Quick Hits

All sorts of stuff today covering all sorts of stories we've spotlighted here and there:

• The man who famously dressed as a Chicago Police officer when he was 14 and fooled cops into letting him patrol the streets for several hours was sentenced to prison Thursday for impersonating a cop in July.
  
  Vincent Richardson pleaded guilty Thursday to false impersonation of a peace officer, and Judge Lauren Gottainer Edidin sentenced him to 18 months in prison and issued a $454 fine, said Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokesman Stephen Campbell.
  
  On July 23, Richardson posed as an Englewood District police officer while trying to buy police clothing, which constitutes felony impersonation of an officer, authorities said.
  

We heard he's hoping to make make parole in time for the next entrance exam - he'll have the felony expunged by one of those church events we get flyers for every years or so.

Rahm's and Zalewski's mandatory prison time proposal died before a vote:

• The Illinois House adjourned Thursday without voting on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s controversial priority gun legislation — stiffer mandatory minimum sentences for some gun crimes.
  
  The legislation was amended Wednesday to remove mandatory minimums for first time offenders. But that didn’t leave enough time for the Illinois Department of Corrections to estimate the fiscal impact of the revised legislation. IDOC had estimated the earlier version would cost $866 million over 10 years.

Jess Jackson, fresh from seeing his son into the federal pokey, arrived to actually lobby against this bill. Yeah, we had a hard time believing that one, too.

And Rahm hires more cigarette inspectors to crack down on illegal sales:

• As he tries to win approval for a higher cigarette tax, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Thursday that he is stepping up city efforts to crack down on black-market smoke sales.
  With some aldermen balking at Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 75-cents-a-pack cigarette tax increase, the mayor pushed back at one of their main complaints by announcing Thursday that he'll hire two more inspectors next year to go after black-market smoke sales.

Someone showed the aldercreatures an Econ 101 book though:

• Many aldermen believe that would lead to more black-market sales and send smokers across city borders to find cheaper smokes in the suburbs or Indiana. The stepped-up enforcement announcement came just two days after the city's top health official said the tax hike would reduce and prevent smoking.

Evidently, they didn't share it with the Health Department though.  And they're counting that imaginary money again, too:

• With some level of increased enforcement in partnership with Cook County authorities already underway, 1,280 citations have been issued since April 2012. The fines for selling unstamped cigarettes are $1,000 for the first 40 packs and $40 for each pack above that number.
  
  Police, meanwhile, have arrested 781 people for selling loosies and issued 490 citations so far this year at $1,000 a pop.

Amount actually collected? ::crickets::