Warm Up the Bus!

If you read the entire COPA report, which we have, a few things stand out. In our opinion, one of the biggest is how many more bosses are going to have to go under the bus for this to go forward.

With the JVD shooting, a whole boatload of careers were cut short as those signing off on the investigation we encouraged (or told) to resign and anyone who couldn't ended up indicted or stripped.

Page though this investigation and you can see the fingerprints of all sorts of people who are going to have to be fired or told to resign or indicted. The Detective(s) for starters. A shit load of white shirts. And Rahm's buddy, Chief Melissa Staples. There's no way she gets out unscathed, and that is going to piss off a lot of Rahm's alternative-lifestyle big-money supporters.

Of course, with Granny Clampett leaving and running a mid-sized police department (into the ground), the novelty of naming Staples as Supernintendo may have worn off a bit. Rahm has always been one to balance the political scales against the winds of public opinion. Watch for the resignation notices to start flying if this is headed a bad direction.

Duty to Retreat

If you go through the entire COPA railroad job, one fact stands out pretty clearly. This comment sums it up:

• Well COPA and the mayor will certainly not put it in writing, but the 'wink-wink' unwritten General Order and the BS "Sanctity of Life" (no the liberals still LOVE abortions) policy is just a cowardly, badly expressed DUTY TO RETREAT. Hey, that's fine ... as cops have ALWAYS said ... "PUT IT ON PAPER" You want me just to get back in the car and code it out when some abused kid comes out swinging a bat? "PUT IT ON PAPER." You are going to hang me out to dry when I do not have super-sharp video game reflexes and cannot wait to shoot and offender the split second his bat it raised in attack mode? "PUT IT ON PAPER"

State Law says that a police officer has no legal duty to retreat in the face of resistance:

• (720 ILCS 5/7-5) (from Ch. 38, par. 7-5)
  Sec. 7-5. Peace officer's use of force in making arrest. (a) A peace officer, or any person whom he has summoned or directed to assist him, need not retreat or desist from efforts to make a lawful arrest because of resistance or threatened resistance to the arrest. He is justified in the use of any force which he reasonably believes to be necessary to effect the arrest and of any force which he reasonably believes to be necessary to defend himself or another from bodily harm while making the arrest.

Unfortunately, COPA Policy (and now Chicago Police Department Policy) pretty much says that if you want to keep your job (administratively), you now have a Duty to Retreat. If you don't, while you likely won't be prosecuted criminally, you will lose your job.

CTA Robberies?

Isn't CTA Property a "Gun Free Zone"?

• Armed robbers have targeted passengers this week as they get off trains across the city, police said.
  
  In each incident, the suspect walked up to a person who was getting off a train, showed a weapon and demanded property, according to Chicago Police.
  
  [...]
  
  The suspect was wearing a dark, hooded coat with a tan scarf, faded jeans and tan boots, police said.

And once again, the Slum Times with a completely accurate description of the offender.

You know what might help prevent this? Bigger signs. And more than one cop per twelve miles of track.

Ghoul Pool

That time of year again:

Gather your players, collect toothpicks, number twenty-two cards to draw, and wait.

You can shade in three squares to reflect the decreased number of districts, or for more fun, get 25 players and when you draw the Districts, make three void cards and you have three instant losing spaces.

Yet Another Lie

Remember that time the Department told everyone that you had to serve a year in Patrol before you ended up back in a Unit or downtown?

Here's a page of a promotional list from this past February with a promotion date of 16 March:

And here's an Admin Fax from two days ago:

Can you spot it? Amazing how the chosen ones always land softly and in complete violation of the "pinky swearsies" that the brass keeps telling the troops. We're supposed to respect these turds as "leaders" when they can't keep the simplest of promises.

A Slow Start

But a start nonetheless:

• Leaders of the rank-and-file Chicago Police officers’ union on Friday slammed the city’s police oversight agency, demanding a “clarification” on use-of-force policies a day after Officer [...] 2015 shooting of Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones was ruled unjustified.
  
  “If an offender is wielding a bat against an officer, must he or she wait until they are actually struck before they can defend themselves?” union officials wrote in a statement.
  
  “Must they wait until they see a muzzle flash of a gun before any attempts to protect their lives and those of the public would be deemed reasonable? How far can the weapon be found from an offender before an officer’s use of force is deemed legitimate? Six feet? Ten feet? Fifteen?”

The standard (for much of our careers) has been the "21 foot rule" where someone with a knife inside of a 21-foot distance, was able to close the gap and inflict damage before an officer could draw and fire. If we aren't mistaken, at one point the TASER cartridges came with a 21 foot wire specifically to address this situation (but ignore the reality that at 21 feet, the TASER prongs were too far apart to make meaningful contact with a subject.) A bat (with an assailant reaching his arms) extends the effective range of the weapon four to six feet. We won't even bother to cite numerous publications by the FBI that show people are beaten to death far more often than they are killed by rifles.

The FOP is completely correct to put this pile of shit into COPA's lap. Make them define exactly what they are basing their judgements on, then show that the Department has failed every officer in training personnel up to COPA standards - the officer will instantly win his lawsuit against the Department's inadequate training. We'd bet that upwards of 75% of the Department was trained under the "21 foot rule," and to date, we haven't heard of it being tossed. We'll even ask to have the names of the gym instructors posted in the comment section - most of them are still alive and would probably love to come in to explain the training.

Name the "Experts"

This was in the COPA article Thursday:

• The agency concluded that a “reasonable officer” would not have believed he was in danger of death or serious injury.

This must have been an interesting conclusion because as far as we know, every single retired Police Officer who interviewed for COPA was denied out of hand. There are no officers at COPA, retired or otherwise. That might just tilt/shade/skew and investigation, don't you think?

But maybe we're mistaken and some retired officer managed to sneak through without any fanfare. In that case, identify the officer, his/her agency, his/her career assignments, and his/her resume so that everyone can see if they have any "reasonable officer" standing as determined by the United States Supreme Court.

FOP, you should be demanding this. PBPA, you should be backing the FOP on this one - they're stripping sergeants for signing paperwork.

Homicides Down, but...

2017 will end down over 100 homicides from last year:

• After the deadliest year in two decades, the first half of 2017 seemed just as grim in Chicago as homicides remained devastatingly high, raising fears that the “spike” in violence had become a new normal for the city.
  
  Then in the second half of the year, homicides plummeted, particularly in two of the city’s most violence-plagued neighborhoods, contributing to about a 15 percent overall drop in killings over last year.
  
  That decrease has raised new hopes that Chicago could make progress in shedding its national reputation for gun violence, an image fueled by both President Donald Trump’s frequent mentions and by the distressing loss on Chicago’s streets.

Let's see:

• same mayor
• same aldercreatures
• same command staff
• same oversight by the ACLU, COPA, and other bad actors

The only thing different? Donald Trump in the White House. So a hearty congratulations and "Well Done" to the President of the United States. You didn't even have to show up in Chicago to cut homicides by over 100 dead bodies.

Carjackings however, went through the roof:

Here's the article. We are assured that President Trump is working on it as we type.

Witch Hunt Continues

From our e-mail:

• ...went to COPA today for an anov that my partner issued. they are throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. fyi they dont always let you view the bwc footage which is at the discretion of the administrator. fop attorneys do a good job. these guys are out for blood. they just reopened the 2010 shooting of william hope at Popeyes on 75th st and found those P.O.s [...] guilty of rule 14 violations via court transcripts. be very careful out there.

"It is never over" should be printed on the cover of every FOP book, posted in every locker room and put on a Post-it note in every squad car.

COPA Credibility Kaput

Two years later, an agency that didn't even exist, using "evidence" that none of its non-existent investigators ever saw, has completely dynamited any imaginary "credibility" they may have had, confirming every suspicion that they were put into place simply to railroad coppers:

• Chicago police disciplinary officials have ruled that an officer was unjustified in the fatal 2015 shooting of a baseball-bat clutching 19-year-old and an innocent bystander.
  
  The Civilian Office of Police Accountability determined that Officer [...] unjustifiably shot Quintonio LeGrier and 55-year-old Bettie Jones while responding to a domestic disturbance on the West Side on the day after Christmas two years ago, according to documents obtained by the Tribune through an open records request.

Did the Department rule the shooting justified? Not that that means much in light of past rulings.

The States Attorney refused to press charges. That means a lot more.

Corp Counsel attempted to properly sue the estate of the deceased seeing as how it was his actions that led to the death of a bystander.

Hey Special Ed. You used to have a halfway decent reputation on this job. You gave it all up for a job you never applied for and sold your soul for a monetary pittance. How about pretending you're the cop you used to be and do the right thing. Disavow this entire charade and cut COPA off at the knees. There is nothing unjustified about this shooting - you know it, we know it, the Department knows it, even Kim Foxxx knows it. What happened to Bettie Jones was a horrible tragedy, but the blame lies entirely at the feet of LeGrier and his actions. Resign if you can't stick up for the troops.

To the FOP, this ought to be a rallying cry to a vote of "no confidence." Apply it to COPA and their non-existent "transparency." They are a political construct to bring about political outcomes to politically unpleasant shootings, even those complete justified under local, state and federal laws. Apply it to Special Ed if he doesn't do the right thing and continues to exhibit the spinelessness that has marked his entire tenure. And apply it to Rahm - attack his already weakened political standing in the forgotten communities, not the one he panders to incessantly. Fuck him.

And finally, to the police readers. Everyone out there thinking that if you just do everything "by the book," within the constraints of General Orders and follow the law as written, this isn't a game. This isn't 1970, it isn't 1980 and it ain't 1990 or 2000 either. COPA can make their pronouncements without having first hand knowledge of the scene, without applying even the basic nuts-and-bolts of the Use of Force model, completely disregarding State Law and United States Supreme Court rulings to come up with a political solution - an appeasement. We hope the message that Rahm is sending is getting through loud and clear.

LODD Down This Year

Small comfort:

• The number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty dropped sharply in 2017, marking the second-lowest toll in more than 50 years.
  
  As of Thursday, 128 officers have died in the line of duty this year, with 44 shot and killed. That's down 10% from 2016, when 143 officers died, with 66 gunned down, according to data released by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a nonprofit aimed at honoring officers and improving safety.
  
  The only other year with fewer deaths in the past five decades was 2013, when 116 officers were killed.

One is too many and the lower numbers are little comfort to the families, friends and co-workers of the 128 who died. Godspeed to the Fallen.

No More Implied Consent?

Does MADD know about this?

• A state appeals court has found a section of the Illinois statute on DUI testing unconstitutional in a decision that reversed felony convictions against a man found guilty of plowing into a mother and her young son as they crossed a residential street in Rogers Park.
  
  Ralph Eubanks was driving 60 to 90 mph on Dec. 21, 2009, when he ran into Maria Worthon, 48, who was holding the hand of her 6-year-old son, Jeremia, according to authorities. The violent impact vaulted her body nearly half a block. She died immediately, while her son was seriously injured but survived.
  
  Eubanks took off but was arrested 10 minutes later. He was forcibly subjected to blood and urine tests that turned up positive for cannabis, Ecstasy and cocaine, according to court documents. He was convicted in 2014 of first-degree murder, aggravated driving under the influence and failure to report an accident, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
  
  But the Appellate Court, in a decision issued Tuesday, found that a series of procedural infractions followed his arrest. Significantly, two of the three judges found unconstitutional the state statute that allows blood and urine tests to be taken without a warrant or a suspect’s consent whenever a police officer has probable cause to believe that a suspect was impaired and involved in a crash resulting in death or injury.

The liberal Illinois courts are determined that there be no police work done statewide.

New Contender - Dumbest Statement

We thought the Maywood Police Chief wrapped it up with his contention that Concealed Carriers were driving 100% increase in his backwater's homicide totals - from five all the way up to ten - despite the fact that not a single Concealed Carrier has even been accused of a crime in Maywood.

Now we find out this asshole is making a run for the top spot:

• The city of Chicago’s annual income from the Divvy bike share program dropped by almost $1 million after a major expansion into South and West side neighborhoods.
  
  Divvy income fell from $2.86 million in 2014 and $2.84 million in 2015 to $1.97 million in 2016, a 31 percent drop, according to the city Department of Transportation figures. The city said it is improving its outreach to get more people to try Divvy and expects its income for the program to be about as high this year as in 2015.
  
  Transportation officials said the expansion to black and Latino neighborhoods on the South and West sides was an attempt to increase diversity in a program that was launched four years ago in mainly white, affluent neighborhoods. But the South and West sides pose challenges to Divvy because they tend to be less affluent and have more impediments to biking, such as fewer bike lanes, cycling advocates say.
  
  “People have barriers to getting on bikes, like cost and access and fear and both interpersonal violence and police violence,” said Olatunji Oboi Reed, co-founder of Slow Roll Chicago, which is dedicated to increasing biking diversity.

Really? Fewer bike lanes? Has anyone seen what Rahm did to the west side? The Boulevards? What used to be a quick shortcut to 26/Cal has turned into a one-lane nightmare...at over $100,000 per mile as well.

Cost? Did Rahm arrange for LINK cards to grant access to Divvy bikes? And lower rates based on where the bike station is located?

Access? those bike stations are taking up valuable parking spots in many neighborhoods near CTA stations and sidewalk space everywhere else.

And the topper:

• ....both interpersonal violence and police violence.

"police violence" Who the Hell is this lib-tarded fuck weasel? What a crock of shit. You know who most coppers aren't going to bother with? People with jobs. People riding bikes in accordance with Illinois law (i.e. not on the sidewalk.)

Here's a free idea - how about a Divvy Car-Jacking station in the hood? For the low low price of $9.95, you can jack a car docked at the station. They can even start a Venecko Gun Rental kiosk next door in case you forget your gat at home.

More Rifles

Tribune Reporter Peter Nickeas has a decent article about the proliferation of rifles on the southwest side being used extensively in a couple of different Hispanic gang wars:

• One late afternoon over Labor Day weekend in 2016, near the arches welcoming truck drivers into the old stockyards south of Bridgeport, a gunman in a red minivan leveled a rifle and fired at a motorcyclist.
  
  The gunman hit the bike but not the driver. An officer found .223-caliber casings, the kind used in rifles modeled after the AR-15. The rounds leave large, jagged wounds. If used by someone trained to shoot, they can hit a target from 650 yards. A city block is 220 yards.
  
  Two gangs — the Saints and La Razas — had been sporadically using rifles for six months. This was the fourth rifle shooting in seven days. It would get much worse in the months ahead, something an officer at the scene seemed to sense.

As usual, the gun nomenclature used by both Nickeas and the police laves a lot to be desired. They use buzzwords designed to inflame the ill-informed. That's to be expected in a liberal town run by liberal politicians who control the media via liberal editors. But it's an interesting article for the conflicts it outlines, that officers elsewhere might now have a good feel for.

Hey, with Rahm declaring Chicago a "sanctuary city" for the cartel hangers-on, might some of this violence be directly attributable to the 5th Floor at City Hall?

Five Hoods?

Way to go Chicago!

• Murders in the U.S. rose nearly 9% last year, and one-third of that increase came from just a few neighborhoods in Chicago, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the FBI’s annual 2016 publication, Crime in the United States.
  
  While violent crime (homicide, rape, assault, and robbery) also rose nationwide from 2015 to 2016 — over 4% — the data show the increase was not uniform, but rather concentrated in cities like Chicago and Baltimore.

And what do Chicago and Baltimore have in common? A democrat-run local (and state) government with a State's Attorney determined to make war upon the police.

Rats Abandoning Ship

Gee, do you think they know something the rest of us can only guess at?

• Thirty-three state lawmakers in the 100th General Assembly will not be holding their seats in the 101st General Assembly. And that’s not even counting those who might be ousted at the ballot box in 2018.
  
  The exodus is unlike anything Springfield insiders have ever seen.
  
  National polling data have long shown Illinoisans at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to trust in their state government. Has that sentiment finally seeped into the Statehouse? Have the distant grumblings become an unbearable scream?
  
  Take a look at the breakdown of who’s leaving, and why.
  
  In the House, 25 lawmakers will not return to their seats in the 101st General Assembly. That’s a whopping 21 percent of the chamber. The situation is less severe in the Senate, where eight members are certain not to return.

There are a lot of bills coming due and there isn't any money to pay for them. We're two or three years from losing a few House seats in Washington DC, and more than a few of those leaving are collecting full pensions before the house of cards collapses.

Maybe this has something to do with it?

• The Democratic Governors Association, in an attempt to attack Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) tweeted this week about how 33,000 people left Illinois for another state over the past year, continuing years of outmigration from the Land of Lincoln.
  
  With that tweet, the DGA is trying to make the public dumber. The DGA knows full well that Gov. Bruce Rauner doesn’t run his state. That would be House Speaker Mike Madigan (D), who has presided over the decline of a once great state during his 34 years as Speaker. By attempting to pin Illinois’ continued decline on Gov. Rauner, the DGA is either ignorant about how Illinois politics works, or they are lying. Most likely the latter, but either way it’s not good.
  
  The DGA wants to talk about the 33,000 people who have fled Speaker Mike Madigan’s Illinois over the last year. What they won’t be touting is the fact that during the administration of Gov. Pat Quinn (D), Rauner’s predecessor, 247,410 people on net left Illinois for the likes of North Carolina, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and other states that are better stewards of taxpayer dollars. Those 247,410 people who left during Gov. Quinn’s time in office, according to IRS migration data, took $13.7 billion with them to states that that are better run and have lower taxes.

Death spiral.

Nick's Fight (UPDATE)

From our e-mail:

• Good evening,
  
  From time to time I see you post stories on the blog about officers or members of their families that are in need of help. I'm hoping you will do the same in this instance. I am writing to you on behalf of an officer that works for me in Area Central Saturation.
  
  Officer Frank Miceli's 1 year old son Nick was stricken with a rare form of cancer earlier this year. Nick is the youngest of 5 children and was diagnosed with Stage 4 Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma (ARMS). Only 350 cases of this rare form of cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year.
  
  The treatment process for Nick will be aggressive due to the stage and malignancy of the cancer. In addition, it has metastasized to his lymph nodes. The journey ahead is long for Nicholas. He is scheduled to have 43 weeks of chemotherapy, possible radiation, regular scans & tests to monitor the cancer, and surgeries. Due to the aggressiveness of the cancer and the intense treatment involved, Nick’s mother, a CPS teacher, had to take an unpaid leave of absence from work. She is dedicated to taking her son to his weekly treatments sometimes 5 days a week. Our wish is to help make the path for Nicholas, his parents, and their whole family a little smoother.
  
  On January 14, 2018 the family is holding a benefit at 115 Bourbon Street from 2:00-6:00pm. Tickets are $35.00 for adults ($40.00 at the door) and $12.00 ($15.00 at the door) for ages 6-20, and child 5 and under are free. Tickets include: open bar, buffet, and live music. Tickets can be purchased online at www.nicksfight.com

See the link for further details.

Comments closed here - informational post only

UPDATE: Someone from out of state was asking about donations. Click the embedded link in the last line - there's a GoFundMe page already established and all sorts of information there.

Dumbest Statement Ever

How the Hell does this ignoramus manage to breathe without being reminded?

• So far this year, there have been 10 murders in Maywood, five more than took place in 2016, according to Maywood Police Chief Valdimir Talley.
  
  The chief said that he believes pending federal gun legislation designed to make it easier to carry concealed firearms across state lines would only exacerbate the village’s violent crime problem.
  
  [...]
  
  Talley said that the proposed Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 231 to 198, could make shooting crimes like the one that happened on Dec. 19 even likelier occurrences.

Really? First up, how many of those ten shootings involved a single Concealed Carry Licensee?

That would be "Zero."

Second, you know what it's called when a Concealed Carrier shoots an assailant? Here's a hint - it isn't a "crime."

Of course, Chief Dumbass runs the suburb of Maywood....Mope-rah-ville....So we shouldn't be surprised.

Indiana CCL

So the armed robber shot by a Concealed Carrier expired yesterday:

• A man has died after he was shot by a concealed carry holder he tried to rob on Christmas Eve in the South Loop, according to Chicago police.
  
  Corey Haggard, 37, was shot around 6:15 p.m. Sunday at a strip mall in the 1200 block of South Jefferson Street, police said. He died at 11:37 p.m. on Monday at Stroger Hospital, according to the medical examiner.
  
  Police said Haggard went up to a 31-year-old man who was leaving a store, announced a robbery and pulled out a gun. The other man also pulled out a gun and fired, hitting Haggard in the chest.
  
  Police said the 31-year-old man had a valid license from Indiana to carry a concealed weapon.

While we don't envy the position that the victim is currently in (with Illinois not recognizing CCL's from other states), this may ultimately may be a good thing.

Every state in the union recognizes an inherent Right to self defense when confronted by deadly force. The Offender/Assailant (Haggard) was armed and threatened to use a gun to commit a forcible felony. That would logically eliminate any high-level charges for the victim....logically in a state other than lib-tarded Illinois. We can see Foxxx and her handlers attempting to push something worse (which will cost Illinois/County taxpayers dearly should it go forward), but we can't see it sticking. We can also see the Department brass attempting to keep the gun for whatever reason their masters come up with.

Hopefully, the NRA gets involved - Rahm is used to writing the NRA big checks after all.

Facebook Guns

If we knew we could get guns on social media, we would have signed up years ago:

• A Chicago Public School teacher was among more than 50 people arrested for selling drugs and guns in secret Facebook groups, police said. Officers conducted a series of raids overnight, and seized drugs and dozens of firearms, according to Anthony Riccio, chief of the Chicago police organized crime division. The announcement was made at a Thursday press conference.
  
  The teacher was allegedly selling drugs, and was arrested at Leland Elementary school in Oak Park, Riccio said. The teacher was found to be in possession of scales and other paraphernalia used in drug sales at the time of his arrest, Riccio said.
  
  An informant told police about the illegal trafficking on Facebook in February, Riccio said. Officers then infiltrated dozens of groups on the social networking site, which were "secret" and not visible in searches on the platform.

Imagine that - a (probably) liberal CPS teacher plus others circumventing the law and failing to fill out the proper paperwork for selling weapons? How can that be? We guess Foxxx will be turning this one over to Federal authorities so that this gun-runner can do a decade or so behind bars.

Club 51? Seriously?

So are police stations actual places where police business is conducted? Or have we given up on that fantasy finally?

• Aleta Clark says she was 18 months old when her mom dropped her off at a South Side police station and walked off.
  
  Nearly 30 years later, Clark walked into another station on the South Side in February to see a relative and noticed a lobby filled with people seeking shelter from the cold night.
  
  
  She came back the next night, this time with food. And every night since then. Around 10:30 p.m., she pulls up to the Area Central police station at Wentworth Avenue and 51st Street with her SUV filled with meals and drinks and clothes.
  
  The regulars have come to call the station Club 51.

Are there no shelters? Are there no safety complaints for the diseases, bugs and smells this indoor homeless colony inflicts on Department members? Do we have to go through the security measures in place at suburban stations to prevent this sort of crap? And isn't there some sort of General Order or rule about people using a Department Facility for publicity stunts? She obviously uses the Deuce for her stunt because of the "free security" in place, despite using police as another sort of prop when she feels the need to conduct political protests in the lobby of other stations.

The two-faced-ness of this individual and the brass who let this happen is truly a mark of how far the Department has fallen. We doubt that any of this meets CALEA Standards, which seem to be the only thing that the bosses care about nowadays.

Trib Steals TASER Story

The Tribune is going to owe the Chaplains a crap-load of money this month, stealing numerous stories from the blog, like this one:

• The Chicago Police Department has tightened its policy on Taser use, rewriting the rules to discourage officers from shocking people who are running away or otherwise vulnerable to injury.
  
  The change drew little public notice when the department enacted new use-of-force policies in October.
  
  The revised order was issued a month and a half after a Chicago Tribune investigation detailing the department’s reliance on the weapon pointed out that the rule changes the department had announced did not specifically ban shocking people who simply run away and pose no serious threat. That prohibition has been adopted by other large police departments and endorsed by reform advocates and use-of-force experts who note that Taser shocks can cause people to fall and sustain devastating head injuries.

Here's an idea - don't run away from the police. Obey the lawful orders to stop and cease resisting.

• There's a 73% chance that Foxxx won't charge you
• and another 78% chance you'll make bail, even on murder and hate crime charges
• and another 82% chance you beat the charge at court.

The Trib gets this part correct:

• But five months after the new rules were unveiled, the department issued a Taser policy containing a lengthy revision. The order now includes a section that advises officers not to shock people who run away, are intoxicated or could fall and suffer a head injury, among other things.The new language stops short of firmly banning Taser uses under those circumstances but says that “when practicable, department members should avoid” those uses.
  
  The department’s force policies are significant not just as guidelines but because they dictate conduct that can lead to discipline for an officer.

But they draw the wrong conclusion. The order doesn't "dictate conduct." It pretty much puts an officer in the trick bag for any bad outcome arising from the conduct of the criminal. If we understand Newton's Law of Motion and his Law of Universal Gravitation, a TASER doesn't negate these realities when muscular paralysis is introduced into the equation, so why carry or use a TASER that will only lead you to Federal Court? They even cite this example:

• The rule change is a step in the right direction, said Dominique Franklin Sr., whose 23-year-old son died after an officer deployed a Taser while trying to arrest him for allegedly stealing a bottle of vodka from a downtown convenience store in 2014. Dominique Franklin Jr. fell and hit his head on a pole, suffering a fatal head injury.
  
  His father called the rule revision “bittersweet,” because it comes more than three years after his son died. He said he suspects little will change unless the department’s culture also changes and discipline grows more reliable.
  
  “Too many cops do stuff because they feel they can get away with it,” he said.

Leaving aside the dark humor this episode provided, dear old dad's quote provides an eerie insight into today's troubles:

• "Too many shitheads do this stuff because they feel they can get away with it,"

No chases? Car jackings skyrocket. No bail restrictions? Recidivism explodes. No serious jail/prison time for theft, robbery, UUW? Guess what's popping up all over the "quiet" and "safe" neighborhoods?

But if they take away yet another tool that prevented cops from having to go "hands on" all the time and suffer injury after injury after lawsuit for "beating" someone instead of "subduing" a resisting criminal, well - we're seeing the results of that now, aren't we?

Jesse in Jail!

Oh wait, he was just visiting - he got out later:

• The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he relies on daily physical therapy, medication and prayer to manage Parkinson’s disease, but he showed few signs of slowing down Monday as he carried on a decades-old Christmas tradition with a sermon to inmates at one of the nation’s largest jails.

He had an interesting message for the inmates though:

• “Our mission is to get you out of here and not return,” Jackson told the crowd of roughly 200 men and women. “Jail is not a hotel.”

That's interesting on a few levels:

• Someone changes your linens, washes your clothes, provides you with a gym, etc.;
• You can get some sort of room service at a hotel, like pizza to order;
• The windows don't open and the furniture isn't comfortable;
• You can engage in all sorts of sexual hi-jinks at a hotel with strangers - men, women, visiting lawyers, etc. And no one really cares.

So jail is pretty much exactly like a hotel, just with higher walls and slightly tighter security.

Another CCL Shooting?

Definitely self defense:

• Around 6:15 p.m. Sunday, a 31-year-old man was leaving a store in the 1200 block of South Jefferson Street when he was confronted by a 34-year-old man who pulled out a weapon and demanded his belongings, police said. Once the robber swiped the property, the 31-year-old victim pulled out a gun and fired shots, hitting the would-be robber in the chest.
  
  The 34-year-old was rushed to Stroger Hospital in critical condition. As of Sunday night, he was being held in police custody pending criminal charges.

This would put Concealed Carriers exactly one single shooting behind the Chicago Police Department, with a week left in the year. That should be a national headline. And we can only imagine the Maalox being chugged on the 5th floors of City Hall and HQ.

Retiree Remembered

Both the Tribune and Sun Times must be hard up for stories, writing mostly sympathetic stories about Officer Hornowski's murder in Arkansas:

• (Tribune) A man who spent decades as a Chicago police officer has been killed in rural Arkansas.
  
  Chester Hornowski, 71, was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in a residence in Mountain Home, Ark., on Dec. 5, according to the Baxter County Sheriff’s office. A man who attempted to flee the scene in a pickup truck as officers arrived was arrested after the truck crashed into a police vehicle, authorities said.
  
  
• (Sun Times) Chester Hornowski survived tours of duty as a Marine in Vietnam and 34 years as a patrol officer on the streets of Chicago — not to mention a long line of bouts on the city’s unforgiving political scene.
  
  But it was in rural Arkansas where the 71-year-old retiree’s generosity likely led to his fatal shooting earlier this month, authorities say.

He's been dead for three weeks, and the media is just discovering this? And giving it wide play on Christmas Day, probably the least read print run all year. We guess we should be glad they're printing anything at all since they even managed to sneak in his supposed work for aldercreature Mell.

Merry Christmas

As always, a very Merry Christmas to you and your this season. Stay safe if you're working, enjoy the day if your not. Maybe take a moment and phone or text someone who's on-duty today.

Open post - comments will be delayed as we will be otherwise occupied today.

$350 a Night

And just look at the amenities!

• Chicago police seized three handguns after shots were fired in a Near North hotel room early Sunday.
  
  Police were called to a hotel in the first block of East Grand Avenue on the Near North Side around 3:30 a.m., police said.
  
  A hotel security guard brought the officers to the hotel room where shots rang out. Officers found a group of about 10 to 12 people and a bullet lodged in a wall of the guest room.
  
  Everyone in the room was detained, police said.
  
  No one was injured.

"No one" being tourists from India who are going to have a great story to tell their friends and travel agent.

We're pretty sure the party room was Double Occupancy, so we hope someone were paying the extra rate. No word if the room was paid for with a stolen credit card yet.

But on the bright side, no one wandered off into a freezer.

Future Ties

CNN recognizing a cop for good works:

• When Jennifer Maddox got the first call from CNN in November 2016, she was actually at dinner with the culprit who nominated her.
  
  “At first I wasn’t going to answer it, because I thought it was a telemarketer. She said, ‘Can I speak to Jennifer Maddox?’ I said, ‘Who’s calling?’ I thought she was about to try to sell me something,” said Maddox, 46, a Chicago Police officer named one of this year’s top 10 CNN Heroes.
  
  “She said, ‘This is CNN. We heard of all the wonderful work you’re doing, and want to come to Chicago and visit you.’ I’m like, ‘OK . . . ‘”
  
  CNN Heroes has for 11 years honored people from across the globe, “everyday people who have dedicated their lives to change the world.” A 20-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, Maddox founded Future Ties, a nonprofit after-school and summer program in Woodlawn’s beleaguered Parkway Gardens complex.

It has been pointed out here and elsewhere that cops are part of the glue that hold a community together, not only one duty, but off-duty, too. Volunteers like this officer, coaches at sporting events, donating time at churches, community events, etc. It's certainly nice to see some recognition for these efforts.

Illinois to Lose 2 Seats?

Interesting prediction following the 2020 census:

• When I was born Illinois had 24 seats in the US House of Representatives. Now there are only 18. Now Illinois is one of the few states consistently losing population. Yesterday the US Census Bureau released its latest population figures--and among the findings is that Pennsylvania passed up the Prairie State, it is now America's sixth-most populous state. The more than thirty-years of tyranny of state House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, and his public-sector union pals, is reaching its inevitable end. Illinois is a rotting corpse for maggots like Madigan to feed on.
  
  Election Data Services in a press release reports that Illinois will lose another seat after the 2020 congressional reapportionment--and it may end up being the only state losing two seats. Boss Madigan is a master gerrymanderer--he'll find a way to increase the number of Democrats in the Illinois delegation, even though the biggest population drops are in the lockstep Dem strongholds of Chicago, particularly the West and South Sides, and its inner suburbs.

One would hope that Madigan was on his way out at some point, given that he's ruined the state, bankrupted its finances, driven out the working class of all races, and made Illinois increasing irrelevant on the national stage. But one would probably be mistaken.

Pre-Christmas Shootings

More "Chicago values" we guess:

• Two people are dead and at least 16 more have been wounded in shootings across Chicago this weekend.
  
  The weekend's first fatality occurred on Saturday afternoon in the city's Austin neighborhood. Two men were sitting on a porch in the 5200 block of West Ferdinand at approximately 2:34 p.m. when a man walked up to them and opened fire.
  
  A 21-year-old man suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his head and body, and was pronounced dead on the scene. A 25-year-old man was shot in the ankle and was taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition.

And with it being a three-day weekend, who knows how the mayhem might go?

No Cash Bond - E.M.

Electronic monitoring?

• Steven Seiler told police that, for about a month, he had noticed a bad smell coming from the bedroom of the Uptown apartment he shared with his wife, but he never bothered to look inside.
  
  If he had, Cook County prosecutors said Friday, Seiler might have noticed a pile of blankets covering his wife’s body, which was naked save for a blue tarp, Assistant State’s Attorney Julia Ramirez said Friday.
  
  Seiler said he didn’t find out his wife had died until he got a call from his daughter. The 60-year-old, however, was charged with concealing a death, implying that authorities believe he might have known sooner.
  
  [...] On Friday, Judge David Navarro ordered Seiler released on electronic monitoring. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said Wilson had been dead for at least four days when her body was discovered by police. The office is awaiting the results of toxicology testing before issuing a ruling on how she died.

The original version of the story said "I-Bond," but the media makes corrections under the radar so Trump has a harder time catching them at the half-assed reporting (#fakenews) that is the new normal. But Cook County Courts, once again, are releasing anyone and everyone to keep the jail at "record lows" without even considering that (A) this guy may have murdered someone and (B) he appeared to have access to money for bail. Dart is still missing a few thousand prisoners on Electronic Monitoring.

Wrong Address

No one checked the numbers as they pulled up?

• Jennell Cross had just settled into a leather couch to watch a movie in her daughter’s South Chicago home when she heard one bang, then another against the front door. Frightened — it was about midnight Thursday — Cross said she ran to the back of the home to warn her daughter. “Somebody’s trying to break in the house,” she yelled.
  
  Shanae Cross said was trying to pull her mother into a restroom for safety when a swarm of cops barged into the house, guns drawn and shouting questions. The officers moved through the bungalow and tried to handcuff Cross’ 17-year-old brother. The family demanded to see a warrant.
  
  Finally, an officer called out the address on the no-knock search warrant.
  
  It was for a different home on the block.

Mistakes happen and the City will end up repairing the door almost as good as new (not really). But perhaps Phil Cline can come back and run a few of his Search Warrant classes? We seem to recall a portion of it that dealt with checking the address on the paperwork a few times, ensuring it was correct on each piece of paper, using existing intelligence photos to verify the building (Google Streetview anyone?) and when you pull up, someone makes sure the numbers on the building are the numbers on the warrant so the guy on the ram knows what door he's hitting.

We're trying to figure out the Tribune though - get a load of the picture they used to accompany the article:

What subliminal message are the Tribune editors attempting to send? Because we can think of a couple hundred reasons you can't breathe lady.

New Statistic Category

HeyJackass.com has come up with a new graphic and new statistic to keep track of:

If you go to the HeyJackass page, you'll see that Concealed Carriers have justifiably shot 20 criminals this year (11 dead, 9 wounded).

Chicago Police have shot 22 criminals (11 dead and 11 wounded).

We could literally see more CCL shootings than police shootings in 2017, and we can't even express how happy that makes us.

Up yours Rahm.

Downtown Muggings Up?

How can this be? And why is the Boystown blog the only outlet covering it?

• It’s one of Chicago’s dirty little secrets.
  
  Robberies in the heart of the city’s business district have soared 132% since 2014. And there is no sign that things will be slowing down soon.
  
  Through mid-December, The Loop has recorded 356 robberies this year. That’s up from 294 last year, 179 in 2015, and just 153 in 2014, according to data provided by the city.

Now let's see the media tie this into Dart's bragging about how the jail population is at historic lows. There can't possibly be a correlation, can there?

Where's the Tax Rebate?

A great question we don't see anyone in the media asking:

• So if the population at the jail is the lowest in three decades then why is Fart's budget the highest it's ever been? Shouldn't half the population mean half the cost? Hey toni when do i get my property tax refund for this?

Dart has obviously bought the media's silence on this issue, what with hiring the wives and other relatives of certain reporters and protecting them from layoffs.

One of our readers did the math:

• Down 4,000 right?
  
  Doesn’t Big Bird Preckwinkle always tell us it costs $143 a day to house a prisoner? Let’s do the math.
  
  4,000 x $143= $572,000 per day.
  $572,000 x 365=$208,780,000.
  WHERE IS THE MONEY?

$200 million? Where have we heard that number before? Oh yeah, the Soda Tax.

CCL Stops a Crime Again

This is a trend we can get behind:

• The owner of a store in the East Garfield Park neighborhood shot a would-be robber Thursday morning on the West Side, according to police.
  
  The 17-year-old boy tried to rob the store in the 200 block of North Kedzie at 10:46 a.m., according to Chicago Police.
  
  The robbery was interrupted by the store owner, a 40-year-old man, who exchanged gunfire with the suspect, police said.
  
  The teen was shot in the upper right shoulder and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition, police said. He is in police custody, and was previously arrested for armed robbery on Nov. 28.

10:46 AM? Wasn't there school today?

Previously arrested for Armed Robbery? He made bail? And got another gun?

"17 year old boy"? How about "armed recidivist felon who shot at a store owner"?

Jail Population Falls

So guess where the criminals are instead?

• The population at the Cook County Jail has fallen below 6,000 inmates, its lowest point in decades, sheriff’s officials said Thursday.
  
  Cara Smith, chief policy officer for Sheriff Tom Dart, said the number has been declining for some time in part because of a drop in arrests, but the biggest change came some three months ago when criminal court judges were ordered to set bail only in amounts that defendants could afford to pay.
  
  Since the order took effect Sept. 18, the jail population has dropped to 5,909 inmates as of Thursday, down by more than 1,500, Smith said.

Meanwhile, property crime is up, robberies are up, carjackings are up. On the other hand, it's a target rich environment for Concealed Carriers.

The Worst That Could Happen?

This sounds like it's right up Rahm's alley:

• The city of Minneapolis may fire its police psychology evaluator because his tests screened out too many minority candidates, despite already lowering psych evaluations far below the national standard.
  
  The July police shooting of Justine Damond triggered the city to scrutinize its psychological standards for police, with many claiming they’d become lax. Psychiatrist Thomas Gratzer has run psych testing for the Minneapolis police for the past five years, and in that time, he has eliminated four of the five tests used to determine whether a candidate is fit to be an officer, APM reported Thursday. Now, Gratzer is facing firing not for gutting his standard, but for screening out too many minorities.

Rahm has already been directing his HR people to hire anyone with a pulse and we've seen

•  recruit with Tourettes, 
• a guy who had to have two targets downrange in order to hit something his lane, 
• one who couldn't walk without a cane, 
• a drunk who made it to graduation day, but was too plastered to shake hands with the mayor, 
• another aiming a gun at another recruit over an argument

Nice hiring practices Rahm.

Remember, Police Are the Problem

Keep repeating that, over and over:

• The father of a 5-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in the hand in the city's South Chicago neighborhood has been arrested. This is the second time Kavan Collins has suffered a gunshot wound in his short life.
  
  The child was in his dad's bedroom in their home in the 8100-block of South Coles Avenue just before 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, when police said he found the gun under a mattress and shot himself in the index finger.
  
  Kavan was rushed to Comer Children's Hospital, where he was listed in good condition.
  
  His dad was taken into custody and will face charges, including child endangerment and a gun charge, police said. He also has a criminal history with the CPD.

Last year, the kid got shot in the jaw while out with Mom. Hopefully the parents aren't trying to one-up each other by getting junior wounded in their "care."

We're Number Six!

Hey Rauner? Madigan? You might want to look at this:

• Illinois again lost population last year and now has been surpassed by Pennsylvania as the nation's fifth-largest state.
  
  That's the "Christmas gift" of sort—a nice lump of civic coal—from the U.S. Census Bureau today as it released its latest estimates of state-by-state population changes.
  
  Look for lots of reactions from the candidates for governor and others after the new data sink in.
  
  According to the bureau, in the year ended June 30, Illinois lost 33,000 people, about a quarter of a percent of its population, dipping from 12,835,726 to 12,802,023. As one of my colleagues quipped, that's equivalent to a town such as Northbrook moving away.

This ties into the post the other day about out-migration endangering the so-called "bailout" of pension liabilities.

Waste of Time and Money

How much is this going to cost the taxpayers?

• Inspector General Joe Ferguson said Tuesday he will conduct an audit in 2018 to determine why nearly 10 percent of Chicago Police vehicles — twice the industry standard — are “unavailable” because they are sidelined for maintenance.
  
  In his annual audit plan, Ferguson said he will also seek to determine why “the average length of time” it takes the city’s Department of Fleet and Facilities Management to service police vehicles is 21.3 days, which “exceeds industry standards.”

Gee, let's see if we can save the IG some time and effort:

• under-staffing the garages, and what staffing there is under-performs;
• body work, transmission work, every short of R-Service is off site;
• no warranty work - all the police "add-ons" void the warranties;
• no set maintenance schedule - Jiffy Lube could do a better job

There you go Joe. Now you can spend more time investigating cheating scandals.

Land for Sale?

Rumor out of 001:

• The city is trying to sell the 001st District parking lot! No joke. The buyer would have to build a parking garage for the district. Heard an email was sent out asking for count of the number of people that work each watch, the number of spaces needed for squad cars, the number of oversized vehicles, etc. First the tie clips an now this!! Let's see, you have mass transit, the Area Central Deputy, Central Detention and district personnel working out of the building. The shifts start at all different times. Say the land gets sold, where in the hell do people park while the construction is going on?!? And if the construction is anything like the building, it will be sinking into the ground within a year!! There's already a new elitist school going up right next door. If this doesn't show us that TPTB and the mayor doesn't give a shit about us, I don't know what will!! What politician has their grubby hands in this shit?

The footprint of the property was obviously an afterthought of sorts - no one expected the South Loop area to grow as quickly as it did.

Can anyone verify?

Who Approves This? (UPDATE)

We asked rhetorically the other day about who approves the Taser General Order without assessing the practical applications and consequences of such a misguided piece-of-crap order.

We got an answer....in more detail than we thought possible:

• ....the way the order is currently written, a PO is forced into an “outcome-based” situation…if the taser deployment is deemed “good”, the PO is ok. However, if the taser based deployment is viewed by COPA as having a “less than desirable outcome”, the PO is screwed because of the wording of the order.
  
  ANY AND ALL CPD POLICY REGARDING USE OF FORCE STARTS AND STOPS AT WALTER KATZ
  
  Katz was hand picked by 9.5 and ONLY KATZ has the final word regarding CPD use of force policy; if Katz can’t be convinced it’s a good idea, it will never be implemented. I can’t tell you the number of hours that gets spent trying to explain things to this guy. His agenda is NOT the police; it is PUBLIC PERCEPTION and covering the Mayor’s ass. His claim to fame is that he wrote the Use of Force Police for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Everything that we try to implement on the CPD is compared by Katz to that policy.

We must admit that we had never heard of this guy. Here's some helpful links to bring people up to speed on who is playing tiddlywinks with your career, reputation and freedom:

• Press Release announcing hiring
• Twitter Account, much of which would get you looked at by COPA/IAD
• LinkedIn
• San Jose Mercury News fawning profile
• another biography
• Q and A with Katz outlining a bunch of his philosophy

Suffice it to say, a lot of the contradictions in the Taser Order were understandable after the above explanation and reading up on this guy. He's cut from the same cloth as those ACLU pukes who dictated the "consent decree."

You want to see the face of "de-policing"? Obama at the top of the list, followed by Holder and Lynch. Then Rahm and others like him, desperate to hold onto their power by hiding videos and covering for the clouted. And finally, there are the foot soldiers like the ACLU's Gupta and this guy, put in place to wreak havoc for their masters, writing policy that is so convoluted, cops would rather sit back than put themselves in the trick-bag for an administration that will fuck them at the drop of a hat.

For some reason, following the posting by this insignificant blog, the Twitter account is now "locked down," meaning no one can view it unless they're a subscriber. It's almost like he's ashamed of all his "tweeting" as it reveals to much of his progressive agenda. Funny how the progs scurry for cover when the lights come on.

COPA Traffic Trickbag

COPA is already out of control, demanding favors from cops:

• ...in 007 a car was called in by the LT to talk, while they went in they rolled some stop signs and red lights.
  
  After talking to the LT they went back to their car and were stopped by COPA reps and told they were seen violating traffic laws and they won't be cited.....this time. But know they are watching.
  
  This is retaliation for a traffic stop where a cop, from another district but was doing OT in 007, stopped a COPA rep and cited them for the stop sign. And the COPA rep handed a business card to the officer on the stop. The PO let them slide on other tickets and only hit them for a stop sign.
  
  We were warned in roll call today because the officer that cited the butt hurt COPA fuckbag works in my district.

Anyone register for the OIG Snitch line yet? This would seem to be illegal on a few fronts and unethical on every other.

They Grow Up So Fast

The Tribune suddenly ages the "boy" offender a bit:

• Teen shot by off-duty Chicago cop in alleged carjacking attempt held without bail

So within the space of 24 hours, he went from "boy," a racially charged term (and one that implies innocence), to a "teen," a word implying a bit of rambunctiousness (and stupid decision making).

• [ASA] Antonietti said the officer was sitting in a vehicle in the 3600 block of South Prairie Avenue about 6:50 p.m. in the Bronzeville neighborhood. The victim, an 18-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department had finished work in the 11th District and was about to head home, officials said. He stopped his vehicle and was gathering his paperwork. He saw two men walking south on Prairie. He was untying his work shoes, Antonietti said.
  
  One of the two men approached the passenger side window; he said something and made a gesture as though he was asking for the time. The officer glanced in his driver’s side mirror. He saw the second man, holding a long-barreled gun, according to Antonietti.
  
  The weapon soon was aimed at the driver side window and the man ordered the officer out of the car and threatened to kill him, according to Antonietti.

The Tribune finally applied the word 'victim' to the correct party. Let's see if they make it a habit now instead of painting the gun wielding offender as someone not facing felony charges. Based on past experience and observation, we have our doubts, but they may surprise us. It has happened before.

Now WGN is "reporting" the officer fired his "Department issued weapon." As many have commented, CPD doesn't "issue" a weapon. Pistols are bought by the officer, out of pocket, when joining the Academy. One day, an enterprising reporter may do what used to be called "research" and write something factually accurate.

Spanking Rahm

This writer goes to town on mayor 9.5:

• Rahm Emanuel appeared Tuesday on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” and wowed the host and audience with his rabid anti-Trump rhetoric. Perhaps jealous of his famous Hollywood power-agent brother, Ari Emanuel, Rahm giddily joined the cacophony of late-night TV anti-Trump snark and, unknowingly, provided Chicagoans a Nero-like vision of a failed leader playing his fiddle as his city smolders, beset by rampant violence, failing schools, and a fleeing population.
  
  It’s a time-honored tactic. Failed autocrats divert attention from internal problems by blaming outside influences. Fidel Castro mastered the art of distraction for decades, ascribing responsibility for his country’s rampant poverty not to his own failed Marxist-inspired economic policies but to the longstanding U.S. trade embargo, which he termed “the cruel blockade against the Cuban people.” Emanuel follows a similar playbook: ignore the bodies, mostly black ones, lying dead in his streets and instead focus on that Donald J. Trump guy in the White House.

It gets better from there, pointing out how Rahm steered the McDonald shooting video, rips him for the failing schools, cites the rising homicide rate, and blames him for the flight of middle-class blacks. An amusing read for anyone paying attention to city politics

Wasn't This Covered Before?

Once again, Channel 7 is trolling our archives for something to write about:

• A dumpster filled with books was discovered behind a Chicago Public School Friday in Chicago's Washington Heights neighborhood.
  
  Community members said the books, found outside Kipling Elementary School in the 9300-block of South Lowe Avenue, were in good condition.
  
  CPS said the books were thrown away because they were outdated or in poor condition, and no longer fit for classroom use.

We mentioned this in a couple of posts five or ten years ago regarding pallets of text books, work books and even unopened boxes of computer systems thrown away. CPS wastes money like it has an endless stream of it coming in every year. An enterprising cub reporter could make quite a story dumpster diving on a daily basis and weighing out the food that gets thrown away every single day uneaten - it'd be enough to feed that homeless colony under downtown for weeks.

With no accountability or oversight, government wastes money. If they don't spend it all by the end of the year, a budget might get cut, and that might lead to layoffs or (god forbid) a tax cut for the already overburdened subjects of Kingdom Chicago.

Did anyone catch the report last week (can't find it now) about the giant school with about 150 students in a building built for nearly 1,000. Closing it is somehow "racist" according to the protesting parents. Must be nice to be so free with taxpayer money.

Off Duty Shoots Robber

Notice the headline by the media:

• Veteran CPD officer shoots boy during attempted South Side carjacking

Just about every outlet used some version of this. What the public is seeing:

• Veteran = someone who should know better
• boy = poor youngster confronted by old cop

The story:

• An off-duty police officer nearly became the latest victim of a carjacking in the city when he was confronted by two people Monday night who tried to take his vehicle at gunpoint in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side.
  
  “It shows how brazen these offenders are,” Chicago Police [spokesperson]. “They’ll target anyone, and tonight it just happened to be one of our own.”
  
  The Harrison District officer, an 18-year veteran of the department, was sitting in his vehicle about 6:30 p.m. in the 3600 block of South Prairie when two males came up on either side of his vehicle, police said.

Cops is fine and best wishes to him on his 30 day detail.

This is the third or fourth armed robber shot in the past five days (police and/or CCL), so we have that going for the Law and Order side of things. HeyJackass.com is going to have to start a new category.

At least the Sun Times got the "victim" portion of hte reporting correct for the first time in a long time.

Snitch Brochure

So if you were lucky enough to get your Department Issued Tie Clip, you had to also sign for the "CPD Member Hotline" paperwork, or as we titled this post, the "snitch brochure."

They claim not track IP addresses and the brass can't access it:

So it's kind of like the blog but with a government stamp of approval. Amusing. So interested parties can copy/paste entire posts/comments and forward it to the OIG. Hopefully, there's a provision in place that requires them to actually investigate each and every complaint filed - and to document each investigation. Start with ExamScam II and work backwards. How about that connected recruit that just pissed hot? Or the other recruit who pointed a gun at a classmate over some slight, real or imagined?

They'll either clean up this Department within a week or grind to a halt by 01 January.

NYPD On the Ball

Their Union isn't about to let their mayor pass himself off as a candidate for national office without some blowback:

• Mayor Bill de Blasio’s police detail won’t be the only officers from the New York Police Department in Iowa on Tuesday. There will be more New York cops traveling to the Hawkeye State to simply protest their boss.
  
  In an aggressive move, New York’s biggest police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, is sending about a dozen officers to protest de Blasio as he heads to Des Moines with the intention of imprinting his image on the national stage, reported The New York Times.
  
  Hence, their acrimonious relationship doesn’t appear to be improving anytime soon. But no one expects it to given the mayor’s public policy on so many issues.

Luckily, FOP 7 can just rely on Rahm to sink his own ambitions by being a all around unlikable ass. Hats of the the New York PBA for their efforts though.

Idiots

Five people get together to protest something they obviously have no idea about:

• A group of Chicago activists want the city to crack down on shady gun dealers.
  
  Members of "United Power for Action and Justice" are demanding the city stop doing business with gun dealers whose weapons end up at crime scenes.
  
  The group is calling on the city to release an approved gun dealer list for officers who need to purchase weapons for their jobs. That way, taxpayers would not be funding gun dealers who skirt the law.
  
  The group is calling on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to change the loophole that allows officers to buy guns from any dealer.

Loophole? The City doesn't purchase our guns. They give us a list of approved weapons and then it's a private transaction between law abiding citizens and businesses. It isn't taxpayer money at any point since recruits/probationary members aren't receiving a uniform allowance - it's all out-of-pocket to the new hire...at least it was when we were hired. Has it changed?

What Lies Beneath

Lower Wacker and Wabash, directly under some of the priciest real estate in Chicago:

Anyone else remember when Daley would send Streets and Sanitation down there and just pitch all the garbage/tents/piles into the garbage trucks? Kept downtown a lot cleaner and safer.

So, No More Tasers?

Did anyone read the revised order that came out in late October?

General Order 03-02-04, Section II (Policy), Subsection E - Increased Deployment Risk:

• When practicable, Department members should avoid the use of a Taser on subjects who:
• are elevated above ground or are in an unstable position (e.g., tree, roof, ladder, ledge, balcony, porch, bridge or stair);
• could fall and suffer an impact injury to the head or other area;
• could fall on a sharp object or surface (e.g., holding a knife, falling on glass);
• may be less able to catch or protect themselves in a fall (e.g., restrained, handcuffed, incapacitated, or immobilized)
• may have impaired reflexes (e.g., from alcohol, drugs or certain medications);
• are running, or are otherwise in motion;
• are operating or riding any mode of transportation (e.g., vehicle, bus, bicycle, motorcycle, or train); or
• are located in water, mud, marsh environment if the ability to move is restricted.

Well, that would pretty much rule out the use of a Taser in any and every situation lest you expose yourself to Department charges, legal liability, COPA probing, public ridicule and Civil Rights charges that might land you in Federal prison for four years. The Taser is just one more piece of equipment they want you to take out, never use and take a few days off for if you lose it.

Does no one in the Legal Department vet these orders before they post them for coppers to run afoul of?

Out-Migration

You need a subscription to read this whole article, but the teaser paragraph is enough to set our teeth on edge:

• If Republicans succeed in limiting the state-and-local tax deduction, one hope is that this could finally inspire a come-to-Jesus moment in prodigal high-tax states. Democrats in Illinois ought to be especially chastened by new IRS data showing an acceleration of out-migration.

Why is this so important? Because guess what's still in danger despite all sorts of "promises" from politicians?

• Chicago’s police pension bailout in the General Assembly's budget deal this summer could be derailed if the state continues to empty out as Illinoisans flee for better tax climates and opportunities elsewhere, a researcher for a fiscal advocacy group said.
  
  "My impression is that the budget deal made it appear more likely that Chicago could make the numbers that were projected," Bill Bergman, director of research at Truth in Accounting and a blogger on financial issues, told Chicago City Wire. "Whether or not the deal actually made it more likely is another question, given trends in migration that appear to show acceleration, if anything, in taxable income out of the state, and the implications federal tax reform poses for future migration trends."
  
  Bergman recently blogged about Illinois as one of five states, along with Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Maryland, "rapidly running out of gas" when it comes to taxable income that fuels any government's financial engines. In that post, Bergman referred to recently released IRS data that revealed a significant increase in Illinois' adjusted gross income outmigration in 2016.

Both articles use the same term - out-migration - to describe the "death spiral" currently underway, and which shows no signs of abating any time soon. Read up on it.

Amazon Not Coming?

Not much local media coverage for some reason:

• Amazon may have just dropped a clue about where it will build its next headquarters.
  
  The retailer registered a lobbyist, Jacob Oster, on December 7 with the Georgia State Ethics Commission, ahead of the start of Georgia's legislative session in January, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
  
  The lobbyist's presence in Georgia is now "the buzz of economic development circles," spurring speculation that Amazon is taking a closer look at the state as the potential site of its next home, the report says.

You can see the post directly above this one for another possible hint. Does anyone know if Amazon registered any lobbyists here in Springfield recently?

Is it Summer?

December throwing up June-type numbers:

• Shootings across Chicago have left five people dead and 11 more wounded since Friday afternoon. In a particularly violent six hours of the weekend, nine people were shot — three of them fatally — in attacks Saturday night into Sunday morning.
  
  The most fatal recent shooting took the life of a 15-year-old boy as he rode in a car Sunday morning in the LeClaire Courts neighborhood on the Southwest Side. About 6:50 a.m., someone in a white vehicle crashed into the back of the car the boy was riding in and then someone fired shots into it, striking the boy in the head, according to Chicago Police. He was pronounced dead at the scene in the 5100 block of West 47th Street.

In addition to the 5 dead and 11 maimed, there's a death investigation up in the quiet part of 016 and someone got beaten to death in Ukrainian Village - another formerly "quiet" part of town.

Oh yeah - rifle killing has continued unabated and we still can't get people trained up, despite Ed Burke's promises.

HeyJackass has Chicago at 658 and climbing. 700 seems out of reach, but we'll address that after the New Year.

Tie Clip....Or....

Funny readers:

We're pretty sure that's oregano.

Pissing Away Money

Another money pit, brought to you by Rahm Emanuel:

• The bold idea was that private financing could be found for much-needed, big-ticket improvements for the city, making it possible to get more of them done sooner and sparing taxpayers from having to foot the bills. City Hall says that still can happen.
  
  But the infrastructure trust has fallen short of the expectations the mayor laid out. It has yet to raise a dime in private financing for a single public works project, records show. At the same time, it has cost Chicago taxpayers more than $5.1 million to pay for its handful of employees, offices on Wacker Drive, consulting fees and other expenses.

$5.1 million. That might have gone a long way toward taking care of elderly retired police officers....and in some cases their widows who don't have promised health care any more.

Another CCL Defends Self

And the same old media bias against anyone with a gun:

• A 21-year-old man was shot and killed Thursday night in a Target parking lot on Chicago's Southwest Side.
  
  He walked up to a 2014 Nissan Altima parked in the 1900-block of West 33rd Street in the city's McKinley Park neighborhood and started talking to the person inside around 8 p.m., police said.
  
  Moments later, witnesses told police they heard gunfire. The 21-year-old man suffered gunshot wounds to his back and chest. He was transported in critical condition to Stroger Hospital, where he later died. The victim has not been identified.

Here we go again - the VICTIM is the 27 year old Concealed Carrier. The OFFENDER is the dead guy who tried to stick him up. The Case Report will read the same thing, but the lib-tarded leftist Rahm-ass-licking media (but we repeat ourselves) think that anyone who gets shot is a "victim."

• The 27-year-old man was taken into custody and two weapons were recovered. Police said that the 27-year-old man was released without charges.
  
  The Chicago Tribune reports the shooting started out as an armed robbery attempt. The victim reportedly had a gun when he walked up to the vehicle and tried to rob the older man, who the newspaper said is a concealed carry license holder.
  
  The 27-year-old man reportedly fired his semi-automatic weapon - one of the two weapons later found in the vehicle, along with expended shell casings - after a struggle in the car. He was reportedly returning to the scene when officers stopped him in the 3300-block of South Damen.

While we don't wish a reporter any particular harm, we do wonder how they'd write about themselves if they were on the receiving end of a similar situation and defended themselves properly and legally - hahaha...we know, complete fantasy. "Reporters" in Chicago do what they're told by the politicians and licking the boots of their liberal masters.

Corruption in Foxxx's Office?

Who would have thought it?

• Fox 32 News has learned that State's Attorney Kim Foxx has accepted the resignation of one of her top aides, after an internal review revealed he was steering significant amounts of legal work to his former law firm at unusually high rates.
  
  The resignation of the acting Civil Actions Bureau Chief, Chaka Patterson, comes after Fox 32 News first made inquiries about the State's Attorney's use of outside counsel six weeks ago. State's Attorney Foxx’s office provided us with a statement saying that her own review of outside counsel practices revealed that Patterson was referring significant business to his former law firm, Jones Day. Documents provided to Fox 32 News show Jones Day attorneys were sometimes being paid up to $500 an hour, rather than the customary rates of about a $185 an hour for outside legal services.
  
  The state's attorney says an outside law firm has agreed to do a review of Foxx's use of outside counsel--at no cost to the county. And in the meantime, any outside counsel who are selected will only be chosen with the approval of the judge who's handling the case.

So are taxpayers going to be reimbursed? How much was this mope getting in kickbacks?

And more importantly, is anyone losing a law license and going to jail?

First Issue....Tie Bar?

What the hell is this? An AdMin Fax message came out Friday stating in part:

• All Commanders and Unit Commanding Officers should be aware that personnel assigned to pick up the payroll checks on 15 DEC 17 will also be receiving a small package of first issue uniform tie clips.

Tie clips? Seriously, First Issue tie clips? We've solved all the other problems and we're nitpicking on tie clips. Something that is never seen under vests or jackets. Something never needed if you wear the turtleneck.If you've seen the ties nowadays, they have little buttonholes on the back that holds the tie in place over existing shirt buttons.

We saw the clips Friday and they are just about the cheapest piece of stamped/folded metal ever. We don't know what connected uniform company supplied them, but the kickback must have been enormous. And what tool is going to try to get a gold star out of this pointless effort?

Tie bars.