We Need Your Opinion

Can anyone tell us...is the person in this picture...:

...a match to any of the people in these pictures:

We're thinking of doing a series on "Arthritis in the Young" and we need visual examples of this debilitating disease.

We were going to do a series on the ignorance of the media to actually do some research, and put two-and-two together and report on the actual reasons behind certain crimes, but we figured that was kind of obvious by now.

Cold Yesterday, Wasn't It?

Garry isn't thinking this through

• Three men and a woman were shot in an attack in the Back of the Yards neighborhood Tuesday afternoon. Three others were wounded elsewhere across the city.
  
  Chicago Fire Department ambulances were called to the scene in the 5400 block of South Winchester Avenue, near Garfield Boulevard, about 4:35 p.m. for a report of four people shot, according to a department spokesman.

So let's think about this - if weather has absolutely nothing to do with crime, then this shouldn't be an aberration, seven people shot on a chilly Tuesday, right?

But if weather has a lot to do with crime, then seven shot on a Tuesday should be worrisome, because you'll have 50 shot on a warm weekend.

Which is what is happening. Whoops.

Like Clockwork - Blame the Gun

Roll out the same old tired nonsensical unproven arguments:

• A 14-year-old girl has been charged as a juvenile in the shooting death of a Tilden High School freshman who was killed Monday afternoon on her way home from school.
  
  
• McCarthy said the gun used in the shooting was a .38-caliber revolver reported stolen by its legal owner two weeks before the shooting. The gun had been stored in the owner’s car, something McCarthy said police officers are not allowed to do with their guns, but that the state’s concealed carry law allows civilians to do if they have a concealed carry permit.

So the legislature finally recognizes the right to carry a concealed gun, but then puts so many restrictions on it that people have no choice but to leave it in their car lest they run afoul of the overly onerous restrictions, then it's their fault when property crime (which is out of control in Chicago despite what McNumberCruncher claims) occurs and they lose their legal gun to the criminal underworld.

That's a brilliant fucking argument. Blame the victim of a crime who was doing the "correct" thing by the law (despite it being not nearly as secure as a safe or ::god forbid!:: actually carrying the fucking gun on your person where it's in your sight and control) for someone else being a victim. Wow.

Hey, here's an idea - blame these assholes:

• Tuesday night, police charged a second person, a 17-year-old boy, with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and other charges for allegedly trying to discard the murder weapon, a .38-caliber handgun. Earlier Tuesday, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy hinted to reporters that a 24-year-old uncle of the suspect's also was being questioned for giving the gun to the girl, knowing “there was going to be a fight,” he said.
  
  [...] The suspect took out the gun and pulled the trigger, but the gun “malfunctioned,” said Assistant State's Attorney Kathleen Kain. The girl handed the gun to others in her group who quickly fixed it. The girl raised the gun again and opened fire, killing Endia and striking a 16-year-old girl in the upper left arm who was later released from a hospital.

They had the stolen gun, loaned it to the shooter, unjammed it for her when it malfunctioned and tried to dispose of it afterwards. That's the fault of the previous gun owner? That's the fault of legal gun owners across Illinois? This is a criminal conspiracy involving at least three people, probably a lot more when you count everyone who knew that a gun was going to appear on scene to settle this fight over a boy, but it's the fault of the gun? No one else bears any responsibility?

Only in Illinois we suppose - and only on the south (or west) side of Chicago where responsibility for one's own actions is assumed to be nonexistent among the community.

Fire and Re-Hire!

Has Rahm been watching this? You bet he has!

• A year after Camden disbanded its police department and brought in a new one with more officers on the street, reported crime has dropped significantly in a city that still ranks as dangerous by any measure.
  
  After years of doing little more than responding to emergency calls, police are on intensive neighborhood patrols, a move that has sent drug dealers scattering. But residents, advocates and officials agree that law enforcement alone can go only so far to heal a city that is also among the nation's most impoverished.
  
  
• The bold effort to fix the problem was to get rid of the city police department and the union contract that city officials found onerous. The city contracted with the Camden County government, which built a new police force. The Camden County Metro police patrol only in Camden, not its suburbs. Clerical, analytical and crime-scene processing jobs once done by gun-carrying sworn officers were given to civilians, and most of the cops were put on beats on the street.
  
  The new department — featuring many of the same officers and the same chief — took over officially on May 1, 2013. When a new class graduates from the academy and hits the streets in July, the city will have more than 400 police officers, up from about 175 at its lowest.

Fire everyone, then hire them back at a fraction of the wages, reorganize and ::ta-da!:: no more pension problems!

Guess Who Turned Up?

Gee Mister, you're a long way from home:

• Four days after a federal arrest warrant was issued for Chicago's former city comptroller Amer Ahmad, the one-time city hall wunderkind has been taken into custody in Pakistan according to multiple federal law enforcement sources.
  
  Ahmad was being sought by U.S. Marshals in Illinois and Ohio after authorities in Columbus determined he had skipped bond. He pleaded guilty in a corruption case there last December. The case was from 2009 and 2010 when Ahmad was deputy treasurer for the state of Ohio and involved kickbacks for state contracts totaling $3.2 million.
  
  Where in Pakistan Ahmad was detained and how the arrest came to be was unclear on Tuesday evening. Federal law enforcement officials in Columbus, Ohio are said to be in the very early stages of extradition although U.S. Justice Dept. personnel there would not provide any details.

Since he's over there and outside of certain "safe guards," wouldn't this be an opportune time to waterboard him and find out how much he knows about the inner dealings of Rahm's administration and how much Rahm might know about things?

Just wondering.

Execution "Botched"

We don't know about botched - he ended up dead anyway:

• Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett died during a botched execution on Tuesday, minutes after a doctor had called a halt to the procedure, raising more questions about new death penalty cocktails used by the state and others.
  
  Thirteen minutes after a lethal injection was administered at the state's death chamber in McAlester, Lockett lifted his head and started mumbling. The doctor on scene halted the execution, said state corrections department spokesman Jerry Massie.
  
  Lockett died of an apparent massive heart attack about 40 minutes after the procedure started, he said.

Gee, we feel so sorry for him. Anti-death penalty advocates are anticipating the end of capital punishment in the US:

• The troubled execution was expected to have national implications, with lawyers for death row inmates having argued that new lethal injection cocktails used in Oklahoma and other states could cause undue suffering and violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
  
  [...] "This could be a real turning point in the whole debate as people get disgusted by this sort of thing," said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment.

Just for reference, this condemned criminal shot an 18-year-old girl in 1999 during a robbery spree and buried her alive before she expired. The other prisoner who was supposed to be executed tonight, raped and murdered an 11-month-old child - he was granted a 14 day extension after the problems last night.

We don't think most people, especially Oklahoma residents, are going to be "disgusted" to the point that they demand executions cease. They're going to return to other tried and true methods of removing murderers from the midst of decent people - electrocution, hanging, firing squads. Oklahoma is the heart of Bible country and they believe in Old Testament "eye for an eye" type punishments a lot of the time.The amount of discomfort that criminals feel isn't going to enter into too many thoughts.

Another Billion???

The First Rule of Holes:

• When you're in one, stop digging.

The First Rule of Running a City if You're a Democrat:

• Borrow, borrow borrow. You're great-great-grandchildren will pay it somehow

This qualifies as "un-fucking-believable"

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel won first-round approval Monday to borrow more than $1 billion to bankroll water and sewer projects, despite aldermanic concerns about Chicago’s plummeting bond rating and its mountain of debt.
  
  Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott said there’s a dramatic difference between general obligation bonds backed by property taxes and the $575 million in “Water Revenue” bonds and the $475 million in “Wastewater Transmission Revenue” bonds authorized by the City Council’s Finance Committee.
  
  The new round of borrowing is backed by Emanuel’s 2011 decision to double water and sewer rates over a four-year period, then impose annual increases tied to the inflation rate.

And exactly how much of this borrowing is going to go toward the $600 million first responder pension balloon payment that comes due next year?

• ZERO!

Is there an adult around who has actually balanced a checkbook and could point out where this is leading? Are there any actuaries who can spell it out in simple terms? And who the hell are these bankers who keep giving this asshole money, a billion dollars at a time?

Girl Fight

And of course, someone gets killed:

• A 14-year-old girl was killed on her way home from school and a second girl was wounded this afternoon in a shooting in the the Back of the Yards neighborhoods.
  
  [...] The girl, who was shot in the back, was taken to Comer Children's Hospital where she was pronounced dead, according to [News Affairs] and the Chicago Fire Department. An official said the girl was 14, but News Affairs was not immediately able to confirm that information.
  
  A second girl, whose age was not immediately confirmed, was shot in the arm and had her condition stabilized at St. Bernard Hospital and Healthcare Center....

And the shooter?

• Endia was on her way home from school not far from her house on 55th and Morgan when a girl from another school approached her, according to her stepfather, who was with many people were gathered Monday evening at the Comer emergency room.
  
  "They had words and she gunned our daughter down," Kennedy said. "For what? What reason would another girl gun down another child?"

Well, we'll tell you, but you won't like the answer. It has to do with involved parenting, self-control, personal responsibility, conflict resolution skills and a sense of right vs wrong. We're going to take a wild guess here and say at least 4 out of those 5 were missing.

Five bucks says Rahm claims it's the gun's fault, completely disregarding the points we made.

And would someone get Channel 7 a map?

• One teenage girl is dead, another is wounded after a shooting on Chicago's West Side.
  
  It happened in the 900 block of West Garfield in the Brighton Park community.

That's the first time we've heard 5500 south described as "West Side." Who knew?

Baltimore Fights Back

Across the ocean, people are burning these things.

Here, just a little paint....for now:

• Someone in Baltimore, MD has been disabling speed cameras by painting over them.
  
  Several of the areas 47-speed cameras have been repeatedly vandalized by an unknown person.

At street level, Chicago cameras wouldn't stand a chance either. They'd be found in pieces in a recycling yard like those school buses.

Maybe if those "Occupy" type protestors actually railed against the ever encroaching government depriving Americans of freedom, privacy and mugging the people with ever increasing fines/fees, they might have found a little more support among the masses.

Stop Counting!

From the comments:

• We were told at a recent roll call that 35h St has stopped using/including Weekend shooting/homicide numbers in their stats if they happen after 8a.m. Sunday morning.
  
  Has anyone else heard this?

Well, Let's see - Friday into Saturday, we found one article that said the following:

• At least four people were killed and 27 others wounded within 16 hours across Chicago.

Saturday into Sunday, we located this published at 10:16 AM:

• Four people were killed and at least 34 have been wounded in shootings across the city since Friday night, Chicago Police said.

So Garry's crime fighting strategies seem to indicate that only 7 additional people got shot during the rest of the weekend? Once again, we're going to speculate that someone is playing games with the numbers by selectively choosing the time frames in which they report crime.

It's a believable statement.

Furthermore, the article lists the following four people killed this weekend:

• a 21-year-old woman was gunned down while riding in a car on Fullerton Avenue near Kedzie Boulevard
• a 17-year-old boy was shot and killed in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side
• a man was killed and a woman was wounded in a shooting in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.
• Late Friday, a 32-year-old woman was fatally shot in the West Pullman neighborhood

Those appear to be the four everyone agrees were killed. But then a quick scan of the headlines finds these:

• A Cicero man was stabbed to death in the Little Village neighborhood early Sunday, authorities said.
• A South Austin man was ordered held on $750,000 bail Sunday after prosecutors say he struck and killed a man with his vehicle Saturday.

They charged the second guy with First Degree Murder, but the vehicular homicide doesn't appear in any of the weekend tallies over at the Tribune. Nor does the stabbing. So again, someone is playing games with the media, who is either too lazy to correct their own numbers in the face of obvious half-truths issued by the Department, or they're in on the game.

Giant Pay Raise Coming

Someone asked this question:

• The city is finished. More and more decent tax paying folks are leaving this cesspool every day. Who is going to pay the bills when all the tax payers are all gone.

Good news!

Everyone is getting a 50% hike in pay! We're all going to be making $120,000 a year.

Bad news.

Rahm is starting a city income tax of around 50% so as to maintain the "social programs" his voters so badly desire. So we'll all be working more, receiving less, but we still get to feel good about paying all the bills for those on the lower socioeconomic rungs of the ladder.

10G $10,000 in the Hole

Stick to football:

• Hi Kids. 10 G here. Give you brothers and sisters a nice pick I have. Won't be popular but a few have axed.
  
  I put 10 large on the underdog Blues over the Hawks today to pick up 14. Told you it wouldn't be a popular choice but there it is!

Not an auspicious beginning.

Same Old Song

We can name this tune in one note - and the note is BANG!

• At least four people were killed and 27 others wounded within 16 hours across Chicago.
  
  The number of shootings from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning is more than half the total number shot over a violent Easter weekend.

What else can we say? We predict this with astonishing accuracy every time the snow fades and the sun comes out. Our readers probably have a combined street experience totaling more than a few millennia and they predict it, too.

Meanwhile, Rahm continues the Shortshanks legacy of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and destroying our promised pensions. McCarthy refuses to point out the obvious manpower shortages and the department brass willingly goes along destroying morale at every opportunity. Coppers are thrown under the bus with enough regularity that they could becomes CTA mechanics in short order.

But Contact Cards and CompStat will save Chicago. Just wait - another three years and you'll see.

Ironic

Rahm, you want to field this one?

• Leonore Draper was minutes away from entering her West Pullman home after an anti-violence charity event she attended Friday night when she was shot and killed.
  
  Police found Draper, 32, shot in the chest and arm in a parked car near her home in the 11600 block of South Laflin Street in the West Pullman neighborhood on the Far South Side at about 10:35 p.m., about 30 minutes after the fundraiser she went to was over. She was pronounced dead at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn at 12:32 a.m., according to the medical examiner's office.
  
  “The irony behind her getting shot… is beyond me,” said Fallon Barrett, 33, who has been close friends with Draper since high school. “I feel like I’m in this really bad dream that I wanna wake up from.”

You and the entire Pullman neighborhood Mr. Barrett. And Roseland. And Bronzeville. And pretty much the entire South side. And West side for that matter.

A Flat Learning Curve

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer:

• Exactly 14 days after his murder case was dismissed, a South Side man was arrested after running from Chicago police and dropping a handgun, prosecutors said Saturday.
  
  Tahari R. Wilson, who had been charged with murder in 2012, was freed on April 11. But on Friday, police said, officers patrolling near the scene of a recent homicide approached Wilson for a field interview close to his Gresham neighborhood home.
  
  The 22-year-old fled through a gangway, police said, and in the process an officer saw him draw a handgun. Police eventually caught up to Wilson, of the 8200 block of South Loomis Boulevard near his home and arrested him.

It sure would be interesting to see why the homicide charge was dropped, especially as he is hanging out at the scene of another homicide with a gun. Anita? You want to answer that one? Maybe he was a rapist on the side, too? You know the media won't ask questions about released rapists.

Garry on Patrol

"every available body" means everyone:

• Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy patrolled the streets overnight and helped officers capture a group of armed shooting suspects.
  
  Officers responding to a report of shots fired near 40th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue attempted to question three people walking at nearby 41st Street and Drexel Boulevard, police said.
  
  The suspects ran away when officers approached, and a foot pursuit ensued, police said.
  
  McCarthy was on patrol in the area and helped Wentworth District officers run down the three suspects, police said. Two handguns were recovered during the arrest.

Remember - GM means "gun magnet."

Officer Defends Self, Wife

We' feel sorry that the Officer and his family had to put up with this crap for so long:

• A police officer’s wife is in serious condition after she was shot by a shotgun-wielding elderly neighbor during a dispute that ended with the officer fatally shooting the man.
  
  The incident occurred about 2:15 p.m., when an off-duty Chicago Police officer was at home in the 8400 block of South Carpenter Avenue and he heard a verbal argument between his wife and a female neighbor, according to a statement from police News Affairs. The officer went outside and saw the female neighbor throwing rocks and dirt at his wife and striking her with a broom. A male in the neighbors’ backyard then retrieved a shotgun and fired shots at the officer’s wife, striking her in the arm and head, the statement said.
  
  Police said off-duty officer then fired shots at the male. The female neighbor then tried to pick up the shotgun, despite instructions by the officer. The officer then fired shots and struck the female, the statement said.

We certainly hope the agitator is facing charges:

• The neighbor called for her husband, also in his 80s, to “get that thing” and come into the yard, Camden said. The elderly man came out with a shotgun and fired at the officer’s wife, striking her in the upper chest and arm area, according to Camden.

So she tells her husband to get a shotgun, getting him killed, then she's going to get the shotgun, managing to catch a bullet of her own. Definitely sounds like Murder to us.

Speedy recovery to the Officer and his spouse.

4 Cops Injured in Crash

Ouch:

• Four Chicago police officers sustained non-life threatening injuries after their vehicles were involved in a motor vehicle accident in the Gresham neighborhood, officials said.
  
  The crash happened at 8 p.m. on the 7900 block of South Racine Avenue, said Chicago Police News Affairs [...].
  
  The officers, who were in two separate vehicles, were responding to a "person with a gun call," when the two vehicles collided in the intersection of 79th Street and Racine Avenue, [...].
  
  The four officers sustained non-life threatening injuries, said Larry Langford, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman. The officers were listed in good condition, Sweeney said.

Look both ways boys. Best wishes on a speedy recovery.

A Call for McJersey's Resignation

This is the first time we've seen a public official calling for McCarthy's head:

• State rep Ken Dunkin says he's had enough and so have his constituents. "After three years now, this mayor and this so-called chief of police can't figure out what the hell to do," he says. "The least the mayor could do is terminate Garry McCarthy immediately and get a superintendent who knows this city and is moving toward some strategies that will save it."
  
  In short, Dunkin isn't pleased, and he speaks for a growing number of south- and west-siders.
  
  Last weekend, in what's become a rite of spring, the casualty count rose along with the temperature, and by the time Easter was over at least nine people had been killed and more than 40 others shot.

Given who Dunkin represents, Rahm is going to be hard pressed not to address this in some way.

Rahm's Guy on the Lam

Rahm's former comptroller, the one that no one managed to discover that he was named in an indictment in Ohio before coming here, has taken off running:

• Facing up to 15 years in prison and stripped of his U.S. passport, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s former city comptroller ordered his wife this week “to get him a fake birth certificate from Pakistan for a passport,” according to court records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
  Now, Amer Ahmad is on the lam, and a judge issued a warrant Friday for his arrest.

He spent the time after trial (allegedly) beating his wife, terrorizing their children and planning an escape overseas. Any bets on which border they find him at?

Sgt and Lt Assignments

They graduated Monday, but still hadn't been assigned.

Now they have.

Who's going where?

More "Chiraq" References

The inevitable comparisons to overseas conflicts:

• During the first two weeks of nice temperatures in Chicago this year--which included Easter weekend--the city was beset with some 100 shootings with nearly a dozen dead. This intense violence has earned the Windy City a brand new nickname bestowed by its own citizens: "Chiraq."
  
  Over Easter weekend, there were 45 separate shooting victims in Chicago, four of which died. The previous weekend saw 35 shootings in only 36 hours that resulted in several more deaths. There were even more shootings and deaths during the intervening days between the weekends, as well. All this violence has turned Chicago into a war zone.
  
  
• Meanwhile, not a single American solider died in either Iraq or Afghanistan in March, and only 13 died in the previous two months. On the other hand, 76 Chicagoans have been murdered thus far in 2014.

When they put it that way, it sounds really bad - it's surprising Rahm and Garry still have jobs.

NATO 3 Sentencing

Later today with a hefty recommendation in the offing:

• Cook County prosecutors are seeking a 14-year prison term for the three out-of-town activists who insist they never wanted to cause harm when they allegedly helped make crude Molotov cocktails under the watchful eye of a pair of undercover Chicago Police officers in days leading up to the NATO summit.
  
  “A sentence of 14 years . . . is fair and just,” prosecutors wrote in a 48-page sentencing memorandum about the trio known as the NATO 3.
  
  Brian Church, 22, Jared Chase, 29, and Brent Betterly, 26, face a four- to 30-year prison sentence when they appear before Judge Thaddeus Wilson for sentencing on Friday for misdemeanor mob action and possession of an incendiary device to commit arson. The trio has been in jail for roughly two years and attorneys for the men argue they’ve served enough time.

A decade or so might be a good message to send.

Obama High

Another TIF project, spending $60 million that Rahm has squirreled away:

• Barack Obama — first black commander-in-chief, adopted Chicago son, one-time boss of the mayor — will have at least one prominent public building named after him in Chicago.
  
  Mayor Rahm Emanuel made sure of that Thursday — well before the president decides where to put his library — as Emanuel announced plans to build a selective-enrollment high school, the city’s 11th, on the North Side using $60 million in tax-increment financing money and eventually serving 1,200, giving much needed hope to parents who want their kids to have a chance at the best high school education the city has to offer.

And as an added bonus, Obama High will, at no extra charge, automatically seal your transcripts for the next 50 years regardless of actual academic standing.

In the meantime, 54 schools closed, a new $60 million dollar building, and another massive expenditure in the face of a $600 million balloon pension payment Rahm has no intention of making.

Suspect Released to Rape Again?

CPD caught a rapist the other day:

• A 20-year-old man was caught on multiple surveillance cameras before and after he allegedly raped and robbed a woman in broad daylight Tuesday afternoon in Lakeview, prosecutors said in court.
  
  Marcus Lynch, of the 4700 block of South Loomis Boulevard, has been charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault and armed robbery.
  
  Lynch was denied bail Wednesday afternoon, after prosecutors told a judge he’d been caught on camera following the a 22-year-old woman after she left a Circle K convenience store at a Shell gas station at Halsted and Addison streets around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Nicely done.

However, this case triggered a few memories of our readers, and it appears that Marcus enjoys having sex at knife-point with unwilling females. In fact, he was arrested on 13 December 2013 on another CSA where he detained and raped a female at knife-point, forced the victim to give him her phone number, called the victim while she was being interviewed by the police for another "date" and was apprehended where he told her to meet him.

Slam-dunk Criminal Sexual Assault, right? Not according to the State's Attorney who refused to approve felony charges that probably would have kept this animal behind bars and prevented the most recent rape. The case was initially listed as "continuing investigation," but was shortly followed up by a refusal of charges.

But you can bet Anita won't be asked any questions about that one.

True or Rumor?

A couple variations on this one popping up in the comment sections - true? Or a troll working overtime?

• The city has decided to 'utilize' the tact teams on their days off in various 'impact' zones through out the city on their rdos starting May1st. Apparently downtown thought this was a way to fill those hot spots without opening up too much Vri. Downtown said that the tact teams would be more proactive than the people who were gobbling up all the VRI dates. So this is their way of skirting the system and not using senority while filling those VRI boxes. Little do they know that with all the other usual crap they make tact teams do, they will be seeing several grievances from officers who have both rdos cancelled 

We can see VRI ramping up - shootings numbers are getting out-of-hand. We can also see Tact teams giving up a day off - there are already teams working downtown more than a few nights a week to combat the "wilding." But this? Seems a bit over the top - but desperate people have desperate ideas.

Violence is Heat Related?

Now Sneed is getting into the act:

• Memo to detractors giving Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to provide air conditioning for every Chicago Public School classroom the cold shoulder: Ya gotta be kidding!
  
  It’s too expensive, you say? It’s too costly to fully air-condition the 206 city school buildings that don’t have it?
  
  What price does one put on the life of a child when hot weather fuels violence?
  
  What price is too high to for preventing a child from getting killed?

Wow, really? We should spend all of our tax dollars into a growing and endless hole in the ground because if it "saves just one child, it's worth it?" That's the typical brainless, liberal argument that Rahm makes on a daily basis - "it's for the children."

There isn't a single study that has ever linked air conditioning in the schools to rates of violence in Chicago. Ever. So of course, you must suspend all reason and accept the spending of another $100 million (that we don't have) to alleviate a problem that no one has ever quantified as even existing. We don't ever remember missing a single day of primary or middle school due to the heat, and we did K-thru-12 here.

Remember when Sneed used to carry water for Shortshanks? There's a "reporter" who's found her niche.

Bears Schedule Announced

Here you go:

• Sun, Sep. 7 vs. BUFFALO BILLS Noon
  Sun, Sep. 14 at San Francisco 49ers 7:30 p.m.
  Mon, Sep. 22 at New York Jets 7:30 p.m.
  Sun, Sep. 28 vs. GREEN BAY PACKERS Noon
  Sun, Oct. 5 at Carolina Panthers Noon
  Sun, Oct. 12 at Atlanta Falcons Noon
  Sun, Oct. 19 vs. MIAMI DOLPHINS Noon
  Sun, Oct. 26 at New England Patriots Noon
  OFF WEEK
  Sun, Nov. 9 at Green Bay Packers 7:30 p.m.
  Sun, Nov. 16 vs. MINNESOTA VIKINGS Noon
  Sun, Nov. 23 vs. TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS Noon
  Thu, Nov. 27 at Detroit Lions 11:30 a.m.
  Thu, Dec. 4 vs. DALLAS COWBOYS 7:25 p.m.
  Mon, Dec. 15 vs. NEW ORLEANS SAINTS 7:30 p.m.
  Sun, Dec. 21 vs. DETROIT LIONS Noon
  Sun, Dec. 28 at Minnesota Vikings Noon

Well, we should know pretty quick if this season is worth watching.

Cops Injured by Fleeing Vehicle

On the west side:

• A man fleeing the scene of a domestic disturbance hit two officers with a car early Wednesday morning in the East Garfield Park neighborhood.
  
  A woman in the 3200 block of West Carroll Street called police about 2:20 a.m. to report a domestic disturbance, police said.
  
  The woman asked to be walked out to her car. Police walked her out and found the man the woman had reported was inside a car.
  
  He tried to flee and hit the officers, a fence and a building.

Nothing life threatening. A speedy recovery wished to all.

There was another incident involving a fleeing vehicle on the south side:

• Five people were hurt after a vehicle hit a bus stop Tuesday night after a police chase in the Roseland neighborhood.
  
  About 8:40 p.m., a vehicle traveling north on Michigan Avenue near 103rd Street struck another vehicle, said Larry Langford, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman. The first vehicle then hit the bus stop.
  
  The crash was the result of a chase that started when Calumet District officers tried to stop a vehicle for a traffic violation and the vehicle sped away, police said.

No life threatening injuries to the citizens,but the story seems to be the police were chasing it. The story says the driver fled a traffic stop, but no word on where it began that would indicate a pursuit. This asshole might have driven 50 feet around the corner and lost control.

CompStat Media

Every time we see this, we're just amused as all hell:

• One day after Mayor Rahm Emanuel decried the rash of shootings over the Easter holiday weekend, eight people were shot across the city in less than seven hours.
  
  The ages of the victims — one teenager and seven men — ranged from 14 to 56.

Pretty soon, the media will be comparing this seven-hour stretch to other seven-hour stretches to come up with percentages that crime is up or down compared to the another seven-hour stretch from seven hours ago.

The weekly numbers have got to be pretty ugly, too. Sure we're getting 40 shot per weekend, but the numbers for Monday through Friday have got to be nearly as bad. Perhaps the guys over at HeyJackass.com can toss up some Sunday through Saturday numbers? We're going to bet it's between 60 and 80 people shot per week - call it 70 for the over/under.

Does that sound like "crime is down"? We don't have anything to compare it to, but 70 shot in a week sounds like a city out of control.

Chiraq

Once again, everyone is picking up on our unfortunate shooting numbers.

Yahoo news has a front page story up - we'll link it here, but it turns out to be more anti-gun screeds from the usual suspects.

The Guardian and Western Journalism have picked up on the Chicago Magazine story regarding fudged numbers. FoxNews has been running a few features along with the Huffington Post people.

And with 7 more shot tonight, Rahm has to be fuming, watching his national ambitions burn in a haze of powder smoke.

Madigan Lawlessness

Someone on the Republican side, the supposed party of "fiscal discipline," noticed that Illinois was broke and said something about it - after Madigan held a number of votes with no one actually around to vote:

• Republican statehouse leaders ripped a proposal to give $100 million to construction efforts for President Barack Obama’s presidential library, arguing there’s no reason the cash-strapped state should dole out money when the president has proven himself a more-than-capable fundraiser.
  
  “When we’re sitting at $7 billion of unpaid bills, why are we dangling $100 million to the decision-makers to entice them to come to Chicago?” House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, told the Sun-Times editorial board Tuesday.
  
  Durkin and Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, took turns railing against the proposal, which House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, muscled through a House committee last week while the Legislature was on spring break.

Good point. Every other presidential library has been funded by private donations - it's actually written into Federal statute. We've gotten mailings from foundations for the past few presidents soliciting funds to house these museums. But now Illinois, a state that can't seem to pay its bills and with outstanding pension obligations approaching a hundred-billion dollars, pulling $100 million out of their ass seems possible.

And Madigan was in full dictator mode last week:

• No Republicans attended the hearing and the committee was not supposed to have voted on the financing measure, which was not requested by the Barack Obama Presidential Foundation. Backlash over the vote has prompted Madigan to call for a re-vote by the committee.

The REpublicans are outnumbered on the committee, so why even bother having them around to cast dissenting votes against the Obamessiah? You know who Madigan blamed right away for his being caught falisfying voting records, right?

• Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan says the Tea Party is forcing him to call for a re-vote on a bill to spend $100 million in taxpayer money to sweeten Chicago's bid for the Obama presidential library.
  
  Last week while on break between hearings, Democrats on the House Executive Committee voted to pass the measure while their Republican colleagues were not present. They then recorded the vote as "unanimous."

Those damn Tea Party folks. Actually expecting their votes to count when they weren't even in the room - when there wasn't even a quorum for the committee (which was officially in recess) to conduct business. Where do these people think they are, America?

Another Transfer Order?

So now there's an amended transfer order with all sorts of names that weren't on the original delayed order?

Just in how bad a shape did Ladner leave that place?

Is anyone running these seniority dates and movement codes to see what the Department is trying to hide?

Spend Spend Spend

What? You don't have the money? Spend it anyway!

• Chicago Public Schools put a $100 million price tag Tuesday on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s sudden mandate to air-condition classrooms in 206 schools, even as CPS faces a $1 billion shortfall and many other pressing capital needs.
  
  Joel Hood, CPS spokesman, said Tuesday the district estimates spending $20 million per year out of the capital budget over five years to fulfill the mayor’s order to cool classrooms with window units.
  
  He did not yet know which schools would be first in line, or how they’d been chosen.

They'll be chosen on the basis of their political viability for starters. After that, who knows. Some of these buildings have been without AC for decades, but by golly, if Rahm wants to burn through another $100 million, he just declares it to be so and damn the CPS billion dollar shortfall.

More Platitudes

Rahm's speechwriters are working overtime:

• Emanuel acknowledged the warm weather played a role in the spike in shootings as more people spent time outside over the weekend. But he said there are many things Chicagoans can do to counteract the violence.
  
  "Every child deserves a childhood, regardless of where they live. But to do that, our city and community, the neighborhoods that make up this city, cannot live by a code of silence," Emanuel said at a news conference at an Edgewater school to announce more international baccalaureate programs. "They have to live by a moral code."
  
  "Now I've read some of this, and I just want to say this, when some people go 'Well, it's the weather.' It's whether you have values," the mayor said. "Yes, weather's an impact. Where you put police is an impact. Whether you have summer jobs, after school programs, camps, summer reading programs. We have to do that and more."
  
  Emanuel said he spoke to the parents of five children who were shot over the weekend, as is his custom, calling it the most difficult part of his job. "I want them to know that I love them, I care for them and their city cares for them, and we will be there as many tomorrows as it takes," he said.

There's a guy running for reelection folks (and people). You can barely keep all the useless platitudes in check there.

Another Federal Task Force?

Really?

• When U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon took his post six months ago amid pressure to curtail Chicago‘s relentless street violence, he was clear that federal authorities were not going to be able to swoop in and make arrests that would suddenly solve the intractable problem.
  
  While Fardon has downplayed expectations, the announcement Monday that he has created a new Violent Crimes section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office clearly reflects how gun violence has become a high-profile issue for an office better known for combating terrorism and public corruption.
  
  After months of consultations on how his office spends its resources, Fardon decided to spin off 16 prosecutors from the larger Narcotics and Gangs section to focus solely on how best to use federal statutes to go after violence, said Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Fardon.

Once again, ignore the outcry from certain constituencies and start handing out federal sentences, ten years at a time and far away from home. If you can put a copper in prison for 4 years over a slap, why not send away a convicted gang banger who lit up a park or a street corner for ten years?

Two words Zach - Project Exile. Look it up and what it did to Virginia gun crime rates. Word got around damn quick on the east coast AND it was supported by the NRA of all groups. Of course, it was immediately branded as "racist" by anti-prison groups, the Black Congressional Caucus and others who said it would adversely impact the minority communities, the very communities bleeding into the streets and being devastated by gun violence. That alone ought to tell you it worked wonders.

Rahm to Stop Using Dead Kids as Props

Thank goodness for that:

• Mayor Emanuel gathered Monday with parents and others at Saint Sabina Catholic Church, calling for an end to Chicago’s violence.
  
  Father Michael Pfleger says another violent weekend does not mean a deadly summer.
  
  “It’s up to us what happens tonight, tomorrow and up to next weekend,” he said.
  
  Emanuel says speaking to the parents of murdered children is the toughest part of his job.
  
  “I am done making these phone calls,” he said. “I have no words to say anymore. There is nothing out there that is more powerful than what’s in here.”

Finaly the taxpayers will be saving money on Rahm's cell bill, although we have to ask, has he looked into a "Friends, Family and Victims Plan" for his phone contract?

84 Recruits Graduate

Yay.

Now do the division:

• 84 PPO's divided by 22 Districts divided by 3 watches.

Plus, once they finish their 12 weeks of field training, they're all getting shipped off to Operation Impact for foot patrol, so the actual net effect on District shortages will be.....zero.

84 is better than 0, but not for a while. Let's not pretend that this is any sort of answer in the short term - you know, like Rahm and McCarthy do.

Coppers Injured

Rollover accident:

• A woman attempted to flee the scene after crashing into a police car in Calumet Heights Sunday night, police said
  
  Around 10:45 p.m. Sunday, a police SUV responding to an emergency call was driving northbound on South Jeffery Boulevard when it was struck by a silver sedan heading westbound on 89th Street. The crash forced forced the police SUV into another SUV and caused the police vehicle to flip over

Non-life-threatening injures, but enough to rattle you around pretty good. Best wishes to the injured.

A Good Point

As more time passes, the recent incident at the Skokie courthouse generates some questions in the comment section:

• SCC: The defense attorney approached the ASA and asked for a deal, saying he has video that doesn't match the report. ASA refused. Now, why would the ASA not view and or prep these Officers with a video she knows exists? and why did she need 5 Officers to testify to a traffic stop (for only a pound of weed)? I'm skeptical about this ASA's actions (subornation of perjury if knew false testimony was being presented? knows they leaving for defense work and wants to F*#@ some coppers?) What is the ASA's story?

Indeed. Five coppers for a traffic stop case - subpoenaed by whom?

The State? Then the State has a responsibility to review the evidence at hand (video, case reports) and prep the officers. It's probably safe to assume this wasn't done at all.

The Defense? Then the Officers better be up to date on everything written or recorded previously, and the State still has to prep them so as to not be surprised by anything that might come up. Five officers subpoenaed by the Defense ought to be a clear indication that something is up on that side of the courtroom.

And what ASA would even think about letting this case go forward after the second Officer testified to pretty much what had to be the exact same questions by Defense Counsel. We don't have a law degree, but two similar sets of questions asked of different officers would kind of point a pretty bright spotlight at what the Defense is planning. Ask for a recess on any pretext and get someone to review the tapes - you've got them there - the State had to turn them over to the Defense as part of discovery.

If the ASA was incompetent, they ought to be fired.

If the ASA knew and let it go forward, they ought to be sanctioned for subornation of perjury, disbarred, and then fired.

This doesn't excuse the Officers by any stretch of the imagination - they screwed the pooch in a way that no cop should sanction, excuse or be a part of. But the ASA has a few questions that need answering from their end, too.

Violent Weekend (UPDATE)

At least for this time of year:

• Easter weekend was no holiday from violence, with shootings claiming the lives of seven across Chicago and leaving 27 wounded.
  
  That includes a Sunday afternoon shooting that left one man dead and critically injured another in South Lawndale.
  
  About 1 p.m., an orange Hummer blocked a Lincoln Navigator head-on at the corner of 28th Street and Sawyer Avenue, Chicago Police at the scene said. Two people with guns then stepped out of the Hummer and fired nearly a dozen bullets at the Navigator, right under a police “blue light” camera.

"...right under a ... camera" - thank goodness it was there to prevent crime, right? The wounded individual in that case has since died, raising the total to 8. And the death investigation of the infant up north might drive it to 9. The wounded are up to 28 at the moment.

Among the dead was a CPD Officer murdered by her husband, a Cook County Officer, who then killed himself. Deepest sympathies to the family.

UPDATE: Almost 40 shot according to the papers, so there goes Garry's "reduction over last weekend" press conference. The five kids wounded in the late night shooting made the difference. Is there a "countdown clock" anywhere?

Shooting Map

A much more even distribution of shootings and killings this weekend.

At least McCarthy's wish last week that "no one will rest until everyone in Chicago enjoys the same sense of safety" is coming true - every neighborhood is slowly become equally miserable.

Congratulations.

Overcomplicated

Didn't they streamline this entire procedure about three or four years ago?

• Police shooting in 025 last night involving the destruction of a dog. Now normally this is a pretty simple procedure pertaining to a missle X, TRR as long as there's nothing else hit.
  
  UNLESS of course you're wearing a gold star,cue the dark side theme from Star Wars,and in steps Deputy Velez with his driver cronie.
  
  Now according to our fearless leader he states that this is no longer a misc x card and requires a case report for non criminal damage to property. When the general order is brought to his attention,he states"oh well that changed after the SGT's Test. Well many attempts of finding this new called Special order,I'm guessing it's under the title This Shit Doesn't Exist file, he begins berating the officers on scene for removing the animal from the presence of the public (let's face it how long has it taken in the past for streets to pick up a dead animal in the past) and not putting up crime scene tape......I didn't realize that a dead dog required the crime lab. He than orders a p.o. to take the dog out of the bag and search it's body for the 3 bullet wounds.
  
  [...] No matter what kind of sense was trying to be relayed of this situation he wasn't having any of this. He even went as far to tell the W.C. I'm the acting superintendent, i know what's going on. He further states that this is new practice as the city has faced numerous lawsuits from dog owners. Well news flash Einstien regardless of how this incident is documented it's not gonna stop some shitbag lawyer from suing....Go back behind the desk and worry about beat tags and take the cronie yes man with you.
  
  what should of been done in 40 minutes took hours of wasted manpower. Now excuse me as I contact the dog whisperer to get dead FIDO's side of the story and contact the Loevy's to get this inevitable lawsuit going.....The real reason to even bring up this nonsense is so people have an idea on how clueless some of the leadership is. God forbid the day when an incident of epic proportions happens and we have to look to bosses like this for leadership and p.s. he also originally stated that the P.O. was the victim for said property which was destroyed.

The people running this asylum.

Giant Walking Puppets - Preview

We found a proposal on-line about Rahm's efforts to bring the Royal de Luxe Theater Company here to Chicago along with their 50-foot-high street theater puppets. Remember, this is a deal worth millions according to the Sun Times:

That appears to be Rahm on the lead float distributing TIF funds.

5 Dead, 16 Wounded

So far that is:

• Five people have been killed and 16 others wounded in shootings across the city since Friday evening, including a double homicide with two teenage victims on the South Side.
  
  An 18-year-old and Jordan Means, 16, who lived less than a block away, were both pronounced dead at the scene.
  
  The police discovered their bodies just after 10:30 a.m. Saturday inside an apartment in the 8200 block of South Houston Avenue.

The double was over some Facebook postings, of all things:

• Two Chicago teenagers were shot to death Saturday over a dispute on Facebook, the mother of one of the victims said Saturday night.

A prominent local news anchor was heard to comment:

And the weekend isn't over yet - even warmer tomorrow.

Happy Easter

You just know that McCarthy is hoping against hope that the dead will actually rise today and save him a few homicides.

Jesus kind of invented CompStat you know, and Lazarus was Jesus's first attempt at manipulating the numbers.

Here's an Easter Jib-Jab to start the morning.

Bike the Ghetto

Brilliant idea? Or scam to not update equipment?

• The Chicago Police Department is deploying bikes for use by patrol officers in 19 of 20 targeted zones that have had a history of high rates of violence, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Supt. Garry McCarthy announced Friday.
  
  Roughly a third of the 360 foot patrol officers assigned to the police’s Operation Impact program, which targets high-violence neighborhoods, have been trained and equipped with bikes, officials said. Some 140 officers will participate in the bike patrol.
  
  The bikes are being deployed in zones on the South and West sides.

Where are they going to mount the PDT's? Can we at least shift them all to their own radio zone so they can run names in peace?

Once a Thief

This asshole epitomizes so much of Chicago-style corruption:

• Smooth-talking felon John Thomas once said the thing he loved about Chicago was, it was “the most forgiving” place for a convicted crook.
  
  He’d better hope so.
  
  The 51-year-old real estate developer — who got a second chance at life and dodged a prison term by wearing a wire against disgraced political fundraiser Tony Rezko as well as former Ald. Ike Carothers — has been up to his old tricks, federal prosecutors say.

And his list of connections is impressive:

• Thomas’s landlord Raghu Nayak — the convicted healthcare fraudster and political fundraiser who allegedly offered former Gov. Rod Blagojevich a $1.5 million bribe to appoint Jesse Jackson Jr. to the Senate — allegedly got $8,250 in rent he was owed, disguised as payment for “plumbing work” at the marina that he never did.
  
  And Regina Evans — the former Country Club Hills Police Chief, convicted of state grant fraud and linked to several other scams — and her husband both got jobs at the marina, sources say.

Yeah, that guy, still out and still scamming. How does the old saying go - "You can't cheat an honest man"? He must not have run into many of those around here because he's had no trouble talking his way into one thing or another for over a decade.

Giant Walking Puppets

No, not the City Council - these are imported!

• Chicago has come up with a really big idea to boost tourism: giant puppets roaming the city's streets for days in an elaborate theatrical presentation. 
  
  A multimillion-dollar deal is in the works to make Chicago the stage for Royal de Luxe, a French street theater company featuring marionettes as tall as 50 feet, during the summer of 2016, according to sources.  
  
  Chicago would be the first foray into the U.S. for Royal de Luxe, and officials confirmed Friday that talks are underway to bring the giant puppets to town.

We suppose part of the allure is that while you watch the show, Rahm will come by and pick tourists' pockets. Seriously, where do they come up with this crap?

Here Comes the Warm

We imagine one guy in particular isn't going to be sleeping much this weekend:

• Friday - 54 degrees
• Saturday - 62 degrees
• Sunday - 71 degrees

And a whole mess of mid-to-high 60's after that.

We suppose that if we can keep it down to 30 shootings,  McCompStat will claim a 17% reduction in shootings over the same time period from last week - and the media will print it.

That Was Quick

These bottom-feeders are "sure-thing" operators - they don't lose often at all:

• A federal lawsuit on Thursday accused five police officers from Chicago and Glenview of conspiring to lie under oath at a court hearing late last month, only to be caught by a judge after a video taken from a squad car contradicted their testimony.
  
  One of the Chicago narcotics officers had asked the two Glenview officers to turn off their video cameras so the traffic stop would not be recorded, but one of the officers failed to do so, according to the lawsuit.
  
  The lawsuit alleged that the incident – first reported in the Tribune on Tuesday -- exposed a broader “policy and practice” by Chicago police “to pursue wrongful convictions in drug cases through untruthful testimony.”
  
  “The biggest casualty in the war on drugs is the truth,” attorney Jon Loevy told reporters at a press conference at his Near West Side office.

Not good....and not getting better.

Another $100 Million?

For a library that doesn't exist yet, hasn't even been awarded as a construction project:

• An Illinois state House panel on Thursday advanced a plan championed by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, to appropriate $100 million in state funds to help finance the construction of President Barack Obama’s presidential library and museum in Chicago.
  
  The panel voted unanimously after a hearing in Chicago where rival institutions angling for the facility all agreed it should be in the city; just where is the point of disagreement.
  
  The measure now advances to the floor of the state House. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said “there is no firm plan to advance this bill immediately.”
  
  While there have been some objections over the cash-strapped state of Illinois putting money toward an Obama library since Madigan announced his $100 million plan, no one testified against the state spending.

A state billions of dollars in debt and full of morons who can't wait to deify a president who, quite frankly, hasn't done much for Illinois in particular and Chicago specifically.

Nice Catch Officers

Big fire, big heroics all around:

• Seven people, including two firefighters and a police officer, were hurt Tuesday evening in a fire in the West Pullman neighborhood on the Far South Side.
  
  Emergency crews responded about 6:10 p.m. to the two-story frame building in the 11600 block of South Michigan Avenue, according to Larry Langford, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman.
  
  Two police officers were in the area about 6 p.m., when they saw people trapped on the second floor of the building, said Officer Hector Alfaro, a police spokesman. The officers told a 15-year-old boy and an 8-year-old boy to break a window and jump down into their arms.

The Tribune also had coverage:

• The smoke was too strong for them to get inside the house, but the two Chicago police officers heard children screaming for help from the top floor.
  
  “At that time, it was just, ‘We've got to figure out something to do to get the kids,'” said Officer Kevin Tate, who spotted the fire while on patrol Tuesday evening on the Far South Side and sped to the scene with his partner, Officer Samanthia Smith.
  
  With the help of a couple of neighbors, Smith and Tate coaxed the 8- and 15-year-old boys to jump from a second-story window and into their arms.

A speedy recovery to all involved. Nice job Officers.

Joravsky Adds it Up

From what we read, Rahm has over $1.7 Billion-with-a-B sitting in TIF funds that he uses to "reward" those who donate to him politically. That's enough for TWO pension balloon payments - and the FOP better make every effort to make sure that's EXACTLY where the money goes:

• As we all prepare for Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposed property tax hike to pay off billions of dollars in pension obligations, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane to a not-so-distant era when our leaders acted like we didn't have a care in the world.
  
  The year was 2004—and what a glorious time it was!

"Glorious" if you were in with Shortshanks.

• ...the city spent more than $250 million to build a[n underground train station at Block 37 at Randolph and State] ...it will probably never use. 
• ...Millennium Park ... cost about $280 million in tax increment financing money
• ...hotel-motel [tax] money ... in 2001 Mayor Daley had earmarked $360 million ... to rebuild Soldier Field
• ... $57.8 million in an arbitration award for violating the LLC Parking Garage agreement
• The Daley administration then spent about $22 million to buy space in a Streeterville skyscraper for the Park District's central office
• TIF subsidies Mayor Daley doled out during those glory years to the likes of MillerCoors, Grossinger Auto, and United Airlines, to name but a few.  
• Then, in 2008, the final year the Central Loop TIF district was operating, Daley went on one last binge, spending about $365 million.

Joravsky notes, "Man, it would be nice to have that money right about now for those pension obligations." but also notes that Rahm's recent expenditures for a Marriott Hotel and DePaul stadiummay rival the Block 37 debacle in short order.

Joravsky also takes apart Rahm's TIF "reform" efforts in a separate article. Rahm isn't broke. Chicago isn't broke. The system of checks-and-balances might be broken along with the oversight of taxpayer money. Keep this in mind if some half-assed agreement comes down the pike.

TIF Slush Fund Garners Contributions

Another in a recent series of articles that points the spotlight at how TIF funds are used to reward connected companies and screw taxpayers out of actual capital projects - and pension funding:

• [...] Chicago is facing a pension shortfall for its police officers, firefighters, teachers and other municipal workers. If you've followed this story, you've probably heard that the only way Mayor Rahm Emanuel can deal with the situation is to slash those workers' pensions and to jack up property taxes on those who aren't politically connected enough to have secured themselves special exemptions.
  
  This same fantastical story, portraying public employees as the primary cause of budget crises, is being told across the country. Yet, in many cases, we're only being told half the tale. We aren't told that the pension shortfalls in many locales were created because local governments did not make their required pension contributions over many years. And perhaps even more shocking, we aren't told that while states and cities pretend they have no money to deal with public sector pensions, many are paying giant taxpayer subsidies to corporations -- subsidies that are often far larger than the pension shortfalls.

Go read it all. It's like the alternative media finally discovered they have an investigative set of balls.

Casino Meeting - City Missing

Rahm is bound and determined to gut the pensions and raise property taxes instead of even considering a casino that might actually assist in solving the problem:

• They said it could be “the largest casino in the world.”
  
  A “jewel” in Chicago’s skyline.
  
  Or an idea whose “day was yesterday.”
  
  Tourism boosters, corruption fighters, religious leaders and gaming lobbyists all had their say Wednesday on a proposal for a massive state-owned Chicago casino that could dwarf all others in Illinois. State lawmakers listened to their testimony during a day-long hearing held conveniently across the street from City Hall.
  
  But Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s staff skipped the hearing — where City Hall loomed through a sixth-floor window in the Michael A. Bilandic Building — and instead told the Chicago Sun-Times “the mayor does not believe it is appropriate to talk about gaming until we have addressed pension reform.”

God forbid actually tapping a new revenue stream from out-of-towners, tourists and conventioneers that could alleviate the mess Rahm inherited but seems determined to exploit to the detriment of anyone who isn't a connected construction firm or connected casino investor. This is the asshole we're supposed to be "negotiating" with.

Gee, Ya Think?

Who would have imagined this?

• Smoking marijuana even just a few times a week may change your brain, according to a study co-authored by a Northwestern University professor.
  
  The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, reported that young adults who use marijuana on a casual basis show significant structural changes in key regions of the brain affecting emotion and decision-making.
  
  “These are brain regions you don’t want to mess with — period,” said Dr. Hans Breiter, a co-author of the study. Breiter is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
  

And just what parts of the brain are affected?

• In the marijuana subjects, the parts of the brain that regulate emotion (the amygdala) and influence decision-making (the nucleus accumbens) were “grossly rewired,” according to Breiter, who’s also a psychiatrist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital..
  
  “Even casual use of marijuana can change the brain circuits that change the way you feel and change the way you make decisions, “ said Dr. T. Celeste Napier, professor in the pharmacology and psychiatry departments and director of the Center for Compulsive Behavior and Addiction at Rush University Medical Center.

And the scientists are just discovering this now? How about asking any copper on the street how weed effects those we see smoking it day in and day out? Short circuiting behavioral and decision making processes - golly!

It sure would have been nice to have this study released as states move toward legalizing marijuana.

Oh, and when someone tells you, "the science is settled" regarding anything like marijuana or the origins of the universe or even, say, climate science, point to this study after someone "in the know" says weed is no more dangerous than alcohol.

Rule 14 - On Tape and Under Oath

Not good - not good at all:

• The dramatic revelation that five officers had allegedly lied on the witness stand in a Skokie drug case, has called into question dozens of other cases which the officers have pending.
  
  The Cook County State's Attorney's office will only say it is reviewing the matter, but privately, authorities are clearly concerned about a case which fell apart, when the officers were confronted with a video which contradicted their sworn testimony.
  
  That moment came two weeks ago, when the officers, three from Chicago and two from Glenview, testified in the case of a drug suspect named Joseph Sperling.
  
  "All five officers were telling the same story word for word," said defense lawyer Steven Goldman. "They were caught in a lie."
  
  The officers testified that they pulled Sperling over under the pretense of a traffic stop, asked for his license and insurance, allowed him to exit his vehicle and walk to the rear, then removed a duffel bag containing marijuana. Only then, they said, did they arrest and cuff him.
  
  But Goldman confronted the fifth officer with the squad car video, which clearly showed the officers approaching Sperling's car and immediately taking him out of the car and putting him in handcuffs. Only then did they begin searching, finding the bag in the back seat.

This was something out of a television show - a genuine "GOTCHA!" moment that defense lawyers usually only dream about. But they got it in this case, hands down. We have a hard time believing the prosecutors didn't have some sort of heads-up once the defense subpoenaed the Glenview in-car-cameras. That should have been a clue that something was up. Espeically in this age of cameras everywhere - traffic, red light, cell phones, squad cars, body cameras, Google-Glass, etc. And if they did have a heads-up, why didn't it come up in prep?

Regardless, this one is going to reverberate for years. A Rule 14 violation is a bitch. Every single case that these coppers are involved in - as arresting officers, assisting officers, affiants on search warrants, inventory officers - is now in question. Every single piece of paper with their name on it can become suspect, even an innocuous To-From as a witness to a CR. And the sergeant involved? Defense attorneys are going to bury the city in a blizzard of paper for everything with his name on it - even such mundane things as Supervisor Logs that might show a car is supposedly logged at a certain location calls into question entire investigations.

In the most extreme cases, a sustained Rule 14 means a minimum of 7 years not even being able to sign a simple case report, a traffic violation, or a parking ticket - your word is no good under oath and the City isn't about to put you on the stand for anything. They'll dismiss or settle in an instant. Charlie Williams wanted to fire everyone with a sustained Rule 14 on their record around ten years ago - he said it was around 150-to-200 coppers and he was seriously pursuing it until told to stop by certain connected persons.

This is going to be ugly.

Wow, Just Wow

Vanecko got out of jail this week. But we didn't see any media coverage on this - maybe we missed it:

• The Illinois Supreme Court has appointed criminal defense attorney Marc William Martin to an 11th Subcircuit vacancy created by the appointment of Judge Carol A. Kelly.
  
  Martin's appointment is effective May 1 and terminates on December 5, 2016.
  
  Martin has been an attorney in Illinois since 1987. Martin was most recently in the news as one of the attorneys for Richard Vanecko, a nephew of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, accused of involuntary manslaughter in the death of David Koschman.

How very....unexpected? Surprising?

Typical?

Exempt Moves?

Someone said they move some people around?

Garry getting all his pieces on the board before summer evidently.

Any dumps? Or did everyone move up again? Funny thing about that - we remember more than a few dumps under Weis, but not so much under this guy.

It's almost like he isn't really running the Department.

The Paradox

Once again, the most observant readers:

• The FBI says "You cant arrest your way out of the crime problem" and McCarty says "We need tougher guns laws to lock up the bad guys." Our leaders don't have a clue on how to fight crime. 

We'll drink to that.

By His Own Words

In regard to the latest Missing File scandal:

• Chief Tracy said...More than one occurrence is a pattern, right Garry?

Well, that is what he (and McJerseyShore) says at CompStat whenever the number crunchers find two robberies in a half-mile radius and they rip the shit out of some tongue-tied gold star, isn't it? Not that we feel for the exempt - they know what they signed up for and they get paid to eat shit. But it's funny how that comes around, isn't it?

More Missing Files?

Where there's smoke, there's fire....and something is burning fierce:

• A police lieutenant at the heart of the missing-files mystery in the David Koschman case was involved in another death investigation in which police records went missing.
  
  The Chicago Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division questioned Lt. Denis P. Walsh last year about missing documents in the death of Jason Stangeland — two years after IAD interviewed Walsh about the missing Koschman files, according to records and sources.
  
  
• Walsh is among nine officers who were involved in both the Koschman and Stangeland cases, records show.

Nine coincidences? Who's yanking our legs on this one?

Nine?

It certainly seems that there was a concerted effort on the part of a core group of people to manipulate and who knows what else deaths in the entertainment district. We don't see a political angle on this like the Vanecko case, but once again, a bar altercation resulting in a delayed death and files gone missing. Chicagoans are entitled to ask, "What the fuck?"

Never Fear! The Feebs Are Here!

Thank God!

• Chicago’s “ingrained” gang culture is to blame for homicide rates far higher than other large U.S. cities, FBI Director James B. Comey said Monday.
  
  Speaking a day after one of the city’s warmest and bloodiest weekends so far this year, Comey said gang values went back decades in Chicago, but he warned “you can’t arrest your way to a healthier neighborhood.”

We'd like to see them try though - one of the problems is Illinois gives day-for-day credit in prison. 6-to-10 becomes 3-to-5 with startling regularity. That needs to end. Another is the inordinately amount of time from arrest-to-trial-to-imprisonment. What good is 10 years downstate if it's already going to be 5 and the first 2.5 are served in Cook Conty jail waiting? There's no "rehabilitation," all the old crew is in there with you, all the old contacts and influences. These are local problems, not really on the FBI radar and certainly not addressable by them.

The Director did make this observation:

• Asked why Chicago has failed to cut homicide levels as successfully as New York and Los Angeles, Comey told reporters,“Chicago has a larger and more ingrained and sophisticated street gang structure than many American cities.”
  
  [...] “They’re old, they’re embedded in a part of the culture in this city, and it’s an enormous challenge,” Comey said.

"embedded"? In many cases, since the early 1900's in fact, the gangs are part and parcel of the political structure - and this is something that the FBI can and should address. Political corruption on a massive scale in Chicago, comparable only to New Orleans and parts of New Jersey. The gangs own numerous aldercreatures, even today. And in other cases, the aldercreatures obtain tax-breaks for Outfit chop-shops. Those are things that the FBI ought to be looking at to break the cycle of corruption. That's where they can make a difference.

This Kind of Sums it Up

From a reader:

• Try N. Tofigure-Itout said...
  
  So, when we have a "good" weekend with low shot/kill #s, it's because of his ingenious and innovative strategies.
  
  When we have the more common "bad" weekends with high shot/killed #s, it's the law's fault.
  
  Hmm. Weren't the laws the same during the "good" weekends?

Exactly.

Blame the Gun Laws?

Oh Garry, how very pathetic:

• At least 36 people have been shot, four of them killed, and one person was stabbed in Chicago violence since Friday, officials said.
  
  The most recent weekend homicide took place around 2:40 a.m. Sunday when a 32-year-old man was fatally shot in the chest.
  

But the tragi-comical part was this quote from our fearless leader:

• In a statement, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said: "While Chicago continues to see reductions in crime and violence, there's obviously much more work to be done and we continue to be challenged by lax state and federal gun laws. Through our police strategies, the City's strengthened investments in youth violence prevention, and a close partnership with residents and community leaders, no one will rest until everyone in Chicago enjoys the same sense of safety."

Well Gar, your "reductions in crime" have been shown to be statistical manipulation of the highest order.

Your "police strategies" of doing-more-with-less has led to overtime bills that dwarf any in previous Chicago history as the Department has to spend more on less coverage.

Your blaming gun laws is pathetic as crime rates drop everywhere except Chicago in relation to increased gun ownership, though we hope Chicago will be catching up with that trend as Concealed Carry takes hold and gun ownership grows.

And your hope that "everyone...enjoys the same sense of safety" seems to mean that everyone experiences the despair and terror of the ghetto as wilding explodes across the business districts, drug dealing moves to all the outlying neighborhoods, and burglaries, thefts and robberies abound in areas stripped of police protection.

Congratulations - you and Rahm managed to do less with less and at a greater cost than ever before.

I'm Tax Exempt

And brain-free, too!

• Nahshon Shelton didn’t want to pay the 22-cent tax on his $1.79 two-liter of Pepsi on Saturday afternoon, Chicago Police said.
  
  So he allegedly pulled a blue-steel Intratec .22-caliber submachine gun out of his Gucci satchel inside the convenience store in the 4000 block of West Madison Street where they tried to make him pay it — and he threatened to kill everyone there, a prosecutor said.
  
  This “is my neighborhood, I’m tax exempt!” he would later allegedly tell the cops. “Man, you know what, I’ll keep it real. I had to put them in their place.”

Because gangsters always carry their heaters in Gucci satchels. How much do you think he paid in taxes on the Gucci?

He did get one thing right in a manner of speaking though - he's definitely a tax drain. We doubt he's paid anything near what he's managed to drain in his 36-year existence.

Smart Phones and Meters

Anyone downtown know anything about this? Sounds like something cops should know, not just in the classier parts of town either:

• For all you beat cops that like to check the meters in 001 and 018 and everywhere else get ready,
  
  The pay by phone program goes live next week.
  
  Supposedly there is an app on the city issued smartphones you will be required to use before you can just issue a ticket for Expired Meter.

Here's the app site - we can't imagine citizens leaving their phones on the dashboard with the meter info - they'd bake in the summer sun - or disappear. We haven't heard anything about "city issued smartphones" though - can such a thing exist?  We scanned the Expired Meter.com site but didn't see anything last night.Sounds interesting to say the least, but how to pull it off?

Homicide Quilt

Art via violent death

• Lindsay Evans’ eyes gravitated to the lower end of the 4-foot-by-6-foot piece of fabric, where the names were so abundant in some neighborhoods that they were stitched on top of each other in a barely legible confluence of Chicago’s violence.
  
  “You can see the hurt and confusion in it,” said Evans, 26, a graphic-design student from Philadelphia.
  
  Hers is the desired reaction for the group of artists who created “Untitled (Homicide Quilt),” a quilted map of Chicago with the names of each of the city’s homicide victims from last year stitched into the neighborhood where a life ended.

Is it wrong for us to hear tomorrows weather report of rain mixed with snow and a 40 degree temperature drop and think to ourselves, "Damn, that quilt looks warm - it'd be nice to sleep under that tonight." And the fact that most of the names on that quilt are currently enjoying the balmy confines of Hell just make it feel all the warmer.