Another Outsider?

A "police auditor:"

• The independent police auditor for San Jose, California, said Monday he agreed to take a “small” pay cut to accept a job he called the “biggest policing challenge in America” — as Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s point-person for public safety.
  
  Walter Katz, 50, will become Emanuel’s $165,000-a-year deputy chief of staff for public safety and chief liaison with the Chicago Police Department. He replaces Janey Rountree, who left on the day the U.S. Justice Department released its scathing indictment of the Chicago Police Department.
  
  Katz will be asked to help turn an agreement in principle with the Justice Department into a detailed consent decree that culminates in the hiring of a federal monitor to ride herd over the Chicago Police Department.

You have to wonder what all these people have on Rahm that they get hired here at astronomical salaries with absolutely no frame of reference to Chicago.

And all with the prospect of no federal assistance from Washington DC.

Oh, and if you're an exempt, be prepared to sit and eat shit for Rahm's cameras:

• After hearing from a “startling cross-section” of Chicagoans who view police officers as racist, Lightfoot has made the case for “some kind of racial reconciliation” that would allow Chicagoans who have felt harassed or disrespected by police to publicly air their grievances across the table from police brass.

That will certainly be interesting - we'll be able to pick out the next two or three superintendents by how big their grin is as they gobble it up with a knife, fork and spoon.

Not Up to Strength

Once again, fake numbers:

• More than 100 new detectives will hit Chicago's streets this spring and fill all of the department's vacant positions, officials said Monday.
  
  The 131 new detectives — who began their training Monday after being lauded by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Supt. Eddie Johnson — will be charged will solving the more than 100 murders already recorded in Chicago in 2017.
  
  Johnson called the fact that the department only solves less than 30 percent of murders terrible, and said it was one of the reasons he asked Emanuel to hire more detectives and fill positions that had been vacant for months.

All 130 aren't going to be tasked with anything close to that - you don't graduate Detective school and go right out to solve homicides. You might be assigned to a group of detectives that are already working on the homicides, but don't worry - there will be plenty more this year...probably another 50 or 60 by the time they graduate.

• After completing the eight-week training, the officers will join the 135 detectives promoted last month, officials said.
  
  Emanuel has promised to add 970 positions to the Police Department over the next two years: 516 police officers, 200 detectives, 112 sergeants, 50 lieutenants and 92 field training officers. The department also will fill 500 vacant positions.

And again, 200 Detectives, 112 Sergeants, and 92 FTO's come from the ranks of patrol (mostly), so that'll be 300 more vacancies. That's not even including the 10 ET's or 12 Traffic Specialists or any other small classes the Department makes in a given year. Then there's the few hundred retirements coming up before May. Those 500 "vacant spots" are barely going to keep up with attrition and promotions.

That isn't to say it should happen - the D-Unit has been neglected for most of the past decade, along with a lot of specialized spots (forensics, ET, Traffic, etc) and the DOJ says we're under-supervised, so these things are going to happen. Congrats to the deserving. But the media (no doubt at Rahm's insistence) is downplaying the fact that these things don't happen in a vacuum - one spot here doesn't mean everything is all filled up to strength. That spot being filled came from somewhere else, and now has to be filled.

But Rahm is facing a tough re-election year, so you know he's calling every newsroom to push his numbers.

Big Oops

So is Dart running the IDOC now, too?

• A man charged with murder for a shooting on the Dan Ryan Expressway in 2012 was mistakenly released from prison last week instead of being returned to custody in Cook County.
  
  “Earlier today, the Cook County sheriff’s office was notified that inmate Garrett Glover had been released from the Illinois Department of Corrections,” a statement from the sheriff’s office said.

And of course, he hasn't been seen since. Click the link above for a picture - he's probably at home.

PBPA Vandalism

The Sergeant Union had their offices spray painted and vandalized:

Because the police are the problem.

Pharmaceutical Desert

Someone commented this would create a "Pharmaceutical Desert" on the west side. We couldn't stop laughing for about three minutes:

• Politicians are pushing back against the planned closing of a CVS pharmacy within the next month on the west side of Chicago.
  
  [...] State Representative Melissa Conyears-Ervin and other elected officials stood in front of a CVS store at Madison and Kedzie Sunday morning to denounce the move. Her husband, Alderman Jason Ervin, said the case was a travesty and that it amounts to theft.
  
  “We have enough challenges and problems in this community, and we don’t need to have the fact that our seniors cannot get their basic medicine anywhere in East or West Garfield Park,” he said.
  
  Ervin said Chicago gave the drugstore $1 million in tax breaks to open at the East Garfield Park location about five years ago. He added that he’s having the city’s lawyers look at any reimbursement the company may owe Chicago.

We're pretty sure the corporate lawyers at CVS had some sort of "sunset" provision in the tax breaks - they do that sort of thing for a multi-billion dollar corporation. You know, like the lawyers probably did for the Whole Foods in Englewood. Once economic reality sets in, corporations are mostly profit/loss orientated. And when you're trying to run a business in the heart of murder/robbery/shoplifting capital of Chicago, it's difficult to justify sticking around.

Pharmaceutical Desert.....hahahahahahaha.

Charges Approved

Attempted Murder for shooting at the police last week - we saw no mention of this anywhere. We guess it's only news when cops shoot at offenders and not when offenders shoot at the police.

Here's the radio traffic.

More Promotions

This time, 11 Traffic Specialists. Congratulations.

Who knew we had enough manpower for two classes of Detectives, one of Sergeants, Evidence Techs and Traffic Specialists? What's next? K9? Or Mounted?

...and There Goes 100

100 homicides already disappearing into the rearview mirror:

• Two men were shot to death early Saturday in the Woodlawn neighborhood on the South Side, bringing the number of homicides in Chicago this year to 101.
  
  Just before 1 a.m., two people in hooded sweatshirts opened fire into a crowd at a party in the 6500-block of South Drexel, hitting a 20-year-old man in the face and torso, and a 37-year-old man in the chest. They died at the scene, according to Chicago police.

Just maintaining the current rate of killings, 600 would be a lock for the year. And that's without taking into consideration the summer killing season rapidly approaching.

Rounding Up Killers

The D unit doing some good work on this case:

• Bond was denied for the three men charged with murder in the shooting deaths of a toddler and his uncle; the man’s pregnant girlfriend was wounded in the Valentine’s Day shooting in the North Lawndale neighborhood.
  
  Bond was denied Saturday for Jeremy Ellis, 19, who faces charges of murder and attempted murder, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
  
  Bond was denied Friday for Doniel Harris, 19, charged with one count of murder, the state’s attorney’s office.
  Another man, Devon Swan, 26, was ordered held without out bond last week after he was charged with two counts of murder and a count of attempted murder.

Good job.

Gangs Upgrading

Rifles appearing more and more:

• The shooting was one of at least 33 in Back of the Yards and Brighton Park over the past nine months that police believe are tied to semi-automatic rifles as several gangs boost their firepower. At least 46 people have been shot in the attacks, 13 fatally.
  
  Police say this is the only area of the city where rifles styled after AR-15s and AK-47s are regularly used, a menacing new development in the gang fights.
  
  It's unclear how many of the high-powered rifles are on the street, but police suspect they are being passed around by members of four Hispanic gangs in the Deering police district, which covers parts of the South and Southwest sides.

"only area of the city"? Not likely. We've posted dozens of comments of rifles being recovered at a number of traffic stops citywide and casings at numerous west side scenes.Is the Department still slacking on training for rifles? And delaying qualifications so as to have less rifles on the street, thereby making officers less safe and unable to protect the public?

Imagined Racism Again

Can someone explain how the Contract is racist? Because these pinheads are making all sorts of claims that don't stand up to the lightest of scrutiny:

• African-American aldermen on Wednesday called for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to remove clauses in the city's police contract that they contend foster racist misconduct in the Chicago Police Department, an assertion the police union swiftly rejected.
  
  The City Council Black Caucus' demands come as the mayor negotiates a new police contract, talks that have been handled by the administration and union representatives, and not aldermen.
  
  The "contract has been serving and protecting the culture of cultural racism and violence in our Police Department for far too long," said South Side Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, the group's chairman. "Now is our chance to change this."

And then the Tribune glosses over the entire accusation - not a single example of racism in a Contract that has been approved near unanimously for decades now.

• Dean Angelo, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Chicago Lodge 7, noted that aldermen signed off on the current police contract.
  
  "This is the same rhetoric we've been listening to ever since the anti-police movement began, and we're expecting these type of statements to be coming out of the chambers of the City Council," Angelo said. "When we ratified our contract in October of 2014, we got a standing ovation (from aldermen) and we went back in November of 2015, they wanted my head on a stick, and we did absolutely nothing. We were thrown under the bus. They are deflecting and blaming the FOP, but this is the same populace that has ratified every agreement the union has had with the city since 1981."

Imagine that - thrown under a bus for political expediency. Who'd have thunk it?

• There are 18 black aldermen on the 50-member council, but a number are close allies of the mayor, so it's unclear if they would vote against a contract that did not include the provisions Sawyer outlined. Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, said would not vote in favor of any police contract that does not include the changes.

Ervin also won't vote for a Contract that doesn't include at least two boxes of Dunkin' Donuts assorted.

• The recommendations call for eliminating the requirement for a sworn affidavit by a citizen before a complaint can go forward, removal of a restriction on investigating anonymous complaints, and deleting the requirement that the name and address of a complainant be disclosed to the officer against whom it's filed.
  
  Changing the requirement for a sworn statement involves more than just negotiating a deal with the FOP because the provision also is enshrined in state law. And getting the FOP to give that up without something significant in exchange will be a tall order.
  
  Other recommended changes included deleting the provision that gives officers 24 hours before they are required to give a statement after shooting somebody and another giving officers a chance to change their statements after seeing video of the incident.

And as we pointed out, most other jurisdictions have 48-hour down time before giving a statement. The feds have a full 3 days. And then the accusations of racism pop up again:

• "They found that racism was rampant in our Police Department, and so was misconduct," said Bryce Colquitt of the Workers Center for Racial Justice, which is part of the coalition seeking the changes. "The thing is the contract is being negotiated right now. We cannot miss our moment to make real change."

And again, apocryphal stories of racism ARE NOT proof of systemic racism throughout the Department. The DOJ report was just as substantial as a fart. What was it Special Ed said a few days ago, something about a Commander with 90-plus complaints and close ties to a guy doing 20 years in prison?

• The fact that you have an allegation doesn’t mean you’re automatically guilty of something. That’s why it’s investigated. So, because they are not sustained allegations, that should should not hold him back. That’s why you have due process.

Unless you're a Chicago alder-asshole looking to score points.

Congrats ET's

There was a class of ten ET's made this week. It's long overdue as in many cases, we're waiting hours to get ET's to shooting scenes and there isn't even a Crime Lab to speak of that processes homicide scenes.

If the Department wasn't wasting time having fully trained ET's answering phones and never hit the streets, that shortage might be alleviated?

A Load of Bull

Literally:

• There was an unusual candlelight memorial Wednesday night in front of a slaughterhouse in Queens.
  
  They're remembering the bull who escaped certain death Tuesday and took over the streets.
  
  Cops couldn't exactly get him to heel so they shot him with tranquilizers and he died.
  
  The people at the vigil wonder if the bull could have been saved.
  
  "No one deserves cruelty, abuse, torture or murder," a protester said.

Pardon our confusion.....escaping certain death.....the bull dies anyway? What's the issue? It escaped from a slaughterhouse. At least he died high as a kite from all the tranquilizers. We heard the Animal Control people might have utilized some fetanyl to boost the lethality of the darts.

Your Welcome - Again

Frank and Fran blatantly stealing from the blog again:

• Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson has quietly changed the rules governing merit promotions, casting another cloud over a process condemned by officers interviewed by the U.S. Department of Justice as a “reward for cronyism.”
  
  City Inspector General Joe Ferguson and Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo aren’t happy they weren’t informed about Johnson’s decision to allow members of the five-member Merit Board to nominate their own candidates, provided they don’t interview or vote on their own nominees.
  
  Also troubling, they say, is the fact that Johnson made the change in a “verbal order” — and applied it to the last two waves of promotions — even though the change has yet to be finalized in writing.

The writing touches on the improprieties we've noted, the nominators having their nominees appear before the Board, the oft-repeated lie about "merit" being used to boost minority representation in the supervisory ranks (when it's so much easier to give girlfriends the test).

This part was highly suspicious though

• Johnson’s new rule applied to the two latest waves of promotions — one for officers who were promoted to detective on Jan. 2 and the other one for officers promoted to sergeant on Feb. 6.
  
  Starting with the merit promotions to sergeant, Johnson decided to make public the names of those who get merit promotions along with the names of the supervisors who nominate them, Guglielmi said.
  
  [...] Guglielmi refused to release the list of officers who received merit promotions to detective on Jan. 2, saying that promotional class was selected before Johnson decided to make merit-promotion nominations public. A total of 136 officers were promoted to detective, records show.

So why conceal the Detective "merit" people, especially as this "change" supposedly took effect two lists ago? We can think of one reason right off the bat:

• one of the names has some connection that would be embarrassing and/or humiliating should it become general knowledge. Perhaps the nominee was telling people how badly he did on the exam? And then through some miracle, began telling people how well he did, hoping that they'd forget he already told people he had done poorly enough that promotion was a distant (and fading) possibility. Someone whose relative would shortly be standing for re-election and then sitting in close contact with the City during the most important Contract negotiations in FOP history.

And that's just one theory - this is Chicago after all. Perhaps an FOIA request could pry the "merit" portion of the list out as it has in the past - but not before the FOP ballots were counted.

Special Ed Fixes Something?

Besides a Lieutenants Exam we mean. This was posted as an open letter on a social media forum calling out Special Ed for a rather shortsighted decision:

• Superintendent Johnson,
  
  I am a sergeant assigned to [...] watch in the [...] District. It has recently come to my attention that the department has, without any administrative notice of this new policy, not been allowing any officer with an open CR to attend award ceremonies at police headquarters.
  
  I find this decision abhorrent, and a figurative slap in the face to every hard working police officer whose actions have gone above and beyond the call of duty. It is no secret that CR investigations, more often than not, have been taking years to complete--most often with a determination that the allegations against the officer are unfounded. But, in the years this process takes (a process that the rank and file have been promised time and time again will be expedited), CPD officers who have earned commendations (commendations approved by exempt members) are mailed their awards and banned from any public recognition of their efforts, as if the department is ashamed of them. Receiving awards at monthly ceremonies, with the officer's family in attendance, is but a small token of appreciation the city can bestow on officers to continue to do good work, especially considering the current political climate and great personal risks that proactive policing brings. It seems that the department is taking preemptive measures that are, in essence, judging these officers as guilty of rule violations without due process.
  
  Defending your recent promotion of a commander with 90 misconduct complaints, you were quoted as saying "The fact that you have an allegation doesn’t mean you’re automatically guilty of something. That’s why it’s investigated. So, because they are not sustained allegations, that should should not hold him back. That’s why you have due process."
  
  In light of your own comments, I ask that you reconsider the message this policy sends to those under your command. Barring good officers from attending award ceremonies is perhaps worse than "holding them back". It negates their bravery and persistence at a time when the city needs it the most.
  
  Thank you for your consideration.
  Respectfully Submitted,

We are further informed that last night, Special Ed called the Sergeant personally and told them that he was unaware of this being done by the Awards people and he was taking steps to ensure that officers who earned awards were being permitted to receive the rare public accolades that come with these honors.

So a salute to the Sergeant for calling out the dumbass-ery and kudos to Special Ed for doing the right thing.

ACLU Smoking Crack Again

There they go again:

• The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has now demanded that the Portland Police Department stop using riot gear in response to protests and potential riots.
  
  Sarah Armstrong, spokeswoman for the ACLU of Oregon, said that when police show up in riot gear, it escalates the situation and that police policies should aim for de-escalation, according to KGW. These comments come on the tail end of when police showed up in riot helmets to the illegal Portland Resistance protest on Monday. That protest was partially sponsored by Black Lives Matter PDX.

Well gee, if the "protestors" didn't show up all dressed in black, with masks to conceal identities, weapons to wreak havoc, gas masks to counter dispersal agents, not to mention the extensive historical record of misbehavior and criminality.....

Perhaps if the ACLU showed up naked as an example to all?

January - Up, February - Almost Up

Remember last week? When Chicago was down over a dozen homicides for February? Not any more:

• Seven people were killed and another six were wounded in shootings Wednesday on the South and West sides of Chicago, marking the deadliest day of gunfire across the city so far this year.
  
  Four other days this year have seen five fatal shootings, including last Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Chicago Sun-Times data. The other bursts of killings happened on Feb. 5 and Jan. 21, when 25 people were shot — the highest single-day toll of gunshot victims.

February 2017 totals stand at 44 - just two short of February 2016.

So There's This Order.....

If you were raised with any sort of moral compass, you'd think that people are supposed to know the rules....and obey the rules, not flout them like some two-bit chiseling criminal.

We direct you, dear readers, to Employee Resource Order 04-05, specifically Section III, Subsection B-1-b which states in full:

• Merit Board members will not be allowed to participate in the nomination process. [emphasis added]

Not "should refrain." Not "might want to think about not participating." It says "WILL NOT."

We now direct you to the "Merit" Board as it is currently constructed:

A fine upstanding bunch of Deputies, none of whom ever passed a promotional exam on their own and at least one that should have been facing criminal charges years ago.

Finally, we present the most recent Sergeant list from about three weeks ago:

Golly. Three of the "Merit" Board nominators have nominees who were made "merit" in direct and egregious violation of the written directives of the Chicago Police Department. And Special Ed, sitting around waiting for a kidney (and hoping for a spine), does nothing in the face of what can only be described as blatant corruption, malfeasance and....well, cheating we guess.

But he's used to that last one.

This has been brought to the attention of the FOP and the Inspector General. You'd think a slam-dunk case of numerous Exempt members violating policy would be the subject of some sort of investigation, what with the DOJ pretty much slamming the "business as usual" practices around here, but all we're hearing is crickets.

Get the Popcorn!

Entertainment time:

• Sandi Jackson’s own comments helped convince her estranged husband’s lawyers that they need to question former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy and two other former cops in the couple’s contentious divorce case.
  
  That’s the argument lawyers for former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. made this week, disputing former Ald. Sandi Jackson’s argument that the subpoenas her husband issued to McCarthy and the other two men were harassment and “a fishing expedition.”
  
  Those three subpoenas were issued last month because of “admissions made by Sandra to Jesse, statements made to Jesse by multiple family members, close friends and former colleagues of both parties, and other information in his possession,” the former congressman’s attorneys said in a Tuesday filing in Cook County Circuit Court.

Another reason McCompStat is keeping a low profile?

The List

With nominating supervisors:

Congratulations to the deserving.

Another Asshat Heard From

Mark Brown, part of the media cabal that has spouses working for Tommy Dart in exchange for friendly, ball-washing newspaper/television coverage, has an opinion on the upcoming Contract - but then again, opinions are like assholes:

• A coalition of groups concerned with police accountability are teaming with the City Council’s Black Caucus to pressure Mayor Rahm Emanuel to publicly endorse specific changes in police union contracts to make it easier to investigate officers.
  
  The Coalition for Accountability in Police Contracts — which includes ACLU of Illinois and the Better Government Association among others — has drawn up a list of 14 recommendations it wants to see recognized in new police contracts.
  
  These include everything from removing the requirement that citizens sign sworn affidavits when making complaints against police officers to removing restrictions on the use of past disciplinary records in the investigation of current complaints.

Well first of all, the Sworn Affidavit provision is a State Law, and not subject to negotiations.

Second, this is part of a concerted effort to deny Police Officers their Constitutional Protections. pfather pfelcher is another portion of this effort, the ACLU and assorted other bad actors, too. You are to be presumed guilty without being able to question witnesses, without being able to view any evidence, and soon to be without the benefit of counsel.

You think we're joking? Check out the part of the proposal where you aren't even allowed to view video of an incident that may exist before giving a statement. You are expected to relate verbatim what may be the most stressful incident of your life, in under 24-hours, without the benefit of a video you yourself may have recorded. A video that we've seen time-and-again, sees only what it's pointed at and not what you may see peripherally by merely turning your head 20, 30, 45 degrees left or right.

And when you deviate in the slightest from what an armchair quarterback determines to be the politically correct actions of the day, made in the air-conditioned comfort of an easy chair, with water and snacks and the REWIND button handily at their side, you will be crucified in the name of political expediency, jobless, pension-less, un-hireable, and god forbid, imprisoned.

Whoever gets elected next month ought to seriously consider forgoing any sort of negotiations with the City for the foreseeable future. There is no way that the FOP (or the PBPA) can or should consider the City as negotiating in good faith. It just isn't possible in this atmosphere. Figure out something else - perhaps the National Lodge to come in and run things on the Contract end.

This Could be Interesting

Guess what turned up?

• ALSO, spring cleaning in Englewood... a truly (rare as it may be) upstanding citizen on a certain block that had an OIS'ing over the holiday season uncovers a weapon lodged in between branches of a heavy bush. The residential location being within throwing distance and directly on the path of the chase the good/dumb (you pick) Sgt took. Here's to praying some DNA, finger prints or any other form of identifiers are traced by the I.S.P. lab to this shitbag. Good luck Sgt and great work by 007 (and many others) keeping this investigation alive for this guy.

Indeed.

No One Noticed Before?

Sorry - we mean, "No one noticed until it was politically expedient to attack the police again:"

• Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson has a busy West Side district under the command of a cop with a long history of misconduct allegations, a WBEZ analysis of police records shows.
  
  Cmdr. James Sanchez has been a subject of at least 90 formal complaints since joining the force in 1985, according to the records, obtained through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Most of those complaints alleged excessive force or improper searches.

And a very close association with SOS's most famous miscreant - they were partners.

But none of this raised any eyebrows back when he rocketed up the promotional ladder. Funny how that works out. Not a single investigative reporter was able to put two and two together and you know - hold politicians accountable for the mess they've made of the Department.

Notice how the first line blames Special Ed? That tells you everything you need to know.

But hey, it doesn't matter - he's maxed out. He'll get a six-figure pension.

016 Going to Hell

Another shooting (murder?) within a mile of the last killing - within half-a-mile of the station:

• A 17-year-old boy was shot in the head on Tuesday afternoon in the Jefferson Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side.
  
  The attack happened about 4:45 p.m. near the intersection of Higgins and Linder avenues, according to Chicago Police.
  
  He was taken in critical condition to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, police said. No one was in custody for the shooting.

Hey, you know what would make all of this violence go away? A 100-unit low-income CHA building!

Another Detective List Out

Send it if you got it.

131 names we heard - and Granny Clampett got her pick in, even though she left.

And Once Again.....

Every time we see some talking dick with ears on TV, radio or the papers saying crap like "We can't arrest our way out of this [Chicago violence] situation," we just want to bitch slap them and say, "Have you tried?" Because we know that they haven't. They're caught up in this narrative that there's no such thing as a bad boy.

Guess what? There is. Many times over. And if they sit in a cage, far away from friends, family and gangs, they can't hurt other people.

Case in point - this piece of shit arrested for the shooting of the two-year-old. Run his name through the IDOC search function. He had a 6 year sentence applied to his worthless ass back in 2008. If he had served 100% of his sentence, he wouldn't have picked up PCS charges (felony) in 2012, 2013 and two in 2014. And if he had served 100% of the year each he got for those felonies in a secure downstate prison, he wouldn't have gotten a two-year sentence for Escape (EM) in 2014. And maybe, just maybe, if he had served 100% of that sentence in some hellhole, he wouldn't have been out on the street taking part in a double homicide that included a two-year-old child.

Supposedly, this isn't the only arrest upcoming in this case and it'll be enlightening to see how many more of them benefited from "early release," Electronic Monitoring, or "day-for-day" credit.

It's the sentencing stupid. And it's far past the time that Prickwrinkle and Dart should be run out of office for the nonsense they perpetuate about "too many" whatever's are behind bars. If they're in jail or prison where they ought to be, for the appropriately assigned sentences, they aren't out bleeding the neighborhoods.

It's far past time for a "Truth in Sentencing" law here in Illinois, and you'll see in short order, that you CAN arrest your way out of this situation.

Interesting

This is amusing - the gangs say Rahm's hiring won't have any effect on murders:

• Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson again called for tougher gun laws. “Enough is enough,” he said.
  
  Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner proposed sending state troopers to Chicago. Without being specific, President Donald Trump suggested sending in the feds.
  
  Tracy Cannon – once associated with the Vice Lords – says it won’t matter. “I don’t care how many police they bring in. It’s not going to stop, man.”
  
  Guys on the street say law enforcement made a bad situation worse. “They locked up these gang chiefs and everything went haywire,” says Charles Winters. Large organizations like the Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords subdivided over unresolved disputes. Absent leadership, cliques within the same gang will often do battle. “Ain’t like it used to be,” says Cannon. “Back then we had structure. Older guys would make us go to school. Even though we was gang banging, we would still go to school.”

And we'll bet the cops reading here know exactly where the problem lies - cops have only been saying it now for 40 or 50 years:

• “We more like a family than a gang… brothers,” says Kevin Gentry – associated with the Vice Lords. In the gang, someone was kind to them. Their role models sold drugs, had money, clothes cars and girlfriends. “The gangs have become family for a lot of young men here in Chicago and across the United States. They gravitate toward the guys with charisma. They gravitate toward the guys that might protect them. But they really are not protected out there. Too many people are being killed, it’s a false sense of security,” says Tio Hardiman from Violence Interrupters, a group that attempts to predict and prevent gangland shootings.

Of course, Tio can't even interrupt himself from beating his old lady, and he's one of the "top" people (or folks?) in these "organizations" making excuses for decades of blood.

SWAT Success

All around nice job:

• One man is in custody and another was found dead after a standoff with a SWAT team Monday morning in Little Village, police said.
  
  About 7:45 a.m., officers were called to the 3400 block of West 23rd Street for a "domestic disturbance" between two men, police said.
  
  There was a standoff until 12:24 p.m., at which point officers were able to get inside the home, where they found a 68-year-old man dead.
  
  The man had been shot in his head, police said, and a gun was found. A 37-year-old man was taken into custody.

No reports of SWAT having fired a shot, so this looks like another homicide - meaning the holiday weekend total goes up one, at the very least, matching last year, for those math wizards who couldn't read yesterday.

Nice job by the personnel on scene.

ICE Sweep Finds Escapee

It's working already:

• A man who escaped from an Illinois prison in 2003 has been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Atlanta.
  
  An ICE spokesman says Jorge Soberanis-Rumaldo was taken into custody Friday as part of an enforcement operation targeting criminal illegal immigrants. Authorities say Soberanis-Rumaldo is a Mexican national who was in the U.S. illegally.
  
  Soberanis-Rumaldo was sentenced to eight years in Stateville Correctional Center on a felony charge of cocaine possession in March 2003. Authorities say he escaped while on work release in June 2003.
  
  The 58-year-old was arrested at his Atlanta home.

He was arrested at his home?

He owes IDOC 8 years, and ICE finds him at his home??

Anyone know why it took 13 years to locate him?

How BS was ABC Report?

Well, let's dissect it:

• In the investigation, the I-Team uncovered thousands of domestic violence complaints against Chicago police officers.
  
  In a database obtained through a the Freedom of Information Act request, the I-Team found 5,280 domestic violence complaints filed against Chicago police officers since the year 2000. That's more than 340 complaints filed every year and on average, nearly one per day.

And how many per day does CPD respond to?

• Chicago police respond to nearly 500 domestic related calls a day, according to the latest department data; calls for help at home from across the city.

So let's break out the slide rule - 500 per day, 365 days in a year....182,500 in a non-Leap Year. So 340 CPD domestics per year versus 182,500 citizen domestics per year is about 0.19% of the total...not even a full percentage. That's positively law abiding. Back to the numbers:

• ...the I-Team found 5,280 domestic violence complaints filed against Chicago police officers since the year 2000.

Golly, that's fully half the Department! Unless there are duplicates. Guess what? There are. Hundreds. Many hundreds. Because once you're in a bad relationship, it follows you many times. One of you is stuck in a bad behavioral spiral, one of you is calling the police semi-regularly (or the neighbors are) and CR's are pretty much automatically generated, even if neither party wants to pursue it - hence the many closed investigations. What percentage of the 5,280 are those?

And we ran our names through the Invisible Institute database, and guess what? We're named in a series of "Domestic incidents." You know why? Because we responded to Domestics, someone wasn't happy and complained to IPRA, and now we have "Not Sustained" domestic beefs on our publicly accessible disciplinary history, even though we've never laid a hand on our spouse, roommate, significant other, etc. How many of those supposed 5,280 are those?

The Department says the following:

• The Chicago Police Department takes any allegation against a police officer seriously, especially in cases of domestic violence. While a complaint or allegation against an officer is not an inherent implication of guilt, all domestic complaints against an officer are fully investigated by IPRA and officers are held accountable in cases of substantiated criminal or administrative misconduct.

Chuckles and his iTeam might want to review that underlined portion of the statement. An allegation is not indicative of guilt or a cover-up. Allegations need proof. Proof requires acceptable admissible testimony under oath according to the Rule of Law duly passed by the Legislature. It's a pretty basic concept for any grade-schooler taking a Constitution test. Not so much for a media in thrall to a midget mayor demanding "bad police" stories to deflect attention from three dead kids. Plus, as we just showed, twisting numbers until they get you the result you want just makes you look like hacks.....or more like hacks than you already are.

Jed Domestic?

Rumor in the comments about the Lake Shore Drive fake "suicide" attempt-er Jedidiah was arrested late last week in 004 on a Domestic Battery charge.

Good thing he didn't still have his gun.

This goof is rapidly spinning out of control.

And Still a Day to Go

Holiday weekend:

• Despite unseasonably warm temperatures that can lead to more people being outside — and, thus, more violence — the number of people killed and wounded in shootings citywide is slightly down from last year.
  
  Four people have been killed and at least 16 more wounded, including a 13-year-old boy, in South and West side shootings since 6 p.m. Friday, according to Chicago Police.
  
  Last year, six people were killed and 19 more wounded in shootings over the same weekend.

HeyJackass has last year at 5 and 28, so well within striking distance.

UPDATE: For the unpublished morons in the comment section, we underlined the phrase "HeyJackass has last year at 5 and 28" since you seem to have trouble reading and comprehending how the earth travels through time and stuff. Here's how part of that works:

• 2016 is LAST year (the past)
• 2017 is THIS year (the present, except for January and most of February - that part is PAST, too. And the stuff still coming up - that's the FUTURE)
• 2018 is NEXT year

And since the HOLIDAY WEEKEND ends at midnight tonight, there's still a better than average chance Chicago will surpass (have more than) last year (2016.)

Stolen Spot?

We certainly hope this isn't true - it makes a mockery of the process...well, more of a mockery we suppose:

• Lots of crying going on at HQ on Thursday around 1430 hours when they were reading off the new D assignments. Only the heavy went North (and by heavy, I mean so many phone calls came into S.O.'s desk that he had to start prioritizing who's heavier. Some unlucky Commanders are going to have hurt feelings). Take a look at the names when the assignments come out and you'll see what Im talking about.
  
  On a side not: The CAPS guy from 018 in the D class withdrew and requested to be sent back to 018 instead of going to A/S

That's a bad move if true. You either deprived a rank order person of a spot, or you made your clout look bad.

Detective Pfleger on the Case!

Once again, the D-Unit does a great job putting together a heater case:

• A 26-year-old man has been charged with murder in the triple shooting that killed a two-year-old and his uncle on Valentine's Day in North Lawndale.
  
  Devon Swan, 26, was charged with first degree murder is the shooting that killed 2-year-old Lavontay White Jr. and his uncle Lazaric Collins, 26. A third victim, a 20-year-old woman who is pregnant, was also wounded in the shooting that was recorded live on Facebook.

This however, made us choke on our whiskey:

• Additional arrests are expected in the case, said Anthony Guglielmi, CPD spokesman. Police Supt. Eddie Johnson, CPD detectives and Rev. Michael Pfleger are expected to provide additional details on the the charges at a noon press conference Saturday.

Um, who now?The phony pfather? Who bad mouths the CPD every chance he gets? Who provides no support, no solutions, and nothing but racial animus because he unhappy in the skin he was born in?

Correct us if we're wrong, but this crime happened in the 010th District, far from the south side shithole pfleger flings his poo in. Does Special Ed ever get tired of all the ball-licking he's required to do? Rahm, Rush, pfleger, the list goes on.

Get Ready for Some Theater

This was published last week:

• Work will start in earnest next week on how to reform the Chicago Police Department after federal investigators found that officers routinely used excessive force against minorities and tolerated "racially discriminatory conduct" by officers.
  
  Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday that officials from the U.S. Justice Department will arrive in Chicago next week to begin negotiating a legally binding agreement — known as a consent decree — to ensure that reforms are implemented under the authority of a federal judge.

Rahm was in Washington last week, ignoring the deaths of three children, and meeting with anyone he could - but not the President. He did meet with Sessions, who has made no secret of his disdain for Consent Decrees and that his DOJ won't be spending much time on them.

We don't know about you, but that seems to mean no Federal dollars for what will undoubtedly be an expensive undertaking. Rahm doesn't have the money, nor the political capital to impose another tax increase on tax weary Chicagoans. Rahm is more suited to being Trump's foil for all that's wrong with "big city democratic politicians." Plus, he's getting zero support from Prickwrinkle's machine - she smells blood, and a chance to run Cook County and Chicago all at once if she gets her tool into the 5th floor.

So what's up? Was Rahm begging for non-iterference from DC? Is he going to create some sort of political theater? Say this, say that, do something completely different, divert funds, pretend reforms, political moves, attack the Contract, etc, etc? We have no idea, and the tame media bouncing up and down on Rahm's lap can't be trusted to ask the real questions and come up with real answers.

End the Signs

This has been a bunch of crap for years now - remember the Hampton sign:

• A man whose father was killed at a New York City restaurant bombing for which the militant Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN claimed responsibility lashed out at Chicago aldermen Thursday for approving an honorary street designation for FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera.
  
  At the behest of local Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th), the City Council’s Transportation Committee voted without a word of debate to designate a three-block stretch of North Luis Munoz Marin Drive as Oscar Lopez Rivera Way.
  
  Maldonado did not attend the meeting and could not be reached for comment. Last month, he participated in what turned out to be a successful demonstration outside the White House to plead for now-former President Barack Obama to commute Lopez Rivera’s 70-year sentence.

Maldonado has always been a turd, and it shouldn't be surprising he'd support a terrorist group that planted bombs across the United States that killed numerous people. This street sign practice should have been done away with years ago, never more so when it was used to reward campaign contributions by some guy, then rescinded in a fit of political pique by people who thought Hillary was going to win an election.

It ought to be used only to honor the dead, and then, someone who actually made a quantifiable contribution to the betterment of the City. That would leave out aldercreatures and most political hacks. And exceptions for those who gave their lives defending the City.

FOP Ballots Are Out

And what a cast of characters.

We've been attempting to remain quiet on this front, seeing as how the last few elections, everyone and their brother used our comment sections to spread all sorts of nonsense and stories about the other tickets. We got sick if it early this year and clamped down most of it.

That being said, we've had a lot of beefs with the current occupants and more than a few with most of their opponents, who happen to be previous occupants of the top offices. It's turned into a clusterfuck of immense proportions and it plays into Rahm's hands any way you cut it.

We still haven't received an adequate answer to the golf outing money. Big problem. The previous president is running a solo campaign, and quite frankly, we haven't gotten over the letter issue when egos got the better of a whole bunch of people. Some of the other characters who thought it was more important to go after an insignificant blog than to represent the members are among the roll call of bitter losers.

We have no advice aside from the following:

• Incumbents are bad
• Active members over retirees (or soon-to-be retirees)
• Patrol over Detectives/Units (but not Dougherty)

Take it any way you want it. Impoliteness will be deleted.

More Payouts

We're sure the usual suspects will add these to the totals bandied about for "payouts for police misconduct:"

• Chicago taxpayers will spend $250,000 to compensate a drag-racing motorcycle driver injured in a 2011 collision with a police vehicle driven by First Deputy Police Superintendent Kevin Navarro.

So the injured party was drag racing (illegally) and collided with the then-Captain's SUV, causing the airbags to go off, giving the then-Captain a concussion, and launching himself through the air (physics) and is therefore entitled to a quarter-million for his stupidity?

And that isn't the worst of the payouts:

• Also Tuesday, the Finance Committee is expected to sign off on a $370,000 settlement with Hugo Holmes, a former field service supervisor for the Chicago Department of Transportation. His lawsuit against the police department claimed he was the victim of a false arrest after getting caught up in a prostitution sting.
  
  At 8:30 a.m. on April 25, 2008, Holmes stopped at the corner of 47th and Washtenaw. According to Holmes, undercover officer Michelle Acosta was posing as a prostitute and approached his pickup truck when she said, “$20 for a b—job?”
  
  Holmes said he ignored the solicitation with disgust and a dismissive gesture, telling her, “I’m working.” Acosta told a different story. She claimed Holmes offered $20 in exchange for “h—d” and to “lick her t—y.”
  
  Acosta signaled to her undercover partners, who “swiftly accelerated” out of a nearby alley into Holmes’ path. They arrested him and searched him and his truck.
  
  Prosecutors dismissed the case against Holmes, but not before he was subjected to “great embarrassment, public humiliation and hate mail that ultimately led to his suspension,” his lawsuit said. Holmes said he suffered from shingles brought on by the stress of the case.

He claims entrapment, but anyone who has ever worked an "Angel" sting knows that isn't the drill - the Johns line up to buy some affection. There's no need to "entrap." And furthermore:

• In a separate investigation, the city’s inspector general concluded the 2008 prostitution allegations against Holmes should not be sustained. In 2005, though, Holmes was given a 29-day suspension after an earlier inspector general’s investigation found he had lewd photos on his Department of Transportation computer.

So he's a known pervert who has used city equipment before in furtherance of his perversion. And he's going to get $370K? Where do we sign up for his job?

Serious Question

So Special Ed sends out a notice that he intends to make another 130 or so Detectives before summer time. So if we have this straight:

• 135 or so Detectives already this year
• 140 or so Sergeants
• another 130 Detectives before summer

400 promotions out of the blue shirts.

Just asking - do we have 400 recruits in the Academy due to come out before summer?  Because we know there aren't 400 FTO's to teach them - they're already asking for anyone eligible to sign up for the "FTO-lite" program, and those being taught aren't even able to work unsupervised until after this autumn.

It just has a bad feel to it all, especially as it goes against just about everything in the DOJ report regarding training.

Jail Justice

Probably just a down-payment on future beatings:

• The 19-year-old man charged with firing the stray bullet that struck and killed 11-year-old Takiya Holmes was beaten by a Cook County Jail inmate while awaiting his bond hearing at a county courthouse.
  
  The beating was captured on video and released Thursday by the Cook County Sheriff's Office.
  
  The surveillance video captured an inmate approaching a dozing Antwan Jones while he was handcuffed to a chair in street clothes before his bond hearing Wednesday at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse on murder charges in Holmes' shooting death.

The guy doing the punching is himself, inside for murder, so he's got nothing to lose and all sorts of reputation to gain. Amusing to say the least.

MidWeek Bloodbath (UPDATE)

Hey Rahm, how's that War on the Police working out?

• 11 people have been killed and 11 wounded in shootings over a 48-hour period in Chicago from Tuesday afternoon to Thursday morning, Chicago police said.
  
  On Tuesday, a 30-year-old man was shot and killed in the North Lawndale neighborhood, police said. He was a passenger in a vehicle when another vehicle approached and someone inside fired shots at about 9:30 a.m.

Those are summer weekend-type numbers...in February...where the temps were in the 40's.

Guess what's coming up?

• A long, unseasonably warm weekend is ahead for Chicago neighborhoods that already are coping with levels of violence that are more common to the warmer months of spring and summer.
  
  Forecasters are calling for a sunny weekend, with temperatures hovering in the 50s from Friday to Monday’s Presidents Day holiday, a weekend that comes after a week that already has seen 13 homicides, including the deaths of three children under 13.
  
  The correlation between warm weather and violence has been documented by criminologists — though the extent and cause of the connection is debated — and the city so far this year has already seen 77 murders, trailing the pace of 88 during the same span last year. In both 2015 and 2014, there were two murders over the Presidents Day weekend.

Chicago is down 11 murders? Really? Oh wait, those are CPD numbers, the only numbers less trusted than Hillary Clinton polling results.

In any event, it's going to be a very pleasant 60 degrees for the weekend into next week. Who knows what fresh Hell the west and south sides will inflict upon the citizenry. We predict that Special Ed will be "concerned."

UPDATE: 13 and 13 if you add in the next day.

War on Police Continues

Channel 7 again - is there anything they do that isn't anti-police?

• The ABC 7 I-Team uncovered a stunning number of domestic violence complaints against Chicago police officers and an overwhelming lack of disciplinary action.
  
  In the investigation, the I-Team uncovered thousands of domestic violence complaints against Chicago police officers.
  
  In a database obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the I-Team found 5,280 domestic violence complaints filed against Chicago police officers since the year 2000. That's more than 340 complaints filed every year and on average, nearly one per day

And how many are filed by bitter spouses, exes, domestic partners and  boyfriend/girlfriend types who know the easiest way to cause problems for a cop is to make up some story and run with it? the complaints die when (A) people make up, (B) people get over it or (C) people realize they have to sign an affidavit swearing under oath that the misbehavior actually occurred, and they realize that a perjury charge and conviction could hinder their futures in some manner (though seldom in Cook County.)

We were over at the Invisible Institute website recently and just for fun we typed in a completely random name to the database. And golly, a Domestic beef and a Conduct Unbecoming complaint, and this person suffered no untoward disciplinary actions. In fact, the sergeant was allowed to keep her spot in IAD, where she investigated many dozens of complaints herself, meting out discipline and sitting in judgement over people who had histories far less then hers. She even ended up in a special study group with all sorts of other IAD cronies and, if the open investigation is to be believed, the answers to a promotional exam. Does this prove anything?

But Channel 7 is determined to make hay out of raw numbers without even the most cursory investigation into what the numbers entailed. That might take actual work, and the Department isn't going to bash itself.

(We know we're going to get a bunch of people saying that we're ignoring a persistent problem yada yada yada. We're not. We know domestic abuse happens. We also know the flip-side where what is said doesn't match what actually occurred. We just don't go off half-cocked with horseshit numbers that can be twisted to fit a media agenda.)

Indiana Chase Goes Bad

East Chicago, Indiana:

• The northwest Indiana police chase that ended in a fatal crash that killed an innocent 13-year-old girl started with a report of a woman shoplifting beer, police revealed Thursday.
  
  East Chicago Police said an officer was dispatched to a parking lot in the 4700 block of Indianapolis Boulevard for a shoplifting complaint Wednesday afternoon. A woman who matched the description of the alleged shoplifter was seen by an officer at the scene carrying a case of beer, authorities said.
  
  The officer told the woman to stop but she ran toward a Dodge SUV and told the driver to "Go, go go," according to police.
  
  The driver then exited the parking lot at a high rate of speed and traveled into the southbound lanes of Indianapolis Boulevard, nearly striking several vehicles on the roadway.

They eventually ran into a 57-year-old grandmother driving her 13-year-old granddaughter. The child died. Hopefully, the shoplifters get charged with murder - in Indiana, they'll probably do significant time.

Be careful chasing boys and girls. We hear it far too often on the radio lately. We all know they're going to run - don't let them run away with your career, too.

Really Ed?

No wonder they call you "Special:"

• Chicago’s police superintendent said criminals view Cook County’s judicial system as “a joke” when it comes to holding gang gunmen accountable for their violence.

  CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson says criminals don't fear courts. "They think the judicial system in Cook County is a joke. They just don’t fear it"

  — CBS Chicago (@cbschicago) February 15, 2017

  Supt. Eddie Johnson, at a Wednesday news conference to announce murder charges in the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old girl, said criminals simply have no fear of the system.
  
  “They think the judicial system in Cook County is a joke. They just don’t fear it, and until we create that mental accountability to them to not pick up a gun, we’re going to continue to see this cycle of violence, and it’s just silly, it is,” Johnson said. “It’s silly on their part, but even more tragic is the leadership doesn’t listen. If you are in charge of these communities, and you have something to say, or you can do something to prevent this, and you don’t, then that’s a failure on you. Shame on you, because you should be.”

We've only been highlighting the inanity of day-for-day sentencing every time a hardened criminal shoots or gets shot while on parole or when they're out halfway through a twenty year sentence for nearly 11 years now.

Start calling them out by name Ed - Madigan, Rahm, Evans, Prickwrinkle, Foxx, the Black Caucus, assorted "revrunds."

Police work isn't rocket science. Neither is superintendent-ing.

February Catching Up

By leaps and bounds it seems:

• Five men were shot -- three of them fatally -- Wednesday afternoon in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood, police said.
  
  The shooting happened inside a two-story, multi-unit residential building in the 3900-block of South Albany Avenue just before 3 p.m. Wednesday. The victims were inside the home when an unknown male walked inside and began shooting, police said.
  A police source said the shooting appeared to be related to drugs. No one was in custody Wednesday night.

On the other side of things, an arrest in the killing of one child:

• The 19-year-old charged in the shooting death of 11-year-old Takiya Holmes opened fire because he saw people he didn't think belonged in the neighborhood, police said Wednesday.
  
  Takiya was struck by a stray bullet Saturday night and died Tuesday.
  
  Prosecutors say 19-year-old Antwan Jones was aiming at rival gang members selling marijuana in his neighborhood when 11-year-old Takiya Holmes was hit in the head by a stray bullet.

But, as one commentator pointed out, selling weed is a "non violent" so this can't possibly be true.

Please No

Someone want to confirm or deny this?

• Special ED has a flunky calling around trying to get {Jedediah's] gun and phone released from inventory. The commander doe not want to sign release of the weapon because the kids is a space cadet! Commander trying to put release of the weapon on Detectives division.

How about someone call ISP and get his ability to own or carry a gun revoked?

Two? Seriously, TWO?

Once again, proving #bl(don't)m:

• A man and a 2-year-old boy were shot and killed and a pregnant woman was wounded Tuesday afternoon in North Lawndale.
  
  The woman was on Facebook Live at the time of the shooting, which occurred in an alley in the 2300 block of South Kenneth Avenue.
  
  They were in a car in the alley about 1:30 p.m. when another vehicle drove past and someone got out, pulled out a weapon and fired shots, according to Chicago Police.

So cue up the outrage....that'll last maybe two news cycles. There were two 11-year-old shot this weekend. One has already been removed from life support, the other is probably hours or days away from the same fate. One aldercreature is talking about a march for all the good it'll do.

Gun laws go unenforced - see our post directly below. Offenders are routinely released or sentenced to minimal time, so there's nothing to fear from the judicial side of things - no consequences. No one in the "community" is willing to step up. Shame doesn't work, appealing to a higher morality doesn't work, humiliation doesn't work. We guess it's time to blame the police again.

Low Charges

You'd think this would be a bigger deal:

• Chicago police say they found a stolen handgun, several magazines, and nearly 100 rounds of ammunition when they stopped a south suburban Lansing man near Clark and Elm streets.
  
  But, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office refused to pursue felony charges against the man, citing “insufficient evidence” that he knew that the firearm was stolen, according to a police source.
  
  Police stopped 23-year-old Tarik D. Coleman outside of Table 52 restaurant around 3:40 a.m. on January 26 because the Mercedes he was riding in had expired plates, according to court records.
  
  Cops say Coleman removed a Glock 27 .40-caliber handgun from under his seat during the stop.
  
  Coleman was detained, and police reportedly found a 9-millimeter handgun in the vehicle’s glove compartment.
  
  “Those guns are mine. The Glock and the nine. I bought them at Cabela’s in Indiana,” Coleman allegedly told police. “Don’t put them on anyone.”
  
  An investigation found that the 9-millimeter had been reported stolen from Mooresville, Indiana. Coleman changed his story to say that he bought the stolen gun “on the street from some guy in Chicago Heights,” police said.

Bought it on the streets? That would appear to run afoul of 430 ILCS 65/3(a-10) which, if we're reading it correctly, is a felony, though of varying degrees depending on other factors.

And while Possession of a Stolen Firearm is a felony under 720 ILCS 5/16‑16, knowledge (intent) appears to play a role in the charging - though as the offender's story changed from "bought it in Indiana" to bought in "on the street," a halfway decent interrogation might solicit information that he knew it wasn't on the up-and-up.

Too bad Kim Foxxxxxxxxxx isn't a law-and-order type of States Attorney.

More From Jed

The ghetto drama doesn't stop:

• The story gets funnier. Staredown boy aka Lamon Reccord somehow was allowed to move the vehicle and promptly drives it to the hospital and somehow gets jedidiah and they escape the hospital. Of course all on facebook livestream. Cops with sirens chasing him,, why in the fuck wasnt he handcuffed to a gurney?

So he never even got evaluated. He just up and left the hospital after his buddy Lemon "borrowed" the car Jed was holding himself hostage in.

• I was on scene with the family. They were all talking shit about the police and trying to draw officers into an argument. They were talking to officers like they were above them as well as making racial comments about some of the whit officers s on scene and even about the black officers being traitors. And the best part is, they had the Superintendents phone number and were talking to him directly!! Nothing but ignorance and drama on display. Watch them sue the swat guys for wrecking his car when they pinned it in after he started making attempts to drive into the lake.

So it was all an act, intended to provoke some sort of response from the police. This is what we deal with day in and day out.

• J'Mal Greeeeene got a personal call from S(t)upEd letting him know his "guy" was "LIVE" at BF attempting/faking suicide. J"Mal then asked the Sup to wait for him to get there and have SWAT stand down - hahahahahahahahahahahaha! The nerve of this a**hole.

And they're directing Special Ed via cell phone to have SWAT "stand down."

Hey Ed, any regrets about giving these idiots your direct number? Personally, we find it "concerning."

Don't worry - we'll strip ourselves on the way out.

Happy St Valentine's Day Chicago

We certainly hope Rahm had a nice day trip to DC yesterday.

(post was mis-dated, so it went up late)

Federal Charges on the Horizon

Sounds like a good message to send:

• After calling out rising crime in Chicago six times since taking office, President Donald Trump moved to make assaulting a police officer a federal crime.
  
  In a series of executive orders signed by the president just after former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions was sworn in as attorney general, Trump ordered his new top law enforcement officer to figure out how to use federal laws to "prosecute individuals who commit or attempt to commit crimes of violence against ... law enforcement officers."
  
  In Chicago, a similar proposal — known as the "Blue Lives Matter ordinance" — has languished in the City Council since being proposed in July by Ald. Edward Burke (14th), a former police officer who is considered the dean of the City Council, serving as alderman since 1969.

Charge it simliar to a Civil Rights statute and they can serve 85% of their sentence in a Louisiana shithole like Bill Cozzi did.

SWAT "Saves" Idiot

Early morning shenanigans:

• A man surrendered to police after officers negotiated with him while he sat in his car, causing Lake Shore Drive near Buckingham Fountain to be blocked downtown for more than an hour.
  
  Authorities were called to the 500 block of South Lake Shore Drive about 5:05 p.m. because of a man in a vehicle parked on Queen's Landing, east of the road, according to police. Police received calls from people concerned about the man after he started broadcasting live on social media.
  
  A SWAT team negotiated with the man, who police said had a gun and was threatening suicide, for more than an hour, and he gave himself up about 6:40 p.m.

Guess who?

• Guess who it was that shut down the lake front and Lake Shore Drive at Queens Landing for several hours tonight in his Facebook Live feed of his promised self termination . . . yep that infamous Mount Greenwood BLM protagonist Jedidiah Brown.
  
  But one has to ask a couple questions of the players in this little charade, first of which is where did Jedidiah get the .45 that he was waiving around throughout the video? I highly doubt he carries it legitimately.
  
  And second, how is it that when mama showed up with her entourage they were only showing desperation and concern for her little angel Jedidiah when they had an audience but as soon as they were on their own they were laughing and joking around like they were at da club on a Saturday night. At one point mama joked she was just to damn cold to be standing around waiting while the poleese did their thing so she went to sit in her car which just happened to be parked right next to the TV cameras and crew. What a complete farce!

It sure looks like some sort of "set-up" to either keep himself relevant or provoke a response.

Special Ed immediately stripped the SWAT Team.

Nice Parking CongressCritter

We'll just leave this here:

Evidently, Fire Hydrants and the yellow lines around them are racist, too.

Again with This Crap?

Evidently, stops being down 85% and homicides being up nearly 80% aren't enough:

• The number of street stops by the Chicago Police Department has plummeted by 85 percent in a year, but African-Americans continued to account for the vast majority of those detained and frisked, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

Really? And why is that do you think?

Whoops - how did that get there?

• That’s the case even though African-Americans were no more likely to be found with weapons or drugs than people of other racial backgrounds, the Sun-Times found by analyzing data on stops collected by the department for the first time in 2016.
  
  The police reported stopping thousands of people because they fit the description of a criminal suspect, were found near the scene of a crime, or acted in a manner deemed “indicative” of drug dealing.
  
  In most cases, officers checked a box on their reports for “other” to explain the justification for the stop. The department hasn’t released records to show whether further details were provided.

Well if the ACLU isn't bitching, you can probably guess everything is A-Okay with them.

• “It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” says Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the Chicago City Council’s Black Caucus. He says many of his South Side constituents would like the police to be more aggressive in searching for guns.
  
  But Sawyer says he’s concerned the police continue to stop people without a “reasonable suspicion” of a crime, which is required for an investigatory stop to be constitutional.
  
  “Were the reasons legitimate?” the alderman says. “Or is it still ‘walking while black?’ ”

You mean like certain CongressCritters profiled for "driving while black"? Oh wait - those cops were cleared after a politically charged investigation and not a single scrap of evidence could be located to railroad them.

• Police spokesman [some guy] says the department tries to safeguard rights as it protects the public: “Good policing and civil rights are not mutually exclusive.”
  
  [some guy again] notes that “most of CPD’s investigatory stops occurred in high-crime areas, primarily on the South and West Sides, precisely in the districts driving violence.”

Which are predominantly......go ahead spokesweasel.....you can say it.....they all know.

So evidently, the Sun Times is trying to drive that remaining 15% down into single digits, thereby increasing the homicide count and giving Mope-rah another few years of semi-relevancy.

Weekend Surpasses Previous 3 Years

HeyJackass.com has the Butcher's Bill:

• Stupidity Tally as of 4:00p: 6 killed, 17 wounded
  2016 weekend tally: 7 killed, 14 wounded
  2015 weekend tally: 2 killed, 7 wounded
  2014 weekend tally: 2 killed, 2 wounded

And the total may climb with a couple of children caught in the carnage.

Federal Sweep

Looks like the "Trump-effect" is impacting the federal side of things already. They're pulling down wires and issuing indictments - something we heard far too little of the last eight years:

• Chicago Police and federal prosecutors said Friday they’ve arrested 15 people involved in a heroin operation that included buyers first calling a hotline to set up a meeting spot.
  
  And that hotline was so busy, the feds say it rang about 1,000 times a day.
  
  U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon said at Chicago Police headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave., that the prosecutors believe the 15 people arrested were selling more than 11 kilograms of heroin every six months through a single phone line investigators dubbed “the Vanna White line.”
  
  He said investigators tapped the phone line and estimated 193,000 phone calls were made in six months to that one land line in an apartment in Wentworth Gardens, the public housing complex between 37th Street and Pershing Road on Wentworth Avenue.
  
  “That is, if my math is right, about a 1,000 calls a day,” Fardon said. “Think about what that means from the perspective of the demand and the heroin problem.”

And that's just the south side.

We have a hard time believing that there were only 15 people involved though. If this is just creating a power "vacuum" at the top, the south side could be in for a rough stretch as things sort themselves out with increased gun play.

Nice start though.

Something is Working?

At last check, February is down over a dozen homicides from last year. There's some warm weather coming up next week, so things could change in a hurry, but at the moment, it's possible that the gangs have run out of people to kill.

How crazy is that?

Ambiguous Reporting

This is from the Channel 7 report about the slander committed by Bobby Rush:

• A spokesperson for Rush released the following statement:
  
  "Congressman Rush said he spoke with the police superintendent and he accepted his apology on behalf of the officers involved. It was never his intention to get the officers fired, he wanted to bring attention to the disparities in traffic stop. The officers contend they pulled him over after running his plates---however, his plates are the only one in the country that is registered in Illinois and to the 1st Congressional District of Illinois. His plates simply read with the numeral one, and United States Congress. With that said, he felt threatened as an African-American elder in the community, and filed the complaint to bring attention to what every citizens in his community experience with dubious traffic stops."

That is among the more poorly written paragraphs we've ever seen - and we've been writing novels for nearly 11 years now. This can be read two ways:

• Version 1 - "Congressman Rush said [Congressman Rush] spoke with the police superintendent and [the police superintendent] accepted [Congressman Rush's] apology on behalf of the officers involved.

In which case, our question is, "Why isn't Rush apologizing in person to the officers? Oh yeah, he's a gutless pussy who can't be bothered to correct the record.

• Version 2 - "Congressman Rush said [Congressman Rush] spoke with the police superintendent and [Congressman Rush] accepted [the police superintendent's] apology on behalf of the officers involved. 

In which case, we have two questions:

• Who the fuck does Special Ed think he is apologizing to this turd for the completely legal, correct and exonerated actions of his officers?
• How does Bobby Rush's dick taste Ed?

We need some clarification.

If it's Version 1, well, Rush is an asshole, and no one expects much from assholes - except shit - which Rush supplies on a near daily basis.

If it's Version 2, it's time for a "no confidence" motion by the FOP as Special Ed has obviously lost his fucking mind, and Special Ed needs to immediately resign as he's lost the entire Department.

Shooting in North Center

Woman with a knife, ineffective Taser hits, advancing on police:

• Chicago police said that a police officer was involved with the fatal shooting of a woman in 3900 block of North Western Avenue in the North Center neighborhood Friday evening.
  
  Police said they received a 911 call from the CVS on that block, saying a woman was inside the store threatening the employees with a weapon. When officers responded to the scene, employees told them the woman had gone to the bus stop outside.
  
  Police said when officers confronted her, she brandished a knife and made threatening statements. Police said officers used their Taser guns on her twice without effect. She continued to threaten officers and then lunged at them with the knife, which was when an officer shot her, police said.
  
  The victim was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. No information about the victim has been released, aside from her gender.

Special Ed promptly apologized to the assailant.

UPDATE: Note to media morons - the deceased is an Assailant. The victims in this case were the occupants of the store and the police, all of whom went home safely.

No Charges

No kidding:

• The Cook County State's Attorney's office said Friday that no criminal charges would be brought against the Chicago police officer who fatally shot a baseball bat-wielding teen and — mistakenly — a grandmother standing by him.

Just about the only good to come out of this entire event, aside from the copper being cleared, is an increased spotlight on the lack of training handling the mentally ill that has plagued the Department for generations. It still isn't where it needs to be, but improvements are being made.

Can't Wait to Hear This One

Any guesses on the defense to be presented?

• The four people charged in the Facebook Live attack that drew outrage across the city and country pleaded not guilty at their arraignment Friday before Cook County Judge William Hooks.
  
  All the defendants’ assistant public defenders entered the pleas on behalf of their clients. Their next court date will be March 1.
  
  Tanishia Covington, 24, Brittany Covington, 18, Jordan Hill, 18, and Tesfaye Cooper, 18, are accused of holding a schizophrenic white man captive in a West Side apartment last month, forcing him to drink toilet water and cutting his scalp with a knife while making him proclaim, “I love black people.”
  
  While the man was being tortured during the several-hour ordeal, one of his tormentors allegedly said on video: “I don’t give a f— if he is schizophrenic.”
  
  Someone in the apartment also said, “F— Trump” and “F— white people” and Hill, a classmate of the victim, called up the man’s mother and asked for $300 ransom for his safe return, prosecutors said.

Seems pretty open/shut, right Judge Hooks?

Sue, Charge, Sanction His Ass

So.....

Bobby Rush wasn't profiled. Both officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.

So where's the charge for a False Affidavit? He had to sign an Affidavit to proceed with the investigation, right? Otherwise, any investigation is pretty much illegal and the officers ought to be suing. If the officers aren't suing, then the FOP should on their behalf for the improper investigation. Otherwise, this is precedent to undermine legal protections put in place to protect officers from false allegations.

Where's the apology? There should be a prompt and very public apology for this false accusation. We don't care who it is, how important he thinks he is, and what rules he believes he doesn't have to follow, he owes the officers an abject and groveling apology.

Where's the payout for damages for slander? Bobby went public with this in an effort to kick the Department when it was down. To further the schism between the police and the community by means of a false narrative - a hallmark of Bobby's since he was part of the black panthers. The video shows complete professionalism by the officers, and none by a sitting member of Congress.

Finally, where's the sanctions by the US House of Representatives? We're pretty sure they have some sort of Code of Conduct, even if it's a Congress-critters from Illinois, where the bar is set so low, it's underground. Isn't this bringing disrepute or something to the House (again, even if it's Bobby from Illinois)?

He lied, it's on tape, anyone with half a brain can see it.

Economics 101

At least the Englewood store is safe, right?

• Whole Foods Market, facing its worst sales slump in more than a decade, is taking a step that would have been unthinkable in its high-flying days: shrinking the size of the chain.
  
  Though Whole Foods plans to open six stores during the current quarter, including two relocations, the company said Wednesday that it's shutting down nine. That kind of retrenchment hasn't happened since the last recession was underway in 2008.
  
  The company, which about 440 U.S. stores, also said it was abandoning its ambitious growth target and no longer plans to reach 1,200 locations as it tries to get expenses under control.

So with everyone else being charged more to subsidize Rahm's dream of ending a "food desert," how will this impact Whole Foods bottom line?

Social Justice Warriors meet economic reality.

Vigilantes?

We can certainly hold out hope:

• The shooting of a 17-year-old on Sunday might have been "street justice" for his attempts to break into a car, a police official said.
  
  Speaking at a meeting of residents Tuesday evening, Near West Police District Cmdr. Ed Kulbida said the shooting near Racine Avenue and Huron Street came about 5:35 p.m., after the teen and someone else were seen breaking into a car. They were followed, and the teen was shot in his leg, Kulbida said.
  
  "These people in the neighborhood, they didn't like that," said Kulbida of the break-in, adding of the pair, "I don't think they'll do that again."
  
  On Monday, some in a crowd of more than 250 residents in the basement of the Goldblatt's Bros. Building, 1625 W. Chicago Ave., laughed at the explanation while others appeared uneasy.
  
  After the gathering, Meaghan Thomas, a Humboldt Park resident, said she was "uncomfortable" with the implication that vigilante or street justice is acceptable.

Vigilantes might be a good thing - bring crime under control, free up the Courts, keep the jail empty. Hopefully, it wasn't for some unpaid gambling debts or similar.