Cease Beating (Your Wife)

Oh Tio, you worthless piece of shit:

• The head of the CeaseFire Illinois anti-violence group is in police custody in west suburban Hillside, charged with domestic battery, and the arrest could threaten the organization’s funding from the city of Chicago.
  
  The wife of Tio Hardiman, director of CeaseFire Illinois and creator of the Violence Interrupter Initiative, “came into the police station” Friday morning to report a domestic battery, said Hillside Police Chief Joseph Lukaszek.
  
  Hillside police went to Hardiman’s home in the west suburb and arrested him, Lukaszek said.
  
  Hardiman, charged with one count of domestic battery, was in custody Friday and will remain behind bars until a bond hearing Saturday, the chief said.
  

Hey Rahm? Can Chicago get their million dollars back? Or do you support wife beaters? We already know you support the "no snitching" policy - maybe Mrs. Tio should have kept her mouth shut?

Eight Years?

Eight years of Sarcasm and Silliness. Over 27 million visitors. Nearly 43 million page views.

And Garry didn't even send a card.

Thank you all, you humble us with your attention.

Obama Body Count

An e-mailer pointed out that NBC ran a count last night - people shot since Obama arrived in town.  That's certainly an interesting way of tracking crime statistics, but not surprising when south side shootings are charted by ho far they are from the home owned by Obama and Tony Rezko.

Anyone have a total of dead and wounded since the president arrived and left?

Springfield Can't Pass Anything

Pension "reform" crashes and burns:

• The Illinois Senate tonight overwhelmingly defeated a major overhaul of the state's heavily indebted government worker pension systems, throwing into question whether cost-saving reforms will be approved before Friday night’s adjournment deadline.
  
  The measure, whose architect is House Speaker Michael Madigan, mustered only 16 votes in the Senate while 42 voted against it. The bill needed 30 to pass.
  
  The defeat continued the pension reform stalemate between Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, who has long argued the speaker’s plan is unconstitutional while his own would withstand a legal challenge.

The legislative session is scheduled to end today. No word on whether lawmakers will be called back into session or extend their deadline via an unforeseen procedural vote. No word on other issues before the body either - like Concealed Carry.

Expect confusion to reign shortly.

Media Continues Decline

Death by a thousand cuts:

• The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, and plans to use freelance photographers and reporters to shoot photos and video going forward, the newspaper said.
  
  A total of 28 full-time staffers received the news Thursday morning at a meeting held at the Sun-Times offices in Chicago, according to sources familiar with the situation. The layoffs are effective immediately.
  
  The newspaper released a statement suggesting the move reflected the increasing importance of video in news reporting

Because video translates so well to newsprint.

The fact is that since there are so many people out there with cell phone cameras and the ability to upload almost contemporaneously as news happens, the day of the dedicated news photographer has passed before our eyes. We can see a not-to-distant future where dedicated news reporters go the same way, replaced by a dwindling number of editors who have the ability to take text messages, "tweets" or similar info and translating it into USA Today-style mini-articles and call it news. After all, we see Frank, Fran and sometimes Sneed stealing articles and comments from this very site.

Graffiti Vandal Charged

"Charged" as in zapped with a few thousand volts we mean:

• A 19-year-old man who police believe was writing graffiti was found unconscious and apparently electrocuted between an electrical transformer, a chain link fence and a telephone pole, authorities said.
  
  He was alive when authorities discovered him in the 1800 block of West Montrose Avenue but died at Advocate Illinois Masonic a short time later, authorities said. He was pronounced dead at 3:56 a.m.
  
  Police said the man may have been tagging because the transformer where he was found was defaced. Firefighters and paramedics brought him down with a ladder, police said.
  
  The man, who the Cook County medical examiner's office has not identified, has been arrested seven times with criminal defacement of property or posession of paint or markers with an intent to deface property, police said.

Pardon our laughter, but you know that you're all smiling out there, too.

South Side Blows Up (UPDATES)

Of course, that's almost a regular occurrence most days:

• Three people were killed and six others wounded in shootings on the South Side this afternoon and evening, authorities said.
  
  The most recent slaying happened about 6:48 p.m. when a male victim was shot dead on the 7500 block of South Carpenter Street, according to Police News Affairs Officer Daniel O'Brien. There was no information available immediately about the circumstances leading up to the attack.
  
  A source identified the victim as a 35-year-old man who had been sitting on a lawn chair near the embankment of some railroad, apparently drinking beer.

Time to ban beer.

And what was the high temperature today? Not that that had anything to do with this outbreak. But it did push us to about even with May of 2011.

UPDATE: Add a fourth to the body count:

• A 57-year-old woman was shot to death in the South Chicago neighborhood, one of four people killed in South Side shootings since about 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.
  Nine others survived attacks during a period of about 12 hours in which 13 people were shot, police said.

Another hot one on tap tonight.

UPDATE #2: Add a fifth - one of the wounded died.

A Class of 9?

A couple days ago, we posted this:

• In an effort to alleviate the current crop of FTO's riding around with two recruits each - and sometimes more - the Department announced a list of 63 people eligible to accept or turn down the FTO position. They have to reply by Friday and report for duty the day after Memorial Day.
  
  We'll have to see how many accept the most thankless job (but most necessary) the Department has to offer.
  
  Good luck.

Now we hear that a grand total of 9 people of that list showed up Tuesday morning. Anyone care to confirm or comment?

Hawks Pull Out a Game 7 Win

This was just about the best 7 game series we've ever had the pleasure of watching. Down 3 games to 1 and they win three straight.

Helping Oklahoma

The Brotherhood for the Fallen:

• Dear SCC,
  
  Since many of the men and women who contribute to the Brotherhood For The Fallen read the Blog we were hoping that you could send out a big thank you on our behalf. Last Wednesday three members drove straight through to Moore, OK with a trailer filled with provisions provided by the generous contributions from the following:
  
  Turano Baking, Fair Share Fine Foods, Jim Calace, Daniel Sadowski, Thomas McGrath, John McKenna and the 011 Dist, Lisa Melemdez and the 010 Dist. Andre Hassen and Major Accidents, Pat Riordan, Sarah McDermott, Mike Bansfield, Ed Daly, Keith Kalafoot, Jim and Debbie Truhlar.
  
  Thank You
  

Actually, thank you Officers.

Bye Bye VRI

The end is near (or at least a major reduction):

• About 200 police rookies will be working foot patrols in Chicago’s most dangerous zones by the end of the summer — and the department will cut back sharply on veteran officers working overtime there, a top police official said Tuesday.
  
  The 20 “impact zones,” mostly on the West and South sides, have contributed to the city already spending about two-thirds of the police overtime budget for 2013, the Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this month. Crime has fallen sharply in the zones, according to the department.
  
  
• In March, the department doubled the number of veteran officers working overtime in the zones to 400 a day. They patrol the zones in cars on their days off. So far, at least 48 rookies have been assigned to foot patrols, spread among five of the zones.
  
  The goal is a roughly equal split of rookies and veteran officers working overtime in all 20 zones by September, said Robert Tracy, chief of the department’s crime control strategies. Tracy said he envisions slightly more than 200 rookies and about 200 veterans in the zones by then.
  
  On May 14, the department announced the graduation of 105 rookies from the police academy and said they would be assigned to Operation Impact after a three-month training program.

This also reminds us about a theory piloted here a month or two ago. That these rookies may be left in place at the Areas, answering to the Deputy Chief, as a Saturation/TRU/Task Force, assigned as needed to whatever hotspots the bean counters come up with.

This could literally be a wholesale change in how PPO's graduate, train and serve until they are able to bid out to District openings, and we all know how many openings have been posted in Districts for the past three years - not many at all.

Seriously?

Who's serving up the koolaid at the Tribune Tower?

• A 15-year-old girl was injured in a far South Side shooting this afternoon during a Memorial Day weekend that saw a reduction in violence compared to last year's numbers, police said.

Um....really?  Did no one at the Tribune do a simple Google search for "Chicago temperature Memorial Day 2012"? The top result is from CBS 2:

• Chicago saw its second consecutive day of record heat on Monday, when the temperature reached 95 degrees at O’Hare International Airport early Monday afternoon.
  
  The official temperature at O’Hare reached 95 degrees shortly before 1 p.m. Monday, two degrees higher than the record high temperature for May 28, set in 1953, according to the National Weather Service.
  
  Chicago also broke a record on Sunday, when the high reached 97 degrees, three degrees hotter than the previous record for May 27, set in 1911.

So a 30 degree temperature difference between this year and last. But it had nothing to do with crime. Right.

Rahm Touts BS

And the media eats it up:

• If a school district's graduation rate is an indicator of improvement, then Chicago Public Schools is improving.
  
  Mayor Rahm Emanuel and school officials announced Tuesday that 63 percent of high school seniors will graduate on time this year, marking CPS' highest graduation rate ever.
  

But then we heard a report on NewsRadio 780 that quoted Karen Lewis (we think). She stated that since they started using a new formula thirteen years ago, the CPS definition of "highest rate ever" actually only dates back to 1999. WBBM doesn't seem to have that report online any longer, or if they do, it's well hidden. After all, numbers embarrassing to Rahm are simply not reported.

Over a Video Game?

We guess this makes everything okay:

• Six-month-old Jonylah Watkins was fatally shot over a stolen video game console, Chicago police said Monday as they announced an arrest in a slaying that has come to symbolize the city's deadly gun culture.
  
  Authorities charged Koman Willis, 33, with killing the infant and shooting her father while they sat parked in a minivan in the Woodlawn neighborhood on March 11. A bullet entered Jonylah's right shoulder and traveled down through her left thigh. She died the following day. Her father, Jonathan Watkins, survived multiple gunshot wounds.
  
  Jonathan Watkins, 29, had been Willis' target "in retaliation for a stolen video game system," police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said. The animosity began after a game system was taken from Willis' Chatham apartment and sold to someone else in the neighborhood, according to law enforcement sources.
  
  When the new owner hooked up the system at home, he saw it belonged to Willis, a fairly well-known figure in the neighborhood and a convicted felon with more than three dozen arrests dating to 1996. Not wanting any trouble, the new owner returned the game console to Willis and told him that he purchased it from Watkins, one of the sources said.

Amazing. The neighborhood will snitch over a video game console so that someone can go home, get an illegal weapon, let him go hunting, blast a burglar, kill a 6-month-old child and then the neighborhood has to be persuaded over the course of months to point the finger at the shooter.

Where are the Snitch Boxes?

Everyone knows that the "no snitching" culture will die an ignominious death once the boxes are placed at strategic locations across the ghetto-sphere. Right?

• Anonymous said...
  
  How are those SNITCH BOXES coming along, McNutsy?
  
  5/27/2013 03:30:00 AM
  =================================
  
  Funded by grant money - none of that money has been spent yet, no boxes have been purchased.

Haven't been purchased? Let us guess - they're still doing field testing to determine a construct most likely to survive more than an hour on the south and west sides? Has to be gun-proof, fire-proof, bat-proof and able to repel biological warfare all without police intervention?

It's going to be a long wait.

6 Dead, 22 Maimed (Oops, 23)

That was with temperatures never once breaking 70 degrees.

And it rained.

So Chicago remains stuck at 35 homicides for May, four short of 2011 totals. And not one of the next 4 days has a high temperature listed below 84. The beaches, which opened 3 days ago, are scheduled to be closed starting tomorrow morning due to extreme heat.

Must Be Nice...

Governor Potato-Head strikes again:

• When Gov. Pat Quinn pardoned a politically connected city of Chicago health department official in late 2011, he didn’t just erase Juan Elias’ rap sheet, which included convictions for marijuana possession, burglary and vote fraud.
  
  The pardon also kept Elias, who heads 1st Ward Ald. Joe Moreno’s political organization, safely in the $78,828-a-year city job that he got after failing to disclose on his job application that he had a criminal past.
  
  Asked if he’d ever been convicted of “any crime,” Elias, 46, checked “no” on the 1990 job application, city records show.
  
  That wasn’t true. Elias actually had two felony convictions at that time — one for a burglary, the other for an arrest with more than three pounds of marijuana, the Chicago Sun-Times reported last year.

It certainly is amusing that we have to pass background checks, but if you collect welfare, make laws or work for a political organization that makes laws and hands out welfare money, you can deal dope and have a felony record without suffering a break in the steady paychecks.

Memorial Day

Freedom isn't Free.

God Bless all those who have served, are serving or shall serve in the future, especially those who gave their lives.

If This Sticks, Nice Pinch

A long involved involved investigation:

• A suspect was being questioned by Chicago Police on Sunday in the fatal shooting of 6-month-old Jonylah Watkins in March, a law enforcement source said.
  
  The man was taken into custody Saturday and was being questioned by Area Central Detectives, the source said.
  
  Jonylah was struck by a bullet on March 11 as she sat with her father in a minivan in the 6500 block of South Maryland. Her father, Jonathan Watkins, was shot three times.
  

And why did it take so long to make an arrest? This comment gives some insight into what cops and detectives are up against each and every day:

• This is an update from CPIC after 2 F/1s were shot in 005:
  
  UPDATE: PER BEAT 560; Be advised that since our arrival and securing of the scene, approximately 10 onlookers and even family members left briefly and returned with t-shirts with the twitter group #NOTALKING on it. There is a direct passive movement to prevent any potential witnesses from cooperating with investigators.

It turns out there is an entire clothing line based on the #NOTALKING twitter hashtag based right here in Chicago. And guess what the target demographic is? If you say "gangs and thugs," give yourself a pat on the back.

Anyone have a snapshot of these t-shirts popping up at crime scenes?

Add Three More

And still another day to the long weekend:

• Six people have been killed and 16 wounded in violence across Chicago since Friday evening.
  
  The most recent fatal shooting happened early Sunday in the Goose Island area on the city’s Near North Side.
  
  Charles Jones, 42, the manager of a Far South Side gentleman’s club, was shot to death in a confrontation with another motorist, whose 2005 Buick LaCrosse sideswiped Jones’ Maserati, police said.

And we aren't sure if they're counting this one as a weekend homicide or backdating it 8 days:

• A 27-year-old woman was pronounced dead today, eight days after being shot along with several others after a family prom party in the Lawndale neighborhood, officials said.

A quick check of the homicide tracker reveals the following:

• May 2011 - 39 homicides
• May 2012 - 51 homicides
• May 2013 - 35 killings

Four days to go and a couple of mid-to-high 80 degree days in there. Everything is returning to normal with 2012 being the outlier.

Ignorant Comment

This popped up a few days ago in one of our Pro-2A posts:

• Here's what I don't get about your stance on this position. Coppers can already carry concealed. So can retirees. Why do you or I care about the rest? Now, I'll have to worry about the law abiding citizen who is having a bad day and has a gun in his possession. It may make sense to Joe citizen who can't carry now, but I don't understand how any copper, who actually does anything on the street, thinks this will make his job easier. And no, it isn't all about me. I did my time and I'm out of here in about ten minutes.
  
  I do notice that you normally get about 200 to 300 comments on pro gun issues. I'm not a mathmetician, but that would seem to indicate that only about 1 or 2 percent of the active and retired coppers support your position. I think that says something.

Why do we care about the rest? Because unlike yourself, we don't see ourselves as above the citizens we serve. That's right - we said "serve." Check the side of your squad car - Serve and Protect. Sound familiar at all? We are public servants and all of our supposed power derives from the consent of the governed. Those same people could dictate that we leave our guns secured at the station every night so as to leave cops exactly where they are - unarmed and vulnerable.

You fall into the trap of thinking that regular people can't be trusted with guns, despite all the evidence to the contrary and 49 other states that aren't awash in nearly the amount of blood Chicago is. You worry about a citizen having a bad day? What about fellow cops? They're human, they have guns. What if they're having a bad day? You make a straw man argument that gets blown over at the first hint of logic.

Truth be told, you aren't going to run into Joe Citizen and his lawful firearm every day. In fact, we bet you wouldn't run into him weekly or monthly either. Joe Citizen isn't out there slinging dope, breaking into cars and houses, beating their significant other or sticking up people for phones, jewelry and cash.

But Joe Citizen is far more likely to run into someone determined to do him or his family harm, steal his iPhone, burgle his garage. And for you to conspire to deny your fellow citizen, the person you are supposed to be serving (even though the statistics say you won't get there for at least 10 minutes) is unconscionable to most right thinking Americans. The Supreme Court has ruled that police are under no obligation to protect the individual. That in and of itself is reason enough for Concealed Carry.

As to you alleging we get 200-to-300 comments on gun issues, you're obviously assuming that all 10,000 Chicago cops and 7,000 retirees read us every day and only those few choose to comment. A quick scan reveals we get under 100 comments on most pension issue posts, so using your "logic," coppers care even less about their golden years than their guns? Not likely.

300 comments is unusual for anything we post, scandals, Line of Duty deaths, gun issues. So you thinking and saying that it says something? All it says to us is you aren't a regular reader, you have no knowledge of statistics, and you certainly don't have a feel for what a large portion of our readership feels. It also tells us you spent your entire career drinking the Daley/Rahm/democratic Machine koolaid and viewing your fellow citizens as less than capable or worthy of defending themselves, no matter their individual circumstances.

UPDATE: Supreme Court link amended to the more appropriate Castle Rock case.

Ambush in Kentucky

It can happen anywhere at all, even doing the most mundane tasks:

• A Kentucky policeman was shot and killed in an apparent ambush when he stopped to pick up debris on a highway exit ramp, the Courier-Journal newspaper said on Sunday.
  
  Bardstown Police Officer Jason Ellis, 33, was found shot to death on an exit ramp on the Blue Grass Parkway in north central Kentucky early Saturday morning.
  
  Investigators could not be reached for comment on Sunday. The Courier-Journal said state police answered a call about an accident on the exit ramp and found Ellis lying outside his parked police cruiser, which had its emergency lights on and had not been in a crash.
  
  He had not spoken to dispatchers and had apparently stopped to pick up debris that had been deliberately placed in the roadway, the newspaper quoted Kentucky State Police as saying.
  
  Ellis had been with the Bardstown Police Department since 2006 and left behind a wife and two small children, the department said on its Facebook page.

No one expects this. Sympathy and prayers extended to the fallen, his family and our brethren in Kentucky.

Messy Start to the Weekend

Holiday weekend and already three dead, eight wounded on Friday night:

• Here’s a roundup of the deaths:
  
  ◆Around 1:50 a.m. Saturday in Hyde Park, about half a mile from President Barack Obama’s home in neighboring Kenwood. Gregory Dixon, 29, had buzzed the suspects in to an apartment building in the 1400 block of East 52nd Street and was shot in the chest and back.
  
  ◆Around 11:45 p.m. Friday, a man was found shot outside his home in the 1100 block of North Lawndale Avenue in Humboldt Park. Tevin Kirkman, 22, died at Mount Sinai Hospital.
  
  ◆At 11 p.m. Friday, a 17-year-old boy was killed and a man was wounded in the 400 block of North Central Avenue in Austin. Leetema Daniels was shot in the head and killed. An 18-year-old, shot in the chest, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.

Half a mile from Obama's house again. Strange how that seems to happen with almost clockwork regularity.

And according to an e-mail, the second homicide occurred ten minutes after the PPO Foot Patrol did a Contact Card on the former Tevin Kirkman.  That's just some bad timing on his part.

Cease Fire Should Cease Whining

Tio sure has a lot of excuses for things:

• CeaseFire Illinois workers say Chicago police officers are increasingly ordering them off street corners in Woodlawn along with gang members, interfering with their efforts to tamp down violence in the crime-plagued neighborhood.
  
  The alleged harassment is the latest sign of tension between CeaseFire and police at a time when the two are supposed to be partners under a first-of-its-kind city contract to reduce shootings and killings in the South Side community.
  
  Adam Collins, a spokesman for Superintendent Garry McCarthy, defended the police conduct, saying officers have a right "in the interest of public safety" to disperse groups off street corners "where gang members are known to congregate."
  

AGain, the one thing we appreciate about McJersey is his willingness to treat CeaseFire with exactly the contempt it deserves. It's a gang organization, run by gangsters, that managed to get $1 million bucks of our tax money from Rahm in return for who knows how many votes. Their entire existence is based on a continuation of the "no snitching" culture that contributes to the pathetically low clearance rate, which means murderers are free to go out and kill again and again.

Sounds Like a Rahm Trick

If you follow international news, exuberant youth of indeterminate ethic origins have been rioting in Sweden for almost a week. Of course, the American media is busy trying to prove they are Tea Partiers, but they can't seem to find any evidence, not that that has stopped them in the past:

• Stockholm experienced a sixth straight night of riots early Saturday, with cars torched in several immigrant-dominated suburbs, as Britain and the United States warned against travelling to the hotspots.
  
  Nearly a week of unrest, which spread briefly Friday night to the medium-sized city of Örebro 160 kilometres west of Stockholm, have put Sweden’s reputation as an oasis of peace and harmony at risk.
  
  The unrest has also sparked a debate among Swedes over the integration of immigrants, many of whom arrived under the country’s generous asylum policies, and who now make up about 15 percent of the population.

Here's the Rahm Emanuel part of it all:

• Car owners whose auto was torched during immigrant rioting aren’t getting sympathy from local officials… They’re getting tickets. The police chose to “wait” and “not to intervene” when the gangs burned cars. But those car owners who could not move their burnt-out wrecks, however, were fined. 

Europe is so doomed.

How Will it Fare in the Senate?

Mdeigan is happy - his hands are clean:

• Over objections of Gov. Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the House approved a concealed weapons bill today that is aimed at ending Illinois’ status as the last state in the nation without a law to allow its citizens to carry guns in public.
  
  But the gun bill backed by House Speaker Michael Madigan goes to a Senate where President John Cullerton has denounced the proposal because it would override local gun laws like Chicago’s assault weapons ban.
  
  
• The bill is designed to create a law that spells out who can carry concealed weapons in Illinois and where they can carry them, but the legislation’s removal of home-rule powers also wiped out local firearms laws—giving more fuel to the opposition of Quinn, Cullerton and Emanuel.
  
  Chicago Democratic Rep. Ann Williams said the bill would wipe off the books local assault weapon bans and taxes on gun purchases, Williams called for the defeat of the Phelps bill and for support of a stricter, New York-styled law to “reflect the realities” of differences between rural areas and urban areas like Chicago.
  
  
• Quinn quickly issued a statement vowing to block passage in the Senate. “This legislation is wrong for Illinois," he said.
  
  “The principle of home rule is an important one. As written, this legislation is a massive overreach that would repeal critical gun safety ordinances in Chicago, Cook County, and across Illinois. We need strong gun safety laws that protect the people of our state. Instead, this measure puts public safety at risk. I will not support this bill and I will work with members of the Illinois Senate to stop it in its tracks,” the statement read.

We are constantly amused that Quinn and his ilk spout off about "gun safety in Chicago" where the streets run red with blood despite the presence of what have been called the strictest gun laws in the nation. And the comparison to rural Illinois is nonsense, too, seeing as how a higher rate of gun ownership there is in direct proportion to lower crime rates.

As someone said, we have one Illinois Vehicle Code for all of Illinois. One Criminal Code. One set of rules covering Concealed Carry ought to be plenty for Illinois.

CPS Bullsh$%

This is hilarious:

• In last year’s round of closings at Chicago Public Schools, more than 400 children were displaced from four elementary schools, and the district wasn’t able to say where some ended up.
  
  Chicago Public Schools says this year, as it moves nearly 13,000 children from a record number of schools approved this week to close, it will track all its displaced students to see where they land, how they fare in their new school, and what the influx means for the new school.
  

Surely, they can't be serious? These mopes can't keep track of all the student who don't even live in the boundaries of each school, yet we're supposed to believe they can keep track of where another 13,000 kids end up?

Why do we have a bad feeling that this is going to involve more than the fire department parking trucks on school routes and police going door-to-door?

It's Safe!

Isn't this the "up and coming" area of Chicago?

• Two men suffered graze wounds near the Red Line station in the South Loop late this morning, authorities said.
  
  One of the men, 57, was standing at a bus stop east of State Street on Roosevelt Road shortly after 11 a.m. when he heard a gunshot and felt something hit his leg, police said, citing preliminary information. The other man, 30, suffered a graze wound to the back, police said.
  
  Both were being taken in good condition to Northwestern Memorial, officials said.

And near the Red Line, too?

Measuring the Cost

$2.5 billion is about what?  A third of the Chicago budget? That's that claim of a study by the University of Chicago Crime Lab:

• Shootings cost Chicago $2.5 billion a year, or about $2,500 per household, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The impact can be measured in the decline of South Shore, a once-vibrant city neighborhood that was home to first lady Michelle Obama, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Sr. and software pioneer Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief executive of Oracle Corp. In the past two years, shootings in the police district covering South Shore surpassed 400 and increased four times faster than in the city as a whole. The first four-and-a-half months of this year have shown improvement, with homicides down 39 percent citywide through May 12, though some community leaders question whether the decline can be sustained. During the first quarter, Chicago police spent almost two-thirds of the entire year’s $38 million overtime-pay budget targeting high-crime areas.

Here's a link to the charts accompanying the article.

The entire article is from Bloomberg.com, a paper owned by anti-gun, super-nanny, New York mayor Bloomberg. We can't help but think this is a not-so-subtle attack on Rahm and yet another shot at his dreams of national office.

More FTO's

In an effort to alleviate the current crop of FTO's riding around with two recruits each - and sometimes more - the Department announced a list of 63 people eligible to accept or turn down the FTO position.  They have to reply by Friday and report for duty the day after Memorial Day.

We'll have to see how many accept the most thankless job (but most necessary) the Department has to offer.

Good luck.

Interesting Concealed Carry Proposal

Evidently, it eliminates "home rule" exceptions that are gumming up the works. And if Rahm isn't happy, it must be something worth looking at:

• Gov. Pat Quinn, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Senate President John Cullerton decried a bill to legalize concealed firearms that is backed by powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan, contending it would invalidate strict local gun laws like Chicago's ban on assault weapons.
  
  That opposition, however, didn't stop Madigan from advancing the bill Thursday, demonstrating that after months of negotiations, the time for talking was over. Predicting it would pass the House, Madigan has indicated that a vote on the measure could come as early as Friday.
  
  
• It would put in place a statewide standard for concealed carry that would not allow Chicago or other home-rule communities to enact stricter local laws on where guns could be carried.
  
  Moreover, it would wipe out Chicago's existing gun laws by removing the right of home-rule communities to enact their own firearm regulations.

The NRA and ISRA have declared themselves "neutral" on this one, so that's a big deal. There's still the outrageous fees to fight about and restricted areas. But the GunSaveLife.com people have this opinion on it:

• In short, the Speaker proffered this proposal that Brandon is now offering in an effort to split the baby between the two diametrically opposed sides.
  
  On one side he had downstate Democrats saying they are getting pounded by constituents for a shall-issue right-to-carry bill.
  
  On the other side, he’s got Rahm and the Chicago Democrats trying to be the next New York or Connecticut and ban magazines, modern self-defense guns, and plenty more… gun control like we’ve never seen.
  
  Madigan knows if either side gets a clean win, it’ll be a real bloodbath either in Chicago or downstate come the next election cycle.
  
  So, he’s splitting the baby. He’s giving some red-meat to downstate voters to salvage some downstate Democrats their jobs in part because of some very unpopular votes to come – and we’ll name topics…  gay marriage and “medical” marijuana for starters.
  
  And he’s giving Chicago Democrats some of what they wanted in terms of no guns in parks, public transportation and a host of other prohibited locations, more licensing fee money, delayed implementation and a whole bunch more.
  
  Making lemonade out of these lemons, which as gun owners is something we’re akin to doing regularly, it means Madigan is throwing Rahm and Preckwinkle under the bus. All their local gun control goes “buh-bye!” in this bill.
  
  “What if we decline?” I asked one source.
  
  He didn’t laugh. He was dead serious.
  
  If we decline his offer, the Speaker is going to stuff a Kwame-endorsed may issue law up our rear ends, without any lube, and move on. Madigan’s done “playing around” on the issue and will let the chips fall where they may as there are bigger issues among the low-information voters in Illinois. No, not pensions. Instead, gay marriage, gambling, legalizing marijuana, to name a few.

Sad that one asshole who already has armed protection, is the person pushing this bill, a bill that we're going to end up trying to chip away at for the next decade via legislation and lawsuits. And Madigan is going to push through whatever he can to have leverage on the other issues and protect Lisa's shot at the governor's mansion. If this passes, he has major leverage. If it fails, he blames Cullerton and the Senate and takes his chances on the other Bills.

12 Years

Another asshole headed to prison:

• A former veteran Chicago police officer was sentenced today to 12 years in federal prison for conspiring with leaders of the Latin Kings to rob the gang's rivals of cash, drugs and guns.
  
  Antonio Martinez Jr., 42, could have faced up to life in prison, but a federal judge in Hammond cut him a break for his extraordinary cooperation, including wearing a wire on his own partner.

You don't just wake up in the morning and decide to help a specific gang. Is this another one who slipped through the cracks?

Englewood Two-Fer? (UPDATE - Not da Wood)

Heating up in da Wood:

• Two men were discovered dead inside a car this afternoon on the South Side in the city's West Englewood neighborhood.
  
  About 3:20 p.m., officers were conducting a well-being check on the 7100 block of South Oakley Avenue and discovered two bodies, one in a back seat and one inside of a trunk of a car, said Police News Affairs [...], citing preliminary information.

And the kicker?

• Residents said the car had been parked a block north earlier in the week, but may have been towed onto the 7100 block because of street work. A city database of relocations in the last week did not show the car as having been towed or relocated, however.

You'd hate to think a city crew relocated the car with two stiffs inside, but it's happened before.Does this vault 007 into the lead?  And is Leo going to pay a price for it? Seeing as how Carothers never was held responsible for a single thing, why would Ric Flair have to?

UPDATE: West Englewood is evidently in 008. Our bad for not checking the beat map.  But who'd have thought that anyone would label a neighborhood as West Englewood?

Is someone trying to sell real estate there? "Don't worry future homeowners - this is WEST Englewood.  Nothing that matter with this neighborhood."

Maybe Leo did have it towed over the border.

Quick Hits

A few stories of interest - the Cook County Morgue can't seem to do anything right. Now they're giving away dead bodies:

• According to records from the Cook County Public Administrator, in many cases family members did not give permission or even know that the bodies had been removed and used for experiments or teaching.
  
  For nearly a decade at the Cook County Morgue, bodies were not made available to medical schools for dissection and research use.
  
  Last September, when newly-hired county medical examiner Dr. Stephen Cina started, that policy changed.

Changed without telling the families of identifiable persons that their bodies were being "donated." Is there anything that the morgue can't screw up?

-----

City equipment breaking down? Specifically, ambulances?

• It could have been a matter of life or death last month when a city ambulance broke down while rushing a gunshot victim to a hospital for emergency care.
  
  How could that happen? [...]

Gee, maybe a lack of routine maintenance, a general disregard for warranty service and running vehicles 24/7/365 into the ground with no replacements in the pipeline for outdated equipment? It couldn't possibly be that, could it?

-----

And Rahm wins again - 50 school closures in less time than it takes to boil and egg:

• History was made in Chicago Wednesday in about 90 seconds, but most of the folks who witnessed firsthand the death of a record 50 Chicago Public Schools didn’t even realize it.
  
  Rather than list the names of the doomed elementary schools, the Board of Education took a single group vote on most of the closings that will affect some 27,000 children. The board secretary read out the numbers assigned to each resolution and asked for the vote.
  
  But onlookers didn’t even get that, as the board president resorted to parliamentary maneuver to speed the process along.
  
  “Madam Secretary, if there are no objections from my fellow board members, please apply the last favorable roll call,” Board President David Vitale said, referring to the previous vote of six ayes and 0 nays. And with that, the bulk of the history — 49 of the 50 schools closed — was made in a unanimous sweep.
  

Four schools were removed from the original list, so Rahm got about 90% of what he wanted, far better than the 75% we had speculated that he wanted.

Boston Investigation Heats Up

"Lone Wolf," remember?

• A Chechen immigrant who was being questioned about his possible links to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was shot and killed by a federal agent in Florida on Wednesday after he suddenly turned violent, the FBI said.
  
  A friend of the dead man identified him to Reuters as 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev, who had previously lived in Boston and knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers suspected of planting two bombs at the marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264.
  
  NBC News reported that Todashev had confessed to his involvement in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in a Boston suburb that investigators believe was drug related, citing law enforcement officials.

Good shooting by the fed. In the meantime, there seems to be a lot of info that isn't filtering down to the street level coppers that might be somewhat helpful is spotting stuff like that which went down in Boston.

New Flag

Apologies to Garey McKee, but it's all in good fun.

Well Boo Hoo

Why is this anyone's problem?

• A little girl is running late for school.
  
  She scurries along South Perry in the navy blue skirt required for Kohn Elementary School students and brown boots, fixing the buttons on her red-and-white plaid coat as she makes her way.
  
  The bell at Kohn, at 104th and State on Chicago’s Far South Side, rang a good 20 minutes ago, yet the child — no more than 8 or 9 — walks alone, hurrying past vacant lots, buildings graffitied with Black Disciple taunts and abandoned house after abandoned house. In the last blocks of Perry and 105th before reaching school property, she also passes the homes of two registered sex offenders — one a predator whose victim was under 18 — and the sites of three batteries and two robberies with dangerous weapons.
  
  Come August, she may have to traverse more of it.
  

Well, the problem can be seen in the third paragraph:

• ...yet the child — no more than 8 or 9 — walks alone...

Why wasn't the child awakened 20 minutes earlier? Why isn't the girl walking with a group of friends? And where, pray tell, is the parent?

It isn't our fault that the neighborhood is decrepit. We didn't make untenable loans to people who had no means of paying them off. We didn't bring a tolerance for criminal activity into the hood. And we certainly didn't bring children into this world with no means to support them. We have a hard enough time supporting our own, but we imagine Rahm's going to make us add a few dependents shortly. Can we at least claim them on our taxes?

This is "Reporting"

The Tribune must be really stretching to fill their pages:

• South Side rapper Chief Keef was arrested near Atlanta this week for disorderly conduct after hotel security smelled marijuana smoke coming from his room, police said.
  
  The disorderly conduct arrest comes two months after he was released from custody in Chicago for a probation violation.

So is this another violation? And seriously, who cares?

• An afternoon test drive of a Dodge Charger turned into a joyride Monday when a teenager from Humboldt Park sped off in the car, with a reluctant dealership employee riding shot-gun.
  
  Kendall Jackson, 18, of the 4800 block of West Superior Street, was charged with posession of a stolen vehicle, unlawful restraint of a person, and driving without a license after he visited the World Discount Auto, Inc. dealership on North Cicero Avenue on Monday afternoon.
  
  Jackson drove the car far past the boundaries of the dealership during the test, according to the police report, while a 31-year-old dealership employee in the passenger's seat pled with him to turn the car around.

And this 18-year-old with no license (and probably an entry level job or less) was allowed to test drive a piece of equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars why exactly? The car dealer/salesman ought to face charges of Felony Stupidity. This happens all the time, yet no one seems to learn.

• When Chicago police officers observed a car double-parked on the 1400 block of North Keeler Avenue in Humboldt Park Thursday, they decided to talk to the driver.
  
  But the driver, Francisco Cruz, of Belmont Gardens, couldn't speak, the police report said. He mumbled something when officers asked for his drivers license, which he did not have, but they couldn't understand him. And when officers asked him if he had something in his mouth, his response was still too garbled to understand.
  
  "Spit it out," officers said to Cruz, 41, according to the report, shining a flashlight into his mouth. Instead, he allegedly lunged at the officers, flailing his arms in an attempt to flee. Unable to escape, he pulled three plastic bags from his mouth and uttered his first words since the police arrived.

Again, this happens on a daily basis, but the Tribune deems it newsworthy for some reason. All of this ought to be on a crime blotter somewhere, not taking up pages while Rahm drives this city into the ground and helps connected people steal everything that isn't nailed down.

Rumor Mill Churning

True or false?

• Off topic.... Gang enforcement is finished. They will have the option to become part of a new citywide tru/msf like unit or be sent back to a district. Gmac is going to sell this as not another citywide unit but as an already citywide unit who has a changed mission with higher visibility(uniform) and a more focused and proactive approach to certain areas in the city. This way gmac can stick to his original story of more bodies in patrol and no more ultra aggressive units don't need to be made... It's the "same unit just a changed look and new mission to be more effective with the cities needs". All units will be consolidated to start at homan square in what is now the gang enforcement office. Kevin ryan(former commander of tru will still be the boss. Allegedly this was his plan and McCarthy liked it. Huge objections from Leo Schmitz since gang enforcement was his baby with JFed. One thing that wasn't brought up though was when its going to happed. I can't see them doing mid summer so it's either going to be soon or after summer. Fact or fiction ??? Usually I dont believe this type of stuff but I heard it from a pretty straight guy who works in admin in organized crime so it sounds very legit to me

We haven't seen the out-and-out blanket denials that usually accompany a rumor like this and we can definitely see something like this happening before the schools let out - anything to put a dent in the $1 million-per-week that Rahm and Garry are burning through. At some point, someone is going to shut off the spigot if federal money isn't hijacked.

Perception Is Not Reality

So sayeth McStatMaster:

• Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy reiterated Monday that his department has safety and security under control in the North Michigan Avenue area.
  
  McCarthy spoke to reporters at his weekly news conference held to showcase the amount of illegal guns seized in the city.
  
  
• McCarthy says its being blown out of proportion by the media, creating a perception that there's a problem.
  
  "So far to date, there's been no major incidents, but what's getting reported is mayhem, and it's patently false," McCarthy says, claiming there's been no robberies, thefts or property damage.
  

No robberies? No thefts?

Bartender? We'll have two of what he's having.

+8 from 2011

From our blogging friends over at HeyJackass.com:

• 13 homicides last week now puts 2013 solidly ahead of 2011 - 123 vs 115. Plus a number of those shot in the past week were listed in "grave" condition.
  
  The Tiny Dancer and McGunControl surge seems to be losing steam.
  
  How much money has been spent in overtime, etc... ? 

No idea how much overtime has been expended, but we know it got that much harder to track the other day.  We got this e-mail from an interested party:

•  Not sure why, but all of a sudden CPD and CFD overtime payments have been removed from the City's DataPortal.  As of March-April, this had YTD overtime for ALL City Departments and ALL personnel but it seems that City Hall has now limited it to those few Depts that they feel like releasing.  So much for open and transparent.
  
  https://data.cityofchicago.org/Administration-Finance/Employee-Overtime-and-Supplemental-Earnings/92xk-4rg9

We'll admit we didn't use the site before, so we aren't sure what was there, but our e-mailer obviously has used it and noticed right away that a significant method of tracking spending has been concealed. Anyone want to guess why?

18 Years

Closing a sad chapter:

• A former veteran Chicago narcotics officer was sentenced today to 18 years in prison for using his badge to help a violent crew of drug dealers kidnap and rob rivals of large amounts of cocaine and millions in cash.

Nothing to add to this....just another black eye.

Oklahoma Tragedy

Prayers here for all the victims in Oklahoma, especially those in Moore.

The First Responders and Recovery crews have a long set of days, weeks and months ahead of them.  And whose who lost family members, a lifetime of mourning.

Police Limit

How can you tell what the temperature was?

That's definitely the way to tell in Chicago.

Steady Numbers

A typical May weekend:

• Five people have been killed and at least 14 others wounded — including a 12-year-old boy left in critical condition — in shootings around the city since Friday night.

This one made us shake our heads though:

• About 9:15 p.m. Saturday, a shooter or shooters opened fire at a group of people at Ryan Harris Memorial Park in the 6800 block of South Lowe in the Englewood neighborhood. Shaneda Lawrence, 30, of the 9600 block of South Peoria, was shot in the head and pronounced dead at 12:46 a.m. at Stroger Hospital. A woman in her 20s was shot in the wrist, and a 24-year-old man was shot in the back.

A park named for a 1998 victim of a brutal crime is itself the scene of a triple shooting. IF that just doesn't define the misery and hopelessness of Englewood, we don't know what does.

What Could Go Wrong?

In Rahm We Trust - NOT:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pushing lawmakers to pass a gambling bill that would allow the city to weigh its choice of a casino operator in secret and forbid state regulators from taking away its license.
  The legislation also would grant the mayor authority to seize land for a casino and keep not only the gambling profits but also two local taxes and a cut of an upfront fee paid for the right to run the gambling emporium.
  It's a mix of power and privileges that gambling experts say has never been bestowed upon any city or casino owner in the country. They also say the measure raises concerns about whether the state would have ample oversight of the nation's first city-owned casino.

A bat-shit crazy insane idea if ever there was one. How about proposing a counter law that all casino revenues first go to pay off outstanding city debt, including pension liabilities, prior to a single dime going to the "schools." Because part of the problem decades ago with the lottery money was that while lottery proceeds went to the schools, the General Assembly then removed the matching amount from the State school budget and spent it on nonsense.

48 Hours Report (UPDATE)

The entire episode can be viewed at this link here.

Our opinion? It's kind of a "shotgun" approach to reporting:

• Hadiya Pendleton,
• a white suburban junkie,
• a crusader from 011 using YouTube to move dope dealers off his corner,
• more Hadiya, another girl killed and the basement level clearance rate,
• McJersey explaining that 200 extra cops has nothing to do with crime prevention,
• the million bucks per week in overtime,
• the rehab and relapse of the white suburban junkie,
• the Hadiya funeral

Rahm get zinged hard as unresponsive and arrogant when CBS shows their reporter at a press conference getting blown off by Mayor Murder.  But all in all, there is no focus to the entire report. We imagine most watchers would walk away feeling Chicago is hopeless and in steep decline - not too far off the mark. But 48 Hours reports no solutions or paths to solutions. Not exactly hard hitting reporting.

UPDATE: We should have been a little more specific. The 48 Hours report didn't seem to ask anyone interviewed for suggestions or paths to a solution, probably because that would point an unwanted spotlight at who the perpetrators and victims of 85-to-90% of the violence actually are - the white junkie was obviously a sop to what otherwise would have been an uncomfortably truthful report about the president's political cradle.

We suppose we should be thankful that McGunsAreBad didn't get a chance to do his shuck-and-jive softshoe routine from St. Sabina about government sponsored racist guns killing black and brown children. Or that Rahm didn't get to read his Bloomberg Talking Points memos.

Warm Saturday? Must Be Wilding Time!

Here we go - again:

• Eleven juveniles and one adult were arrested this evening after a large group converged near the Gold Coast and were blocking traffic, police said.
  
  The people were arrested and charges were pending, said Chicago Police News Affairs [...].
  
  The youths were part of a group that had caused a "minor disturbance" in the area, Ursitti said. She said the group members were not being violent and there were no reported injuries.

This appears to be a "boisterous" group as opposed to one of the other group intent on stealing, robbing and destroying. It still doesn't excuse the fact that nearly 100 officers had to be deployed to contain the nonsense.

Where Are My Keys?

Three shot in Lawndale:

• When the shooting stopped in Lawndale late Friday night, three people lay on the ground with gunshot wounds outside a family prom party on Kolin Avenue.
  
  
• It’s not clear why at least two shooters took aim at the group of people partying out on Kolin Avenue, among them at least a few children. They approached from an alley and ran back toward a green conversion van. When police arrived, it was still running.
  
  East of the van, police found the guns at the mouth of the alley on Kostner Avenue. South on Kostner, police found a pair of gloves and even farther south, jackets near a garbage can in a vacant lot.

The guns and clothing were recovered because the shooters left the van running and locked the doors. Oops.

Enforcers Football

Sunday:

• Hey SCC the annual First Responders Bowl football game is this Sunday. The CPD Enforcers vs. CFD Blaze play Sunday at 3pm at St Laurence HS 77/Central in Burbank. The games the first three years all came down to the last minute. 

Proceeds benefit the respective Police and Fire charities.

Flawed Concealed Carry Dies in Springfield

DOA:

• A Senate effort to impose restrictive concealed-carry limits on Illinois gun owners failed to surface for a vote Friday as expected even after the legislation was changed to ease opposition from the National Rifle Association.
  
  "One of the realities that I was keenly aware of when I entered this effort was that there are some extremists," said Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), sponsor of the gun-control measure. "There are some extremists with some very loyal followings, and they use intimidation as part of their advocacy efforts. And sometimes that intimidation is quite effective."
  

Liberal Playbook 101 - wanting to uphold the Constitution of the United States, wanting to be able to defend your life and the lives of loved ones, wanting to be able to live in peace without the fear of being robbed or murdered in the streets of Chicago makes you an extremist now. Just so we're absolutely clear.

Hey Kwame? 49 or 50 states don't have blood running in the streets and two national studies show that violent crime is down significantly as gun ownership has risen.

Everything is Fine - Trust Us

Thank goodness that the supposed robbery on Michigan Avenue was a hoax. We'd hate to think that misguided youths left the green pastures of Englewood and deliberately targeted the weak or infirm members of society for whatever nihilistic impulses distracted them from church, homework, and community service.

Meanwhile, back in the hood:

• Three teenagers face sex assault charges after they raped a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint and posted a video of the December attacks on Facebook, prosecutors said.
  
  Scandale Fritz, 16, Kenneth Brown, 15, and Justin Applewhite, 16, were all ordered held in lieu of $900,000 bail in a hearing today before Criminal Court Judge James Brown, said Cook County state's attorney spokeswoman Tandra Simonton. The three were charged as adults.
  
  The assaults took place about 3:30 p.m. Dec. 15 in Fritz's home in the 400 block of West 60th Place in the Englewood neighborhood, according to Chicago police records.

Yup. Everything is fine. This will probably be a hoax, too.

No Exempts in DC?

Well this is just sad if true:

• [McCarthy] hasn't got a clue. He is not respected, nor has he earned any. And he has no respect for us or this department, which was abundantly apparent these past few days in Washington DC at Police Week. About 200 blue shirts were there, 20 or so Sergeants, about a dozen Lt's, and a drove of retired guys including Patterson, Dugan and Folliard, but not one exempt, or Capt for that matter. Not One!!! 

We thought our eyes were deceiving us, but we didn't see a single gold star in DC. We saw one of the retired exempts mentioned, but no current bosses. Of course, we couldn't be everywhere and we may have missed one, but this comment and a couple e-mails we received make us think this might be true. And that's just too bad if our "leaders" are so intimidated by McJersey that a representative contingent can't even leave town for two or three days to honor our dead at the National Memorial.

CPS Bait and Switch

Typical Rahm ploy:

1. Go out and threaten to do something bad.
2. Let everyone get riled up.
3. Back off slightly and let people think they won.
4. Laugh
5. Bask in the glory of the "great compromiser"

Rahm did this with city stickers, proposing an increase in fees for vehicles over a certain weight. When it was discovered that all the soccer moms with minivans would be hammered with massive sticker fee increases, there was much hue and cry.

So Rahm "compromised." All city stickers went up by $10 bucks across the board. Rahm got his influx of money pretending to be reasonable to the minivan owners, when the $10 increase was what he wanted all along. He just pretended to overreach, then backed off to what he figured he needed in the first place. And the low-information sheeple (and media) sang hymns in praise of having a reasonable mayor who was responsive to the needs of the citizens.

But it was all bullshit. And here comes more bullshit:

• At least a few of the 53 Chicago Public Schools targeted for closing could be dropped from the list before Wednesday’s final school board vote, under pressure from black aldermen to follow hearing officers’ recommendations, City Hall sources said Friday.
  
  The chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus has demanded that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked school board follow retired judges’ recommendations to keep open 13 of the 53 schools.
  
  To do otherwise, Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) claimed, would be to “render the whole proceeding a joke” when Emanuel is the one who set it up.
  

No Howard, the joke is on you. Rahm is still going to close 40 schools. We aren't saying that Rahm is wrong closing 40 schools, but Howard Brookins is wrong think that Rahm isn't getting exactly what he wants. Howard is playing to his constituents by "fighting" Rahm and "winning." But we're pretty sure Rahm is letting Howard "win" while Rahm walks away with 75% of his proposed closings taking place as planned.

75% versus 25% - it's not hard to see who won.

McPeacock

A couple of e-mails coming in describing CompStat yesterday.  Seems a national news outlet, possibly CNN was there to tape the meeting, as a sort of rebuttal to the Saturday "48 Hours" report depicting Chicago crime as out of control.  The e-mails are unanimous as describing McCarthy as "preening" and "strutting" around the room, playing to the cameras at every opportunity.  None of the harsh screaming and cursing that have become commonplace, but a veritable love-fest of gentle correction, droll humor and posterior smooching.

This guy is as bad a Jesse Jackson for face time when a camera shows up.

Robbery Hoax

Liar liar pants on fire:

• Chicago police have discredited a 68-year-old woman's claim that she was robbed of tens of thousands of dollars of jewelry during a brazen attack Wednesday afternoon along the Magnificent Mile.
  
  The woman originally told officers that a group of six to eight young men robbed her of more than $135,000 in jewelry as she walked along North Michigan Avenue, according to a police report.
  
  But on Thursday night, Area Central property crimes detectives determined that the story she gave police didn't add up with surveillance video footage that was examined.
  
  "Chicago police have determined that the reported Michigan Avenue robbery of a 68-year-old woman [Wednesday] is unfounded. Detectives confronted the victim with inconsistencies between her account of the incident and recovered video, and learned that the story was not true," according to a statement from the department. 

WBBM Newsradio has an interview with the lady where she says something along the lines of, "Maybe some good will come out of this....maybe there will be more foot patrols on Michigan Avenue."

Nothing to See Here!

Move along!

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave a preliminary comment Thursday to a broad daylight mugging on Michigan Avenue this week.
  
  A 68-year-old woman says she was surrounded by a group of young men on the 700 block of North Michigan Avenue and ordered to hand over her jewels and her purse, which amounted to around $100,000.
  
  Emanuel told reporters Thursday that he wouldn't fully comment on the incident until he sees the police report, but he doesn't feel as if there's cause for alarm.
  
  "There are a lot of police, presence on Michigan Avenue and yes, people feel safe because I talk to people constantly who note how safe they are," Emanuel said.
  

Of course, Rahm talks to all these "people" from behind a wall of 22 armed security personnel or from his front porch where another half a dozen police cars guard the streets, sidewalks and alleys around his house, with a heavy weapons team less than 15 seconds away. That gives him a completely accurate picture of the situation downtown on a daily basis.

What an asshat.

Concealed Carry Bill Moves Forward

These idiots in Springfield are going to have to be held by the hand and guided through everything, step by step, by a federal judge at some point:

• Favored by gun-control advocates, a push establishing tight limits on where Illinois gun owners could carry their weapons in public advanced in the state Senate Thursday over objections from the National Rifle Association.
  
  The measure, which passed the Senate Executive Committee by a 10-4 vote, with one member voting present, surfaced less than a month before a June 9 deadline imposed by a federal appeals court for Illinois to end its last-in-the-nation prohibition on concealed-carry.
  
  "I'm trying to do something to respond to the mandate of the court to promote and preserve public safety and to balance the rights of the law-abiding gun owners in the process," state Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), the bill's chief Senate sponsor, told the panel.
  
  Within Chicago, Raoul's legislation would require police Supt. Garry McCarthy to sign off on all concealed-carry applicants before they could get permits from the Illinois State Police, setting up what gun-rights advocates fear would be a choke-point that could keep city gun owners from getting licenses.
  
  "I can see Garry McCarthy abusing the snot out of that," said National Rifle Association lobbyist Todd Vandermyde, who opposed the legislation.

Mr. Vandermyde has that correct, and that's not the only political hack lining up to obstruct citizens their Rights:

• Raoul's bill, which could be voted on by the Senate Friday, also would permit Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and other sheriffs to lodge objections to any concealed-carry applicants that the State Police would have to consider along with 17 other qualifying hurdles.
  
  Among those requirements are the broad standards of whether an applicant demonstrates "good moral character" and whether the issuance of a concealed-carry license to that person is "consistent with public safety."
  
  One legislative critic said that standard is too vague.

"Good moral character" would rule out the City Council. And the police superintendent for that matter. Eighteen procedural hurdles and roadblocks thrown in the way of American citizens exercising a Right spelled out in the Constitution.

State Hires Data Entry Operators

Someone has to help the ISP catch up - might as well hire it out:

• Anyone who has recently applied for a firearm owner's card in Illinois knows that it there is quite a wait.
  
  State police say that's because 70,000 applications have piled up in their outsource processing center - and that's because there are only four state workers doing background checks.
  
  The I-Team has learned that an emergency contract is now in place with a new vendor to process that backlog and to prepare for the onslaught of concealed/carry applications.

So even the bureaucrats know that some form of Concealed Carry is coming.

Not Another Targeted Senior?

In the Red Line tunnel.  By "youths."

• An man in his 80s was hospitalized after he was knocked to the ground and robbed of his wallet at a Loop CTA subway station Thursday morning.
  
  The attack happened at 10:33 a.m. in the subway in the 300 block of South Dearborn, where the Blue Line connects with the Red Line, according to Chicago Police ...
  
  The victim was walking up the stairs to the platform when he was knocked down and had his wallet taken....
  

Someone needs to ban CTA platforms. ASAP.

Wilding Jackpot

The Tribune plays dumb, but this has all the hallmarks of a wilding:

• A 69-year-old woman was robbed of as much as $200,000 in jewelry, cash and other items by a group of young men in front of a North Michigan Avenue department store this afternoon, authorities said.
  
  A victim was robbed of her possessions in the 700 block of North Michigan Avenue about 12:20 p.m., said Police News Affairs [...]
  
  The victim was not injured in the robbery...
  
  [Police News Affairs] had no information on suspect descriptions, or the amount taken in the robbery.
  
  The woman, age 69, was robbed by a group of at least three and as many and eight young men, law enforcement sources said. A detailed description was not available.

As Forest Gump says, "Stupid is as stupid does." Who the fuck would carry/wear $200,000 worth of cash and jewelry on North Michigan Avenue knowing what goes on there every single night? Our comment sections and e-mail were alive with reports of wildings all last night and it continued into tonight with the warm temps - but weather has nothing to do with crime, right?

The Tribune helpfully closed comments for this story - anyone wonder why?

UPDATE: The reading-impaired are out in force today. Yes, we realize that the victim ought to be able to walk around where she likes wearing what she likes. However, here in Reality Land, we would like to think the lady has a TV and watches a minimum of news reports and must have stumbled on some report that says Michigan Avenue isn't safe, no matter the time of day. Common Sense says you don't flaunt $200,000 worth of bling in an area where bling gets stolen with astonishing regularity.This is a crime of opportunity, so why wave the raw meat in front of the predator?

Then again, if Common Sense were common....

UPDATE: See "Robbery Hoax" post following this one.

Mother of the Year Nominee

There really ought to be an exam and license to have children:

• A South Side woman who had parked her car in an alley refused to yield to a marked police squad car, then grabbed a Chicago police officer and dragged her as the SUV with two children inside sped backwards down an alley, prosecutors said.
  
  The officer and her partner were blocked from turning into an alley by the parked 2009 Lexus SUV near 83rd Street and Kerfoot Avenue around 9 p.m. Monday when the driver, Catherine Brown, 38, refused to let them pass, authorities said. Brown, who faces charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery of a police officer, was ordered held in lieu of $25,000 bail by Cook Countyu Criminal Court Judge James Brown in a hearing midday today.
  
  
• Brown rolled up her car window, locked the door and started talking on her cell phone, then refused to take out her driver's license and insurance, prosecutors said. The 8-year-old, who had been screaming in the back seat, got into the front seat, onto Brown's lap, and unlocked the driver's door, pushing the female officer into a fence.
  
  When the officer told Brown to get out of the SUV, both Brown and the older girl hit the officer in the head.
  
  Brown then grabbed one the officer by her bulletproof vest and threw the SUV in reverse, driving backward at high speed, prosecutors said. The officer was dragged face first, and rolled over several times after being dragged for about 50 feet through the alley, almost running over the officer, prosecutors said.

Charged with attempted murder, but bail is only $25,000 according to the article. No charges on the 8-year-old, but her day will be coming shortly.

Another Warm Night

And another baker's dozen shot:

• Two men were killed and at least 11 people were wounded -- one of them by police -- in shootings from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning across Chicago, police said.
  
  
• Among those wounded overnight was a man shot by police around midnight after pointing a gun at an officer in the 1600 block of East 83rd Street, authorities said.
  
  Police officers heard gunfire and were told the shots came from a car. When they tried to stop the car, a passenger ran off and the officer chased him, police said. The man turned and pointed a gun at the officer and the officer fired, striking the man, according to police.

Officers are fine and jagoff should live.  And that was just Tuesday into Wednesday - nothing to do with the 80 degree temperature overnight, right?

Wednesday into Thursday isn't looking much better:

• A man was shot and critically wounded inside a building in the Beverly neighborhood this afternoon, one of at least seven people shot in the city this afternoon and evening, police said.

Summer must be here.

Rahm Finds Another $100 Million

Another nail in the City's "we're broke!" excuse:

• Plans are in the works for a $300 million, 12,000-seat arena for DePaul University’s basketball teams to be built near downtown Chicago, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
  Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected to announce plans this week for DePaul University at McCormick Place – a proposal that will call on $100 million in taxpayer dollars. The team currently plays in the 17,500 seat AllState Arena, which opened in 1980.
  
  There are also plans to build two mega hotels on the property in the hopes of aggressively growing convention and meeting business in Chicago.
  
  The men’s basketball team finished 11-21 this season, have just six conference wins in the past three season and have not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2004.

A $100 million gift from Chicago taxpayers for a private Catholic university? While the city is pleading poverty and in the midst of contentious negotiations with how many labor organizations?

This also brings to the fore the land-based casino proposals because, let's face it - an 11-21 DePaul basketball team just isn't that big a draw.

Another PPO Foot Patrol Shooting

Somewhere in 003 Monday night?

They've done a good job keeping this one under wraps - we haven't found any mention of it. No one got hit, so it must not have happened, but some people went to jail over it.

Wait...Red Light Cameras are About Money?

Who would have thunk it?

• City Hall cannot back up claims that its controversial red-light camera program is designed to make intersections safer, according to a watchdog's report released Tuesday.
  
  Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said the city cannot provide documents to prove that the cameras went up at intersections with the most side-impact crashes. He also questioned why cameras remain at intersections with no recent history of such crashes, which the $100 ticket-issuing "cops-in-a-box" are designed to prevent.
  
  "We found a lack of basic record keeping and an alarming lack of analysis for an ongoing program that costs tens of millions of dollars a year and generates tens of millions more in revenue," Ferguson wrote in a letter addressed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials.

Golly, scams for money. In Chicago. Shocking.

In other news, the sun rose in the east today. Seriously, where do they find these people?

Another Camera Report

We heard a blurb on the radio yesterday, something about another "investigative report," possibly by Channel 2, regarding police cameras and how they are breaking down, not being repaired, and possibly how they are recording crime, but no one is watching.

Any of this sound familiar to anyone? Because we're pretty sure we wrote about it more than a few times and generated hundreds of comments regarding this exact issue.

Is this breaking in conjunction with the "48 Hours" report this weekend? We can't seem to find the teaser trailer.

City Retirees Moved to ObamaCare

Better start rethinking that retirement if you haven't already:

• Chicago will phase out its 55 percent subsidy for retiree health care by January 2017 but continue that coverage for the oldest retirees, under a mayoral plan that will free taxpayers from a $108.7 million a year burden. Thirty thousand retired city employees will be forced to switch to Obamacare.
  
  [...]More than 35,000 government retirees have been on pins and needles waiting to find out whether Mayor Rahm Emanuel will continue their city-subsidized health insurance after June 30, when a 10-year settlement agreement that calls for the city to share costs with retirees is due to expire.
  
  They are not likely to be relieved when they find out how Emanuel has decided to resolve the politically volatile issue.
  

There was this though:

• But 5,500 of the oldest and most vulnerable retirees—known in the marathon litigation as the “Korshak class”—will be guaranteed a 55 percent subsidy as long as they live. They retired before Aug. 23, 1989. Specifics of the three-year phaseout for the remaining retirees will be unveiled by the end of the year.
• The annual costs do not include police and fire early retirees, who receive free health care under the active employee benefit plan until they become eligible for Medicare.

This is going to change a lot of retirement equations. It will probably end up in court for years, too.

Aldrecreature Burke to Practice Law

It's seldom so obvious, but does anyone else think the fix is in?

• Spotted in branch 44 today was former alder woman Sharon Dixon who looked just like a hype searching for a rock on the west side. She is being represented by none other than Ald. Burke himself, yes he looked like a lost puppy attempting to figure out how to operate in a courtroom. Anyway, Sharon will be staying a bit longer at Cermak hospital while Alderman Burke figures out how to get the charges dropped and fill in Sharon on how and who to sue on the Police Department 

Eddie hasn't practice criminal law in how many years?  If ever?  Anyone have a continuance date for this case?  Anyone drop a line to Kass?  You want to see the Chicago Machine Fix in action, drop by Branch 44 and check this one out.

CFD to "Escort" Students

If you don't have enough cops, bring in the firemen!

No word yet if the FOP or Firefighters Local will be filing some sort of job action on this one. According to the memo, it's supposed to run for three weeks.

Nice Background Check Ladner

Good thing she's weeding out the cops kids, the military veterans, and psych-disqualifying every applicant who doesn't meet her personal criteria. Wasn't Hilliard's firm supposed to be do these instead of Department investigators? Or didn't that ever happen?

• great job in screening applicants. A P.P.O. in 006.. yes, I said a P.P.O. has just been stripped and more than likely will be facing charges after he was found stealing over 2000 dollars at a domestic. After pressure and a beef was put in the kid folded and went to the watch commander to give the money back... too late kid. Since he is a P.P.O the city is moving for immediate termination so he wont be stripped for long. IPRA has the case and is giving it to the states attorney for charges. Oh by the way, Ladner if your reading this kid didnt have any family members on the job in the past and is not in the military. So much for your idea of not giving coppers kids a chance because they might end up bad cops...

Sometimes bad eggs slip through - we've all seen that. But those usually surface after a few years of working the street and figuring out how much smarter they think they are than the people they arrest, never realizing that someone else, at some time, tried the same bullshit. This must have set some sort of land-speed record though.