Injunction Denied

Evidently, this will all have to go through the process:

• As promised, here are the results of this morning’s hearing in front of Judge Rita Novak.
  
  Although Judge Novak denied the Motion for our TRO, she agreed that the Plaintiff-Officers raise a valid issue as to how officers are being promoted in this round. The Judge found that the Plaintiff-Officers will not suffer enough “irreparable harm”; in that any violation that might occur by the Department during this round of promotions can be resolved by the Court without the need for issuing a TRO.
  
  The Lodge will be moving forward with the Complaint for Declaratory Judgment that remains pending. As part of the Complaint for Declaratory Judgment, the Court could award all back pay, back benefits and seniority to the officers who should have been promoted.

Any way to tighten up the language in the Contract and the processes? Because every time the City decides to make up the rules as they go along, taxpayers get screwed along with the people trying to legitimately get ahead.

Coordinating Violence

The expansion of Cook County government continues apace:

• The Cook County Board has approved appointing a gun violence coordinator who will be expected to “live, eat, breathe and sleep gun violence,” reports WBBM [...].
  
  Commissioner Richard Boykin, who is behind the idea, said the yet-to-be named gun violence coordinator will certainly have his or her work cut out for them with roughly 2,500 shootings in the city this year so far.
  
  “This will be the first gun violence coordinator, to my knowledge, in the United States of America,” Boykin said.
  
  “The Cook County Board heard the people who said this is intolerable, we’ve got to change it,” said Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee.
  
  Boykin said he hopes the person is in place before the end of the year.

Well, let us be among the first to say that coordinating gun violence is loooooong overdue. All these people (and folks) running around with guns, firing willy-nilly, wounding thousands who can't even begin to pay their bills must end.

First up should be "Target Identification" and "Checking Your Backstop." Those two courses alone would cut down on the "Unintended Victim" phenomenon almost overnight. Next, "Controlling Your Weapon." And finally, "Getting Away With It," which unfortunately, seems to be the course that all of the shooters in recent memory have no problem passing.

You know what might be some good alternatives instead of expanding government? How about some of these courses?

• "The Present Father"
• "Complete Families"
• "I an NOT a Ho - A Lesson in Self Respect"
• "The Pitfalls of Materialism"
• "Passing 3rd Grade (and 4th, and 5th, etc)"
• "Respect for Others"
• "How to Earn a Living - Step One: Laborer"
• "How to Earn a Living - Step Two: Assembly Lines"
• "Conflict Resolution Without Guns"

So the only question now is who gets this new highly paid government spot that will waste more and more tax money - Ernie Brown or Jody Weis? Charlie Williams is the outside shot.You think we're joking?

Anyone Got a Ladder?

Imagine being the body removal crew on this one:

• GLENDALE, Calif. -- A driver who police say was driving recklessly was ejected onto a 5 Freeway sign in Glendale following a rollover crash Friday morning.
  
  The fatal crash happened near Colorado Street around 7 a.m. when the 20-year-old victim was driving on the southbound side of the freeway at high speeds, hitting one vehicle with three passengers, according to the California Highway Patrol.
  
  Authorities said the victim's Toyota Prius rolled several times, and the driver was catapulted onto the sign. CHP said the victim was not wearing a seatbelt.

And if you can't see this one in your mind's eye:

Wow.

A Third Term?

Only if the Republicans take the White House:

• On the same say that the City Council approved Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s $7.8 billion 2016 budget, he says he wants to keep his job when his current term is over.
  
  The mayor sat down with CBS 2 [...].
  
  “You know its gonna stand the test of time of having been right for stabilizing what was bleeding, and that’s what you would want out of public service: a selfless act,” Emanuel said.
  
  The mayor sat down with [CBS] just hours after passing a painful budget. He admitted that he is now reconsidering an earlier pledge not to seek a third term.

Last time he didn't have much of a record to run on and managed to make Chewbacca look like a man without a plan. Now? Rahm is known as the guy who couldn't get a casino deal done to spare taxpayers, the guy who presided over the biggest tax increase in history, and should a casino actually come to fruition now, the guy who enriched insiders at the expense of property tax owners.

We could run a campaign and garner enough votes to have a decent shot at the 5th Floor. Prickwrinkle or her minions, who actually have a political organization, will be in prime position to bury Rahm if he sticks around and doesn't flee back to Washington under a democratic regime.

13 "Merit" Sergeants Made

Looks like the rumors were true once again:

There's the list of 13 "merit" picks. The Department is short nearly 80 sergeants as we write and due to the recent win by the Sergeant Union over the "55 and Free Medical Care" issue, will be short another 80 or so by May of 2016 when the benefit runs out and isn't renewed. But McCan'tFollowTheRules is going to make these 13 out-of-order picks and give them major seniority over anyone who earned it.

Supposedly, the FOP has filed for an injunction and McMoron has said he doesn't have to follow the rules. Just to help everyone follow along, these are from the Human Resources website:

Section A states quite clearly, "...of each round of promotions," and Section 12 says "If Merit Selection is used, CPD shall fill no more than 30% of the recognized career service vacancies....in each round of promotions." Those are the city's criteria and have been for years - past practice.

Last we checked, 100% is a bit more than 30%, even to someone from New York.

Garry needs to be gone if he can't understand the plain language of the process.

Bargaining Chips?

Anyone who lives in the 44th Ward ought to be gathered outside Tunney's office with pitchforks and torches:

• Lakeview homeowners and renters will feel the burn of property-tax hikes next year, but an increase in police might soften the blow.
  
  By the end of 2016, the police district that includes Lakeview will have 43 more officers, Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) said Wednesday.
  
  Tunney said the boost in officers was part of the reason he voted to approve the city's record $589 million property-tax increase on Wednesday. The City Council passed the measure 36-14.
  
  "I will continue to make sure our neighborhood receives the level of city services we are paying for," Tunney said in a statement.

So let's just break this down for the Lakeview sheep:

• 43 officers broken down by watch percentages, let's just guess at 13 on First Watch, 10 on Second and 20 on Third. Approximately.
• One-third of those are going to be RDO on any given day.
• Another 7-to-8% will be on vacation
• Pick any single one of the officers for a miscellaneous day off - medical, P-Day, BFD, time-due for a family event.
• Detail one or two officers out to Area teams - you know there will be some heavy people included.
• Some might even be assigned to the foot beats in the trendy areas, the bar scene, the "entertainment" details.

Lakeview is paying their portion of the $589 million on the off chance they might see one, maybe two extra squad cars manned at any given moment. Not really a big deal.

And Tunney sold his vote for these numbers. There has to be someone in Lakeview smart enough to ask:

• What were we getting for our previous tax money? It wasn't exactly cheap.
• What were we promised when the aldercreatures allowed 019 to merge with 023? Weren't we promised not a single officer would be lost, and now we're hundreds short?
• Where are these officers coming from? Rahm isn't running classes through the Academy, therefore officers will be taken from some other neighborhood to fill these spots - robbing Peter to pay Paul as it were. 
• Who's Peter and is he going to be coming to my neighborhood to look for his police? And what if Peter has more votes in the Council - the "black" caucus as opposed to the "gay" caucus - seems to us Paul might be a bit outnumbered, if you know what we mean.

And finally, haven't we been told time and time again that the District manning numbers are determined by needs for police service? That's why we have these "impact areas" and "gang conflict areas" and "VRI boxes" all determined by some bean-counters at CompStat deciding  what "dots" on the maps receive police officers? Now it turns out aldercreatures can negotiate the terms of district manpower based on how deep they can stick it to the taxpayers of their wards?

Actually, torches and pitchforks would be a mercy. Hanged, drawn and quartered would be more appropriate.

Behind the Curve

Hey Deano, you going to hop on board with this or what?

• All 14,000 Members of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 have joined officers in New York and Los Angeles in calling for a boycott of Quentin Tarantino’s films.
  
  “Tarantino has shown through his actions that he is anti-police,” the group’s president, John McNesby, said in a statement. “Mr. Tarantino has made a good living through his films, projecting into society at large violence and respect for criminals; he it turns out also hates cops.”
  
  The statement comes after Tarantino participated in an anti-police brutality rally in New York City last weekend. “When I see murders, I do not stand by, I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers,” Tarantino told a crowd of protesters on Sunday.

So New York, LA and Philly have beaten FOP 7 to the punch on a slam dunk gesture. Deano must be following the Sparklefart dictate of "leading from behind" again.

And Another Rush to Judgement

Fetal policing is here to stay:

• A deputy was fired Wednesday after video showed him flipping a teen backward out of her desk and tossing her across a classroom, with the sheriff saying the officer did not follow proper procedures and training.
  
  Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields was told of his firing late Wednesday morning, Sheriff Leon Lott said. Lott said he would not describe the now-former resource officer at Spring Valley High School as remorseful, but that Fields was sorry the incident happened and tried to do his job.
  
  The student was being disruptive and refused to leave the classroom despite being told by a teacher and administrator to do so, Lott said, and that's when Fields was brought in Monday to remove her from the class. She again refused, and Fields told her she was under arrest, Lott said.
  
  She continued to refuse, and video shows the deputy flipping the teen backward and then throwing her across the room. At that point, Lott said, Fields did not use proper procedure.

Except new video is emerging constantly:

• A South Carolina sheriff said Tuesday that there is a third video depicting one of his officers in a now viral confrontation with a high school student — and in it, he says the student can be seen attacking the officer.
  
  “There’s a video … showed her striking and punching at the officer,” Richard County Sheriff Leon Lott told CNN. ”Again, our hope would have been that he could have de-escalated the situation without getting physical.”

Well, this simply demonstrates that Sheriff Lott is a fucking moron joining into a rush-to-judgement mentality that completely undercuts any legitimate authority his officers have...or used to have. We can't think of a Use of Force model in existence that advocates "de-escalation" in the face of an assault. In fact, most state laws we know of declare without reservation that a police officer is not obligated to retreat in the face of resistance and is in fact authorized by the State to use whatever force is necessary to overcome said resistance.

So once again, if we could just have a list of actions that officers are required to overlook when performed by a black person, that'd be great. It would save so many problems and progressive society could finally embrace and welcome the criminal element into their homes and hearts.

In the meantime, stay fetal friends.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Oversight

Chicago ain't ready for reform...still:

• Chicago City Council members are about to make life easier for themselves. They're running their inspector general — the person assigned to investigate them and their staffs — out of town.
  
  The contract of Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan, who has warred with the aldermen since he was hired in 2011, expires in November. There's no chance the aldermen will renew it. But they're also making no moves to replace Khan.
  
  The most logical step would be to expand the powers of the city's inspector general, Joe Ferguson, to allow his office to investigate complaints into aldermen and their staffs. But the aldermen are in no rush to do that either.
  
  The aldermen created the LIG job and hired Khan, but set him up for failure. He can't launch an investigation into aldermanic or council staff corruption on his own. He has to wait for a complaint. He can't investigate anonymous complaints. He needs permission from the city's Board of Ethics to pursue an investigation. He has to inform the subject that he or she is under investigation.

Remember, these are the assholes voting to raise taxes by nearly $600 million. The same assholes who allow, via their negligence and their greed for kickbacks, $17 bottle of bleach to be bought by "approved vendors" and who knows what else. But until actual taxpayers get tired of taking it in the shorts, responsibility will be avoided for years yet to come.

Tattoos Stay Covered

Officers lose in court:

• A federal judge this week threw out a lawsuit filed over the summer by three Chicago police officers who challenged the Police Department’s new policy requiring officers to cover up their tattoos.
  
  U.S. District Judge Charles P. Kocoras ruled Tuesday that the city’s goal to have a professional-looking department with uniform restrictions outweighs the officers’ interests in expressing themselves by keeping their tattoos visible while on-duty, according to court papers.
  
  When they filed the suit against the city in July, Officers Daniel Medici, John Kukielka and Dennis Leet argued that the department’s policy violated their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and expression. The officers all served in the military and have tattoos on their arms.
  
  Kocoras argued that the trust officers are trying to establish with the community might be compromised by allowing them to show off the tattoos.

Was the argument made that there was no restrictive policy prior to this arbitrary decision and if the officers had been hired before the policy was put into place, then they had a decent argument to being "grandfathered" in? Could the Department show even a single instance or complaint of an officer being unable to perform any particular function due to having exposed tattoos?

Has anyone checked the Department of Transportation (aka the Department of Tony - How you doin'?) for their professional appearance?

UPDATE: The Grievance process continues apace, possibly making the arguments we stated above. We'll see.

Halloween Safety Alert

In case you haven't seen the notices, the media has picked up on it:

• An anarchist group may be planning to use Halloween as cover for a plan to ambush police in cities across the country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly said in a bulletin to local police departments.
  
  The New York Post reported Monday that the National Liberation Militia has encouraged supporters to create a disturbance to attract law enforcement and then attack them, the paper reported, citing the FBI. The group calls the ambush a "Halloween Revolt."
  
  The paper reported that the NYPD is monitoring the threat.

Stay alert in any event, especially with hundreds of people running around in masks.

Sparklefarts Supports Who Now?

What an ass:

• President Barack Obama is expected to blame cable news shows and social media for whipping up divides between the police and the communities they serve in a Tuesday speech in Chicago.
  
  And though this is not on the schedule, Obama is expected to meet, according to the White House, “with families of police officers who gave their lives in the line of duty” and “families of children” in Chicago who perished.
  
  “I told these grieving families how sorry I am for their loss. But I could not honestly tell them that our country has done everything we could to keep their loved ones safe,” Obama is expected to say, according to speech excerpts released by the White House.

Kind of like how Hillary is blaming YouTube for four American deaths on a video publicly while admitting that her State Department knew terror organizations were responsible for the attack in Libya privately?

Or things Obummer's Justice Department running fully functional guns over the border to drug cartels with zero oversight in order to push an anti-gun agenda? Guns that ended up costing the lives of hundreds of Mexican citizens, dozens of Mexican law enforcement officers and military personnel, and at least one US Border Patrol Officer and maybe more?

Things like "The police acted stupidly." when police responded to a call of a break-in? Or sending White House representatives to the funerals of known thugs and terrors of the community while unleashing "civil rights" investigations on Officers who were found time-and-again to have operated with the law?

And what name appears on White House visitor logs nearly 100 times according to numerous news sources? Al Sharpton? Racist, anti-Semite, libeler, slanderer, tax-cheat, and oh yeah, police hater.

But hey, Obama keeps the police safe and unites the country!

What a load of shit.

Nice Connections Rahm

Let's see - Rahm worked for the Clintons, was a US Representative, big money banker making millions, Sparklefart's Chief of Staff....and not one of his connections could whisper in his ear that his pick for Schools Chief was a bit shady?

• Federal investigators were looking at Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s role in a $40 million textbook contract that was awarded while she worked in Detroit, long before she became Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
  
  Byrd-Bennett, 66, faces more than seven years in prison after she pleaded guilty in Chicago earlier this month to steering $23 million in no-bid contracts to a former employer while she was CPS CEO in exchange for kickbacks.
  
  Both the Chicago and Detroit deals contain startling similarities, interviews and public document obtained by the Sun-Times show.

This makes the picture we posted a few days ago look extremely accurate:

So who got the kickbacks? Why aren't we hearing about any of these people? Why isn't the media asking where the money went? All we're getting is this bullshit:

• A CPS spokeswoman said in an emailed statement: “No one could have predicted the crime that Barbara Byrd-Bennett admitted to earlier this month. As we’ve said before, CPS will do everything in our power to make sure that this will not happen again, and that every possible dollar reaches our classrooms.”

We're pretty sure someone could have predicted this crime easily if they had the ear of the White House, the Clinton political apparatus and more government contacts than Chicago has rats.

In fact, you would think that someone who managed to dodge all sorts of questions about how he earned $11 million without any experience in high finance and hundreds of thousands more serving a mere 18 months on the board of Freddie Mac, would have all sorts of insight into the hiring of someone who seems to have existed solely to steer money into connected pockets.

Police Like You're Bruce Lee

This might be cool!

• A Northern California town is tapping into its inner Kung Fu master and will be equipping its police force with the favorite tool of Bruce Lee.
  
  The Anderson Police Department will be offering up nunchucks to its 20-person force as an alternative to batons in what the department hopes will be a better non-lethal alternative to batons, according to the Los Angeles Times.
  
  The department is hoping that nunchucks, which are essentially two small batons connected by a rope or a chain, will allow an officer to detain suspects without having to strike them with the blunt force that a baton requires.

Of course, ours would be made of balsa wood and dental floss. Also, no contact with subjects above the ankle would be permitted lest you actually defeat an attack. The Bruce Lee "Hai!" would be required however.

Still Killing Crime

The people over at CrimeInWrigleyvilleAndBoystown continue to hammer police crime reporting:

• Making it difficult to report crimes is a great way to keep Chicago's impossibly low crime rates heading in a downward direction. Just when we thought we'd heard every hoop and hurdle that can be thrown in a citizen's way as they try to file a report, we caught wind of a doozy.
  
  According to not one, but two area residents who contacted us independently, the Chicago Police Department has refused to accept reports of package thefts from local doorsteps because—here it comes—the packages were never in the victims' physical possession.
  
  In one case, a neighbor saw the theft take place. But that wasn't good enough for the Chicago Police Department, which refused to accept the man's report.
  
  The other tale comes from our pal W.H. Thompson at HeyJackass:
  

  I had video of the event and a good description of the thief. I filled out the online form with no issues, but a week later it came back as not being a valid online submission because the theft took place outside of the residence. Porches don’t count. I had to resubmit through whatever number they gave, which of course I did not.

  Who would call at that point? Why bother waiting on hold and telling the story again?

So who's the victim? UPS who delivered the package? The retailer who entrusted UPS to deliver it? The homeowner, who paid for the item, trusted UPS to deliver it, had it delivered, but never actually got the delivery, so he's out the package AND the money?

Evidently, no one according to Garry's CompStat. It's like a miracle, except to the poor sap out the money and stuck trying to get a replacement without a police report.

How Does This Work Again?

Why can't we do this?

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Monday that cash-strapped Chicago Public Schools is likely to borrow against a $45 million property tax increase he’s proposed in his budget for school construction.
  
  The CPS tax hike is part of the record $588 million property tax increase aldermen are expected to approve Wednesday. The mayor pitched the CPS tax in his budget address more than a month ago, but his comments Monday mark the first time he’s indicated CPS would borrow against the new revenue stream to embark on a building program that would be more expansive than just $45 million per year.
  
  “The financial officers will work through how to deal with that. My guess is, like other things that they have done, they’ll bond so we can actually meet the obligations today, so kids and teachers are not being held in the penalty box, when you have the resources and capability to actually make a modern school system,” said Emanuel, who appoints the Chicago Board of Education.

So Rahm closes 50 schools to save boatloads of money. Then the schools raise their portion of the property taxes $45 million so Rahm doesn't take the all the heat. Then the schools are going to issue bonds in excess of the $45 million they haven't even gotten yet.

And we can't do this to improve our situation why again? Oh yeah, because we'd go to fucking jail if we tried to pull this shit with the banks.

Not the End of Tax Increases?

Still another case in the courts might mean even higher tax increases:

• The Illinois Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for Nov. 17 in Chicago's attempt to reverse a lower court ruling that voided a law aimed at shoring up two of the city's financially shaky retirement systems, a court spokeswoman said on Friday.
  
  A Cook County Circuit Court judge in July rejected Chicago's arguments that the 2014 Illinois law provides a net benefit to workers and retirees because it will save the municipal and laborers' retirement systems from insolvency.
  
  
  The city also unsuccessfully argued that the law was backed by a majority of affected labor unions.
  
  The circuit court decision followed a May Illinois Supreme Court ruling in litigation over a 2013 law that reduced benefits for workers in state retirement systems. In that case, justices found public sector workers have iron-clad protection in the Illinois Constitution against pension benefit cuts.

That $588 million might be approaching over a billion dollars in short order.

Ick

Way more common than you think:

Toss a couple Roach Motels under the seat...just in case.

Summer Type Numbers

We guess it goes with the nice weather...but didn't McCompStat say weather had nothing to do with crime rates?

• Five people were killed and at least 26 others wounded in shootings across Chicago this weekend.
  
  The latest homicide happened early Sunday in the West Garfield Park neighborhood.
  
  Perry Burrell, 26, was found with a gunshot wound to the head about 2:45 a.m. in a vehicle that had crashed into a tree in the 4500 block of West Adams, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

The Tribune had some tape of the family rushing the crime scene tape and "motherf@#$ing" the police, as if the police went and shot this altar boy, which was surprising. Usually, that doesn't see the light of day.

Also, congratulations to the 011th District - this was their 40th homicide of the year. No one else has even hit 30 yet. And that doesn't even count the two chopped up bodies found this year - "death investigations" you know.

...and $11

Hope that wasn't all she was paid for carrying this stuff:

• A 25-year-old woman planning to take a train to Pennsylvania was arrested after police found she was carrying 5.5 pounds of crack cocaine and other drugs, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
  
  When police searched Michelle Ramos at Union Station before she was able to board a train Saturday, they found, along with the purple neck cushion she carried for the long trek, a stash of crack cocaine worth $307,000, Cook County prosecutors said during a court hearing Sunday.
  
  Police also found 99 ecstasy pills worth nearly $2,500 on the street, a pound of marijuana worth $7,264 and 50 grams of heroin worth $5,600, according to prosecutors and court records.
  
  She also had $11 in cash.

Someone is going to have some explaining to do if they ever get back to Pennsylvania.

Dems Drive Out More $$$

Thanks to Madigan and crew:

• Even buying lottery tickets in Illinois is losing its charm.
  
  With Illinois delaying payouts of more than $600 because of its budget mess, neighboring states are salivating at the chance to boost their own lottery sales. Businesses near borders, particularly in Indiana, Kentucky and Iowa, say they've already noticed a difference.
  
  The Lottery problems stemming from Illinois' budget impasse have led to a lawsuit and come amid questions about Illinois revenues and a shake-up in lottery management.

Illinois may never recover large portions of those lottery players. Just another budget hole to fill.

Video Everywhere

And the feds willing to use it:

• A veteran Chicago Police officer was convicted Friday of using excessive force in the beating of a South Side convenience store clerk.
  
  Aldo Brown was found guilty of one count of one count of using excessive force and aqcuitted of two counts of filing a false police report.
  
  A federal jury began deliberations Thursday and resumed Friday before reaching a verdict in the trial for the 38-year-old former officer. Brown was indicted in 2014 on federal civil rights and obstruction charges in connection with an incident that occurred in September 2012.

A lot stunk about this case and we know very little about it. The articles says "veteran" cop, then "former" two paragraphs later - had he resigned in the interim? That's always a bad sign. His lawyer has promised an appeal, so we'll see if more comes out in the coming months or years.

Protests!

Protests this weekend at the International Association of Chiefs of Police:

• Protesters demanding a decrease in police funding and more money for black communities chained themselves together and were arrested outside a police chiefs conference at McCormick Place Saturday, according to police and protesters.
  
  In all, 47 women and 19 men were arrested on misdemeanor charges of obstructing traffic in front of McCormick Place as the International Association of Chiefs of Police held its annual convention there, according to Chicago police News Affairs.
  
  Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy welcomed the chiefs to the city, while outside 66 people chained themselves together and sat down in the street. Police closed traffic outside the convention center’s main entrance on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive for several hours during the protests, after a group of several hundred people marched from Chicago police headquarters midday Saturday.

Decrease police funding? Already there kids - or haven't you been following the pension news and the statements by McCarthy about "overtime being cheaper" than actually hiring officers?

As near as we can tell, a bunch of leftist, commie-affiliated, Occu-tards got together to protest a convention populated by.....leftist, commie-affiliated people with high-paying jobs. Only bosses or executives need apply - no one else can be a voting member, but they'll happily take your money. They're anti-gun in the extreme, disturbing when you figure that they've probably got access to all the statistics that prove "more gun = less crime" and every piece of data that contradicts the ant-gun stances of their political masters. Hell, Sparklefarts is due in town Tuesday to speak to them...and you can bet he isn't speaking to an unfriendly crowd in the waning days of his on-going War on the Police presidency.

Which brings a stray question to mind - isn't McCormick Place a "gun free" zone? Aren't there signs posted all over the place? Are the Chiefs being disarmed for their conferences, seminars and meetings? Are they all being disarmed when Obummer gives his speech? We're just curious.

FBI Blames YouTube

Building on what others have been pushing...which is typical for the FBI:

• This year, murders have spiked in major cities across America — including Chicago — and [FBI Director] Comey said one explanation is that police and the minority communities they patrol aren’t seeing eye-to-eye these days.
  
  Comey said he’s heard a lot of theories why killings are rising after decades of decline: the release of violent offenders from prison; the chaos resulting from law enforcement busting up organized street gangs; and the availability of guns.
  
  But he said the most plausible explanation is that “maybe something in policing has changed.”
  
  Comey, echoing other public officials such as Mayor Rahm Emanuel, suggested that fewer cops are policing proactively in response to anger in minority communities over the events in Ferguson, Mo. and other cities.

This, even though McCompStat has been touting gun arrests being up. So either we're proactive or we're not, but don't look for a straight answer.

And not a word about the FBI investigations which time-and-again, have cleared police officers of violating ordinances, laws and Civil Rights. Strange.

Nice Arrest

Clearing three homicides:

• Two men have been charged with murder in connection with a shooting at a barbecue last month that left three people dead and two wounded, police announced Saturday.
  
  Anthony Jackson, 20, and Lawrence Brown, 22, each have been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder and aggravated battery. They were ordered held without bail in a hearing Saturday before Cook County Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesel.
  
  Jackson, Brown and another gunman walked out of an alley and fired at a crowd of people Sept. 29 near a playground in the 400 block of West 42nd Street, according to prosecutors.

Very well done Detectives and Officers.The article doesn't mention the hours of interviews, hours away from family, hours poring over statements, videos dealing with liars and "no-snitchers" and a lot of bottom feeders. Now comes the hours at court to make it all stick. A salute to you all.

Bears Won't Lose!

Because it's a bye-week.

Open post in the meantime - discuss sports if you like.

Sgt Class Coming...and Going...Gone

Is it true? Put out a list, then revoke it hours later?

Whoever has the list, send it here.

If it exists.

Not Him Again

Anyone know what a CPD sergeant was driving Jody Weis around Englewood last night? Curious minds want to know what the hell J-Fledgar is doing around again.

Retiree Star

Anyone lose or misplace a retiree star in or near Itasca recently?

We've been contacted by an officer who located a retiree star who'd like it returned to the owner without delay.

Contact us for info.

Crime Still Down

Even with a city worker getting shot:

• Six people have been wounded in shootings citywide since Friday morning, including a city worker who was seriously hurt at a work site in the Gresham neighborhood.
  
  [...]
  
  Earlier, a 28-year-old worker for the Water Management Department was wounded on the left side of his face around 8 a.m. in the 1400 block of West 85th Street, police said.
  
  He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was in critical condition, according to a hospital spokeswoman.
  
  He was on a work site when someone fired from an alley and fled in a silver car, police said.

Nothing to see here...move along.

We Got Nothing

Coyotes Up

Pointing to a bigger problem:

• Cook County animal control says the coyote population is on the rise and that people may see more than usual in the area.
  
  The reason why coyotes are on the rise is because their food source has also increased, according to Dr. Donna Alexander, an administrator at the Cook County Animal and Rabies Control. Rats and rabbits have increased their population, having managed to get to more food.

We see quite a few coyotes at VRI, seeing as how the hours coincide with hunting hours. We've also noticed an increase in rats all over the districts we frequent and this leads to the question, what's up with Rahm's rat budget? Has the city stopped baiting alleys? Because it isn't just us - we've heard dozens of coppers at court and dozens of citizens in "positive community interactions [now REQUIRED by G-Mac]" and the neighbors have been none to subtle in the conversations over the backyard fences.

Rahm is a Bully?

Who would've guessed?

• Spike Lee, director of the controversial movie ""Chi-Raq," said something so amazing about Mayor Rahm Emanuel that I just had to sit down, on the floor. The chair was too far away and I almost fainted.
  
  "Spike Lee says the mayor is a bully," Old School announced.
  
  No!

That's Kass having some fun at Rahm's expense...and Spike Lee's for stating something everyone here already knew.

• But there it was in Chicago magazine's December issue, with Lee explaining in an interview how Rahm was angry about "Chi-Raq," "the movie about the slaughterhouse that is Chicago.
  
  Rahm didn't like the title and neither did his minions among the aldermen, whom Lee called the mayor's "bootlickers."

We would have claimed a little higher than Rahm's boots, but we're crude that way:

• The mayor didn't like it because "Chi-Raq" suggests that Chicago is a violent place, like a war zone, like Iraq. Actually, Chicago is more violent than Iraq is now.
  
  "OK, so that's where your mayor and I got off on the wrong foot, right away," Lee told Bryan Smith in an excellent interview. "What I didn't like was him trying to paint me as this villain. I'm not the bad guy, but that's how he was trying to portray it. Do I have the guns? Am I the one pulling the trigger? To be honest, he's a bully."

Rahm has national aspirations. Working for Hillary or something else in the Senate? Something bigger than Chicago though. It's a humorous read and Spike comes off okay.  

Mixed Message

This is amusing:

• The top cops in America's four biggest cities said on Wednesday that the war on drugs has failed to keep America safe and that it's time to reform the country's criminal justice system, a view now officially shared by more than 125 other prosecutors, sheriffs, attorneys general, and law enforcement leaders from across the US.
  
  The police chiefs of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston appeared together in Washington, DC to explain a new initiative called Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration ahead of a meeting with President Barack Obama on Thursday afternoon. The chiefs and other law enforcement officials said their goals include reducing incarceration and protecting public safety.

Okay, so the War on Drugs is a failure. Hooray for drugs! Is there going to be a parade?

But then this paragraph pops up later in the article:

• Gerry [sic] McCarthy, Chicago's top cop, said the use of data by police departments to evaluate success has made cities safer, but there are still problems that need to be addressed. He noted that the Windy City has experienced more gun violence this year despite arrests for gun crimes going up 25 percent. He argued that Chicago needs to focus more on strict sentences for gun crimes and less on drug arrests.
  
  "It's really clear we can reduce violence and crime, and at the same time reduce incarceration rates," McCarthy said. "I really think that what we have to do in this country, and maybe this is a little bit radical, is rethink what constitutes crime."

Aside form the complete disconnect that longer and harsher prison sentences reduce crime by the segment of individuals committing most of the crime, what the hell is this statistic about "arrests for gun crimes going up 25 percent."??? We thought Rahm said we were candy-asses? That YouTube had removed any sort of impetus toward proactive policing? That a post-Ferguson world and Sparklefarts war on the police had provoked a de-policing backlash unseen in history.

We're confused.

Guess Who's Free?

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmmm:"

• PHILADELPHIA — Charles Ramsey was 15 when he had his first encounter with the kind of violence he has worked nearly five decades to end.
  
  A friend was stabbed to death by a gang member down the block from the Chicago home where Ramsey and his family lived. The friend was on his way home from playing pool and table tennis at Ramsey's house.
  
  Five years later, on the same South Side corner, a police officer was gunned down in his patrol car.

And his policing strategies seem to work at least as well as CompStat:

• Violent crimes have dropped every year since hitting a 50-year high of 22,883 in 2006, two years before Ramsey arrived. Last year, the department reported 15,771 violent crimes — a 69 percent drop. In 2006, there were 406 homicides. Under Ramsey, the city's homicide rate has averaged 299 killings per year, with 248 in 2014.

Nah, it makes too much sense. No chance.

Raise Taxes More?

Honest to god, where do they come up with these assholes?

• Determined to bite the bullet and get it over with, aldermen on Monday questioned why Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not proposing an even bigger property tax increase instead of assuming that Gov. Bruce Rauner will sign a bill that gives Chicago more time to shore up police and fire pensions.
  
  “What I’m detecting here is an appetite to get this over with one way or the other and not keep coming back and doing it again and again,” said Ald. Edward Burke (14th), chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee.

Not a word about cutting waste, eliminating fraud or redundancy, reforming spending/contracts/rigged bidding. No, just "why don't we raise taxes even more?"How about eliminating 25 aldercreatures?

Money for Guns

Didn't we mention this just yesterday?

• Hours after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a $250,000 gun buyback program on Monday, a downstate gun-rights advocate promised to come to Chicago to exploit it.
  
  “We will be delighted to transact business once more with do-gooders in Chicago,” John Boch, executive director of Champaign-based Guns Save Life, said Monday.
  
  Guns Save Life used Chicago’s 2012 gun buyback to embarrass city officials. That year, members said they turned in about 60 guns — some of them rusty and inoperable.
  
  They received $100 MasterCard gift cards for each gun, which they used to buy ammunition for a National Rifle Association youth camp in Bloomington and bolt-action rifles to give away to campers.
  
  Suburban Chicago gun dealers also took advantage of the no-questions-asked policy of the 2012 buyback to unload inventory worth less than $100 in exchange for the $100 cards, sources said.
  
  At the time, city officials angrily accused Guns Save Life of abusing a program intended to take guns off the streets of Chicago and reduce violence. But Boch says the group was simply demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the program.
  
  “Tell the mayor we need substance over symbolism,” he said Monday.

As members of these organizations, we'd also extend our thanks to the mayor and the gullible taxpayers/corporations coming up with this money. It shall be put to good use.

UPDATE: Not so fast! Rahm is ready for so-called "scammers:"

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel says officials are ready for activists who want to thwart the city’s gun buyback program, reports WBBM [...]
  
  Mayor Emanuel says officials and community leaders will make sure that gun rights advocates don’t scam the weapons buyback program by turning in worthless guns for gift cards. The Champaign-based group Guns Save Life has threatened to turn in worthless, inoperable guns.
  
  “One of the things we did to redesign it is to work through our church leaders to make sure it’s exactly taking guns that we think need to get off the street off the streets,” Emanuel said. “I know where I stand. I stand with the residents, yesterday as well as last night, who want to see police on the street and getting both guns and kids off the street.”

And how exactly are the churches going to do this? Because churches are experts on guns. And the Department has already stated there will be no checking of ID's and pretty much no questions asked. It's not like they're setting up a portable firing range to test these things.

Are they going to discriminate against white people bringing in guns? Because we know lots of black people who belong to these groups. Are they going to only put the money in black neighborhoods? That might appear to be racist against brown and white people, after all, they're victims of crime, too. Oh wait...is Rahm only putting the quarter million in neighborhoods hardest hit by violence? Now we're getting closer to the problem that no one speaks about, but still claims is racist.

Give it up Rahm. One way or the other, you're going to give a bunch of this money to people who use it to educate people as to gun rights, sharpen their gun skills, or support gun camps for kids.

Snow Money!

Somehow, we just know what areas of the city will be targeted with this one:

• It will cost more to be lazy this winter.
  
  A City Council committee on Monday hiked the top fine for failing to shovel your sidewalk to $500 — a tool city officials said would be used against repeat offenders.
  
  City officials clarified language on snow removal, but in doing so it also hiked the fines and set strict times to have sidewalks shoveled.

You also better not shovel your snow into the street - that's another fine.

Parts, More Parts

What is going on over on the west side?

• Two bones discovered in the West Garfield Park neighborhood Monday afternoon are human and appear to be from an adult, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
  
  The right and left femur, or upper leg bones, along with decomposed soft tissue and adult clothing were examined Tuesday at the medical examiner’s office, according to spokeswoman [...].
  
  The bones are too large to belong to a child, but an anthropology consultation will confirm the results in the next two weeks, [...]. If found to be human, samples will be sent for DNA analysis, which usually takes several months.

That's the second set of parts found in as many months. Any connection? Are the detectives looking for anyone named "Frankenstein"?

Final Conviction

The last holdout convicted:

• A Cook County jury deliberated about three hours Monday before convicting the third and final defendant in the 2010 killing of off-duty Chicago police Officer Thomas Wortham IV.
  
  Marcus Floyd faces mandatory life imprisonment after jurors found he knew Wortham was a cop.
  
  Jurors found that prosecutors did not prove Floyd personally fired a gun but held he was still legally responsible for Wortham's killing because he joined his cousin in attempting to rob the off-duty officer. Jurors also found Floyd guilty of murder in connection with the death of his cousin, Brian Floyd, who was mortally wounded in a shootout with Wortham and his father, a retired cop who came to his son's rescue.

Hopefully, this one rots along with the rest and the Wortham family can find some small bit of closure.

The Dead Don't Just Vote....

In Chicago, they graduate college:

• City Colleges of Chicago has its own version of “The Walking Dead.” Call it the Graduating Dead.
  
  The seven-campus school system is combing records for dropouts, including deceased ones, who may qualify for two-year diplomas, part of an all-out hunt to boost lagging graduation rates and polish a centerpiece of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's education agenda.
  
  In 2013, City Colleges adopted a “posthumous degree” program that made dead alums eligible for a degree or certificate, provided they had fulfilled three-fourths of the requirements. “This policy can be administered retroactively and applies also to students who have died prior to the effective date of this policy,” City Colleges documents say.

Is there money involved in this somehow? Do they get retro-active student loan payments from the feds? It can't just be about "prestige" to boost a dismal graduation rate, can it?

Maybe Rahm needs another line on the resume? The Education Mayor!

More Money Located

If Rahm keeps this up, he might not have to raise taxes! Of course, he'll have to stop giving the money away in the first place:

• Mayor Emanuel will announce a new fund today to support local gun buy-back events.
  
  The city will provide $250,000 for churches and community-based organizations to host their own gun buy-backs.
  
  The police department will help staff them, recover the guns and provide cash cards for the guns that are turned in.
  
  The organizations will host and promote the events.

Ah yes, the "gun buyback." Proven time and again to not have a single iota of effect on crime rates and actually helps get rid of "hot" guns used ion all sorts of crimes, not to mention a few expensive collectibles that would bring a legit seller many thousands of dollars in numerous cases.

On the bright side, the taxpayer money also goes to many gun organizations who use the $100 gift cards to buy ammo for gun camps and training hours to teach responsible gun owners how to shoot better, so it isn't all bad.

Congratulations on 400

No, not birthdays:

• Three people were killed and 20 others were wounded in shootings in Chicago over the weekend, including a 3-year-old boy killed by his 6-year-old brother while they were playing cops and robbers with their father's loaded gun, according to authorities.
  
  So far this year, at least 2,434 people have been shot in the city. That's 347 more than during the same period last year and 583 more than in 2013. As of early Monday, there have been at least 404 people shot to death this year, 55 more than during the same period last year and 40 more than in 2013.

Chicago is pretty much leaving the last two years in the dust.

So, Which is It?

Last week, we were "fetal," pretty much giant candy-asses who were scared of cameras.

Then Rahm "clarified" his statement, saying, yeah the cops are candy-asses, but hey, that YouTube stuff really has them back on their heels, completely leaving out the fact that the YouTube shit has been promulgated by police haters from president Sparklefarts on down....and oh yeah, and it's mostly lies.

Then, McCompStat trots out the "cops are getting thousands of guns off the streets, how can they not be doing their jobs if they're getting thousands of guns off the streets?"

Then, once again, the cops are fucking it all up:

• Amid a spike in shootings and murders that’s put a national spotlight on the city this year, authorities in Chicago are seizing more illegal guns than anywhere else in the country.
  
  The Chicago Police Department says it has seized more than 5,500 illegal guns in the first nine months of this year — most of those confiscated during searches in high-crime areas on the South Side and the West Side. By comparison, the number of illegal guns seized in Chicago all last year was about 7,000 — about 583 a month, versus 611 a month this year.
  
  But even though they’re winning seven of every 10 gun cases, Cook County prosecutors acknowledge they’re having a tougher time getting convictions.

Well then, that would appear to be a County prosecutor problem, right? Wrong:

• In part, that’s because of the public’s concern over police tactics in the wake of high-profile shootings of African-Americans by police officers around the country, according to both prosecutors and defense attorneys. They say that’s caused growing skepticism among jurors about the credibility of police officers.
  
  “It is probably more difficult to prove these gun possession cases than it has been in the past,” said Fabio Valentini, chief of the criminal prosecutions bureau for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. “I think it makes sense that the events of the last couple of years have affected the way that jurors look at police narratives.”

They are claiming that seventy-two percent of the guns cases are pled out as guilty. But cops are at fault for the twenty-eight percent who beat the charges.

Let's just point out that we can't recall a single instance of a Chicago cop planting a gun. And of the guns seized, we can't recall but a handful that were ever returned for any reason whatsoever. The vast majority of the seven thousand recovered last year and the five thousand-plus recovered this year were possessed by felons and other ineligible persons. But it's the fault of the police that the Assistant States Attorneys can't make a case?

Hey Fabio, why don't your people make the case that this media driven leftist narrative is based on half-truths, deception, misrepresentation of police procedure and outright lies? Or would that be asking too much? We guess your political masters won't let you correct that misconception.

More Laws! More Laws!

Because more laws would have prevented this stupidity:

• Michael Santiago bought a revolver to protect himself after the former gang member was tagged with the dangerous label of “snitch” because he testified at the murder trial of another gang member, prosecutors said Sunday at his bail hearing.
  
  But his plan went terribly wrong.
  
  Santiago’s 6-year-old son got his hands on the gun and accidentally shot his 3-year-old brother while the toddler ate a bowl of macaroni and cheese, killing him, prosecutors said.
  
  “This is the ultimate tragedy,” Cook County Judge James Brown said before setting Santiago’s bail at $75,000. “I’m sure the defendant didn’t intend for this to happen, but it did happen.”

Intended? No.

Preventable? 100%.

Maybe more than 100% (if that were possible) since he bought it illegally, stored it improperly, and may not have even been eligible to own it, seeing as how he bought it from another gang member. Hopefully, someone is working to make sure the appropriate gun-running charges are presented so the Supernintendo doesn't have to point out how the laws aren't being enforced against criminals in Illinois again.

Meanwhile, we're sure that Rahm and Garry are working diligently to ensure that this guy's FOID and Concealed Carry permits are summarily revoked...along with any one else who dares to own a gun. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that crap.

Bad Sports Day

Seems anything related to an ursine creature had a bad day today.

Bad news - We lost badly underestimating the football over/under and the baseball contest.

Good news - we only lost in toothpicks, since actual gambling would break laws and stuff.

Open post for now.

Sgt Rumor

Remember that supposed class of sergeants before the end of the year?

• Straight outta headquarters. McCarthy is attempting to promote a class of 13 merit sergeants. With no one off the list. McCarthy has been advised not too, but refuses to listen to legal affairs, human resources, inspector general. Why on earth would you promote a class of 13. Waste of a classroom at the academy. Are they going to be in the broom closet. Somebody give him a snickers bar, he gets pissy when hungry.
• Talk about fuzzy math, Best rumor of the week. There will be a class of 13 merit sergeants all by themselves starting next Monday. Don "Elmer Fudd" ONeill and his loyal sidekick Sgt YT the OCD legend in her own mind think they can twist the Shakman language to let them sneak in 13 OCD cronies of the right demographic and no one will complain because they'll just say they were merit from the last class. In there mind 100% and 30% are the same thing if it's their people getting promoted. Just a rumor folks. nothing to see here. I bet the class won't happen next Monday. Bring back Tracey Ladner!

And yet again, another reason for the FOP to negotiate for a change to the "merit" system...something along the lines of "sure, you can have 30% "merit" from the entire total of promoted sergeants, but they're the last class promoted. That way people who actually earned a promotion by studying the material and scoring well get promoted ahead of the hacks."

Anyone have info on this rumor? At least we'd have no problem picking out the clouted and could follow their subsequent career trajectories with ease.

Only 3-point Underdogs

So they'll win by 6?

Over/Under is a generous 44.

It would be nice to go into the bye-week at 3-and-3.

Um....No. Simply No

Let's hope this horseshit idea doesn't migrate here from New York like an entire host of other horseshit ideas have:

• The NYPD will soon allow cops to handcuff criminal suspects with their hands in front instead of behind their backs as part of the use-of-force overhaul — a change one police source called “total lunacy.”
  
  “They want to say they’re a kinder, gentler police force by coming up with a new policy on front-cuffing. But it invites danger,” the source said.
  
  NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis told The Post that the change — which will go into effect Jan. 1 — was part of the revision of the Patrol Guide regarding use of force.
  
  He said suspects with “medical or physical hardships” would be candidates for front cuffing, but it would be the arresting officer’s decision.

If you have a "medical hardship," here's a bright idea - don't break the law. It'll prevent a lot of problems later, especially as prisons aren't usually known for being "medical hardship friendly."

Openings North

Evidently a crap-load of openings....mostly north.

• 001 - 4
  002 - 4
  012 - 2
  016 - 8
  017 - 4
  018 - 2
  019 - 8
  020 - 8
  024 - 2
  025 - 2

You'd almost think the northside has been short coppers for a few years now.

All the sergeant openings seem to be south though.

CompStat Takes Another Beating

You'd think someone besides Chicago Magazine would catch on finally:

• The Los Angeles Police Department misclassified an estimated 14,000 serious assaults as minor offenses in a recent eight-year period, artificially lowering the city's crime levels, a Times analysis found.
  
  With the incidents counted correctly, violent crime in the city was 7% higher than the LAPD reported in the period from 2005 to fall 2012, and the number of serious assaults was 16% higher, the analysis found.
  
  When presented with the findings, top LAPD officials acknowledged the department makes errors and said they were working to improve the accuracy of crime data reporting.
  
  "We know this can have a corrosive effect on the public's trust of our reporting," said Asst. Chief Michel Moore, who oversees the LAPD's system for tracking crime. "That's why we are committed to ... eliminating as much of the error as possible."

7% and 16% "errors" aren't actually errors, even in the broadest sense of statistical reporting - it's willful misconduct, dishonest, and should be criminal to mislead to this extent.

And get this - even the corrected numbers show that crime was dropping anyway - just not dropping fast enough for the politicians and brass who needed it to drop faster, probably to justify spending, salaries, contracts and all sorts of crap.

And this part sounds so very familiar, too:

• The efforts to improve data accuracy within the LAPD have unfolded amid a sharp rise in the city's violent crime over the last year. Moore and other police officials have said that some of the increase may be due to more accurate reporting, but that much of it reflects an actual increase in crime.
  
  For example, homicides and shootings — categories less susceptible to classification errors — are both up by double digits this year.

The similarities are amazing. And we imagine the corrections in Chicago when someone with the authority actually goes through the mish-mash reporting here will be equally amazing, if not more.

Whoops!

Nothing like calling in gang leaders to a known location so that those looking to kill them have an easy time tracking them to a kill zone:

• A parolee was fatally shot on the South Side after leaving a meeting run by Chicago police and other law enforcement officials that is intended to steer gang members stay out of jail, authorities said.
  
  Tracey Morgan, 25, and his mother were shot Tuesday night after she picked him up from the "gang call-in" at the Friendly Temple Church of God In Christ at 7745 S. State St. in the Chatham neighborhood, police said.
  
  Police think that another vehicle followed their car and that someone inside opened fire in the 8200 block of South Lafayette Avenue, about a mile from the church.
  
  Morgan was wounded in the abdomen and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead at 9:27 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. His mother, 55, was treated at the hospital for a wounded arm.
  
  Detectives were investigating if Morgan, a reputed member for the Terror Dome faction of the Black P Stones, was targeted by a rival gang member who also attended the meeting, police said. No one was in custody as of Thursday afternoon.

If we were the betting type, we'd say "Duh, ya think?"

• The call-ins are a key strategy used by the Police Department in its efforts to reduce violence in Chicago.
  
  While it's still unclear if the meeting was directly connected to Morgan's death, Chicago police spokesman [...] called his slaying a tragedy.
  
  "This is an example of what we're trying to prevent," he said. "The irony is that these call-ins are our effort to get these individuals out of a life of violence."

And how's that working out this year? Homicides are up how many? Shootings are up how many? And now the Department is an unwilling and unknowing accomplice to assisting in a hit?

• Parolees are typically required by their parole officers to show up to the meetings, which are generally not open to the media or public.
  
  Chicago has hosted more than 40 call-ins since 2010, said Christopher Mallette, who heads the city's program. He said he moderated Tuesday's event attended by about 30 people.
  
  [Police spokesman] said no conflicts between gang members occurred at the meeting, which Chicago police and corrections employees also attended. In light of the homicide, the Police Department plans to make what Guglielmi called "enhancements" to future call-ins, but he declined to detail those changes.

"enhancements"? So we're going to be escorting these shooters, felons, dope merchants and murderers home at night? That's the function of the Department now? What a fucking joke.

This Will Be Pleasant

What the fuck?

• Two veteran Chicago police officers have been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation involving child pornography and prostitution, [...].
  
  Sources say two veteran police officers - each of them with more than 10 years of experience - have been suspended. There are possibly more officers involved in the case.
  
  The case began when inappropriate images with juvenile girls were discovered, according to ABC7 sources. It's unclear how many girls are involved or any of their ages at this point.
  
  The scope of the investigation involves child pornography and prostitution during the last couple of months. At this point, it's not known where those two officers worked.
  
  The president of the Fraternal Order of Police said if the officers are union members and face charges, the FOP would not pay the legal bills.

When did we become the Iraqi army?

No shit the union won't pay. There is no way in hell this could be construed as any sort of "official capacity" even in fantasy land.

And it's a federal investigation? Hope you brought your toothbrushes boys.

Ignorant Churchmen

Phleger must be creaming in his frocks:

• Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich says there needs to be stricter gun laws.
  
  The archbishop wrote about his concerns in a piece in the Chicago Tribune. In it he said lawmakers must act, and act quickly, to change how easily guns are bought and sold in this country.
  
  Wrote Cupich:
  

  Let’s be honest. The Second Amendment was passed in an era when organized police forces were few and citizen militias were useful in maintaining the peace. Its original authors could not have anticipated a time when the weapons we have a right to bear now include military-grade assault weapons that have turned our streets into battlefields. The Second Amendment’s original intent has been perverted by those who, as Pope Francis recently commented, have profited mightily. Surely there is a middle ground between the original intent of the amendment and the carnage we see today.

"military-grade"? Did Phleger white this bullshit?

"battlefields"? Have you ever seen a battlefield?

And Pope Francis who is/was/continues to be protected by armed members of the Swiss Guard and Secret Service agents? Are you for real?

You know what else the Founding Fathers never could have foreseen? The internet. So that whole First Amendment thing must have been perverted seeing as how thousands have profited mightily taking advantage of free speech. The genius of the Constitution is it's simplicity and intent to restrict government power while allowing the entire country to grow around it. Try studying it once instead of the leftist Cliff Notes.

Tell you what Blase, when your churches start paying taxes and punishing molesters according to the laws of the land instead of covering up for decades, we'll grant you a voice in government matters. Until then, shut up, minister to the poor, the downtrodden, the sick, weak, infirm and religiously bereft and stay the hell out of issues you are woefully ignorant about.

More Corruption?

Yet another Federal investigation tripping up an Illinois pol:

• Federal investigators are looking into whether Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown accepted loans from employees in exchange for jobs or promotions as part of a wide-ranging probe into possible corruption, according to sources.
  
  A source familiar with the case said the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago has a grand jury looking into Brown’s conduct, including loans she might have gotten from employees “in connection to employment.”
  
  Another source, speaking of having been interviewed by the FBI more than a year ago, said, “They asked me about personnel stuff. Was somebody paying for a job? . . . Why was this person promoted? . . . Pay to play.”
  
  Those revelations come as federal agents visited Brown’s South Side house last week and seized her county-issued cellphone.

A fed could make a career out of jailing corrupt Illinois politicians. And they're so dumb it's almost a mercy to jail them.

Gary Who?

Rahm never met no one:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday he doesn’t know and has never met Gary Solomon, a key player in the $23 million contract kickback scheme that culminated in the guilty plea by his handpicked former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett.
  
  [...] With Solomon’s fingerprints all over the hiring of two schools CEO that went sour, one of whom turned out to be a crook, Emanuel was asked Wednesday to clarify the nature of his relationship with Solomon, who was indicted along with Byrd-Bennett.
  
  How did he know him? Where did he meet him? Why did he rely on him? And if he knew that Byrd-Bennett once worked for Solomon’s company, why did the mayor not disqualify SUPES and two other Solomon-owned education consulting companies from receiving CPS contracts?
  
  The mayor’s answer was enlightening and unequivocal.
  
  “First, I don’t know Gary Solomon. Never met Gary Solomon. Not a supporter of mine in any effort. So, I don’t know how you can say that, based on the fact that there is no relationship between me and Gary Solomon ever,” Emanuel said.
  
  “The U.S. attorney just finished five months of review. Didn’t talk to me about anything. Didn’t ask for anything from me. … And I don’t believe that mayors should get involved in contracts, which is why I did not.”

Riiiiight. We can only hope that there are (A) wiretaps and (B) Byrd-Bennett sings like a canary.

Another Parolee with a Gun?

Geez, these things just write themselves for Garry's crusade for tougher sentencing....You Go Garry!

• A three-time convicted violent felon who was released from prison on parole this summer is charged with firing a handgun on Clark Street as the Cubs victory celebration wound down last night.
  
  Dolton resident Hoytuan Pierce, 31, is charged with reckless discharge of a firearm and with being an armed habitual criminal, according to court records.
  
  Chicago police witnessed the incident outside of Roadhouse 66, 3478 N. Clark, at 11:33PM Tuesday. Pierce and two others were taken into custody and a weapon was recovered, police said.
  
  Pierce is currently on parole after serving part of a one-year sentence for his second DUI. His previous convictions include robbery in 2002, aggravated battery of a government employee in 2005, and being a felon in possession of a firearm in 2012.
  
  Information about the other two individuals taken into custody with Pierce was not immediately available.

Quick! Someone check his FOID card! And get on the horn to revoke that Concealed Carry permit!!!

You know what might have stopped all of this? Another gun law! Oh wait.....

You get it yet Rahm?

Here a Tax, There a Tax

And once again, not a single substantive cut to government:

• Months after winning approval for a controversial penny-on-the-dollar sales tax increase, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle now wants to extend the county's 3 percent amusement tax to cable TV and recreational activities such as bowling, golf and many for-profit sports leagues.
  
  The additional $20 million — most of it coming from cable taxes — would help close a projected $199 million hole in the operating budget, Preckwinkle said. The county would get much more from the sales tax hike and spend it on shoring up government worker pension funds, loan repayments and capital projects such as roads, bridges and major technology upgrades.
  
  "We're taking the difficult but necessary steps to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of county government," Preckwinkle said during her 2016 budget address Wednesday. Later, she characterized the expansion of the amusement tax as a "modest" effort to close a loophole, given that the city already charges its 9 percent amusement tax in those same areas.

Someone want to remind us what the purpose is for County government? Most of their functions are already performed by incorporated cities, suburbs and townships. Yeah yeah yeah, we know they're a political patronage machine, so their main purpose is fleecing taxpayers for assorted government slobs to "earn" a living, usually the relatives too dumb or corrupt to go into city government. So why does this entity still exist to steal our money?

Hey, Where's Ours??

Garry, what the deal with this?

• Police Commissioner Bill Bratton won’t let the NYCLU — or anyone else — bully him for details on the NYPD’s super-secret X-ray vans.
  
  The top cop was asked Tuesday about the counter-terror vehicles, called Z Backscatter Vans, in light of the NYCLU’s request to file an amicus brief arguing that the NYPD should have to release records about the X-ray vans.
  
  “They’re not used to scan people for weapons,” Bratton insisted. “The devices we have, the vehicles if you will, are all used lawfully and if the ACLU and others don’t think that’s the case, we’ll see them in court — where they’ll lose! At this time and the nature of what’s going on in the world, that concern of theirs is unfounded.”

And to think, our bosses sit down with the ACLU and develop ways to make coppers jobs harder.

In any event, where are our sooper-sekret x-ray specs....whoops...we meant...vans? Of course, we already have sick building that cause all sorts of unexplained cancer clusters in cops and firemen, so we probably don't need a nuclear device that might give cancer to citizens, too. It would probably dwarf the "brutality" settlements of late.

Ethics Violations? (UPDATES)

We're pretty sure this was forbidden to us according to the Ethics test we take every year:

• Cubs offering 2 free tickets to Alderman. Don't they take same ethics test we do ? Are they prohibited from accepting gifts (which these can be several hundred dollars apiece) from a company (Cubs) that do business with the city ?

In the aldercreatures defense, this might be classified as a "once in a lifetime" event. But hey, rules were made to be broken, right?

Wasn't Rahm behind home plate the other day? How much were those tickets? Face value? StubHub? A grand each? They don't just sell those to anybody.

UPDATE: Okay, not freebies? Just moved to the "front of the line" so they wouldn't have to actually sit on hold and hope for the best. Not like they're going to vote on any improvements or zoning variations in the near future, right?

UPDATE: So, kind of like when Daley was offered a condo at that Loop development at some ridiculously low "introductory" offer of a few hundred thousand bucks....and then after the complex was completed, he and the missus were sitting on an un-lived in property worth well over a million. That kind of bribe?

Wisconsin Gun Shop Payout

Garry, consciously or unconsciously, is echoing the right:

• This week in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee County Circuit Court is hearing arguments in a lawsuit filed by two police officers, both of them shot in the head by a young man named Julius Burton back in 2009. The officers are suing the former owners of the defunct gun shop that sold the pistol Burton used to a straw purchaser, Jacob Collins. Burton was at the time too young to legally purchase a handgun.
  
  Like many other jurisdictions, Wisconsin doesn’t really take straw purchases of firearms very seriously. At the time of Collins’s crime, the offense was only a misdemeanor. (Subsequent legislation has upgraded straw purchasing to a low-level felony.) The crime was, and is, seldom prosecuted, and, before the Burton-Collins incident, offenders would “typically get probation or less than a year in prison because of their clean records and the notion they have not committed a violent crime, according to a review of five years of federal court records,” as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2010.
  
  Wisconsin isn’t alone in its nonchalance. California normally treats straw purchases as misdemeanors or minor infractions. Even as the people of Baltimore suffer horrific levels of violence, Maryland classifies the crime as a misdemeanor, too. Straw buying is a felony in progressive Connecticut, albeit one in the second-least-serious order of felonies. It is classified as a serious crime in Illinois (Class 2 felony), but police rarely (meaning “almost never”) go after the nephews and girlfriends with clean records who provide Chicago’s diverse and sundry gangsters with their weapons. In Delaware, it’s a Class F felony, like forging a check. In Oregon, it’s a misdemeanor.

The case referenced in the opening paragraph was actually adjudicated yesterday - the gun shop was found civilly liable to the tune of nearly $6 million to the officers for gross negligence by ignoring the common characteristics of a straw buyer. The straw buyer got 2 years, while the shooter got 80.

The rest of the article shows how the Courts, state governments and feds routinely ignore their own laws in order to further an agenda, an agenda set by the politicians in power at the moment.

Garry deserves a bit of credit for pointing this out, but we doubt he's doing because he's suddenly a supporter of the Second Amendment, the NRA and right wing politics in general - he's doing it because everything else has failed: disbanding citywide units, combining districts, merging detective areas, centralizing gang teams, downgrading crime, hiding homicides, etc.

True!

Remember, he supported her 100%.

Double Standard Much Rahm?

Remember, you're "fetal," you're scared, you're second-guessing yourself.

Rahm, on the other hand, is not:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office was more involved in a $20.5 million school contract with a now-indicted consultant than previously disclosed, public records indicate, but his administration has refused to release hundreds of emails that could provide a deeper understanding of how the deal came to be.
  
  Emanuel and his aides have maintained that the mayor's office had nothing to do with the contract to provide leadership training for principals that is at the center of a federal bribery indictment against ex-schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and the consulting firm where she once worked.
  
  When asked in April if his administration had any role at all in the SUPES contract, Emanuel told reporters, "No, you obviously know that by all the information available. And so the answer to that is no."
  
  Yet the mayor's office and schools officials have been in an ongoing struggle with the Tribune over reporters' public records requests that could bear directly on the controversy, withholding many emails for months before releasing them, several so heavily redacted that little more than the subject line and addresses remain.

You will wear cameras, you will ride with cameras, you will have any cell phone video of your actions dissected and analyzed to the merest recorded electron.

Rahm, however, will fight for his privacy in court:

• Illinois law says government officials' emails about taxpayer business are public records for all to see. But what if they're sent from private accounts or personal cellphones?
  
  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel argues those are not for public consumption. The Chicago Tribune claims they are, and took the matter to court last month. Gov. Bruce Rauner had his own dust-up this summer over an aide's private emails, and the practice cost a University of Illinois chancellor her job in August.
  
  The issue, once limited to scattered consternations over politicians playing fast and loose with new technology, is pervasive this year, beginning with revelations about Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to conduct business while she was U.S. secretary of state — a case that spurred a lawsuit by The Associated Press.
  
  Public-access advocates insist Illinois law is clear, and the state's attorney general and appellate court weighed in just two years ago, declaring that public business is public record — no matter how it's conducted.

So we can expect Lisa Madigan to back up her ruling by supporting the Tribune lawsuit?