom. You sweep things with it. We won't even bother to look around for pictures of people carrying the things. But you can bet there are going to be thousands of them walking around down south.

Deja vu.

Firefighter Investigator Shot

Stray round? Targeted shooting while he was collecting evidence? No one is saying.

• After a lone arson investigator was shot early Sunday as he checked an alley where a Molotov cocktail had been tossed against a house, the Chicago Fire Department will change its policy and have investigators work in pairs, the fire commissioner said.
  
  The incident was the first time that a firefighter had been shot and wounded since about 1968, said Fire Commissioner Raymond Orozco. Paramedics have been shot at over the years, but department officials could not recall any being hit.
  

Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Keep an eye on these guys - yeah, we have our rivalries, but they're still on the First Responder team.

Brooms at the Ready

Saturday's game was one of the better games we've seen. In person. Well played all around with a bit of drama right at the end. A sweep will make for interesting discussions until next year. What does everyone do? Argue who scored more runs so their team wins the season series? It just increases the rivalry factor, that's for certain.

Chicago - Nanny State

Great take on what Daley hath wrought:

• [...] Chicago seems to have lost a bit of its hard edge. The town that poet Carl Sandburg called "a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities" has itself gone soft, thanks to meddlesome politicians and public health officials who think Chicagoans aren't capable of making their own decisions about health, risk and vice.
• At Reason Magazine, we recently took a look at how the 35 most-populous cities in the United States balance individual freedom with government paternalism. We ranked the cities on how much freedom they afford their residents to indulge in alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex, gambling and food. And, for good measure, we also looked at the cities' gun laws, use of traffic and surveillance cameras, and tossed in an "other" category to catch weird laws such as New York's ban on unlicensed dancing, or Chicago's tax on bottled water.
  
  The sad news, Chicagoans, is that your town came in dead last. And it wasn't even close.

Go read the entire piece. Remember what Chicago used to be.

And what Daley has done to kill it.

Alleviating Shortages

One of the more observant comments we've seen lately. The entire comment is in the post titled "Changes in Duty Status at 6/28/2008 10:27:00 AM. Here's the money paragraphs:

• [...] As far as assigning L/D people to the desk and pushing the 6 extra people to the street is OK with me. My roll call is empty but the parking lot is full with cars from the CAPS office that has three times the authorized strength! If Jody put out an order that W/C’s will be the subject of a CR# if they sign A&As that show people on the street that are actually working upstairs we could man at least 7 more cars on days alone! Plus another 5 to 6 on the desk!
  
  J-Fed should order a fire drill next week at HQ and make all the people stand in the parking lot by rank. He will see that there are way to many young Sgt.s in that building. In the army we had one Sgt for every eight grunts. You have one Sgt for every three grunts. Then have all the P.O.s and Sgt.s with revolvers go back into the building. I think he will see that the building has way too many young females, most who are related by birth or marriage to your command staff! That’s your answer Jody. Send everyone with less than 15 yrs. back to patrol!
  
  You could start with your own office boss. Yes you should pick your own staff. But how many of your full duty people could be replaced by L/D IOD officers? How many of your own staff have full duty family members on the job and and not working in the field? Before you rain on everyone else you could put your own house in order. Lead by example sir. But I’ll bet you are being kept in the dark by your own staff or your exempts about those little secrets. [...]
  
  1977 revolver police!

It'd get us at least fifteen bodies per district where we work. The trouble would then be that we have no cars available for them to drive anyway.

Summing Up Daley's Nonsense

From one of our very own commentators:

• Daley...called the Supreme Court's overturning of the Washington D.C. handgun ban "a very frightening decision"
  
  I think Thomas Jefferson had some apropos comments for this...
  
  "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
  
  Sounds to me like the system is in good working order.

It certainly does. For the moment. Maybe a little more fear on the government's part is in order though.

Returning the Favor

The Sox handed the Cubs a spanking to open up the weekend series. The comforts of being at home.

Afternoon game today, night game Sunday. Bragging rights on the line.

And under 90 days until hockey season.

More Guns = More Burglaries?

A couple of comments popped up today about how if everyone has guns, this will only lead to an increase in burglaries, thereby providing criminals with a steady supply of guns.

Talk about a real stretch of the imagination. Crime goes down exponentially when more guns are around according to every reputable study, and that includes property crime.

First up, we were hoping for a reduction in the population of jagoffs once a few of them get killed breaking into houses that have an available means to defend the home.

Secondly, go out and buy a decent gun safe, install it properly and most burglars aren't going to waste time trying to move it. They want simple, easily disposable items. A safe lag bolted to the floor is probably one of the better ways to secure your gun. A stand up gun safe weighing a few hundred pounds is a great place to store important papers along with your gun(s). Tucked away in a sock drawer? Not so good.

But this just goes to show the typical liberal thinking that goes into a concerted effort to deprive law abiding people from exercising their Rights as guaranteed by the Constitution.

BIS Program Fallout

What's this all about?

• ###ATTENTION###
  To all the P.O's that received their letters in the mail from the FOP regarding the BIS program DO NOT SIGN IT. If you do, it prevents you from seeking any form of compensation in the future. The FOP has some balls entering into an agreement with the city concerning this matter without even consulting the people that were in the program to begin with. Then trying to order the P.O's to agree to it.
  ****************************
  Fellow P.O.'s if you were placed on BIS or Personal concerns and received a letter in the mail pay attention. DO NOT SIGN THE AGREEMENT! It is the City and the FOP's way of trying to mislead us and not have any responsibility for their actions. REPEAT DO NOT SIGN THE AGREEMENT!
  
  *******************************
  

We're aware that the City recently admitted to "mistakenly" placing or keeping a few hundred officers in the BIS program. With such an admission, why wouldn't everyone be entitled to some sort of restitution, compensation or what not?

Someone care to enlighten the masses?

Off Duty PO Shot

Robbery gone bad:

• An off-duty officer was shot early Friday on the South Side.

  The officer was approached by a gunman about 3:20 a.m. in the 8200 block of South Evans Avenue and the two exchanged gunfire, police News Affairs Officer David Banks said.

  The officer was shot, possibly in the hand, and taken to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County with non-life-threatening injuries.

  The gunman fled the scene following the shooting.
  

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to the Officer.

Changes in Duty Status?

Rumblings abound over some meeting allegedly held downtown regarding the status of light duty personnel. One story has these people being shipped out to desk spots across the City, thereby freeing up able bodied personnel for street duty.

This doesn't address the bid spots that are covered under the contract, that same contract that J-Fed and his cronies seem to have so much trouble understanding protects certain jobs.

Another story has these people being forced off the job and accepting some form of duty disability. Again, they are covered under an existing labor contract and simply forcing them off the job would probably violate any number of clauses.

Anyone have the real story?

Silly Statements

Geez, did Daley turn on the bullshit today or what?

• An angry Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday called the Supreme Court's overturning of the Washington D.C. handgun ban "a very frightening decision" and vowed to fight vigorously any challenges to Chicago's ban.

Frightening? In what way? That people might be able to defend themselves in their own homes with perfectly legal firearms when the police are far away? And as to the fighting vigorously, on behalf of voters everywhere, stay the fuck away from deciding what's good for us. You work for us and we're telling you loud and clear to stay the hell away from our guns.

• City officials expressed confidence the city would prevail in any court challenge, asserting, among other things, that the 2nd Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights restricts the federal government and does not apply to state and local governments.

Better re-read the opinion "city officials" and then take a civics course. ISRA and the NRA are going to beat the crap out of you in a civil trial. Surrender. Other articles:

• An “outraged” Mayor Daley this morning denounced a U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Washington D.C.’s handgun ban as a “frightening decision” and a “return to the days of the Wild West.”

Forty-eight states in the country have concealed carry or "shall issue" laws. And guess what? The streets are only running red with blood in Washington DC, Chicago and areas where the law abiding citizens are forbidden the means to defend themselves. No "wild west" anywhere. In fact, double digit crime reductions are the norm. Seems the citizens know better than Daley and crew. How about this insanity - is this English?

• But, how do you get a gun into your house? Does it fly in by a stork? You purchase a gun. You carry the gun in a car. You come to your home. And we’ve shown time and time again how many children have been killed in their homes by guns. Parents are away, they get the guns….The child takes the gun, runs out in the street, has an argument, comes back and shoots somebody.”

Would you care to share any of this alleged "study" where these statistics come from? What's that smell? Smell like ass. Did you pull this stats out of your ass Mr. Mayor? A properly secured weapon and a properly educated child eliminates this straw man argument instantly. But then, being a brainwashed Machine democrat, Daley doesn't believe in personal responsibility - the nanny state government knows best and has already decided guns are scary and evil.

• Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis today said that 75 percent of Chicago’s murders involve firearms. So far this year, Chicago Police have responded to 15,000 “man with a gun” calls and 27,000 calls of “shots fired.”

And would J-Fed like to tell the public exactly how many of the "shots fired" calls or "man with a gun" calls or how many of the thousands of "confiscated" guns were registered according to existing unconstitutional laws? We'd imagine the number approaches zero with astonishing speed. How about all the murders (up 13% at last count) committed with registered guns? Again, if not zero, darn near zero.

Gun registration and regulation does nothing to prevent crime, it only makes criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens.

Fifteen Minutes After Heller...

...and the Illinois Rifle Association had a lawsuit filed in Federal Court.

15 minutes.

You think these guys were waiting for this decision to come down?

Anyone want to guess how much tax money Daley is going to spend attempting to fight what is already a lost battle? Someone really needs to explain what a US Supreme Court decision means to this alleged law school graduate.

J-Fed Kabuki Theater

Welcome to the wonderful world of Chicago:

• A Humboldt Park mother who was publicly blamed for her young son's shooting by top Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis has demanded an apology and retraction from him.

  An attorney for Jessica Perez called Weis' characterization of her an "absolute lie'' and threatened to file a defamation lawsuit unless Weis issues a public apology.

We agree with Weis's statement that the parents bear responsibility for placing their child in harms way. However, we stand by our contention that this isn't something you say out loud in Chicago. J-Fed has two choices:

• Stand by his statement and risk a financial penalty, possibly costing him a largish portion of his 3-year $1 million salary since the "top notch" lawyers at Corp Counsel will be arguing he wasn't really making a statement in his "official" capacity but rather venturing an opinion based on faulty data (mom is contending that she has no criminal background).
• Or we bear witness to one of the rarest of sights - an ex-FBI agent publicly removing his own balls and apologizing, thereby completely losing the respect and trust of those he's supposed to lead...oh wait, he did that with the Cozzi incident.

Never mind.

Good News is Hard to Find

But golly, we found some:

• A Chicago man has been charged with burglary for allegedly posing with two other men as Water Department employees to enter the South Side home of a 93-year-old man and rob it.

  [...] The men told the elderly resident they needed to shut off a valve in his basement. An off-duty police officer observed the men on the porch and saw their white van in front of the home, police said.

  [...] The offenders then left the home, one fleeing on foot and the other in the white van. The off-duty police officer apprehended Miller when he left the home, police said.

In a related development, Commander Frank Gross contacted this off-duty officer and asked him why he wasn't working the movie detail. When the officer appeared confused, Commander Gross told him that he'd never be working the movie detail again anyway because the officer failed to contact his superiors in regard to the off-duty incident.

Up and Running!!!

We're baaaaack!

Open post while we transfer everything over. Big thanks to Crimefile, SecondCitySarge, ShavedLongCock and everyone else who offered us the temporary use of their sites and informed readers what was going on.

And a bigger thanks to everyone who stuck around, checking in, sending comments and words of support.

Heller Today

Since we don't know when Blogger will get around to release the blog from blog-purgatory, we can't definitively say if we'll have an open post for the DC v Heller decision. If we do get publishing, this is the post. If not, this will appear a day or two late and who knows what will have happened in the meantime.

Run with it people.

UPDATE: US Supreme Court strikes down D.C. gun ban. Entire decision can be found here, now. The opinion stresses that the decision won't change "longstanding bans on gun possession by felons or the mentally retarded, or laws barring guns from schools or government buildings, or laws putting conditions on gun sales." (quoting from The Ace of Spades)

Discussion on various websites listed to the right, we're sure.

Oh, the Humanity!

Now where's our check?

• The family of a man fatally shot by police early Sunday is suing the city Wednesday after officers used what the family is calling excessive force in the fatal shooting of Shapell Terrell.

  About 1 a.m. Sunday, police fatally shot Terrell in the 2300 block of East 85th Street. The 39-year-old garbage man was pronounced dead on the scene at 4:40 a.m. Sunday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said.

  Nina Eskridge and Shapell Terrell Jr. -- two of the slain man’s six children -- and his father, James Terrell, filed suit against the city Wednesday claiming Shapell Terrell was unarmed and the shooting of their family member was “excessive” and “unreasonable.”

And the amusing part?

• The Independent Police Review Authority recovered two handguns at the scene and “will be investigating whether the officers’ conduct was consistent with department policy and Illinois state law,” the agency’s chief, Ilana Rosenzweig, said.

Not one gun...TWO. And they can still claim he was unarmed and "gunned down." Only in Daley's Chicago.

Share the Traffic

Second City Sarge has a great essay by Lt. David Grossman posted up. Anyone who has ever read the "Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs" article always remembers it. It's timeless, poignant and dead on target.

Forgotten Chicago Update

Over at Forgotten Chicago, they've updated their archives with pics and stories about old police stations (just like they promised us they would).

We've been in a few of these stations, visiting and working. If anyone has other pictures these guys may be able to use, they have contact info at the bottom of the page. We're sure there is a treasure trove of stuff that has never seen the light of day. Now is your chance to get rid of some of those boxes in the attic.

DC v Heller Decision Today?

Regardless, as soon as it comes out from the US Supreme Court, each and every link in the side bar will have all sorts of opinions, especially the "Links for Right Thinking People" and the local media links. If it goes the way it's supposedly leaning, expect lots of screaming from the "reverends," the mayor and media outlets along with various celebratory posts from the right.

Ridiculous Question

The Sun Times has an article here:

• A group of pastors gave the Independent Police Review Authority an "F" after meeting with its director Monday over a recent spike in fatal shootings by Chicago Police officers.

  The authority takes too long to complete investigations into shootings by officers, the Rev. Robin Hood said.

The Tribune has video of a "reverend" with this fine quote:

• "What happened to the days of police saying "Halt!" and "Drop your weapon." Why do you feel that you have to shoot so quickly?"

Why do we feel we have to shoot so quickly? Hmmm. Let's see:

• A 17-year-old boy was killed and three men injured Monday night when four males in a van opened fire on them in an apparently gang-related drive-by on the South Side.
• A 19-year-old allegedly shot by a rival gang member while driving in a funeral procession Monday on the Southwest Side died of a fatal gunshot wound to the arm, an autopsy Tuesday revealed.
• A man slain on the South Side was involved in an argument before he was shot late Monday, police said.The shooting occurred at the intersection of West 102nd Street and South Lafayette Avenue, according to Calumet District police.
• Shots fired from outside hit a man in a bedroom Monday night in an Avalon Park community house on the South Side.
• A Chicago man was shot to death on the Near West Side on Monday, Chicago police officials said.

And that's just skimming the Monday papers. Seems like the streets are violent, especially when the police aren't around. So it only makes sense that officers are prepared mentally for confrontations with armed individuals and they are determined to be better at winning those confrontations than not. This isn't "High Noon" where people walk up a dusty main street toward each other and try to out draw the competition. These are criminals attempting to avoid prison by any and all means, including killing police officers.

And all the stats you see quoted by the "reverends" that shootings are up? Lies. Shootings are down - we've just hit a heavy stretch at the moment.

And here's the only thing that matters - "You just fulfilled the first rule of law enforcement: make sure when your shift is over you go home alive. Here endeth the lesson." Sean Connery as Jim Malone in "The Untouchables"

Another GOOD Shooting

Once again, convicted felon, on parole for previous weapons violations, running around with a .357 which he pointed at police. End result? Another altar boy who was just about to turn his life around becomes worm food:

• Eighteen-year-old Luis Colon was shot and killed by police.

  Police cordoned off the area where the shooting occurred at 5 p.m. in the 2700-block of North Kilbourn. Police were reportedly questioning several people in connection to the case.

  A police source told ABC7 that officers approached a group of young people on the street and one man turned and walked away. When officers tried to stop him, the source said that person reached for a weapon in his waistband and pointed it at officers. Then, officials said, the officers opened fire. Witnesses said they heard six shots fired.

Witnesses on scene admit he had a gun. A gun was recovered. The neighborhood is a described "gang war" zone. And Mama has the quote of the day:

• "They're here to serve and protect, not to kill," said mother Maria Colon, crying. "They're killing innocent people."
• "They could've shot him in the leg. They could've shot him in the arm. Why did they shoot to kill him?" said Maria Colon in tears.

He wasn't innocent Mama. He was a convicted felon who had a bad habit of carrying a gun. And witnesses who say he had a gun again. That isn't "innocent" by any definition of the word. And the reason we shoot to kill is because that's the way we're trained. Neutralize the threat and continue to fire until such time as the threat is no longer a threat. If that means one shot and they drop the gun, great. If that means six shots to center mass, oh well. If it means twenty-five shots against a jagoff carrying and pointing two guns at the police a few days ago, so be it. The ammo is free.

J-Fed Speaks Truth - Will He Be Fired?

You can think this all you want - most coppers do. But you can never ever speak it aloud:

• An 8-year-old boy was in the hospital Tuesday afternoon after being shot overnight in Humboldt Park in an attack that appears to be gang-related. But in an unexpected twist, Chicago's top cop blamed the boy's parents for the tragedy.
• "I hate to say it, but the parents are to blame for that 8-year-old being shot. They choose to engage in this activity," Weis said. "(The father is) engaging in gang activity and, more than likely, he's probably breaking some laws. ... As long as we have people who are willing to break the law and engage in criminal activities, these are some of the consequences that we face. We have an innocent boy whose dreams will be shattered, whose family's dreams are shattered and it's horrible and we've got to do something about it."

We know exactly who's to blame. So does the mayor. The media might or might not - they're all pretty stupid. But you aren't allowed to say it out loud. The reverends get all antsy, the media screams, and the mayor might lose votes. Mope-rah might write a whole column about it depending on the her med levels.

Here's the thing - nothing good ever comes of kids being on the street after 8 p.m. Never. And this kids was in a van in a crappy neighborhood at 10 p.m. You know why decent people with jobs and their children are almost never the victims of drive-by shootings after dark? Because they're all in bed!

Kids can't choose their parents and what happened to this 8 year old was a completely preventable occurrence. J-Fed called this one right - but what will be the fallout for speaking the truth?

More Bad News

Now the supervisors are getting in on the act:

• Scandal in the Police Department? Sneed hears rumbles a female police sergeant from a South Side district was relieved of her street duties Sunday when it was discovered she had a man in her car who was later identified as a gunman at a gang-related shooting. Police are investigating whether she drove him to the scene of the crime or just had him in her car and let him go.

  • • The shocker? Internal Affairs is trying to determine if the suspect was the sergeant's boyfriend.

  • • The upshot: Sneed is told the police sergeant has been assigned to the CPD's callback unit, where she handles complaints from the public by telephone -- the only on-the-job contact she is allowed with civilians. The shooting victim is reportedly in serious condition.

Accessory before and/or after the fact? Great fucking headline that's going to be. And of course, a clout heavy "merit" selection, covered for her entire career. We seem to recall a number of "red flag" type instances following this person around along with a stint running the "Pole-ease" Stripper Academy.

And this is only one incident. Appearing all over the comment sections is another off duty, clout heavy, "merit" selection in the process of getting numerous responding officers stripped in the 019 District for his drunken shenanigans involving a handcuffed prisoner and lots of cell phone video.

As previously suggested, can we start outing their clout that keeps giving us these stellar examples of what not to do on and off duty?

UPDATE: Numerous readers are saying the female Sergeant wasn't merit. We've heard both yes and no, but her assignments seem to lean toward someone who is being taken care of in a quid pro quo manner. Perhaps she was legit and as soon as the City releases all the "merit" promotion lists from years past, we'll know for sure. Just be aware of the different versions.

Inspirational!

Did you all catch the story about the drive by shooting offenders caught near the movie set of the Johnny Depp film "Public Enemies"? Officer witnesses a bit of gun play, corners the offender's vehicle, holds five individuals until help arrives, then returns to the movie set to finish his job.

If what was related in the comment section is true, we just want to run out and do everything we possibly can for J-Fed, the mayor and the Department:

• [...] now word is this detective who was working on the movie set and was 10-99 at the time, witnesses a drive by shooting while blocking street traffic for the movie. He cornered the vehicle and was able to keep 5 gang bangers with a gun at bay by himself and called for assistance. Once the on duty district cops showed up, he turned the whole thing over to them and went back to blocking the street.
  
  His rewards for his efforts? He was told since nobody notified the movie detail unit (the detective did immediately notified his movie detail supervisor sgt, as to what happened with the drive by and arrest) the Commander of Special Events, Cmdr. Gross, had this officer told that he won't be working the movie detail anymore!
  
  Hmmmmmmmm... makes a great stop and arrest, nobody gets hurt, 5 gang bangers shooting from a car are arrested and the gun with expended shells was recovered and this officer is PUNISHED? This Cmdr Gross should be FIRED! What a pompous asshole!

We can't wait to go to work tomorrow - thanks for the inspiration! Way to take a bit of good news and professional decorum displayed by a guy working his day off and turn it into a great big steaming pile of manure. This is our "leadership."

UPDATE: Comment #16 claims to be the Detective involved. He tells the story as we've heard it from numerous sources with no BS, straight up. We're really and truly inspired now! Go team go!

Here's a Hint - STOP CALLING

Whine, whine, whine:

• A neat little home with a well-manicured lawn at 68th and Aberdeen in Englewood was the latest scene of a police shooting on Sunday. Officers said a woman called from the house, begging police to protect her from her boyfriend.
  
  Neighbor Nicole Wright said, "She ran across the street to the other house, was telling them she needs some help … and before you knew it we heard three or four shots from inside the house."
  
  Darius Nicholson was shot and killed inside the house. Residents of the home didn't want to talk about the incident, but neighbors had questions.
  
  "One minute it's quiet, the next minute's a thousand police out and you don't know what's going on," said Reggie Reed.
  
  "We can't see what goes on inside, we don't know if he had a gun, but we know the police had guns," Wright said.

Well, gee, if you don't want men with guns coming to your damn houses for every little freaking thing, stop calling.

• Kid won't eat his vegetables? Don't call police.
• Junior won't go to school and he's all of 10 years old? Don't call police.
• 14 year old pregnant by her 24 year old boyfriend? Don't call police.
• 12 year old grandson disrespecting his 42 year old grandma? Don't call police.
• Boyfriend of the hour beating the crap out of you and he's got at least one gun that he stuck in your face and threatened to kill you for whatever reason? Don't call police.

We, along with most of our readers responded to every single one of the above calls at some point in their careers. Three of the five aren't really police matters, but at every scene, there were guns, usually two guns if you count partners, three or four guns of it was a slow night and someone bored came by to help out.

You don't want the police there, fine, stop calling. Call your "reverend" to come out and solve everything. That way when the asshole pulls out a gun and kills the "reverend" along with your stupid ass, you can die feeling all self righteous that at least a cop didn't kill him. As a bonus, we reduce the surplus of "reverends" and raise everyones collective IQ with you dead.

Of course, the survivors won't have anyone to sue. So that's a win-win situation all the way around from our viewpoint.

2nd Amendment Rally

The first of it's kind in Chicago:


As this should be coming on the heels of the DC v Heller decision, we'd expect a decent turn out. Even a few thousand gun owners would make Daley and Co. shit in their drawers. Jesse, Phleger and their idiots can barely get a hundred people together lately.

At the very least, it's a chance to meet completely sane people.

Actual Timely Training?

Saw this in the Sunday paper:

• With an eye toward the Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech massacres, Chicago's multi-pronged disaster plan has added a new chapter on school violence that will ultimately require retraining the city's 7,000 patrol officers.

7,000 patrol officers? That's about the worst number they've ever admitted to. Who let that one out? Carrying on with the article:

• "Now the feeling is we don't have the luxury of waiting to establish a perimeter. We have to go into the building and resolve the problem in immediate fashion. That's what we're training our officers to do. It's not a hostage situation. It's a violence situation. We can't negotiate with someone who is in the act of shooting people."

  School-violence drills at the police academy have "just started," Daly said. Ultimately, every patrol officer will have to be retrained on the new plan.

Instead of waiting for four officers and entering the school to establish a command post within the school administration offices, the new thinking is to immediately locate and neutralize the threat through direct means. If you're interested in the entire study article, it can be located at ForceScienceNews.com. Ron Borsch contends that time is the enemy in most school shootings and quick action will almost always save lives for various reasons:

• * 98% of active killers act alone.
  
  * 80% have long guns, 75% have multiple weapons (about 3 per incident), and they sometimes bring hundreds of extra rounds of ammunition to the shooting site.
  
  * Despite such heavy armaments and an obsession with murder at close range, they have an average hit rate of less than 50%.
  
  * They strike "stunned, defenseless innocents via surprise ambush. On a level playing field, the typical active killer would be a no-contest against anyone reasonably capable of defending themselves."
  
  * "They absolutely control life and death until they stop at their leisure or are stopped." They do not take hostages, do not negotiate.
  
  * They generally try to avoid police, do not hide or lie in wait for officers and "typically fold quickly upon armed confrontation."
  
  * 90% commit suicide on-site. "Surrender or escape attempts are unlikely."

This training can be applied to "soft" targets across the board and in fact, that is what Daly plans to do with the Department. We'd like to see more of this type of thinking.

Smug People

This is a broom. You sweep things with it. We won't even bother to look around for pictures of people carrying the things. But you can bet there are going to be thousands of them walking around up north.

Some might even be baseball fans.

Welcome to Chicago!

Nice to see the Airport people getting into the spirit of Chicago 2016!


The readers DEMAND more Chalkie!

Another Two-Fer

Police successfully defend themselves and the public two more times from armed assailants:

• Police fatally shot a man Sunday night outside his Englewood home in the second South Side police-involved shooting of the day.

  Police responding to a domestic disturbance call in the 6800 block of South Aberdeen Street and fatally shot the man about 7:15 p.m., authorities said.

  The armed man confronted officers and a weapon was recovered at the scene, police said.

• At 1 a.m. Sunday, police fatally shot a man in the 2300 block of East 85th Street, police said. The man, believed to be in his 30s, remains unidentified Sunday night, the medical examiner’s office said.

  The shootings are the sixth and seventh Chicago Police-involved shootings this month. Four of the seven people have died.

And of course, Channel 7 jumps right back into the slime. Remember Retired Sgt. John Northen's attempt to get them to stop playing bullshit games with words?

• While relatives cleaned up Sunday, the bullet holes remained in the hallway of the South Side apartment where Terrell was gunned down by police early Sunday morning.

"gunned down by police" despite the fact that TWO guns were recovered at the scene. WLS Channel 7 just landed at the top of the hit parade in our books.

More Money Wasted?

Didn't we just read about how tax revenue down? The bottled water tax is collecting under half of projections, anyone hoping to save money is shopping outside the city, ticket revenue is down millions more, the City even sold the land at 14th & Ashland that was supposed to be for a new 012 District to Sam's Club.

So why waste a few hundred thousand, maybe a million or more on a structure that's falling down? From our e-mail:

• The Eleventh District parking lot is getting a make over. The city has hired someone to replace the entire sprinkler system. Of course if you look you can see that it is falling apart. The ramp to the basement has concrete hanging down, the stairwell door frames are falling apart, the foundations to the supports are all cracked, humongous potholes were just patched, bricks by the judges parking space are falling and the city is paying someone to put in the new sprinkler system before it is condemned?

Got to keep those union voters happy we guess. How many projects like this go through the City Council and mayor's office on an annual basis? Tens of millions of dollars worth? Hundreds of millions? And we get offered a 1.5% raise and the possibility of no retro pay? What's that cost-of-living increase speculated to be at the moment?

FREE to the First 10,000 Fans

It's giveaway day at Wrigley today. We had no idea this was coming up or we would have promoted it a bit more heavily. Evidently, Sam Zell or som of his people read the blog and are backing our Olympic play:

Even the grounds keeping crew are getting in on the act - from the people at GoodYear:

More Chalkie to come! He's EVERYWHERE!!!

Screw the New Hires

Just as everyone suspected:

• The lavish pensions that City Hall has been known for may become a thing of the past for new city employees.

  Newly hired employees would shift to the 401(k) plans favored by private industry -- instead of the "defined benefits" enjoyed by their older co-workers -- under a plan being pushed by the head of Mayor Daley's pension reform commission.

  Sources said the two-tiered pension system is the painful solution favored by Chicago's former chief financial officer Dana Levenson.

This could also be part of the push being felt around town regarding buyout rumors and early retirement packages. The more new people they can push into 401(k) plans and the more retirees they can lock into lower pension payouts, the better.

We'll admit to being in the dark for a lot of this bean counting. Someone will really have to explain the entire thing to us over the course of implementation. We do know that chronic mismanagement and the City failing to meet it's obligations are the primary causes of the troubles. But that is typical of the Machine ever since it's inception - screw the cogs in the Machine as long as the votes get counted. They'll bleed each and every one of us to keep Machine ticking.

Disgraceful

In the "Fired for Sit Ups?" posting, there's a lively give and take about a family that lost one son in the line of duty and another son's job to a series of bureaucratic snafus and inflexibility:

• How about being fired for failing to list all police jobs you applied for prior to Chicago? My son, with 10 years prior police experience on the street, inadvertently left off 2 after he ran out of room on the employment app for Chicago. Completes the Academy has an ex girlfriend put in a bogus complaint, which he was cleared but IAD comes up with lying on the Employment application. Strip him of police powers and say he's a liability to the City. Guess they forgot about the burning building he ran into to evacuate or the Tech 9 he took off the street, wasn't a liability then. City waits 45 days and then fires him. Here's whats heart breaking for my family. His brother gave his life in the line of duty for Chicago. All those high ranking officers who said if there's anything I can do, call me. Or the Aldermen who said call me, well I did, no one helped and most never returned my calls. Now I have one son who died for the City and the other the City disgraced. Thank You Chicago PD. There are those in the Department that did stay close to us and to those men and women, most of whom are the street cops, thank you for all your support.

This deserves some sort of second look, but the City's fall back position will always be the "at-will" phrase. It looks like someone decided that defending baseless accusations had too high a price tag, even if it's the recruit himself bringing the situation to the attention of the Department, which, as most cops know, is par for the course when dealing with City attorneys whose only instruction is to "settle as quickly as possible for the least amount of money." Anything that goes to trial is a loser as far as well can tell because the City doesn't keep even one decent lawyer (sorry for the oxymoron) around to win nuisance suits.

Cubs/Sox Abuse

Open post to belittle each other's team.

Refrain from the common slurs.

We imagine Sox fans are feeling a bit stressed right about now though. As per our usual denials, we don't follow baseball, we follow the Bears and Blackhawks. But since everyone else seems to be glued to the Crosstown Series, go for it.

Crosstown Ballgame

The radio was alive with ball busting on numerous zones when the Sox took a 3-1 lead yesterday. And the favor was returned in full measure as the Cubs hit a walk off homer to take the first game.

In real news, we're about three months from hockey and about two months from football camps. If we aren't knee-deep in dead bodies, it should be a fun fall.

Weekend Starts with a Bang

Maybe not the first one, but it falls in the weekend violence tracking numbers:

• A 35-year-old man is dead following a shooting Friday night in the West Side's Humboldt Park neighborhood.
  
  Juan Torres was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 7:50 p.m., according to a Cook County Medical Examiner's office spokesman, who said Torres suffered multiple gunshot wounds at Campbell and Potomac avenues.

And a warm weekend on tap. Did everyone get their PAX 501 from J-Fed thanking us for overseeing the homicide rate rise by 12%? We guess the only thing to say is, "Gee, thanks Jody."

Any bets it's up 20% by July?

A Real Apology?

Retired Sgt. John Northen told us to keep an eye out for this. He's been hammering the crap out of Channel 7 for broadcasting the following via letters, phone calls, etc. You know, the stuff FOP ought to be doing for us:

• "It's not really a good neighborhood anyway. People shoot. So after the [earlier] shooting , I was expecting something to happen," said Reginald Finley, who also lives in the area. "You got little kids out here packing for the police. The police, they kill you as fast as a little kid would. They abuse and do us wrong. So, people pack guns for the police."

Friday, this appeared as the last comment in the 17 June post titled "Another Shooting."

• ATTN: NORTHSIDE
  
  Dear Mr. Northen,
  
  On behalf of WLS-TV, we apologize for broadcasting the interview with Mr. Reginald Finley. We will be more discriminating in the future.
  
  Yours truly,
  
  Janet Hundley
  Assistant News Director
  WLS-TV

  6/20/2008 01:55:00 PM

We have no way of verifying that this came from Channel 7 unless they authenticate it with Sgt. Northen. But if it's legit, it's a small victory for the men and women of the CPD during this period of beating on the police for doing their jobs in the face of increased violence.

Perceptive College Kids

Daley gave a speech at Northwestern University. Some of the better comments:

• "It was the most generic speech anybody could come up with," said Laila Chen, a political science graduate who grew up near the mayor's Bridgeport neighborhood. "None of it was directed to us. It was just about him selling himself, the city, the Olympics. He could have given that speech to anyone, anywhere, anytime—and he probably has."
• Tyler Brandt, a computing graduate from Berkeley, Calif., said, "He spent a lot of time talking about what he had done and all the things that made him great and not so much time talking to us."

Now imagine trying to get a fair deal or even a contract out of this joker.

Welcome to Daley's Chicago.

Not a Crocodile

We can only hope that a breeding population is taking hold and starts eating the gang bangers in the area:

• An alligator was found in the South Branch of the Chicago River near West 37th Street Friday afternoon, police said.
  
  The alligator, which is about 5 feet long, was found alive near West 37th and South Racine Avenue in an area of the river known as Bubbly Creek. The reptile was found by an employee at Midland Metal Products, which is located nearby.

Old Man Daley must be very happy in whatever netherworld he ended up in - the river is much cleaner than it used to be.

Amnesty International

Looks like we're the international whipping boys of choice:

• Using Chicago’s Olympic bid as a pressure point and the alleged 2006 harassment of a gay man as evidence, Amnesty International turned up the heat on Mayor Daley today to fix, what it called the city’s “flawed approach” to investigating police brutality.

  At a news conference outside the mayor’s office, civil rights activists reiterated arguments they made last summer, when the City Council approved Daley’s plan to sever the Office of Professional Standards from the Police Department.

  They argued that the landmark ordinance is undermined by a union contract tailor-made to protect rogue officers.

The ACLU jumps in with their usual socialist, totalitarian, anti police BS (civil liberties and due process for everyone EXCEPT the police.) Instead of addressing the root of the problem (Daley, the Machine and the corrupt political process), they attack the perceived source of all evil (i.e. the Police.) One "alleged" and unproven allegation and suddenly the Department is worthy of international condemnation, yet Rio can operate "death squads" of rogue cops paid for by the elite to execute street urchins, Iran can execute teenagers for various "moral" lapses, honor killings can explode across Europe and Amnesty International does what exactly?

Fired for Sit Ups?

From the comments sections:

• Probably in the fall. Hiring freeze on. Make sure you have the correct fat percentage. learn to do sit ups in perfect format. otherwise they fire recruits for missing one sit up. Fingers must be interlocked. Very important to be a police officer with correct sit ups and form. Firing recruits for anything. 3 fired this week.

We know PPO's are "at-will" employees with no protections. We also know that with the new regime, physical fitness is being emphasized much more so than in years past. Is this a firing after repeated attempts to pass the physical requirements? Or a knee jerk reaction to attempt to correct a minor problem with a hammer?

We Told You So

And so did every responsible economist. If you tax it, people are bound to shop around for the better bargain:

• Revenues from Chicago's new bottled water tax are continuing to trickle in -- at less than half of city projections -- despite claims that consumption would rise during warm-weather months.

  City Hall predicted a summer surge after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the first month of collections from the nickel-a-container tax had fallen far short of the city's projections.

  Instead, the problem has gotten worse, exacerbating a budget crunch that has already prompted Mayor Daley to order $20 million in mid-year spending cuts and warn of a second round of cuts.

At the current rate of collection, the bottled water tax will garner less than 46% of the projected total in Daley's fantasy budget numbers. That means more service cuts and more raised taxes. And not only does the City lose out on the bottled water tax, they lose out on any other revenue that might have been generated on that shopping trip. We're thinking that the revenue shortfall is going to be quite a bit broader than just the bottled water portion.

Walter has a License?

Insightful commentary from our readers:

• Walter Jacobsen locked up for DUI? What is wrong with the media? Are they drunk when they report? Are they drunk when they drive to news sites? How many moms out there have lost a child to a drunk driver? The media needs to be stopped. What a bunch of drunks!!!! Let's follow them around and catch THEM on their own time even though they probably dring on the job anyway. Amy Jacobsen and now Walter-the media needs to be STOPPED. What is Walter's address? Are they going to post it and put his house on the news too?
• Skippy locked up again for DUI? He could have killed some innocent person by being so irresponsible! This is an outrage! We need to put some controls on the media! They're out of control! They have an important job keeping the public informed and this is how they behave in their off time? Something needs to be done!

Tribune and Sun Times cover the story. Is there some statute of limitations on drunk reporting?

Brilliant!

If true, this is the best story we've heard in years:

• Kudos to the officers from TRU who were asked to volunteer to go to Iowa for disaster relief. They were told that 30 officers were needed. Their response was "how about we send 29 and the gov of Iowa can commute Mikes sentence and he can meet us there, otherwise GFY" Needless to say, the state of MN. sent officers.

Someone to verify? This is the type of thing we'd like to see pull everyone together to really stick it to the City, the mayor and the jackasses running this Department into the ground.

Back to the Beat?

Another wonderful idea:

• News that isn't being circulated: J-Fed wants to put dicks in uniform for the summer. Rumor has it one week a month. Supposedly detailed to a district, which and how many is up for grabs. Just to curb the expected "rise in crime" for the summer. Peterson is against it, but it'll come down to what Daley wants.

So, it's like a new "Operation Closed Market" but for the Detective Division? Watch that clearance rate bottom out at under 10% for ALL crimes. The word is already out there - if you want to get away with murder, kill someone in Chicago. We guess it's going to expand to robbery, burglary and any manner of crime, too.

Here's the thing - there are about 75 recruits in the Academy right now if our letter writers are to be believed. And we are on pace for 600 retirements again this year. There are no more classes planned until later this year and once they start, the recruits aren't coming out until 2009. So they are reducing the size of the Department drastically. In order to maintain the current force projections is to rob Peter (the D Unit) to pay Paul (Patrol). And the only thing that changes is the clearance rate, the property losses, insurance premiums and god knows what else while the city slowly turns into Detroit.

For the Old Timers

Does this bring back memories?

CLICK HERE for two really big pages of all sorts of Chicago Police memorabilia. The author has won a number of awards for his collection and is searching for other stuff. It's an impressive site and brings back a bunch of memories here. The younger crowd might like it, too.

And Here Come the "Questions"

Will the Superintendent step up and follow the mayor's lead?

• Mayor Daley said he will wait to see what his Independent Police Review Authority has to say, before deciding if Chicago police officers are becoming too trigger-happy.

  In the past week, officers have killed two men and wounded three others in separate incidents. But Daley said the authority, which he controls, should “assess and review each case separately” before drawing any conclusions.

  “You don't have all the facts,” he said. “If you don't have the facts, you can't say that, no.”

Frankly, we aren't holding our breath:

• A department spokesperson says in several of the incidents, the person officers shot confronted them with weapons. But some victims' relatives blame the shootings on overzealous policing.

Well, J-Fed did ask for "more aggressive" policing.

And if we recall the incidents correctly, a gun was observed, recovered or used in each of the police shootings. The Sun Times has started moving articles around and re-linking other ones that back the police stories. They've also started using "quotation marks" around things like "alleged," "armed offender," and other key words, as if to imply the police are just running around shooting people at random.

We still don't seem to have hit bottom. The mayor knows something is up as he's again attempting to defend the process. Watch yourselves and your partners.

More Bad Publicity Coming

You have a trial coming up the first week of October:

• A Chicago police officer indicted in the Special Operations Section scandal is set to go to trial in October, but his lawyer said Tuesday that he first wants to see evidence gathered by federal investigators he believes will prove his client had no part in robbing and kidnapping people.

This will probably end up a series of trial dates coming up.

Then there's an alleged beating over arguments about shootings:

• Twenty-four-year-old Patrick Richmond claims he was beaten by Chicago police and says he has the scars to prove it. The incident started at 57th Street and Prairie Avenue when he was arrested at a Father's Day picnic.
  
  In a sure sign that tensions are mounting with police, the incident was reportedly triggered by an argument over how many people have been recently shot by officers.

And then there are rumblings over other stupid crap. A day in the life of a Chicago cop.

Idiot of the Week

Evidently, he didn't major in snake charming:

• Bridgeport police say they arrested a city man after he ordered his pet to attack two officers. Lucky for them that 9-foot-long pythons aren't very obedient.
  
  Police Lt. James Viadero says 21-year-old Victor Rodriguez was charged with threatening police and disorderly conduct after Monday's incident. No one was hurt.
  
  Officers were called to Rodriguez's apartment on a report that he was threatening his girlfriend with the pet reptile.
  
  Viadero says that when the building superintendent opened the apartment door for the officers, Rodriguez allegedly threatened them with the snake and told it to "Get them!"
  
  Rodriguez and his pet were both taken away: Rodriguez to jail on a $10,000 bond, and the albino python to the city's animal control shelter.

We know you can be creative as hell. Keep it reasonable clean you dirty minded people.

Another Shooting

Six police shootings since Wednesday. The latest:

• A man is in critical condition Monday night after a police-involved shooting on the Northwest Side in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

  An adult male was shot by police in the 1100 block of North Pulaski Road, according to Fire Media Affairs Cmdr. Will Knight.

  Harrison District police officers were conducting a traffic stop when they were reportedly confronted by a suspect with a weapon, police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli said. The suspect allegedly pointed a gun at the officers and he was shot.

The previous five here:

• 300 block of West 109th Place at 11:20 p.m. Sunday
• 7:35 p.m. Saturday in the 5900 block of South Michigan Avenue
• the 5800 block of South Wabash Avenue and pronounced dead at 3:37 a.m. Saturday
  
• near East 100th Street and South Luella Avenue
• 10:45 p.m. Wednesday in the 13000 block of South Drexel Avenue.

Watch yourselves. The shit is spilling over.

Ban All Cars!

And knives! And bats! And anything else someone might get hurt with!

• At least four people were injured, one of them critically, when they were hit by a car driven by a man who appeared to crash it intentionally into a crowd in a West Side alley, police said.
  
  The incident happened at about 10:15 p.m. Sunday in the 600 block of North Lawndale Avenue, said Fire Department spokesman Will Knight.
  
  Chicago police believe "the vehicle was used as a weapon," and the driver was previously involved in a dispute at that location, said Officer John Mirabelli.

And it seems the car got away - otherwise we'd be reading about a man dragged from the vehicle and beaten to death. But it remains a fact that if the urge to murder comes over someone, they are going to use whatever is at their disposal to inflict the mayhem as soon as they work up the nerve.

Anyone Missing a Foot?

A few months ago, we wrote about a number of human feet washing up on Canadian shores. They were all right feet and appeared to be size 12. Last we heard, there had been three. Evidently, they're up to five now and the latest is a left foot:

• VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Yet another human foot has washed up along the British Columbia coast.
  
  Police in southwestern British Columbia say a left foot was found partially submerged in water on Westham Island, south of Vancouver, Monday morning.
  
  It's the fifth foot in less than a year that has washed up on shorelines along islands in British Columbia

No word if they're starting to match up pairs. We know it's not really Chicago Police related, but we'd love to hear what everyone thinks is going on in Canada.

It's Official

He has returned:

• As expected, the Blackhawks announced the return of Pat Foley as the team's television play-by-play announcer.

  The Sun-Times originally broke the story that Dan Kelly would not return, opening the way for Foley's return.

  “We are thrilled to have Pat Foley back in our organization,” Hawks president John McDonough said. “His voice is synonymous with Blackhawks hockey and it resonates loudly to our entire fan base.”

It certainly resonates with us. Foley is about the best there is and the Blackhawks are making all the right moves to win back the fans.

Now, about that missing hardware in the trophy case. Mr. Wirtz the Younger, if you please?

You are Now a Weatherman!

Huh?

• The police blotter: Sneed hears new top cop Jody Weis summoned his top brass recently to tell them of his decision to initiate a new plan.

  • Translation: Weis wants a new statistic inserted in all police reports: the temperature on the day of the crime.
  

  • The backshot: Although crime reportedly rises when the weather warms up, Weis supposedly wants the assumption confirmed statistically.
  

Sorry, but don't we have a few thousand inside people who do data entry? Can we get them to call Skilling, get a print out of the temperatures and give that to Review? Is the Detective Division gong to be going through the National Weather System archives and checking for hourly temperature readings? And although the official temperatures come from O'Hare, everyone knows you add three to five degrees for Midway and the south side. Are we doing WBBM "Real Feel" temps that factor in the humidity? What if the crime occurs in an air conditioned building - are we looking for thermostat readings? Will we be issued calibration equipment to ensure that the thermostat setting is within a range of acceptable deviation? "Squad, can I get a temperature check at 1725 hours on today's date? Send me an ET for pictures of the thermostat? Thanks."

Is J-Fed doing a master's thesis on temperature vs crime? What could possibly be the purpose of such asinine data collection? What idiot is advising J-Fed that this is a good idea? And yeah, we know about the "Approx Outside Temp" box on the TRR - that's an incredibly stupid bit of data collection, too.

J-Fed Taking Revenge?

Did these people bid out? Or is this some of his minions exercising their new found power?

• The Lieutenant who wrote the letter on the Lts website advocating the return of the St. Jude's March to Michigan Avenue has been reassigned to the 010th District.
• A PO who brought up some uncomfortable truths at a "town hall" style meeting has been dumped from teaching DUI classes at the Academy.

Anyone want to confirm or deny that this is the price of speaking out?

Latest Jib Jab

When all seems slow, roll out the funny video:

• CLICK HERE for the latest Jib Jab offering

Where did the Deputies learn to move and play like that?

Funniest Readers Ever

Funniest thing we've seen in a while:

• Is there any such thing as a handicapped police officer? In other words, can you be a police officer if you're handicapped?
  
  6/13/2008 05:35:00 PM
  
  
• Sure,they are called supervisors.

  6/15/2008 09:51:00 AM

Great comeback.

The Cold Hard Reality

Did anyone else catch this? We saw a comment from a retiree in a previous post and did a little digging for this media report.

• The two shootings, just 20 hours apart, separated by only one block, had the neighborhood on edge Saturday night.

  "It's not really a good neighborhood anyway. People shoot. So after the [earlier] shooting , I was expecting something to happen," said Reginald Finley, who also lives in the area. "You got little kids out here packing for the police. The police, they kill you as fast as a little kid would. They abuse and do us wrong. So, people pack guns for the police."

Seems the shitheads in the 002 District have declared war on the police. Where's the protests that the "little kids" are arming themselves? Where's the marches by Jesse and Phleger and Meeks and every other useless "man of god" who spends more time creating victims and extorting money from their flocks that actually addressing problems?

Mr. Mayor? Reverends? Citizens of Chicago? Get your fucking heads out of your asses. Right now. Because a whole lot of people are going to die very shortly.

UPDATE: post clarified to straighten out some misunderstandings.

Useful Idiots

Jesse fits the bill - again:

• Vowing to intensify his campaign against gun violence, Rev. Jesse Jackson held a protest rally Saturday at a Lake Barrington semiautomatic rifle manufacturer.
  
  Leading 80 supporters to the remote industrial park that houses D.S. Arms, Jackson said assault weapons were turning Chicago into a war zone.

Assault weapons? Can we get a listing of each and every homicide linked to one of these so-called "assault weapons"?

• Though [D.S. Arms Attorney Michael] Danforth acknowledged that the company's weapons are available for purchase at the retail level, he said they have never been linked to a crime in Chicago.

Wait a minute - D.S. Arms, which manufactures a product which complies fully with the laws of Illinois and the United States and is used primarily by the military and law enforcement organizations, has NEVER had one of it's products linked to a Chicago crime? Then why is Jesse the jackass protesting?

• Last summer, Jackson, accompanied by Pfleger, first visited D.S. Arms, the closest gun manufacturer to Chicago.

Nothing to link them to any crime. Nothing hinting at straw purchases. Nothing that indicates they might be flooding the market with guns. Just that they're the closest. What an idiot.

Weekend Bloody Start

It's there, just hovering around the edges, waiting to erupt:

• The beginning of the weekend was marked with violence as five people were killed in separate attacks in the city.
  
  The violence unfolded over about 15 hours starting at 11 p.m. Friday night, when a 19-year-old man was shot on the city's South Side.
  

While the article says five dead, the headline boasts six. Regardless, one good series of 90 degree days strung together and lord knows what we're in for. Stay safe.

Is Anyone Surprised?

From Channel 7:

• Since last October, the IPRA has opened investigations into just over 1,200 allegations of police misconduct and abuse.

  "Our investigators immediately came on the scene, and we are investigating," said Mark Payne, IPRA spokesman.

  During the same six-month period, October to March, the IPRA issued reports on 364 investigations filed previously. The vast majority of cases, 346 charges, were either not sustained, unfounded or the officers exonerated. Only in 18 cases, fewer than 5 percent, did the IPRA sustain the misconduct allegations.

So let's see - a "new" investigatory agency, a total revamp of the existing bureaucracy, new procedures, promises of prompt investigations and quick turn-around and the result is?

• Over 95% of the cases brought to IPRA are found to be bullshit!

Golly, maybe is isn't the police running around beating people for no reason. Maybe the vast majority of complaints filed are filed by criminals seeking revenge on officers who arrested them. Perhaps the only basis for a CR to be filed is the hopes of a quick and generous payout by Corporation Counsel to avoid having to actually try cases.

But that wouldn't fit in with the Administration's attempts to screw us over in the middle of contract negotiations.

Cops OK, Offender Dead

Southside:

• Chicago Police fatally shot a man early Saturday near his South Side home. [...]
  
  Officers responding to a report of shots fired in the area shot Young about 2:40 a.m., said Independent Police Review Authority spokesman Mark Payne.
  
  Nobody else was injured, Payne said.

Good job officers.

What the Public Didn't See

This is EXACTLY what we were looking for when we put up the "Tort Reform Please" post:

• Got this from a very close source.
  Female and male run up to crashed police vehicle with two female officers inside. Driver and passenger probably knocked heads in broadside accident when hit, so both are dazed. Driver pinned behind wheel, passenger exits to help partner.
  Male tells the "plaintiff" hold her and get her shit. Plaintiff tries to get her star, struggle insues with "plaintiff" holding passenger officer in a full nelson hold while male reaches into vehicle and TAKES driver's weapon. He flees, hides gun, tells play uncle where gun is. Play uncle gets nabbed and gun recovered later. The male returns to scene to see what happened to female who could not get away with arrival of the calvary. CITIZEN WITNESSES quietly let the police know who they actually have as a witness is the female offender. She is pinched for battery on scene. The male gets pointed out and grabbed for disarming, vehicular invasion et al. Guy caught with gun pleads out. Male found not guilty on technicality because element of vehicular invasion is entering by force and it is unknown if window broke in accident or by offender.
  Female also found not guilty...how I am a little unclear. At any rate "plaintiff gave confession to ASA...was fed was allowed use of washroom..blah blah blah. She was offered 75000 and said no...then we upped it...she said no...7.9 mil.

Or another version posted a few minutes later:

• For all of you that are unfamiliar with the case, its amazing to me, someone that was, after having sat in federal court for 8 days and listen to the piece of shit attorneys liken us to the russian military and refer to us as inhumane garbage, that even some police would still take her side and ask questions of the police involved.
  Let's clarify a few things first. These so called heroes of the neighborhood held Brogan in a full nelson head lock while other pieces of shit disarmed her unconscious partner. The plaintiff after first claimimg to be a hero was later implicated by a witness as the individual in question holding Brogan in the full nelson headlock. This witness, later recanted his entire statement at 26th street and to make a long story short, it was thrown out.
  Next, a states attorney from felony review took a handwritten and signed statement from this plaintiff as well as a polaroid picture of the full nelson used on Brogan which was all evidence!! And while we are on the topics of handwritten statements, let's also talk about the one the witness wrote along with and signed with that same states attorney. This same witness who yes, recanted his story like the piece of shit he is.
  Oh by the way, the police who u second guess, on scene that night, not only got the scumbag who took the officer's gun, but also arrested the uncle of that same piece of shit trying to sell it at a nearby factory for dope money!!

Pretty much the same story? Facts mostly consistent throughout? And almost none of this made it to the jury. But cops know exactly what happened, what didn't make the papers, what the jury wasn't permitted to see. Or if they were, they just didn't care.

And people question why morale is in the shitter?

Negotiating in the Media

Wake up FOP! The mayor has his people doing it. Maybe we need a little bit coming from our side with some pro-police spin on it? From the Tribune:

• On-duty Chicago police officers and any officers who shoot their weapons, on or off-duty, would be required to submit to random alcohol tests under a contract proposal sent to the union.
  
  Police officers also would be forbidden to drink alcohol four hours before any shift.
  
  A second proposal would renew a pilot program, which was tried three years ago, to put officers on 10-hour shifts—a move the city says might improve officer productivity and morale.

What's truly amusing is that the Tribune is probably taking the proposals right off the publicly accessible FOP website and then doing the mayor's dirty work by putting a less than positive spin on it (implying officers who get in shootings could be drunk!) One question though - how can it be "random" if we'd be "required to submit" following a weapon discharge incident?

A Positive Story

Mixed Martial Arts fighter and Chicago Cop Mike Russow is fighting this weekend in Hoffman Estates:

• Mike Russow lives in a tough world. Whether it's his job as a Chicago Police officer working the Englewood District or his passion as a rising mixed martial arts star, Russow never is far away from conflict and danger.

  He wouldn't have it any other way. The 31-year-old Russow will be putting his MMA skills on display in a 13-fight card Saturday at the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates.

Good luck Mike. Hope 007 sent a decent sized cheering section.

R. Kelly Verdict?

Announcement of a verdict shortly? 010 mobilizing.

Remember: If there ain't no mole, that ain't his pole!

UPDATE: Not Guilty. Fourteen times. The hip hop community celebrates.

Tort Reform Please

This is just a bit out of line:

• A trained nurse, Rachelle Jackson immediately ran toward the sound of the crash. A Chicago police car had collided with another vehicle and was starting to smoke, two officers still inside. Fearing an explosion, she quickly pulled one officer from the passenger side. She never imagined her act of kindness nearly six years ago would land her in jail for more than 10 months on charges that she robbed, battered and disarmed a peace officer.
  
  Jackson filed a lawsuit, and on Thursday a federal jury found against the city and several Chicago police officers, awarding Jackson $7.7 million for false arrest, malicious prosecution, coercive questioning and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Following two days in the CPD lockup, she signed an allegedly false confession and spent ten months in county. For this she gets $7.7 million? Where's the sense of proportion? Sorry to seem unsympathetic, but if we knew that we were completely innocent, there isn't a force on earth that would get us to sign any piece of paper - and she's not even alleging torture. She was hungry for two days and "threatened."

$7.7 million? Come on.

Olympic Video

Something for the Olympic Committee to watch while they count the bribe money:



Much hilarity ensued.

Write to the Committee

Let the International Olympic Committee know how you feel:

• International Olympic Committee
  Chateau du Vidy
  1007 Lausanne
  Switzerland

It's going to cost a bit more than a first class stamp though. Does anyone know if they have e-mail? If so let em know about the video posted above.

Mette Update

Tomorrow, 13 June, is Mike's birthday. This is a bit late to send him a card that'll get there beforehand, but if you'd like to send one anyway, this is as good a time as any.

• Michael A. METTE # 6520284
  North Central Correctional
  313 Lanedale
  Rockwell City, Iowa 50579
  

Drop the guy a line.

Hard Work Yields Confession

We lament often about the abysmal clearance rate. So it's only fair when a good job is done, we acknowledge it:

• "This was one that stood out," said Detective Tim Murphy, standing alongside Detectives Dan Stover and Neil Maas. The officers had been working around the clock since Friday, when the tip came in.
  
  The detectives talked to the witness several times, gaining his trust, eventually leading to information that identified Williams as one of the killers, Stover said.

As undermanned as Patrol is, the D-Unit is about as depleted. And it shows.

But this was an excellent job in trying circumstances.