What to Do?

So 12-hour days remain in effect for Monday, regardless of the outcome of Game 5.

But if you are in Day Off Group 62 or 63, you are RDO. First and Second watches will have all the cars.

And Third Watch? They show up for work at 1230 hours and sit around waiting for the Command Staff to make up something for them to do.

Brilliant plan.

No Slow Down

In fact, it seems to be speeding up:

• 2014 - 3 killed, 28 wounded
  2015 - 4 killed, 15 wounded
  2016 - 16 killed, 42 wounded (tentative total)

It looks like Chicago is going to blow past the SCC prediction of 666 long before December even starts.

Officer Assist

Back in February, Officer Andrew Jones was saved by some quick thinking 011 District co-workers who utilized the recently installed Automated External Defibrillator, resuscitating him and enabling him to reach the hospital.

Since that time, he has suffered some medical setbacks and his family is attempting to retrofit his house ADA compliant so he can be home for the holidays. There's a GoFundMe page set up and they are just over halfway to their goal. Any assistance is appreciated.

Comments closed here - informational post only.

Shots Fired at Police - Twice

Barely covered in the news:

• Chicago Police officers faced gunfire while on patrol in two separate incidents across the city early Saturday.
  
  Just before 3 a.m., officers heard shots in the Little Village neighborhood and saw a car speeding away from the 2500 block of South Avers, police said.
  
  As they followed the vehicle, someone inside it shot at the officers, police said. No one was hit.
  
  The car eventually stopped and two people ran away. One was arrested, with charges pending Saturday morning, police said.
  
  About 5:15 a.m., another pair of officers were performing a traffic stop in the 2000 block of East 71st Street in the South Shore neighborhood when they came under fire from an unknown source, police said.
  
  Their squad car was shot, but no one was injured, police said. Area South detectives are investigating.

Be careful out there boys and girls.

Getting it Right the Second Time

Another one of those warm and fuzzy stories:

• A man killed Friday outside a gas station previously had suffered multiple gunshot wounds in March while he was using Facebook Live, effectively broadcasting his own shooting on social media.
  
  Brian Fields, 30, of the 7200 block of South Wolcott Avenue, was shot to death while sitting inside a white two-door vehicle in the 1900 block of West Garfield Boulevard after 10 p.m. Friday, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner's office. Fields was shot in the chest, and Chiquita Ford, 30, who also was killed in the shooting, was shot in the side.

He doesn't seem to have had the camera running this time though.

Mayhem Continues

And not just at Wrigley.

So far, during an unseasonably warm October weekend, 7 dead and 20 wounded (per HeyJackass.com)

And a warm Sunday to go.

Yes, this is a mostly pointless post - but we warned you with the 12 hour days and canceled days off, it would be slow going. Bear with us.

Night One

A non-clinching game.

Thousands of cops sitting in and around buses in the general area of Wrigley.

This accomplished what exactly? That the Department could move large amounts of cops around the city 6 hours before game time using buses? The CTA proves they can do that every day of the year.

Any stories to share?

That Adjustment Week

Tin-foil hat alert!

• Anonymous said...
  
  Will the department try to redeploy officers from their bid districts come the middle of July? We will be without a contract at that time. Why is a adjustment week needed then? Will they subtract the lowest senior officers from each district for redeployment? Will we then rebid for watches come the end of June for that mid July adjustment week? Or are permanent 10 or 12 hour days on the horizon?

Um, no. When a labor contract expires, the provisions remain in effect until a new labor agreement is signed. Nothing changes...which you'd know if you actually paid attention and lived through more than one Contract.

The adjustment week in the middle of next year is for one simple reason:

• Day Off Groups 61, 63 and 65 have gotten the most beneficial furloughs for the last few years - 26 days at a time if you choose the optimal segments.
• 62, 64 and 66 could only get a 20 day furlough, regardless of the segment.

This is because of the provision that lets you build your furlough forward and backward to your days off.

The Adjustment Week flips this around so 62, 64 and 66 get an opportunity for the 26 day vacations.

Nothing sinister, nothing being plotted, no sudden schedule shifts. That isn't to say the Department couldn't redeploy the lowest seniority officers if they got some manpower report (like we posted about yesterday) or the DOJ came up with some wild scheme. But that would probably be allowable under certain narrow circumstances with the current Contract.

Screeeeeeeech!!!!

The smell of burnt rubber emanating from City Hall:

• After infuriating constituents and embarassing [sic] her City Council colleagues, Ald. Milly Santiago (31st) is now apologizing for her public tirade against a Board of Ethics ruling that forced the Cubs to yank a lucrative offer to let aldermen purchase World Series tickets at face value.
  
  “I never intended to offend anybody and, if I did offend somebody, I apologize,” Santiago, whose annual salary is $116,208, told Fox-32 Chicago during an interview recorded Thursday.
  
  “When I said `poor alderman,’ — I’m very grateful for my salary and my position. What I meant to say was, you know, compared to so many people, the scalpers and all these brokers and all these people who have access to all these tickets to the highest price, of course I’m poor compared to them. Because my salary doesn’t make me rich.”

Liar. Everyone knows exactly what you meant - you're an entitled politician using your position to skip to the front of a line that happens to have Cubs tickets in it. Just another symbol of the endless corruption infecting Chicago.

The Return of Georgas?

Can anyone confirm the "lack of brain" trust at HQ has called back the banished one?

• 2 things from 35th street:
  
  ALL overtime being paid for by Major League Baseball. They advanced a check to the city.
  
  Second, DC EC of special functions told to sit this one out. The job is over his head. DC SG was asked to come back to special functions so the job would be done correctly. SG is the only guy who has the knowledge and experience to get the job done. Even Eddie knows he can't count on his Noble buddies. They are simply in over their heads. That is why 35th Street is so messed up right now. All the entitled friends of Eddie feel they don't have to do any work because they are "Friends with the Supe." This is the truth and a very sad reflection of the Department.

The correct move? Because everything we've seen on paper so far doesn't instill us with any sort of confidence int he Command Staff.

1230 Start Time?

First of all, it's not a clinching game.

Second, even if it was, why start at 1230? Is the Department thinking that the festivities will be over by 0030 hours? Or do they not care that the 3rd Watch will be pulling a 16-hour shift that will likely leave them ineffective?

A 1500 or 1600 hour start time would make a lot more sense, and be a lot closer to a normal shift....but that would make sense. Are there different start times for an actual title game?

Redeployment Study

The "third rail" of police staffing:

• Police Supt. Eddie Johnson vowed Thursday to develop a “fair, transparent and objective methodology” for determining where to assign both veteran police officers and the 970 reinforcements Mayor Rahm Emanuel has promised to hire over the next two years.
  
  A study that could lead to the police reallocation South and West Side aldermen have been demanding for years will be conducted by Alexander Weiss, a staffing expert, and Paul Evans, a former superintendent for the Boston Police Department.
  
  Weiss has conducted 30 similar studies for cities such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans. He conducted a more cursory study for the Chicago Police Department in 2010.
  
  This time, the Chicago study will be far more extensive and include far more variables than calls for service. A draft report is expected in about four months.

You almost never see a police car in some of the "copland" neighborhoods.

Once this study is done, you can probably eliminate that "almost" from the previous sentence. You will pay taxes for everyone else's police protection.

Marching Orders (UPDATE)

Supposedly, the World Series Order is rolling or has rolled out tonight. It's supposed to be huge and as bad an any rumor we've heard this week.

We'll get a copy from somewhere today and see what it all means. But canceling days off ALL weekend (when the Cubs can't win anything) and disrupting Halloween (when the Cubs aren't even playing and the kids have Trick-or-Treating plans), seems needlessly disruptive.

Instead of approaching this intelligently, the non-leadership seems determined to fuck-up as many plans as possible while spending, literally, millions of taxpayer dollars.

UPDATE: Just from reading the first sections, it isn't quite as bad as thought. Someone thought through the start times and went with 0800/2000 and 0900/2100. Canceling Friday though? A lot of coppers had plans, even tickets.

UPDATE: As you might suspect, posting for the duration of the World Series will be slightly off of our regular schedule. Same with comment moderation. But again, you might not notice seeing as how your reading should be off slightly - unless you're retired or just someone wandering through. We'll do our best.

The Entitled

Talk about people who have lost touch with what their part-time job is supposed to entail:

• Aldermen on Wednesday continued to press for further explanation of an ethics rule that would curtail their ability to get their hands on sought-after sports tickets, calling on City Hall's watchdog to clarify when exactly standards that were established in response to a playoff ticket offer from the Cubs would apply.
  
  City Inspector General Joseph Ferguson urged aldermen to consider the public perception of them accepting face value playoff tickets from the Cubs.
  
  But Ferguson declined to lend his interpretation to a recent Board of Ethics ruling that said aldermen cannot take tickets offered by the Cubs to World Series games at Wrigley Field unless they perform a ceremonial duty at the game. The ruling says taking tickets could violate a ban on elected officials accepting gifts worth more than $50.

If they want to purchase season tickets that would give them first shot at playoff games, hooray for them.

If they want to enter the Ticketmaster lottery or however the Cubs sell single playoff game tickets, have at it.

But getting to the front of the line, no matter how shitty the ticket, that in and of itself is worth way more than $50, and therefore a violation of the City Ethics rules.

Have you seen what the Wrigleyville bars are doing?

• A number of Wrigleyville bars are looking to take advantage of the expected crowds by offering food and drink packages that run several hundred dollars each, as well as implementing cover charges that also run more than $100.
  
  Casey Moran’s, across Clark Street from Wrigley Field, is charging $250 for an appetizer, dinner entree and drinks from 7 p.m. until 10:45 p.m., according to Kim Smith, the bar’s office manager.
  
  The food and drink package, though, does not include a table to sit at. A four-person table runs an additional $500. A group of four who wanted to eat, drink and be guaranteed a place to sit would split the $1,500 bill four ways.
  
  Those not interested in the food and drink packages still must pay $100 to get in the door, and that cover charge is expected to go up as the weekend nears, Smith said.

Hooray for capitalism and all that - if you can get a bunch of well-heeled drunks and bandwagon jumpers to shell out $100 to walk in the door and $500 to sit at a table, more power to you. But this phenomenon is worth way more than $50.

Perhaps it's time to roll out those petitions to reduce the number of aldercreatures to under 50 again. Under 25 in an ideal situation.

Downtown Muggings

Once again, crime in the heart of the tourist area spiraling to new heights:

• Chicago police on Wednesday released a series of photographs of a group of teens that earlier this month robbed women late in the evening near Millennium Park and in the Loop.
  
  In each robbery, the group of about five to eight teens has gone up to the woman or female teen and hit her in the head, police said in an alert issued Friday. Victims have also been kicked.
  
  The robbers have stolen cellphones and backpacks containing tablets, then fled on foot.

Then the media does something amazing - they described the offenders when the police wouldn't:

• Police did not release detailed descriptions of the teens, but photographs released Wednesday show that all those allegedly involved were black. The alerts say the group includes both male and female teenagers, but do not specify their possible ages.

Whoa.And not only that, but the Tribune further describes each and every individual, what they were wearing, and what they did to the victims.

This is undoubtedly the most racist article we've ever seen published by the Tribune. Describing offenders, describing their actions, what they were wearing....it's enough to make you want to throw up a little and write a check to #blm.

Cops as Less Than Citizens

Marylin Mosby, the failed prosecutor/persecutor of Baltimore cops, isn't giving up her drive to railroad cops by depriving them of their Civil Rights:

• Baltimore City State’s Attorney is calling for major changes in investigations of police misconduct…
  
  Mosby wants the power to limit officers from choosing bench trials–after the strategy proved successful for the officers she charged in Freddie Gray’s death. It’s one of several changes the state’s attorney is asking for in police misconduct cases.
  
  Gray’s death is still having a huge impact on the state’s attorney, but critics say getting the reforms she wants will be difficult. Mosby signaled Thursday, she’s willing to fight for them.

So, not content with denying police the right to a fair trial by withholding exculpatory evidence, and withholding evidence completely, she wants to deny officers their Right to a trial at all, preferring a lynch mob she can whip into an uninformed frenzy.

Days Off Canceled

And there's part of the order:

We'll see what the start times are shortly, but it looks like this is going to be very expensive to say the least.

No Tickets? No Problem

So this happened the other day:

• The Cubs have withdrawn their offer of face-value World Series tickets to Chicago aldermen after a city ethics board determined that taking the team up on the offer could violate a ban on elected officials accepting gifts worth more than $50.
  
  Three aldermen on Monday confirmed that the team had withdrawn the offer after the Board of Ethics on Friday sent out new guidance to aldermen, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials on the issue. Some aldermen were upset, contending that the ethics board and its new chairman, William Conlon, were making much ado about nothing.
  
  "This whole thing is a circus," said Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, whose North Side ward includes part of Wrigleyville, the area that's home to the team's iconic ballpark. "Rather than celebrate the Cubs, the Cubs now are going to have to comment on something when we as a city should be celebrating going to a World Series.

Remember, that's an alder-asshole who decided he was going to threaten the LOCAL Lodge for an endorsement that a NATIONAL Lodge made. Never let actual ethics get in the way of a corrupt deal.

But not to worry!

• The City Council chambers will be emptier today, during the important budget hearings because a large number of aldermen, who cannot get tickets to the games in Wrigley Field, have gotten a bus and are going to Cleveland to watch the game, after getting tickets on Stub Hub scalping site.

Thank goodness the Budget Hearings can take care of themselves.

Lieutenants Promoted

Twenty-seven promotions, but not starting until after the World Series

• BAIER, J 121 (another from IAD?)
  BALLAUER J 312
  BLOCK A 025
  BRANNIGAN W 001
  CALDERDON G 189 (detail to 116)
  DE LA TOPRRE M 009
  GEORGAS, S 050 (big surprise)
  HOWARD, J 191
  JANOPOULOS, J 311
  KENDIOR K 011
  LAMB JR, T 353
  LEE, A 630
  MCHUGH C 016
  MULLENIX C 018
  MUNIZ, S 010
  MURPHY J 192
  PARHAM, A 015 (detail to 620)
  RASHAN, E 312
  SCHULER, J 121 (and another IAD)
  SHOSHI, L 003 (211)
  STADNIK, R 010
  VANNA, R 121 (IAD again?)
  WEIGLEIN, T 025 (detail to 123)
  WEST, L 115
  WILSON, M 720 (detail to 123)
  WINES P 189
  WISER, R 620
  

Only eight from Patrol Division - the supposed "backbone" of the Department.

And three more from IAD? Two from Human Resources? It must be something in the water on the 5th floor of HQ - so many people with the answers scoring so well, all in that tiny little study group office.

Hats Damnit, HATS!!!

Police shooting in the 'Wood:

• A person was shot by a Chicago police officer outside a church in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, police said.
  
  Police officers were attempting to stop a vehicle with stolen plates in the 300-block of West 59th Street at about 10 a.m. on Sunday. That's when several suspects ran out of the car and officers chased them.
  
  One of the officers fired multiple shots and hit one of the suspects in the lower extremities and chest, seriously wounding that suspect. He was transported to a hospital in critical but stable condition.

When the street deputy showed up (over two hours later), everyone missed her because she was so short. Then she started harping on the hats. Then, just to make sure everyone knew who was in charge, she washed out every officer's mouth with soap as she is known to do. Then she had Gustie come in and twist arms, measure sideburns and check for hair touching collars.

The cops were all okay though, not that she ever asked.

Anyone See a Problem Here?

Exhibit A:

• Chicago Public Schools officials are moving ahead with plans to add hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to the district's books, setting up a blitz of construction projects.
  
  The Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday is expected to approve borrowing as much as $840 million. But CPS won't tell the public what it plans to spend the money on until after the district goes to market for the new bonds.
  
  In addition, the school board also is set to vote on issuing an additional $160 million in bonds to re-finance some of its old debt.

Exhibit B - we seem to recall this was a big deal a years or two ago:

• Chicago officials finally announced what was widely rumored: They will close 54 under-enrolled schools this year in the country’s third largest district to help close a $1 billion budget deficit. It is the largest mass district closing of schools ever in the United States, and it is fiercely opposed by many teachers, parents and education activists.

Exhibit C - just last month:

• Chicago Public Schools student enrollment dropped by 3.5 percent this year compared with last, according to information provided by the district.
  
  That could mean layoffs for 300 teachers and support staff members.

That was something like 13,000 students. Where are the students going?

Exhibit D:

• Nearly half the respondents — 47 percent — would leave Illinois if they could, while 51 percent would stay.
  
  The hierarchy of dissatisfaction: Taxes, 27 percent; weather, 16 percent; government, 15 percent; jobs and schools, 13 percent.
  
  “People often feel they don’t get good value for their tax dollars,” Yepsen says, “and with frequent stories of public corruption or the large number of government units, it’s no wonder they feel that way.”
  
  The urge to bid Illinois adieu is strongest — 58 percent — among people 35 to 50. Millennials under 35 are next at 57 percent.

That would be families with school aged children and those about to start families. But hey, another $840 million on the debt ledger? It's not like it's being wasted.

Of Course She Does

Prickwrinkle again:

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and a bipartisan, biracial coalition of commissioners on Monday pushed for jailing fewer people charged with nonviolent crimes while they await trial.
  
  Preckwinkle and her allies called for a public hearing next month to explore the issue, contending unnecessary incarceration wasted taxpayer money and needlessly kept in jail those who simply could not afford their bail.
  
  In an unusual move, the commissioners cited a recently filed lawsuit that seeks to force the Circuit Court to release more defendants without requiring them to post a bond, claiming the current practices result in unconstitutional discrimination against poor, largely minority criminal defendants. The suit sued five Circuit Court judges and Sheriff Tom Dart.
  
  "I usually say that jails in this country ... are at the intersection of race and poverty," Preckwinkle said.

So....poor black people commit crime because....they're poor and black? That doesn't sound right. Poor white people commit crime because....they're black? No, no, must be something else. Because every study we've seen quoted by the libs says there is no correlation between poverty and crime. How about this - if there is no financial incentive to appear in court, then people )or folks) aren't going to appear in court leading to warrants, leading to higher (or no) bail.

We've already seen how many gun offenders and shooting victims who wouldn't have gotten shot/done the shooting if they were in jail where they belonged. And we all know how "diligent" Cook County Corrections is about letting out just the "non violent" ones. We could fill three of four pages with names and another dozen with the laughter.

Not A Hate Crime?

Selective prosecution once again:

• A video of a Chicago activist removing a Trump sign has generated thousands of views and prompted police in one suburb to issue a statement explaining why they did not charge him with sign theft.
  
  Jedidiah Brown posted a video on Facebook on Oct. 18 showing him removing the large sign from an unspecified location and placing it in the back of his car.
  
  "I think this it is my duty as a citizen of the United States of America," Brown says to the camera as he pulls his car over and walks toward the Trump-Pence sign. "I'm clearly in a predominantly white area because that would never roll on the South Side of Chicago."

And if we go to the Illinois Compiled Statutes:

• (720 ILCS 5/12-7.1)(from Ch. 38, par. 12-7.1)
  Sec. 12-7.1. Hate crime.
  
  (a) A person commits hate crime when, by reason of the actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors, he commits assault, battery, aggravated assault, misdemeanor theft, criminal trespass to residence, misdemeanor criminal damage to property, criminal trespass to vehicle, criminal trespass to real property, mob action, disorderly conduct, harassment by telephone, or harassment through electronic communications...

Well, the Tribune has the video up. We're sure it's available to the Northfield Police Department, as well as the State's Attorney. The perpetrator posted it on his social media site.

So.....why no charges again? It's right there in black and white.

Cubs Detail

And the rumor mill begins:

• OT, but from a reliable source at 35th Street. For any potential "clinch" game next week, 2nd watch is working 1200-2359, 1st watch is 0001-1159 and the entire 3rd watch will be deployed to 18, 19 and certain south and west side districts in anticipation of the rioting (celebration). Busing them around like the Bull's riots (celebrations).

These "reliable source[s]" turn out to be wrong far more often than they're correct. But the sheer incompetence demonstrated in this post makes us think it could be true.

• Third watch would be the obvious choice for being on stand-by. We can see that.
• But why would you have start times of noon and midnight? By the time the game ends, the 2nd watch is going to be ten hours into a twelve hour shift. 
• Not only that, you're well into that Contract section (23.6?) that states the City will pay officers when their start times deviate more than two hours from assigned time. We thought Rahm and Special Ed were trying to cut overtime.

But then we remember who we work for, and we read this in the comment section....:

• But I have to throw this out there. At Wrigley I watched as Dep Chief Al worked like a maestro getting streets and sans to build all kinds of lanes, boxes, and aisles with barricades at Clark & Addison for the end of the Cub's game. He must have dug deep into his kindergarten drawing books for the plan. Five minutes after the game ended it all collapsed, nearly injuring a bunch of cops and trapping a dozen or more buses in the middle of the crowd for hours. Thanks Deputy, for reaffirming my belief once and for all that goofs run this dept. Planning for the World Series should be a real joke. I'm just thankful that no cops got hurt.

And we see this post in CrimeInWrigleyvilleAndBoystown blog:

• Good news: The Cubs advance to the World Series and the Chicago Police Department says they only arrested six people. (We've tracked seven. Whatevs.)
  
  Bad news: Many more arrests would have been made, but police were unable to transport detainees from within the massive crowd.

....and we realize that if there's a right way and a wrong way to accomplish a task, the Chicago Police Department will always create a third way that no one else would think of because it's too dangerous, too expensive and too dumb to consider, and then run with it, consequences be damned.

And congratulations to the Cubs. We're not writing about them for the same reason we've ignored the Blackhawks in the playoffs - they seem to do better when we aren't posting about them.

War on Police is Real

Jack Dunphy again:

• Writing in the Washington Post thirteen months ago, Radley Balko assured his readers that, contrary to widespread belief, there was no “war on cops.” He cited a Rasmussen poll taken the week before that found 58 percent of respondents believed there was indeed such a war while just 27 percent did not. Public opinion was at odds with the truth, Balko wrote, and he had the data to support his position: FBI statistics showed that officer deaths from gunfire and non-fatal assaults on police had been declining for years. Balko wrote that 2015 was “shaping up to be the second safest year for police ever, after 2013.”
  
  It’s good to be reminded when the actual statistics run counter to public perception. Police work is after all concerned with seeking the truth, and law enforcement is not served when hysteria is fomented by misleading information. That said, what would Balko say about this year? Has the war whose existence he denied last year now begun?
  
  According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 46 police officers have been shot to death in the United States so far this year, a staggering 55 percent increase over the number seen at this time in 2015. Balko would perhaps argue that this is an aberration, a statistical blip on an otherwise downward trend, like a brief rally in a long-term bear market. And maybe it is, but whatever the multi-year trend may be, a 55 percent increase surely bears examination. Even the skeptics of the “war on cops” must admit that there has been a change in attitudes regarding crime and policing over the last several years, a change that became all the more pronounced with the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. Lest we forget, the officer who shot Brown was acting completely within the law when he did so. Despite this, the Brown shooting brought the Black Lives Matter movement to prominence, and despite its origins in the poisonous lie of “hands up, don’t shoot,” it continues to shape both perceptions and policy in American policing.

The leftist media is always using statistics from years ago, ignoring present day trends to pretend everything is great. McJerseyShore's CompStat does something similar, comparing certain weeks or months or holiday weekends against whichever number made the current mayhem number look like an improvement. We and our readers had a fun time finding the discrepancies, like if a holiday weekend one year didn't relate to a holiday weekday the next.

There was always some statistical manipulation - does anyone believe Chicago ever had two years worth of double-digit crime reductions? As we pointed out, Chicago would end up owing the future a certain number of robberies, rapes, arsons and murders. Dunphy calls out the left's tendencies to look at the long view while ignoring the current trend staring them in the face.

Election Day Coming

And time for that SCC tradition!

• Every single judge on the ballot gets a NO vote

We've been pushing this for years, on and off the job. The last time any sitting judge got dumped was when Passarella was removed for his handling of the Officer Touhy case and two others failed to get the required 60% threshold following the Greylord scandal. In each case, all fell a mere 3-to-4% below retention. That in itself gives you an idea of the difficulty of removing any judge, even those tainted by corruption.

There's hardly a cop on the job now who remembers Greylord. The length and breadth of the corruption was astounding. Ninety-three court employees were indicted including:

• 17 judges (15 convicted)
• 48 lawyers
• 10 sheriff deputies
• 8 cops
• 1 state legislator

It was often said that if the feds had left the wires up, they would have gotten every single judge in Cook County along with a few aldercreatures, and Chicago would still have been the most corrupt city in America. And since that time, when we reached voting age, we have voted "No" for almost every single judge whenever they appeared on the ballot. Those we didn't vote "No" on, we left blank and we can count those judges on one hand with fingers left over.

If you want change, you vote for change. Vote out incumbents and vote out judges is a good start.

Be Helpful

Yesterday, we posted about a website that is hoping to identify cops by trolling media reports, social media, etc to "facilitate" complaints against the police.

Someone took the time to read the site and discovered they're accepting pictures the public has managed to acquire for their use. That same someone also suggested we could helpfully upload some pictures:

And that doesn't even begin to cover the pantheon of TV cops and detectives available for uploading. Might as well keep them busy. Links are in the post titled "Don't Pose for Cameras."

FTO Tablet

We've found the tablet the Department is offering potential FTO's:

Thanks to the comedian in the comment section who suggested this.

Crowd-Funding Legal Defense (UPDATE)

We thought GoFundMe had some sort of prohibition raising money for criminal defense cases?

We've been informed that Parta Huff, the asshole high on PCP who attacked the coppers in 015, has some sort of GoFundMe page for his legal defense. Remember, he had just made a court appearance for attacking a suburban cop and spent the hours between ingesting illegal drugs.

We guess if you're charged with attacking the police, the lib-turds at GoFundMe have no problem letting you gather money.

UPDATE: It's down. Good job.

Inspector Battery

Inspectors returned about what...a year or two ago? And evidently they've been invested with new and frightening powers:

• Hey SCC,
  
  First time I've ever written to you but you have to hear this. An inspector appeared in 011 the other day, monitored the radio, ran some plates in the parking lot, then went into the station to find some violations to write up. She went and grabbed a female officer wrist and twisted it in order to verify the officer's fingernails were in compliance with Department policy.
  
  This is a 25 year veteran officer who is retiring next year, and somehow Inspector Augustina Gonzalez feels it's appropriate to grab and twist an officers wrist. Word is a CR was averted by the intervention of the Commander, so you know he "has everyones back"  hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Well, that's....interesting. We can't recall any of the old inspectors grabbing and twisting wrists of some old timer - they'd probably end up short a few teeth and who knows how that wrist would work once the cast came off. But hey, you give small people a little bit of power to flex against someone who might not fight back...someone better take this flake off the street (Special Ed, we're looking at you).

Don't Pose for Cameras

Another reason to disengage:

• A new open data project aims to make filing a complaint against Chicago Police — a fraught endeavor, since it’s often hard to name the cop in question — significantly easier.
  
  According to data tracked by Mapping Police Violence, at least 54 people have been killed by police in Chicago since 2013, and the city has spent more than $640 million since 2004 settling police brutality cases. But properly identifying a Chicago Police officer for a formal complaint is a difficult process. False complaints can be met with a class 3 felony perjury charge. A successful complaint needs to be as detailed as possible, and lack of proper identification is an endemic problem in Chicago: One study found that more than a quarter of all complaints against CPD officers — 28 percent between March 2011 and March 2015 — were dropped for lack of officer identification, and only about 2 percent of complaints lead to disciplinary action.

So to be helpful, they've come up with a website, and they're trolling social media, award ceremonies, newspaper and television reports, even crime scenes and social media pages to get pictures of you to post so that a complainant can identify you. They've already got the names of every Department member thanks to the payroll databases the city released.

Of course, anyone can access this database and start stalking you at the grocery store, at your kid's ballgame, at church, at dinner, or anywhere, with a nice picture supplied by these ... whatever they are. And we don't have to remind everyone how easy it is to Google or Zaba someone.

Anyone else feeling all warm and fuzzy now?

No FTO's? No Problem!

They'll just stick them with a sergeant:

• Effective Sunday, 23 October 2016 through Saturday, 05 November 2016, the members of Recruit Class 16 -- 02 [...] will be detailed to the listed Districts
  
  The Probationary Police Officers (PPO) will be utilized in the following manner:
  
  The week of 23 - 29 October 2016, the PPOs will be assigned to the district desk or lockup and monitored by District Station Supervisor.
  
  The week of 30 October - 05 November 2016, the PPOs will be assigned to work with a field sergeant.

So did the Academy run out of stuff to teach the new kids? We guess so, otherwise they'd keep them there for a couple 40-hour classes of stuff.

In any case, talk about your pointless efforts. A sergeant's job is to supervise, and these kids are at least 6-to-8 years from any sort of supervisory position. A sergeant has five or ten or more cops to keep an eye on and, quite frankly, isn't about to start teaching a PPO something an FTO is just going to have to un-teach at some point. This is a babysitting job, plain and simple.

Bribe the FTO's!

So Don O'Neil (and the Department) screwed over the applicants for the FTO position recently.

Now they're offering another FTO Exam in order to screw over a whole new list of people. But coppers aren't taking the bait this time - the Department has extended the deadline three or four times already in an effort to drum up interest in being lied to and getting screwed over once again.

They are so desperate, they are now offering bribes:

• As an incentive to become a police officer assigned as a field training officer, the Department will offer the following incentives:
• FTO's will be issued a tablet.
• FTO's will be given priority for use of new cars on their watch.
• FTO's will be allowed to choose their day off groups.
• FTO's will be given priority to receive training.
• FTO's will be given consideration for their desired starting times on their watch.
• FTO's will be priority to test and evaluate new equipment and uniform components.
• FTO's will be given consideration for their desired beat assignment or rapid response car.

Wow, that's a lot of incentive. A few questions though:

• This tablet - will it be a top of the line brand name tablet? Or one of those no-name refurbish jobs? And will it come pre-installed with NetFlix or similar?
• New cars? Day Off Groups? Big deal.
• Training? How are they going to go to training if they're....training new cops? You're going to pull them off the street for a week at a time to finally get rifle training? Or 40 hours of Procedural Justice? Or 40 hours of CIT? Or is that only after you run out of recruits?
• Starting times? Big deal.
• Test equipment? Not if the Commander's favorites are already getting that.
• Desired beat? Big deal.

We also notice the word "consideration" and "priority" appearing a lot. That is a far cry from the word "guarantee." And we here at SCC can "guarantee" if you accept any of this, you'll be screwed over as soon as Don O'Neil thinks he can do it.

Squad Policing to End

Yet another of the supposedly "great ideas" dragged into Chicago after failing in New York:

• Effective the 12th Period, Sunday, 6 November 2016, the Bureau of Patrol Squad Pilot Program will be discontinued. The existing Bureau of Patrol duty assignment, roll call, and tour of duty procedures will be re-implemented in the 003rd, 012th and 24th Districts. To accommodate the termination of hte pilot program, members currently participating in the pilot program will be allowed to request to be placed in one (!) of the three (3) additional day off groups to which the Department must assign members.

This was the disastrous plan that assigned the entire District to Day Off Group 61, 63 or 65....except for front office, CAPS, foot posts, schools, and anyone else specifically exempted by the commander. This plan failed in New York over ten years ago, but somehow got implemented here....where it promptly failed. Funny how that happens.

Confidential....Sort Of

This is a hilarious AdMin Fax message about the Department of Justice:

• The US Department of Justice has asked that we issue the following message to our members: "As part of our investigation of the Chicago Police Department, the Department of Justice will hold office hours on Tuesday, October 25, 2016, from 0930 to 1530. The location is: The Federal Executive Board Conference Room, Metcalf Federal Building 77 W. Jackson Blvd, Suite 2115 Chicago, IL 60604 This is an opportunity for CPD members to confer privately, in person, with DOJ representatives. Appointments are not necessary, but are encouraged for the sake of efficiency.
  
  [...]
  
  Conversations we have as part of our investigation, are confidential and we do not disclose the identity of anyone who speaks with us unless the DOJ is later required to do so by law.

So it's confidential.....until it isn't. That instills a lot of confidence in the process.

Shots Fired, No Hits

There are still criminals out there, willing to kill police to get away:

• Two people were in custody Thursday morning after Chicago Police officers witnessed a shooting and exchanged gunfire with the suspects in the West Pullman neighborhood on the Far South Side.
  
  Officers responding to an unrelated call at 2:40 a.m. heard gunshots from at least two different types of weapons in the 11800 block of South Lowe, according to police. The officers saw people inside a vehicle firing at a group of individuals in that block.
  
  When the officers announced themselves and began to intervene, the people in the vehicle fired at the officers, police said. One of the officers returned fire, but no one was struck.
  
  The vehicle drove westbound on 119th and crashed in the 4400 block of West 119th Street in Alsip, police said. Three people got out of the vehicle and ran away. Two of them were caught and were being questioned by Area South detectives, while police were still searching for the third suspect Thursday morning. A weapon was recovered from the vehicle.

Stay safe boys and girls.

Another Corrupt Aldercreature?

Hey Pawar, you keeping track of this?

• Ald. Willie Cochran (20th) is under federal investigation in connection with his use of political campaign funds, sources told the Sun-Times.
  
  The Sun-Times reported Oct. 8 that records show Cochran paid himself more than $115,000 from his campaign fund over a three-year span.
  
  Most of those payments were reported by Cochran belatedly — months after he was required to do so by state disclosure laws — in a series of amended campaign disclosure reports.
  
  Illinois law does not prohibit politicians from taking money from their campaign funds for personal use if the payments are “for services actually rendered.”
  
  But they are required to report any such payments as income to the IRS and pay taxes if owed.

Anyone know what percentage of aldrecreatures have been the subject of federal investigations now? It's an obscene number with most going to jail at some point. Far more corruption per capita than any other government employee. Perhaps it's time to look into body cameras, "restorative justice" (where every taxpayer gets to kick an aldercreature in the balls) and a wholesale reduction in the total number of elected thieves serving.

Half of Call-Takers Missing

When you call 9-1-1, guess who isn't there?

• Chicago’s 911 emergency center is still struggling to get a handle on runaway overtime because 49 percent of call takers are on “some type of” absence tied to the Family and Medical Leave Act, aldermen were told Wednesday.
  
  Testifying at City Council budget hearings, Alicia Tate-Nadeau, executive director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, said the hiring of 48 additional call takers has reduced overtime by 28,000 hours over the same period last year. That should reduce overtime spending to $9.9 million, down $1 million from a year ago, she said.
  
  But, rampant use of the leave act is still costing the city big-time.
  
  “We have approximately 44 people every single day that call off. That’s about 49 percent of all of the 911 operators we have [who] are on some type of intermittent FMLA. Clearly, this number is much larger than it should be,” Tate-Nadeau said.

And this has resulted in some employees doubling there salary in overtime alone. That's probably your first clue that something is seriously broken inthe system.

Another Exam

Because "hiring surge," you know?

• Chicago will hold another police entrance exam in April — and reduce the “pre-employment process” by up to two months — to maintain a continuous pipeline of candidates needed to bolster the police force by 970 officers over the next two years, aldermen were assured Monday.
  
  The opening day of City Council budget hearings focused heavily on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s ability to deliver his promised police hiring surge.
  
  Year One of the two-year surge calls for the city to fill 495 police vacancies, keep pace with rising retirements and still hire enough police officers in 2017 to add 250 patrol officers, 37 sergeants, 50 lieutenants, 92 field training officers and 100 detectives to raise an abysmal clearance rate for homicides and shootings.

Once again, Fran reverts to form, parroting City Hall numbers and not connecting the obvious dots:

• The City has already burned through the last hiring list.

They didn't literally "burn" through it. They merely disqualified many with military backgrounds, caused copd family members to fail the Psych portion of the process, denied hundreds, if not thousands, a second chance at the POWER test, not to mention the drug and background failures that typically knock out nearly a quarter of the list.

And then there's the other quarter or third of the list who look at the headlines, read about what's happening across the country, see the crime numbers rising and the number of decent neighborhoods declining, test the wind and say to themselves, "The Hell with this crap." And then they never show up or answer the follow-up calls. It's not limited to Chicago - it's nationwide as we've posted many times.

But hey, Rahm is getting lots of headlines from reporters like Fran.

New CTA Signage

We'll just leave this here:

Good luck riders.

Sun Times Numbers Way Off

Where is Fran getting these?

• The 28-year-old man killed on her block Monday night helped push Chicago past a miserable milestone: 600 homicides so far this year — a 24 percent uptick compared to the same time last year, not to mention about 100 killings more than the homicide totals in New York and Los Angeles combined this year.

HeyJackass.com has Chicago at 607, but that isn't the weird number:

• Nonfatal shootings also are way up citywide. As of last week, more than 2,100 people had been wounded this year and survived, compared with about 1,400 people shot in the same time period in 2015.

2,100?

HeyJackass.com has the total at 2,958, a difference of 800+ wounded.

We know you carry a lot of water for Rahm, but you just can't hide 800 shootings Fran. You might want to go back and check that press release from City Hall and 35th Street. Your threadbare credibility is ...well...shot.

Branch 29

They're still out there:

• On a side note, a interesting thing happened in branch 29 today. Seems a individual with a very middle eastern sounding name didn't show up for his court date today after getting arrested for circumventing security at Willis Tower and then going up to the 66th floor and taking video of multiple areas in the building. Calabrese seemed very concerned about the individual's absence and issued a pretty substantial bond forfeiture warrant. Also questioned why homeland security only charged him with misdemeanor cttl. Hmmmm . . . how long before the democrat's sanctuary city takes a major hit?

But hey, what could happen?

Guess Who Paid to Injure Cops

Yes, the democrats. Specifically the husband of communist plant and Alinsky-ite representative Jan Schakowsky:

• Democrats have used trained provocateurs to instigate violence at Republican events nationwide throughout the 2016 election cycle, including at several Donald Trump rallies, using a tactic called “bird-dogging,” according to a new video investigation released Monday by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.
  
  The goal of “bird-dogging”: to create a sense of “anarchy” around Donald Trump that would undermine his political support. Often, the tactic uses the most vulnerable people — including the elderly and disabled — to maximize shock value.
  
  O’Keefe’s extensive video investigation reveals that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) are involved in “bird-dogging” and other provocative tactics through a web of consultants led by Robert Creamer, a veteran Chicago activist and convicted felon who is thought to have planned Democrats’ political strategy during the push for Obamacare in 2009 and 2010.

It was during the rally in Chicago that two CPD Officers were injured, most likely by paid protestors of the democratic party, and organized by Schakowsky's convicted felon husband.

Hey Pawar? Any comment on this you asshole? Your party is paying protestors to provoke riots and injure cops. Anyone facing any "questions" or "scrutiny" from your office? Go fuck yourself....again.

Tribune Does Math

We've been talking about this for what? Years? Especially the upcoming retirements. Now the Tribune wakes up and gets in on the act?

• The plan to grow the size of the Chicago Police Department could mean hiring more than 2,200 police officers over the next two years.
  
  In a string of September announcements, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson laid out a series of police staffing proposals. There are three main parts:
  
  1. Add 500 new officers.
  
  2. Promote 470 officers to higher ranks and other positions and hire new officers to fill those empty spots.
  
  3. Fill the department’s current vacancies, which as of Oct. 16 were 471.
  
  That would grow the department by 1,400 new cops; however, to sustain that new level, the hires will have to come on top of as many as 800 retirements over the next two years, a number that could be much larger by some estimates.

Hey Tribune? Welcome to the world of actual reporting. It's been so long since we've seen you here. You're welcome.

Shenanigans

Well played:

• A construction sign flashing at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Central Avenue on Sunday stopped a lot of passersby, but not with traffic information.
  
  The sign read, “Rahm Lies, Children Die.” It flashed its disparaging neon message off and on for hours, just across the street from the Chicago Police Department’s Belmont-Central district station at 5555 W. Grand Ave.

Right across the street from 025. Must be those ghosts of the pissed off Native Americans buried there.

Plus 1,000

Someone is noticing the blood pooling around Rahm's ankles:

• A thousand more people have been shot in Chicago this year compared with the same time last year after a weekend that saw eight people killed and at least 40 wounded, according to police and data compiled by the Tribune.
  
  At least 3,475 people had been shot in the city as of shortly after midnight Monday compared with 2,441 people shot this time last year, an increase of 1,034, according to Tribune data. There have been at least 595 homicides this year compared with 409 this time last year, an increase of 186.
  
  The gun violence over the weekend was at levels usually seen in the summer when shootings typically spike.

So...is Rahm putting Special Ed on the chopping block? He needs someone to blame for the increase in the increase.

But if he does that (which he won't), the next person will inherit a Department in shambles going nowhere fast.

And with the DOJ report due out early next year......

With a What Now?

A frozen chicken?

• A CTA bus passenger went on a frozen chicken-swinging rampage last week, first attacking a woman with a bag of chicken and then savagely beating the bus driver, prosecutors said.
  
  Caleb Russell, 27, became enraged when a woman wouldn't flirt with him Wednesday — so he attacked the woman with the chicken before setting his sights on the driver, according to authorities.
  
  The 52-year-old driver was beaten so badly that he lost a tooth, will need corrective gum surgery. He suffered a broken nose and jaw as well, Assistant State's Attorney Erin Antonietti said during a bond hearing Friday.

Anyone want to tell this lady and the bus driver a package of frozen poultry isn't capable of causing Great Bodily Harm, maybe even death if he had kept beating the driver?

Deadly Force authorized? Not under the proposed new order. You have to hope you can (A) coax him out using the least amount of force or threats of force, (B) the chicken thaws out enough where it isn't doing quite the amount of damage it does when frozen, or (C) hope Colonel Sanders shows up and offers him a straight up trade - the frozen stuff for a three-piece-meal with his choice of side orders...and then jump him when he isn't looking.

Hey Pawar, Go Fuck Yourself

Anyone see this ignorant asshole aldercreature's comments?

• Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) lashed out at the local police union Saturday over its endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
  
  "Sometimes when people don't feel supported, there is a knee-jerk tendency to run to the loudest and most ignorant voice," said Pawar. "The [Fraternal Order of Police] is doing just that with their endorsement of Donald Trump."
  
  The National Fraternal Order of Police backed Trump last month, calling him a law-and-order candidate who will "make America safe again." The local Fraternal Order of Police lodge more recently and more quietly backed that endorsement by posting it on its website.

Did everyone get that? The NATIONAL LODGE endorsed Trump. This after surveying all of their chapters and coming up with a tally on whom to endorse. The LOCAL FOP did NOT endorse a national candidate (as far as we know, they never have) and merely posted what the NATIONAL LODGE had decided.

Given the tenor of recent endorsements by the LOCAL LODGE, we wouldn't be surprised if they actually voted for Hillary, seeing as how they consistently have endorsed Chicago Machine candidates and countless other democrats. But they are only one vote.

And get this - the NATIONAL LODGE sent out a survey to the two candidates for them to fill out and return, asking for their positions on issues important to the police. Usually a flunky fills out the answers and the NATIONAL LODGE makes its endorsement based on the answers that best reflect the concerns of.....police officers!

Guess who didn't even bother to fill out the survey? Or even have a flunky do it?

So the LOCAL LODGE continued endorsing Chicago Machine democrats locally and reported to its members exactly what the NATIONAL LODGE had chosen to do based on the response AND NON RESPONSE of the candidates. Amazing how that works.

That wasn't good enough for alder-asshole Pawar though:

• Pawar said Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the City Council had already shown their support for police, and Emanuel has called openly for community support as well.
  
  "You know what support looks like?" Pawar said. "Take one look at what Chicagoans just did. We passed the largest property-tax increase in city history to secure police pensions. In the 2017 budget, we are hiring over 1,000 new police officers. Why? We did this to support the people who support us.

Um, no. You and the other 49 thieves did this to right an historical wrong. You see, for years, the city refused to acknowledge the actuarial tables presented to them by various pension boards that pointed out (correctly) that the multiplier used by the city to determine pension contributions was low - lower than was possible to maintain the solvency of pensions systems.

But successive mayors and alder-thieves ignored these warnings and instead, spent the money in an orgy of financial misconduct unseen in recorded history. Many connected families, firms and individuals got rich while the pensions withered. So spare us your "we did this...to support." You're full of shit.

Oh yeah, and the governor signed a law that said if the city didn't make the proper contributions, their share would come out of other state money that democrats wanted to spend on all sorts of other crap.

Then the threats start (gotta rub the balls of the "revrunds," social justice warriors and urban terrorists!):

• He said the union's endorsement of Trump could have consequences in the City Council, starting with 2017 budget hearings beginning next week that will eventually embroil the Police Department.
  
  "I think there will be a lot of questions during the budget hearings about culture and police-community relations in the wake of this endorsement," Pawar said. He also said it would attract scrutiny over the new police contract, expected to be reached in the coming year.

Really? So a LOCAL Fraternal Organization merely publishing the result of a vote taken by their NATIONAL Fraternal Organization, is going to result in "questions" and "scrutiny"?

Why? Because they didn't endorse the "correct" candidate? This is still America asshole. We don't march people to the voting booths and hold a gun to their head so they "elect" the "correct" candidate. We're sure that there are many cops who are going to vote for Trump, others for Hillary, and each for their own reasons - usually naked self interest. You don't get to force cops to endorse your candidate.

Deano responded, but not nearly forcefully enough.

Fuck this asshole with his socialist leanings and Big Brother bullshit.

Hey asshole, you come from the most corrupt city council north of Orleans parish with an incarceration rate rivaling certain banana republics. A kleptocracy run by "public servants" who all end up millionaires inside of three terms. And you're going to bluster about an endorsement by a NATIONAL LODGE and hold it against a LOCAL entity merely attempting to keep up with your criminal misspending, crooked contracting, and massive tax increases?

Did you forget that cops are REQUIRED to live in the city? That your tax hikes are PAID BY US to save OUR pensions that you and your ilk mismanaged? So your "support" is actually shorting us (and out families) more money so that we don't have to eat cat food when we finally manage to retire?

Or does your narrow-minded, leftist, democrat, socialist, totalitarian thinking only go so far?

Fuck off.

It Never Stops

Some famous socialist once said this:

• I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.

This as a prelude to confiscatory tax rates, "free" health care and policies that have and will continue to wreak havoc on the economy. But he didn't specify "creatively acquiring via shady practices" money - evidently, that's still okay:

• Former Mayor Richard M. Daley and his son are aiming to cash in on a federal program that offers green cards to wealthy foreigners with a deal that could bring their company $15 million, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
  
  Tur Partners — which Daley formed with his son Patrick Daley after leaving office — is seeking permission from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to solicit $150 million from foreign investors to help finance construction of a downtown skyscraper through a controversial visa program known as EB-5.
  
  The Daleys hope to land as many as 300 foreign investors, most likely from China, according to the application Patrick Daley submitted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Sept. 22, 2015. Each would put up $500,000 for the skyscraper project and also pay a $50,000 administrative fee that would bring the Daleys’ company $15 million, the application shows.
  
  In return, the foreigners would be eligible to be granted visas allowing them and their immediate families to move to the United States and live here forever.

So rich foreigners buy their way into the country through already connected rich guys and jump to the head of the line. And Shortshanks reaps another windfall on top of how many pensions? How many connected "chairmanships"? How many partnerships? Wasn't this fucker senile or something when he avoided testifying in Federal Court?

And then there are the widows of coppers wondering how they're going to survive when their health care payments stop in 2017.

2016 Over/Under

After this weekend, where (currently) 8 were killed and 33 maimed, while running up to (and maybe past) 600, we've decided to set the over/under for homicides at the following, fully appropriate, number:

• 666

Cold weather is going to sap some of the momentum, and it'll be here soon enough.

Police Shooting - 011

Armed robber shot. No cops injured:

• Police shot a person after responding to a call of a robbery Sunday night in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood, police said.
  
  It happened in the 1000 block of North Cicero Avenue, according to [...] chief spokesman for the Chicago police.
  
  Officers who were responding to a robbery call shot an offender.....
  
  The person shot was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious to critical condition....

No other word yet.

Hey Look! Look at Fran!

Fran actually did some leg work....or made a phone call:

• Driven by low morale and lured by the expiring offer of free health insurance at age 55, 274 Chicago Police officers have declared their intention to retire by June 30, making it more difficult for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to deliver on his two-year promise to bolster the police force by 970 officers.

And that doesn't seem to take into consideration sergeants and above taking the same benefit. Nor the officers who are already past 55 and just hanging around until something drives them to retire. Or those facing mandatory retirement at age 63. All of which are likely to push the numbers past the 500 mark.

Rahm's fuzzy numbers don't pass the smell test.

And someone let Fran Spielman write about it.

6 and 17....So Far

It's October, right?

• Six men were killed and at least 17 people were wounded in shootings in Chicago between late Friday morning and early Saturday, police said.
  
  One shooting, just before 8:20 p.m. Friday in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, left one man dead and wounded six other people. It was the largest number of people shot in one attack in Chicago since 13-year-old Samuel Walker was killed and six others were wounded in an attack in Lawndale on July 25, 2014....

These are summer-type numbers.

And HeyJackass.com has number 600 on the board. Great job by Special Ed and Rahm.

National Exodus

It isn't just Chicago that's seeing a largish number of cops leaving - NYPD is a prime example:

• Is the Big Apple about to witness an exodus of cops from the force? That's what The New York Post is asking after reporting that nearly 600 of the city's boys in blue nearing retirement age have signed up for a pension seminar next week — four times the number who normally sign up by this point:
  

  The Tuesday event for members of the officers, sergeants and detectives unions will be held in Queens Village and feature retirement advice from Joe Maccone, former commanding officer of the NYPD’s pension section. The venue holds 700, and organizers fear they will be forced to turn some people away at the doors.
  
  The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association said that typically about 150 cops RSVP in the week before the event, and the record number of reservations points to a looming exodus of veteran officers.
  
  The union blames the increased interest in the retirement seminar on job dissatisfaction, including low pay and low morale.
  
  The NYPD did have a spike in hiring from 1,593 to 2,418 between 1996 and 1997 — and cops can ­retire with full pensions after 20 years.
  
  But PBA officials said RSVPs had never before surged like this — even when the event fell 20 years after a similar peak in hiring.

And hiring is getting more and more difficult. No one staying and no one coming in? We sense much lawlessness in the near future.

Openings

Golly, there are a lot of them!

• 003 - 10 openings
  005 - 10
  010 - 5
  016 - 6

And sergeants:

• 001 - 1
  002 - 5
  003 - 7
  004 - 1
  006 - 2
  007 - 2
  009 - 1
  011 - 3
  012 - 1
  024 - 1
  025 - 1

No lieutenants. And no detectives until they make that class.

The Video

Every news outlet has it.

Here's the Tribune link.

The Sun Times has already engaged in a bit of historical revisionism:

• The officer remains in the hospital with injuries to her head and neck, a police spokesman said. Her partner, another officer and Huff were treated for minor injuries.

Broken thumb? Torn quadriceps. Yeah, real "minor." He'll be lucky to only be off two months.

The Sun Times actually did something mildly intelligent though. They interviewed a Use of Force expert, who said the officers would have been completely justified in ventilating this asshole. Of course, that wouldn't have stopped the protests, marches, and violence from the low-information cretins and their mentally deficient followers.

The Officer remains hospitalized nearly two weeks later and most likely, has a rocky road ahead. Prayers and best wishes.

600 On Tap

HeyJackass.com has Chicago at 591 killings.

According to a commentator, three "death investigations" just got reclassified as homicides, so the Department numbers are catching up to the HeyJackass.com numbers....slowly.

And still two-and-one-half months to go....700?

What Did They Expect?

A certain extra-round west side aldercreature is complaining that junkies are shooting up in a park, setting up an encampment, and generally making the west side a shithole.....oh wait, the west side has been a shithole for half a century now.

Anyway, the aldercreature is getting heat from the "community" that junkies are discarding needles and empty drug baggies all over the place. What the "community" doesn't seem to remember is that one of the biggest west side needle "distribution and exchange" sites is only a few blocks away from the park they're complaining about - an exchange that the aldercreature brought into the area to cut down on the spike in communicable diseases among the junkie population.

If you enable misbehavior via decriminalization, lenient sentencing or providing lawbreakers with the means to, you know, break the law and use drugs, you shouldn't be surprised when you get a bunch more of it.

And Once Again

The FTO's....supposedly the most important job on the Department....are getting roundly screwed by Rahm, Special Ed and the entire process.

You see, they had a test, people passed, people got notified to go to training, so they did.

And the City/Department promoted some of them to a D-2 position, where they got a pay raise of a few grand and a half-hour-a-day on the books if they had a Probationary Officer.

The rest? Well, they went back to the Districts without the pay raise, and were told by the powers that be, since they were trained as FTO's, they could get out-of-grade for the days they had a PPO and the half-hour-a-day, but they'd be getting PPO's after the promoted FTO's got theirs first.

So the City obviously never intended to pay everyone, they just wanted bodies available for the "hiring surge" without having to pay everyone once the surge receded. Only the chosen few got the stripe and the pay.

Now, there's another FTO test in the works. And the Department has had to extend the application process three times already because....go on...guess....no one signed up for it.

So the most important job in the Department is one that nobody wants.

What You Won't Hear

Assorted media outlets are making mountains out of molehills where the CR release is concerned. But here's the story behind the story:

• If the public only knew that the majority of the beefs are BS.
  
  There's one in my file for "inattention to duty" it was not sustained but the title of it makes it appear that we were incompetent. The silly beef was for missing seat belts in the rear seat of our car that we didn't notice at the beginning of our tour. Cops were driving the same car for two months but finally someone noticed it, reported it, and we were last to drive it so it's on us. Dumb.
  
  Also got a beef with the same title because the cook county jail found 1 small joint of weed in our bad guys ass. Beef automatically initiated on us even though we are not allowed to strip search and would have no reason to anyway. Unfounded but Dumb. Both these are in my file and when the media sees the title of it they say "wow bad cop" but if they read the file they would see how silly it really is, but they won't cause they don't care about the truth. The truth doesn't make a good story.

A few of us here have one like that floating around. Big deal - we took our reprimand and never heard another word about it. It wasn't serious and we didn't treat it like something serious. It was dumb, we learned, we didn't do it again, kind of like a red-light ticket. It didn't make us corrupt or crooked or prone to beating people.

But the media is going to take 30 years worth of unsubstantiated beefs, many never attested to under oath, many closed due to non-cooperation, many ridiculous on their face full of lies...and tens of thousands of others that were simply "red-light tickets" - procedural violations that were corrected and forgotten shortly thereafter.

Everywhere a Tax Tax

Prickwrinkle getting in on the act:

• Calling it a “difficult but necessary choice,” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Thursday proposed a “moderate” tax on sweetened soft drinks as part of her $4.4 billion 2017 county operating budget.
  
  Preckwinkle said the one-penny-per-ounce tax is necessary to help avoid devastating layoffs and close a $174.3 million budget shortfall for next year.
  
  “I do want to be clear that I didn’t come to this decision lightly,” Preckwinkle said, addressing her fellow Cook County Board members. “The proposal put before you represents months of effort — working with business and labor leaders, our criminal justice stakeholders, our public health team and my fellow elected officials.”
  
  The tax — which the beverage industry strongly opposes — would go into effect on July 1, 2017. If approved, the cost of a 99-cent can of soda would increase to $1.11; a 20-ounce bottle, from $2.19 to $2.39.

County government is a redundant government - there is almost no function that isn't already covered by a municipal government. Essentially, it's a giant patronage Machine sucking money out of taxpayers for the connected. And Prickwrinkle is dipping into everyone's pocket once again.

Here a Tax, There a Tax

Taxpayers getting soaked once again:

• Chicago taxpayers will be on the hook for at least $100 million more under the tentative deal that averted a strike by Chicago Public Schools teachers compared with a January proposal shot down by the union, according to the attorney for the Chicago Teachers Union.
  
  Despite a demand from the Civic Federation to come clean, CPS officials and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration refuse to spell out the cost to Chicago taxpayers who have already have been hit with $1.2 billion of new taxes to solve the pension crisis at the city and the public school system.
  
  “I would say this deal has about $100 million more in it,” said Robert Bloch, a longtime attorney for the Chicago Teachers Union who was at the bargaining table late Monday when a strike was averted minutes before a midnight deadline.
  
  Bloch thought the difference could be even larger over the entire four-year agreement “but CPS finances are so opaque, it’s hard to know exactly what they’re spending, what the cost is.”

And since the CPS is a separate taxing body, transparency is not going to be coming any time soon, not over another $100 million.

Presumed Guilty

Check out the biased reporting by the assholes over at Channel 7:

• Thousands of pages of complaints against Chicago police officers from the past 25 years were made public Wednesday after the police officer's union lost a court fight to have the records destroyed.
  
  The I-Team reviewed the giant document dump, which reveals two things: the enormity of citizen complaints filed against Chicago officers in recent decades and the puny number of accusations that result in any action.

Um.....could it be that the vast majority of complaints were, dare we say it, bullshit to begin with? That the complainants (A) lied or (B) were found to be "revenge" complaints for arrests or (C) refused to cooperate with investigators?  That's three separate possibilities just off the top of our heads, but Channel 7 makes the unsubstantiated leap from "a lot of complaints" to "puny number of actions."

Any comparison to how complaints went down by astronomical percentages once complainants were held to the same standard as any other criminal/civil complaint - swear to the truthfulness or face charges? CR's bottomed out after that, but rose once again as the "community" realized Anita had no intention of actually jailing people who lied on Sworn Affidavits.

The Long View

Rahm looking to run for a third term. Evidently, his star has fallen so far with Hillary, he isn't getting a cabinet post nor an ambassadorship.

In the comments, here's someone who knows what's what in Chicago:

• Rahm is in Desperate Mode, and his interview with the Scum-Times last week showed it.
  
  1. He realizes that the McDonald case has trashed his credibility in the Black Community, so he is appeasing them in any way possible.
  
  2. He is about to give the most decayed Black areas an influx of City business. In the Interview, where he Blessed Us by promising to run for a Third Term, he stated that he was moving the huge Fleet Management garage facility at Goose Island, the North Avenue re-fueling facility to police, to Englewood. Apparently part of the deal for the Whole Foods in Englewood was to create an island of economic stability.
  
  So I guess the fantasy is for [a worker] who has his City job at Fleet Management, to now commute to Englewood from the Northwest Side! This of course is going to cause retirements, which means patronage jobs open to be dispensed, by Black aldermen. Expect the new Police Academy to also be developed in some abandoned area of the South side. Stimulate the Black economy with Public funds and expect Black Political Support.
  
  Here we go again with those Chicago Values! Democrat politicians have a way of being benevolent with tax-payers money, but they never spend their own, just other peoples money!

Makes sense.

Job Openings

Some new organization is looking to hire:

• Under direction, supervises and directs the work of investigative staff engaged in investigating allegations of misconduct against members of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Manages caseloads, and monitors and reviews the investigative process to ensure investigations of misconduct against members of the Chicago Police Department are performed with integrity and timeliness, and performs related duties as required.

Fifteen spots at something called "COPA." Apply today....but the downside is you have to live in Chicago.

How to Pay for New Hires?

Cut the overtime of course!

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to reduce police overtime by $40 million next year as he begins to deliver on his formidable promise to hire 970 additional police officers without raising sales, property or gasoline taxes.
  
  The decision to apparently wean the Chicago Police Department away from its heavy dependence on overtime emerged during a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board on the mayor’s $8.2 billion budget for 2017.
  
  The police department spent a record $116.1 million on overtime in 2015 — up 17.2 percent from the previous year — to mask a manpower shortage that has mushroomed under Emanuel with police retirements outpacing hiring by 975 officers.
  
  [...]
  
  Under questioning, Budget Director Alex Holt acknowledged that the budget Emanuel presented to the City Council on Tuesday would reduce police overtime to about $76 million. The $40 million cut would be precisely enough to cover salaries and benefits for the additional officers the city expects to hire in the first year of its two-year police hiring surge.

Amazing - cutting exactly $40 million will pay for exactly the numbers Rahm wants hired....to the penny! And once again, those manpower numbers are awfully fuzzy:

• Chicago aldermen remain skeptical about the mayor’s ability to deliver on his promise to fill 471 vacancies, keep pace with rising retirements, and still hire enough police officers in 2017 to add 250 patrol officers, 37 sergeants, 50 lieutenants, 92 field-training officers and 100 detectives to raise an abysmal clearance rate for homicides and shootings. They noted that Emanuel campaigned for a first term on a similar promise, only to break it.

The aldercreatures are right to be wary, since those 37 sergeants, 92 FTO's and 100 Detectives come from .... the ranks of patrol officers, meaning those 250 new hires are a net gain of 21 officers to the manpower numbers.

Those 50 lieutenants come from the sergeant rank, so sergeants are going to be a net loss of 23.

And that doesn't seem to take into consideration the 700-plus officers (and 50-to-75 sergeants) who have already put in for retirement next year.

Hint to the media - call around. Officers intending to retire in 2017 had to declare that intention by 01 October of this year. The bulk of those retiring will be gone by 30 June when the current Contract expires. You think Rahm can replace 700 officers by next summer when the killing season starts?

A New Academy?

Rahm presented a budget to the fifty thieves:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday delivered a 2017 budget address he pitched as Chicago moving past its years of financial woes and the series of major tax hikes that accompanied them.
  
  Hundreds of new police officers will be hired, the city's 3-1-1 system modernized and a new Police Department training center will be built. To cover the spending, shoppers will pay a new plastic bag tax if they don't have their own, drivers parking near Wrigley Field will pay more at meters and delivery trucks will be hit with a new loading zone charge.

Wait...what?:

• The city also will start searching for a place to put a new Chicago Police Department training center, a project the mayor said would be paid for with money from the sale of land that now houses a city vehicle yard. And Emanuel said the city would modernize its 311 system to request city services, an upgrade that "will be operational by 2019."

Should be a pretty cheap building - don't need a gym for Control Tactics. Don't need a driving area for Peak Performance Driving. Certainly don't need a range for Taser and Firearms training.

Just a few classrooms for Report Writing.....and one long hallway for running away.