Exploiting Bauer

This is Rahm not "letting a crisis go to waste:"

• Lawmakers in Springfield will discuss gun safety Tuesday.
  
  A new bill that honors Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer will be introduced.
  
  Bauer was shot and killed on Feb. 13 while chasing a man who was wearing body armor and had an extended magazine in his handgun.
  
  The new legislation would ban the sale of body armor and high-capacity magazines to anyone except police officers, licensed security guards and members of the military. It would also require gun dealers in Illinois to be licensed.
  

Rahm's puppet is going to Springfield to not let "a crisis go to waste:"

• Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson will travel to Springfield to testify in support of the state bill.
  
  “I am all for Americans who have legal rights to own firearms only, but you can not convince me that high-capacity magazines are needed in the city," said Johnson. "As a legal gun owner, you can't convince me you need an AR-15 in the streets of Chicago, you just won’t convince me of those things."

None of which has anything to do with Commander Bauer. Last we heard, there were all sorts of rifles being used on the west and south sides of Chicago, so the law is failing. And the CPD deploys officers with multiple round magazines for pistols and 30 round magazines for rifles just to keep up with criminals. So it's obvious Ed is being used as a propaganda tool.

As far as we know, the Commander didn't volunteer any opinions on gun ownership, but we know he said, clearly and eloquently, that keeping repeat offenders behind bars was the primary driver behind lowering the crime rate. But we don't see that Bill being introduced anywhere for some reason.

It isn't the legal gun owners brandishing and using the weapons. Punishing the law abiding for the actions of the criminals doesn't seem to make sense, does it? And doing it in the name of a dead cop is truly shameful.

COPA Commie Update

Seems the COPA website has taken down all references to Mark Clark and his admiration for straw buying communist accessories to the murder of a judge.

So much for a "transparency" in Rahm's COPA.

019 Swiping?

So the HQ test run must have been rousing success?

OT is under control and house mouses are doing full tours of duty? No early ducks, half-tours, carried on the sheets?

Can we see the printouts?

So now it's to be piloted in the field:

• Apparently 019 has to swipe in and out with only 7 min window... It's not attached to payroll... after 30 days the people who have not been doing it will be admonished... then 30 days later if the same people are found to not be swiping in then could be a spar

So it's not even attached to payroll?

Does this mean we still get a "gun day"?

Pending Voter Fraud

So Rahm's new "Chicago CityKey" card will be legal ID to vote:

• Municipal ID cards that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is launching for undocumented immigrants and others will be a valid form of identification for people both registering to vote and voting in Chicago, according to a letter aldermen received Friday.
  
  Clerk Anna Valencia, who’s heading up the CityKey program, cited state election rules to explain why the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners will accept the card.
  
  “The Illinois Election Code requires the Board of Elections to accept current, valid photo identification cards and other local governmental documentation that includes an individual’s name and address, as proof of identity and residency,” Valencia’s letter reads in part. “The CityKey fits both of these requirements.”

But if you aren't a citizen, you aren't supposed to vote - except you can lie and get a ballot anyway.

Impossible you say? Not really:

• More than 100,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in Pennsylvania alone, according to testimony submitted Monday in a lawsuit demanding the state come clean about the extent of its problems.
  
  The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which has identified similar noncitizen voting problems in studies of Virginia and New Jersey, said Pennsylvania officials have admitted noncitizens have been registering and voting in the state “for decades.”
  
  But state officials have stonewalled PILF requests for access to the data that could expose the problem, the group says in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Harrisburg.
  
  “For months, Pennsylvania bureaucrats have concealed facts about noncitizens registering and voting — that ends today,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said.
  
  He said Pennsylvania had already admitted to a “glitch” dating back to the 1990s that had allowed noncitizens applying to renew driver’s licenses to be offered the chance to register to vote. Mr. Adams said he now wants to find out how bad the problem is overall.

Original article here, but you might have to sign-in to read it all.

Future Changes?

From the comments - place your bets!

• Speaking of clout. A few changes to come.
  Nieves to Deputy Chief of Techincal Services.
  Rios to Cmdr of 24.
  Lofgren to Executive Officer of First Deputy.
  Cesario to Deputy Chief D Unit.
  Vulgaris to Cmdr Area North.
  CK no movement. [...]
  Buslik to get a suburb chief job.
  Kane to get 19

Plus, Special Ed is about to load Homan Square with a bunch more bodies. Interesting times ahead of summer.

Suburban Humor

Read the narrative (click for larger version):

What was it that asshole said?

Oh yeah. "Guilty as sin, free as a bird."

Shooting

Late Sunday:

• A Chicago police officer shot and seriously wounded a man who pushed an officer during a traffic stop and then ran off in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side Sunday night, authorities said.
  
  The man was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
  
  Officers with the Area South Gang Team were conducting a narcotics investigation when they pulled over a car in the 4200 block of South Ashland Avenue just before 8 p.m., police said.
  
  When the officers directed the occupants to get out of the vehicle, one man pushed an officer and started running toward an area where several tractor-trailers were parked. The officers followed and one of them fired a weapon, striking the man, police said.
  
  No officers were reported injured.

A warm week on tap. Be careful out there ladies and gents.

Electronic Monitoring Pays Well

Who knew the opportunities that come up while you're awaiting trial?

• Chicago police and federal agents say they found more than $255,000 worth of cocaine and pot when they raided Antwaun Walker’s high-rise apartment in the 300 block of East Wacker Drive. Over 14 pounds of marijuana worth $103,000 and nearly three pounds of cocaine worth $154,000 were recovered along with a handgun, according to prosecutors.
  
  At the time of the raid, Walker was on home electronic monitoring awaiting trial on firearms charges, court records show. Hanging out in Walker’s apartment when police came knocking was Robert Robertson, a 27-year-old felon who’s on parole for a weapons violation.
  
  Both men are charged with Class X felony manufacture-delivery of cocaine and Class X felony manufacture-delivery of cannabis.

High class neighborhood. Or it used to be.

Tip of the hat to the CWB blog that is doing a great job reporting stuff that the legacy media won't

Abra Ca$h-Dabra!

$8.5 billion in airport expansion money:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel broke out a string of strong adjectives on Monday as he began to sell an $8.5 billion expansion of O’Hare International Airport, calling his vision to catapult the major travel hub into the 21st century “once-in-a-lifetime,” “watershed,” “unprecedented” and “the gold standard.”
  
  Emanuel echoed top aides in saying no taxpayer dollars would be used to bankroll the plan. And unlike previous O’Hare runway projects, the mayor said his push to add a state-of-the-art terminal, dozens of new gates and several additional concourses would not rely on any federal funding.

Is O'Hare a wholly owned asset of the City of Chicago? It must be because Daley tried to sell it and Midway at one point.

If so, everything it generates is "taxpayer dollars." Now, there might be some rules or agreements that say revenue generated by O'Hare has to be spent at O'Hare, but it's all a shell game. The money generated at the airports is more than enough to fund all sorts of things - road repairs, infrastructure improvements, pensions. But that negates the ability to skim and direct crooked contracts to political contributors.

Crime? What Crime?

Prickwrinkle plays dumb over Dart's tossing her under the bus:

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Monday disputed Sheriff Tom Dart’s recent assertion that public safety could be compromised because hundreds more gun suspects have been released from custody on electronic monitoring since bond overhaul measures took effect last fall.
  
  Dart’s own data don’t support his warning, said Preckwinkle, who emphasized that many of the defendants in question face charges of gun possession, not necessarily a violent crime.
  
  “I believe it is our responsibility to keep these matters in context and not contribute to sensationalizing them,” Preckwinkle wrote in a letter dated Monday to Dart.

If the rumors are correct, Dart is about to be the subject of a rather embarrassing media piece regarding the number of people on EM that he has no idea where they are and the alarming recidivism rate of hundreds of others. Toni obviously hasn't seen the carjacking numbers, robbery numbers, CSA numbers. Yes, homicides are down, 20 or 30 from last year. But carjackings continue to skyrocket and most are committed with guns.

Still. it's great to see the County in-fighting.

UPDATE: Here's some of the crime Toni doesn't seem to see:

• On February 2, Delonte Sawyer received probation for beating and robbing a man in Boystown last year. Eleven days after receiving probation, he beat and robbed another victim in a CTA pedestrian tunnel downtown, police say.
  
  Sawyer, of the Grand Crossing neighborhood, was one of four men who robbed the victim underground at 200 South State Street around 7 a.m. on February 13, authorities said. He was arrested late last week after someone recognized him in a police department community alert.

Same old same old.

COPA Quotes Who Now?

This is one of the COPA supervisors sitting in judgement of you:

Supervising Investigator Mark Clark quotes Angela Davis on his official web page. Who is Angela Davis?

• Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, academic, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
  
  As a result of purchasing firearms used in the 1970 armed take-over of a Marin County, California courtroom, in which four persons were killed, she was prosecuted for conspiracy. She was later acquitted of this charge

So if you had any doubts about who is running COPA, rest assured that what you imagined isn't even close to how bad it actually is. Act accordingly, and know that admirers of communists, radical anarchists, and black panthers will undoubtedly judge you solely by the facts at hand.

Hahahaha....sorry, couldn't keep a straight face. We're all screwed...and that includes actual law abiding citizens of Chicago.

Nice Turnabout

Remember the assholes banished to downstate for applauding a cop killer?  One came back:

• Eddie Negron, Cook county inmate returned from his down state transfer, after cheering the murder of Commander Paul Bauer on Friday to bond out on misdemeanor charges from Branch 34. As Negron was walking out of 26th st he was greeted by Area Central Detectives who placed him in custody for a loop robbery in which he was identified.
  
  20 cook county guards and supervisors all assembled and gave him a large round of applause, nice support by our brothers in the county.

Well played gentlemen. Well played indeed.

Academy Follies

From the comment sections:

• Kentech can’t turn the files over fast enough to HR and even after that they still need to be completed by an investigator. It’s a total scam this hiring process. 30 something investigators up on the 4th floor can not keep up with the HR director and Rhams demands. It should be out sourced to an outside company and completely eliminate the liability on the department. They just put a candidate in that had a battery to PO arrest, sued the city all just to put bodies in the academy per the civilian HR director. Give it a few years, this department will be swimming in federal lawsuits because of what they are doing at HR.

We didn't realize when Rahm wanted a "more diverse" department, he was talking about hiring criminals.

Clout = More Payouts

Someone really needs to start outing the bosses who cover for this crap:

• Chicago taxpayers will pay $20 million to compensate the families of two men killed by inebriated off-duty police detective Joseph Frugoli after victims’ attorneys argued that the Chicago Police Department’s code of silence allowed a cop with a history of driving drunk to believe he could do so without consequence.
  
  The settlement, first disclosed two months ago, is on the agenda for Monday’s meeting of the City Council’s Finance Committee. If, as expected, aldermen sign off on the pay-out, the latest in a parade of costly settlements tied to alleged police wrongdoing would be approved by the full City Council next Wednesday.

$20 million more pissed away. We've said it before, the so-called "code" isn't coppers covering for each other - it's politicians and connected bosses covering for the people they chose to hire, promote, employ. What copper possibly could have covered drunken misbehavior, hidden "investigations," excused/concealed CR findings? What's the link to everything?

• IAD

Yes, regular coppers step into shit every so often and what happens? They get investigated, fired, sometimes jailed. But what happens when there's a corrupt team floating around, not for one incident, but for years with all sorts of allegations made, all sorts of hints, and a complaints that "someone should have done something." Hanhardt, Marquette 10, Miedzianowski, 002 Tact, 007 Tact, 015 Tact, SOS, Sgt Hicks, Downtown Brown, ExamScam, ExamScam II, etc. Each of these scandals (and others) ran for years on end.

Someone did "do something." But then, someone heavier made it disappear. And supposedly, there's more on the horizon, aside from the Gang Team brewing:

• ***Off Topic Merit Follies***
  
  Two dics in area 2 stripped this week....one for trying to pick up a hooker in suburbs and the other for drug test.
  
  Add that to the pending indictment of the merit sergeant and I would say the merit system is a complete joke

Time for a complete accounting of who recommends whom based on what standards - for promotion and for special assignment. Because from here, there don't seem to be any.

Re-Purposed "Snitch Boxes"

We heard that this is where the "snitch boxes" went after we made fun of them years ago:

• Tourists leaving Las Vegas can now dispose of their leftover, legally-purchased marijuana at specially designated bins outside the McCarran International Airport, rather than hastily smoking it before the flight, or just donating it to a "chill bro" on the way out of town.
  
  The green receptacles — of which there are 13 so far — have been bolted to the ground in “high-traffic” areas outside the airport and its car rental area, The Las Vegas Sun is reporting. The Department of Aviation moved to install the bins, or amnesty boxes, after Clark County instituted a ban on marijuana possession and advertising at McCarran back in September.

Maybe Rahm could get a few of these where criminal can drop of used pistols. Or maybe drop of the keys from recently jacked vehicles once they run out of gas.

So, NOT a Free Library?

We're pretty sure this wasn't going to cost taxpayers a dime - right Rahm?

• Chicago’s City Hall on Friday for the first time put a price tag on the cost to overhaul the roads in and around Jackson Park for the Obama Presidential Center and a related golf course merger: roughly $175 million, with potential funding sources to include the state of Illinois.
  
  If funding from the financially frail Illinois government is to be a major source for paying for the Obama Center roadway work, it could emerge as a campaign issue in the race for governor and other down-ticket contests.
  
  Last October, the Chicago Sun-Times reported how the Democratic leaders who control the Illinois General Assembly – House Leader Mike Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton – were mapping plans to ask the state for more than $100 million to pay for road work related to the Obama Center.

Illinois is around $15 billion in debt with another $130 billion in unfunded liabilities. Coming up with $100 million shouldn't be a problem for Madigan, Cullerton and their magical money tree.

They're going to need a magical money forest shortly.

Oh Special Ed

Do you think he gets tired of lying for Rahm?

• Chicago’s 22 police districts will have to wait until the end of this year to benefit fully from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s two-year police hiring surge, Police Supt. Eddie Johnson acknowledged Wednesday.
  
  Johnson and Deputy Supt. Barbara West said 1,200 police officers have been hired — for a net gain of 720 officers after retirements — since Jan. 1, 2017.

And this:

• Johnson emphatically refused to reveal how many officers are assigned to each district. Nor would he say how many, if any, districts have fewer officers today than they did before the hiring surge.
  
  “I will not release district-by-district numbers because it’s an officer safety issue. If the bad guys knew exactly what we put out there every day, that would give them a mechanism to try to figure out how to defeat us,” Johnson said.
  
  “It’s been our policy for years, decades. And it’s consistent with best practices across the country. That’s why we don’t disclose those numbers. … One of my responsibilities is not just to keep the citizens safe, but to keep these officers safe.”

The trouble is the information is easily available...from aldercreatures:

• North Side Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) is on the warpath about a drop in police manpower in a Town Hall District plagued by robberies and burglaries that runs contrary to a promise made in exchange for his vote for the largest property tax increase in Chicago history.
  
  In October 2015, Tunney was one of 35 aldermen to walk the tax plank and support a $588 million property tax increase for police and fire pensions and school construction.
  
  At the time, he made it a point to tell his constituents what he got in exchange for that difficult vote: 30 additional police officers and a promise that a Town Hall district that had 468 police officers a few months after Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office, only to lose 30 percent of them would have a minimum of 376 officers going forward.
  
  Now, the latest staffing report shows just 352 officers in a busy district that covers Wrigley Field, Boys Town and thriving commercial and entertainment strips crowded with bars and restaurants.

And then, there's those pesky FOIA requests:

• As of the 1st pay period Jan 2017, there were 7,060 officers at the district level.
  As of the 1st pay period Jan 2018, there were 7,148 officers at the district level.

A net gain of 88 cops in a whole year.

Peace Loving Rappers Arrested

Unbelievable:

• In court this afternoon, prosecutors said that the accused men were in a limousine and their driver informed police that some of his passengers were armed. Cops kept the limo under observation and pulled it over near State and Roosevelt around 8:30 p.m. according to a CPD source, not 10:30 p.m. as previously stated in a police press release.
  
  Prosecutors said a gun was found under the seat where Deavonte Kimble was sitting. Another gun was allegedly found inside a gym bag that was in the limo’s front seat with Marchello Walton, according to charges.
  
  These three guns were recovered from rapper G Herbo's limousine on Thursday evening, police said. Herbert “G Herbo” Wright was seated in the rear seat and cops said they saw him put a handgun into a seat pocket. Attorneys for the men said all three are in the music industry. Wright, who is based in Chicago, has worked with Chance the Rapper, Common, and Nicki Minaj, among others.

Their music promotes peace, love and understanding among the "community"

This Is Going to End Well

Smooth move Tommy:

• Sheriff Tom Dart says hundreds more accused gun offenders have been released from Cook County Jail on electronic bracelets in recent months as a result of attempts at bond reform, raising public safety concerns.
  
  Dart said Thursday the dramatic increase has overwhelmed the office’s electronic monitoring program, leading him to take immediate steps to shore up those efforts: shifting staff, making unannounced searches of the homes of those being monitored and, if necessary, declaring them too risky for the program altogether.
  
  The startling acknowledgment by Dart came in a letter he sent Thursday to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
  
  “...Out of concern for the public safety that I am sworn to safeguard, I have determined that I am neither satisfied nor convinced that the E.M. program, in its current form, offers adequate protections given this recent dramatic increase in violent offenders,” the sheriff wrote.
  
  Dart said he was immediately “leveraging existing staff and deploying them” to the community corrections division that oversees the electronic monitoring effort, even though that move “is all the more difficult given budget reductions.”

So even Dart knows that these criminals are going to end up shooting more people and he's tossing Prickwrinkle under the bus as quickly...and publicly...as he can.

How Big is That Buffer?

Cameras are everywhere. Not just in phones, but in businesses, on streetlamps, covering intersections. There aren't many part of the city that don't have at least a few cameras looking around. But someone called some things to our attention regarding in-car and body cameras.

The in-car camera have a "buffer" built in that supposedly overwrites the previous minute before activation of emergency equipment. Same thing with the body cameras. Our e-mail asked if that is so, why is it that whenever there's a police shooting, IAD comes out and doesn't download car cameras - they take entire hard drives? The e-mailer claims that the camera doesn't actually overwrite for days, even weeks, if the camera is turned on. Why would you need an entire hard drive for what is essentially minutes of tape?

That brought to mind a comment that appeared recently regarding the 006 District alleged sex assault. The camera was supposedly activated somehow, but if that happens, it beeps regularly, letting you know it's active. The comment said that the camera wasn't actually "active" but filmed the Officer deleting pictures off of his personal phone that he was holding up in front of his body camera, leading to the charges.

We're these in the "buffer" zone? Is the body camera filming during all activate moments, and the beeping is only when audio is being recorded? So all things going on inside the squad car are recorded regardless of activation?

Any tech-savvy people want to chime in? Anyone have the camera technical specs lying around?

How Dumb is Rahm?

Pretty dumb:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday dismissed as “upside-down and inside-out” President Donald Trump’s suggestion that arming trained teachers could deter school shootings.
  
  “It is absurd, at any way you look at it, by President Trump that the best way to protect our kids is to bring more guns into schools,” Emanuel told reporters after an event to promote an academic recognition award for Chicago Public Schools. “And now we have a president who’s taking what had been common sense to anybody, both on the public safety side and the public education side, and turning that upside down and inside out.”

This said while he's being protected by a detail of a dozen cops and his "residence" is surrounded by how many squad cars with cops? Something makes Rahm more "valuable" than children?

Courtrooms have deputies, metal detectors are in use at Court, stadiums, City Hall, HQ. Chicago has cops AND CPS security AND metal detectors at every high school.

After 9/11, the Air Marshall program was upgraded and pilots were armed. Why was that? How many hijacking have there been in the US since then?

All 50 states have some form of Concealed Carry, and aside from a handful of major cities run by democrats, crime has gone down for how many decades?

Lt. Col Dave Grossman has (again) an article on the "denial culture" so prevalent on the left that ignores actual practical and affordable solutions.

What the Hell?

Disturbing:

• A person of interest was in custody Wednesday night in connection with the stabbing of a 2-year-old boy who was found dead earlier in the day in the Little Village neighborhood.
  
  Mateo Garcia Aguayo was found unresponsive about 1:55 p.m. in a third-floor apartment in the 2700 block of South Avers Avenue and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. He lived in the apartment.
  
  Police said the boy suffered “severe trauma from lacerations and fatal stab wounds.” The wounds were so severe, the boy was nearly decapitated, police said.

What could possibly possess someone to "nearly decapitate[...]" a two year old child?

Hopefully, EAP and the Chaplains have reached out to the personnel on scene, similar to how they did for the Garfield Park lagoon child murder a few years back.

McCarthy Broadside

He wasn't really a "victim." He was part of the Machine helping to get Rahm re-elected. And then he became expendable:

• Fired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says he was the victim of a political “witch hunt” engineered by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to mask the fact that the “entirety of that cover-up” of the Laquan McDonald shooting video “occurred at City Hall.”
  
  McCarthy let it fly – and contradicted the claim he made nine months after he was fired – during a free-wheeling interview Tuesday on the WTTW (Channel 11) program “Chicago Tonight” that focused on whether he will run against the mayor who fired him.
  
  After claiming he had McCarthy’s back for weeks, Emanuel abruptly fired him on Dec. 1, 2015. At the time, the mayor said McCarthy had become a “distraction” in the unrelenting furor after the court-ordered release of a video played around the world of white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke firing 16 shots at black teen Laquan McDonald.

It doesn't speak well to McCompStat's political instincts, and pretty much proves the "carpetbagger" label he was saddled with, to not realize that all political appointees are expendable if the king needs a body to toss to the wolves. This is especially true in the democratic party and even more so in Chicago.

But it's fun to see Rahm's political life flicker, smoulder and die, especially on the national stage.

How Many Chances?

And as this article asks, "At what price?"

• Last November, a deranged 26-year-old man, Devin Patrick Kelley, opened fire on worshipers inside a church in Sutherland, Texas, killing 26. High-casualty mass shootings are tragic in human terms but anomalous statistically, at least in terms of the portion of total U.S. homicides that they represent. The vast majority of murders, which take place disproportionately in America’s low-income and minority neighborhoods, don’t get nearly the same attention. The Texas church shooting does have an important point of commonality with the majority of American murders, however: its perpetrator had a troubling criminal record. The deincarceration movement, which would return thousands of convicts to American streets, presents a threat to public safety. Repeat offenders already commit a substantial portion of the nation’s violent crime—according to one study, 53 percent of killers have at least one prior felony conviction. They will be walking the streets in greater numbers if deincarceration advocates have their way.
  
  Consider a few examples. In October 2017, Radee Prince shot and killed three people in Maryland. Prince, it turns out, had 42 prior arrests and 15 prior felony convictions. About a month earlier, a police officer in Yonkers was shot in the face by an 18-year-old assailant not unknown to police. He had recently been sentenced to probation and classified as a “youthful offender,” despite being caught with an illegal firearm, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a machete, and brass knuckles. Earlier in 2017, Baltimore police named Cortez Wall, an 18-year-old murder suspect, “Public Enemy No. 1.” Wall had already been convicted of a gun charge, for which he was on probation. That didn’t stop a Maryland judge from releasing him on bail on a drug charge; he had allegedly murdered someone before his release, though police did not yet suspect him. Had bail been denied, Wall would have been in custody when he became the prime suspect in the deadly shooting.

The final example in the article is the murderer of Commander Bauer. The article continues with cold, hard facts that show recidivist felons commit the vast majority of crimes, including murder. And it also points out that "progressives" like the current city and county administrations are driving the crime rate solely through their asinine policies.

Some people don't deserve to walk the streets. Some don't deserve to see the sunshine. And some don't deserve to breathe the same air you and we do.

More Manpower Cuts

A lot of interesting links in this article:

• Chicago is the canary in the coal mine for America's big cities as civil order slips away. The presumption that life can be lived without constant fear of violent predators is already gone in gang stronghold neighborhoods, where murder rates shock the nation and the world.
  
  The combined force of the police and judiciary, hobbled by federal scrutiny of police tactics and a bail system so weak that it is informally known as "catch and release," is simply laughed at. Cook County jail is "out of control," and a gang leader enforced a reign of terror there. Only last week, Chicago's top cop admitted that criminals think the police and judiciary are "a joke."
  
  Police powerlessness was convincingly demonstrated when police were unable to stop a thousand-strong gang party that disrupted a neighborhood for hours last summer. The angry and violent men enjoying success on their home turf are not content to leave alone the rest of the city, with richer pickings. The emboldened criminal class got the message: car-jackings are spreading into affluent neighborhoods.
  
  And now, via CWB Chicago, the locally focused website that chronicles Chicago's worsening crime, comes the news that violent crime in Chicago's Loop has skyrocketed 97% over the past five years, while Mayor Rahm Emanuel has cut the number of cops patrolling it by almost 8%.

We're having doubts that Rahm can get anywhere near the numbers he promised citizens. But will it cost him the election?

Still No Comments (UPDATE - We're Back!)

Blogger is irritating us to no end. We haven't been able to read/moderate comments since late on 15 February.

Five days, six days starting as of this posting, without our regular back and forth, sarcastic readers, pointed commentary, etc. We are beyond unhappy with the situation.

We'll let you know as soon as something gets fixed.

UPDATE: Comments appear to be working again. We have nearly 1,000 backlogged and it might have been more if it hadn't been a holiday weekend. Hopefully we can get a bunch of it up and running before headed off into the night. Keep an eye out.

Nice Police Station Rahm

Leaky, decrepit, one of a number of cancer-cluster stations:

• The Harrison District police station in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side lost power briefly Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.
  
  The loss of power to the district, 3151 W. Harrison St., about 3:35 p.m. affected the transmission of its police radio zone and officers had to switch to another police radio band, according to a police spokesman. Power was back on within a few minutes, according to officers at the station.
  
  A ComEd crew was dispatched to check on the outage, which was believed to be affecting only the district station, said Erica Velasco, a ComEd spokeswoman. It was determined to have been a malfunction of equipment at the station, not ComEd power supply equipment, she later said.

The entire station had to be evacuated a few years back when the electrical room caught fire due to leaky ceilings and an explosion. We're going to guess they haven't fixed that yet.

No Bail?

But we thought that Judge Evans said everyone gets a bail they can afford?

• A Chicago man with only a misdemeanor supervision in his past was ordered held without bail Tuesday after Cook County prosecutors said he shattered a window at a judge’s home a day after he had cursed her out from his car.
  
  Michael Laureto, 36, of the Logan Square neighborhood, faces felony charges of criminal damage to property and threatening a public official for the incident Sunday at the home of Judge Stephanie Miller.
  
  Judge David Navarro, who was hearing the regular bond court call Tuesday, recused himself from deciding Laureto’s bail because Miller is his colleague in the Pretrial Division. Instead, Judge Ursula Walowski, who regularly sits in the Criminal Division, stepped in and ordered Laureto held without bail, saying he poses “a real and present danger” to the public.

It certainly would be nice to see some consistency across the board in Cook County Courts and not simply based on who the victim happens to be.

Warm Weather

Looks like summer is here already - and the media is .....over-reporting the carnage?

• Eight people were killed and at least 30 others were wounded in Presidents Day weekend shootings across Chicago.
  
  The last fatal shooting of the weekend happened early Tuesday in Englewood. Maurice D. Hutson, 24, was involved in a fight with a group of males about 12:25 a.m. in the 6800 block of South Normal when one of the males pulled out a handgun and fired a shot, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office. Hutson suffered a gunshot wound to the back and was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead at 1:06 a.m. He lived in the Roseland neighborhood.

HeyJackass.com only reported 6 dead and 22 wounded. Are the media actually doing their jobs and reporting Rahm's and Special Ed's continuous failures?

Nice Subway Rahm

As understaffed as the CPD is, you'd think that maybe other means of combating crime would be undertaken. Perhaps moving the deployed officers around to, you know, when and where crime was actually occurring. That way you could effect arrests, drive down crime, perhaps even make the city a safer place for people to live and work in it. Because the criminals are doing it, working where they know the police aren't:

• A group of young men has surrounded and robbed people in downtown subway pedestrian tunnels at least three times in recent weeks, according to Chicago police who have released surveillance photos of four of the five robbers.
  
  The string of attacks date to Jan. 30, according to a community alert. They have surrounded people in pedestrian tunnels between the Red and Blue lines, hit and kicked and robbed them, even showing a handgun in one robbery, police said.

The Transit Unit is woefully understaffed and deployed as if there weren't any riders on the El between 1800 and 0400 hours. Almost no one walks the platforms and tunnels, visible presence is a joke and has anyone even seen an effective "decoy" mission run in recent years? McCompStat himself expressed shock and dismay at how few Transit Officers there actually were (seeing as how NYPD had thousands) but we can only assume he was told "no money" by the politicians because he pretty much never did a thing about it.

Shockingly, the Tribune provides actual descriptions of the ne'er-do-wells and posted the photos. A small miracle of sorts.

This Dumbass Again

Aldercreature Arena's media outreach people don't seem capable of keeping their boss out of the news:

• 45th Ward Alderman John Arena is facing criticism for a Facebook post about a police commander who died and allowing controversial comments to flood his page.
  
  The commander was killed Feb. 13 in the line of duty by a man on parole wearing body armor. On Arena’s Facebook page, followers have made comments such as “given how corrupt the police department is I really don’t feel bad at all” and “he got what he deserved.” The post and comments don't appear to be on Arena's Facebook page any longer.
  
  Northwest Side Neighbors News, a group opposed to a planned development project on Northwest Highway, called Arena out.
  
  “This is the same alderman who took screen shots and tried to have officers reprimanded,” Northwest Side Neighbors News wrote on Facebook. “Why the double standard? Why doesn’t he have an anti-bullying code of conduct for his page.”
  
  The Facebook incident comes as Arena staff recently filed a complaint against Chicago Police Department members for their opposition to the building project at 5150 N. Northwest Highway.

Remember, this is the staff member who filed the complaints against 31 police officers:

You'd think a "Community Outreach" person would be a bit more media-savvy than your average schmuck and attempt to not alienate voters.

City Finances Police Hater

Seems the police hater and jewelry store owner is a big supporter of Alderdumbass Pewar:

And where does she get the money? Suing the police when she got picked up for violating a "No Contact" order with a school principal:

Rather than Corp Counsel fight it, it looks like they settled for $15,000, and the money flows back into Machine politicians who march with anti-police haters.

You know, an actual investigative reporter could really write a few years worth of stories just looking into crooked pols and people who exploit the system. We got this from two e-mails and about three minutes of research.

What a Lovely Person

The derangement of society has hit new lows:

It seems that she's taken down her business and personal page. Someone helpful ran her name and came up with this amusing tidbit - she has a criminal record:

• NAME SHERRI L BOURDAGE
  AGE 49
  CB NUMBER 18962132
  ADDRESS 2210 W WINNEMAC AVE , CHICAGO, IL
  ARRESTED Monday, August 25, 2014 8:41 AM
  ARREST LOCATION 2210 W WINNEMAC AVE
  ARRESTING AGENCY CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT
  
  History Charges
  740 ILCS 21.0/125 VIO STALKING NO CONTACT ORDER

The attached booking photo is exactly what you'd expect from someone with such an ugly attitude. We'd suggest looking for jewelry somewhere else. Tell your friends, too. And spread the word however you like.

(The above is all public record with attached link. Time to stuff these types of attitudes back in the sewers where they belong.)

Staffing Numbers

FOIA is revealing - look at the progress Rahm is making at the District level:

Wait a second.....why is that last number in red? And why are all those other numbers in red? Red is bad, right? Red usually means things are going downward.

More New Buildings?

Interesting info from the gossip queen herself:

• Sneed is told the Chicago Police Mounted Patrol Unit as well as the CPD’s Canine Unit has been told to prepare to move to a new location in the near future.
  
  They were given no specific dates.
  
  • Translation: Plans to move the CPD’s horse patrol’s “barn” now housed on Chicago Park District property in the park adjacent to the South Shore Country Club — and next to the South Shore golf course — may be the result of a hush-hush proposal to merge the Jackson Park and South Shore golf courses into a single championship-caliber course involving the Obama Presidential Center planned for Jackson Park.
  
  (The Sun-Times has reported plans for the Obama center are being firmed up largely out of view.)
  
  Meanwhile, Sneed hears the police Canine Unit, located near O’Hare International Airport, has been told to prepare for a move because of the construction of a new tollway exit.
  
  “That’s what we are told,” said two top police sources.

We suggest the new Mounted Unit be placed in close proximity to City Hall. Not only are the horses then centrally located to where a majority of their assignments take place, but the smell of horseshit will blend in perfectly with what emanated from City Hall and the County Building on a regular basis.

Still No Fix

As of this writing, blogger still hasn't fixed the comment sections. We've been out of commission for 72 hours and no end in sight. The comment counter tells us we have many hundreds of comments waiting, so once it's up, we'll be busy for a while.

Final Honor

You can find coverage at all the usual media outlets on the right hand side of the blog.

This one was unexpected though:

• The $95 million police and fire training academy in West Garfield Park that has drawn opposition from Chance the Rapper and college students around the nation will be named after slain Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer.

RIP Commander.

What Makes Them Special?

This is from a few weeks ago:

• Emails and text messages sent and received by Chicago aldermen on their personal accounts and devices generally may not be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, a Cook County judge has ruled, partially thwarting an attempt by a Chicago lawyer to uncover what he believed were efforts by his neighbors to use connections to a Chicago alderman to allegedly improperly block him from obtaining a permit for a home improvement project.
  
  Cook County Circuit Judge Celia Gamrath denied Ameer Ahmad’s request to force Chicago 1st Ward Alderman Joe Moreno and the city of Chicago to provide him access under the FOIA law to certain emails and text messages, which Ahmad believed would show Moreno had essentially allowed Ahmad’s neighbors to hold up the work on his home project and caused him to be fined by the city.
  
  In her ruling, issued Nov. 28, 2017, Gamrath said she did not believe an individual alderman could be considered a “public body,” under the terms of the state’s FOIA law, and thus, unless an alderman had sent or received such messages as part of an official city action, their personal messaging accounts could not be considered public documents discoverable under FOIA.

So why is IAD, COPA and assorted lawyers confiscating and subpoenaing cops personal phones and emails, despite there being no proof the personal device was used in an official capacity? In fact, when you go to Corp Counsel nowadays, they want all of your social media information, just because. No matter if you are scrupulously using it for non-police purposes - they want it all.

But not aldercreatures. Oh no. They can conduct "public business" on all sorts of accounts (remember, Rahm used non-city e-mails to thwart government record keeping laws...kind of like Sparklefarts and Shrillary did) and now they have legal precedent by a Cook County judge to hide behind.

We'll certainly be citing this ruling next time we appear at Corp Counsel. As stated before, cops are not above the law, but neither are we below it, and that should go double for the crooked pols.

Is the Machine Wounded?

This is from a week ago:

• A set of polls released Friday showed Democratic primary challenger Fritz Kaegi with a sizable lead in his bid to unseat Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios — but the embattled incumbent’s campaign says Berrios is not sweating over the numbers.
  
  Two of the polls — one commissioned by a progressive group backing Kaegi, the other by an independent pollster — gave the challenger double-digit percentage-point leads in a potential head-to-head matchup with Berrios among likely Democratic voters in the March 20 primary.

It hasn't gotten any better since then:

• Already facing a tougher-than-expected re-election bid, Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios had a bad week.
  
  The biggest blow came when an independent report found that Berrios has failed in determining the value of homes for property tax purposes, punishing poor homeowners while providing tax breaks to wealthy ones. The study backed up findings from the Chicago Tribune’s investigation “The Tax Divide,” which exposed widespread errors and inequities in residential assessments under Berrios from 2011 through 2015.

The Tribune really needs to tie Berrios to the Burke and Madigan law firms that constantly get property tax "breaks" for the big and connected that cost the city hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of dollars and costs every other extra in order to make up the difference. After all, who notices that you pay an extra $0.19 cents on your property tax bill when Vienna gets a half-a-million dollar break?

But all those breaks add up over time, and Berrios is steering the ship.

Glitch Persists (UPDATE)

We still can't moderate comments. We're pretty sure people can still make comments and submit them, but blogger isn't letting us into the comment moderation screens. That means comments are stacking up at the rate of 300 to 400 per day, and as of this posting, we stand at a day-and-a-half.

Again, this isn't us, but the platform. Be patient.

Comments closed here.

UPDATE: Still no fix from blogger. We can continue to post, you can continue to submit comments, but we can't see them to moderate, so we don't even know if they're being saved. Our historian tells us this happened once before a few years back and it took nearly a week to fix and a few days to moderate the hundreds of pending comments.

Apologies, but we'll get there when we get there. Stay safe.

Dirt on Madigan's People?

Gee, where did Madigan learn this?

• A lawyer is accusing Mike Madigan’s Southwest Side ward organization of trying to find “dirt” on a woman whose sexual harassment allegations led the powerful Democrat to fire a longtime aide who is the brother of the ward’s alderman.
  
  The lawyer for political consultant Alaina Hampton sent a “cease and desist” letter to Jack Hynes on Thursday, accusing her former boss at the nonprofit Chicago Heights Economic Development Corporation of trying to smear Hampton — and claiming that Madigan’s team put Hynes up to it.
  
  “It has been brought to our attention that you, on behalf of the 13th Ward Democratic Organization and Michael J. Madigan, have been conducting an investigation to build a case to disparage Ms. Hampton’s professional and personal reputation,” wrote the lawyers with Kulwin, Masciopinto & Kulwin. “In so doing, you have contacted several of Ms. Hampton’s male colleagues, friends and acquaintances, in an effort to get ‘dirt’ on her and determine whether she has had inappropriate relationships with those men.”
  
  Hynes issued a statement denying the claims.

Sounds like a certain Arkansas "power couple" with root(s) in Chicago hiring detectives to look for dirt to tamp down numerous bimbo eruptions. Perhaps local politicians had a hand in inventing the process and passed it along.

Burke Sideline

The corruption is so ingrained, they do it right in front of everyone and dare you to do something about it:

• This is a story about how hot dogs and money are made, Chicago-style.
  
  Nine months after Ald. Edward M. Burke led the Chicago City Council in approving a nearly $5 million tax deal for Vienna Beef to buy a vacant factory in Bridgeport in 2013, Burke’s law firm got a new client — Vienna Beef.
  
  It hired the alderman’s law firm to push for property tax cuts on the factory site.
  
  And Burke’s firm got results. It got Vienna’s property taxes slashed by an average of 70 percent over the next two years, arguing to Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios and the Cook County Board of Review that cuts were merited because the factory wasn’t operating while renovations were underway. That saved Chicago’s biggest hot dog maker a total of $308,460, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found.
  
  On top of that, records show Burke’s firm won a refund of $135,602 of property taxes Vienna had paid when it bought the factory at 1000 W. Pershing Rd., where Sara Lee Corp. used to make Best’s kosher hot dogs.

That $300,000 in taxes might look good in the city coffers about now, on top of the other $135,000. And this is just one of many businesses dealing with Burke's firm. How many others are there? And how many other aldercreature firms are there?

Please Stand By

Blogger is experiencing technical difficulties this morning and we can't access comments. We are going to take a nap and check back later.

We guess you can use this as an open post, but we still won't be able to access comments, so it's actually kind of pointless to comment on a post that we can't moderate comments on.

Services

Funeral Services:

Nativity of Our Lord Church

653 W 37th St, Chicago, IL 60609

Visitation:

Friday, 16 Feb, 2018

3:00pm - 9:00pm

6:00pm St. Jude

Funeral Service:

Saturday, 17 Feb, 2018

10:00am

Interment:

Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

6001 W 111th St, Alsip, IL 60803

Carjacking Fatality

Not the original victim either:

• A man who carjacked a taxi cab in River North on Tuesday evening crashed into two cars just blocks away, killing a woman, police said.
  
  The 31-year-old cabbie was in his taxi in the 200 block of West Walton when a 29-year-old man opened the driver’s side door, struck him in the face, and forced him from the car around 10:45 p.m., according to police.
  
  Minutes later, the stolen cab crashed into two other vehicles about a half-mile away, in the 800 block of North Larrabee. A woman who was driving one of the struck vehicles was later pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
  
  Police transported the taxi driver to the crash scene where he was able to positively identify the man who attacked him, police said in a statement overnight.
  
  The carjacking suspect is in serious condition at Illinois Masonic Medical Center. The cabbie is in good condition at Northwestern.

No word on his rap sheet yet. We're imagining a whole bunch of previous arrests, a few convictions, on parole or some sort of early release. Anyone know?

Four Time Felon

Isn't it far past time for a "three strikes" law, not to mention a "truth in sentencing" law?

• A repeat felon with a decades-long rap sheet was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder of a police officer in the fatal shooting of Cmdr. Paul Bauer.
  
  Shomari Legghette, 44, is also charged with aggravated use of a weapon by a felon and drug possession, officials say.
  
  [...]
  
  Legghette’s adult criminal record includes convictions for armed robbery, resisting a correctional officer and felony drug possession.
  
  In 1998, he robbed a Forest Park couple in their driveway. Legghette claimed he was urinating when an acquaintance nicknamed “Trouble” pointed a pistol at a man in his car and ordered his wife to turn over her valuables.
  
  Legghette was arrested after getting away in a car and running from police. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the holdup, according to documents in his unsuccessful appeal.
  
  More recently, Legghette was charged in 2014 with selling heroin to a man. Five baggies of the drug and $138 were found on him. He was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.

That's quite a criminal history there. And it didn't stop him from getting another gun. Why is that do you suppose?

And finally, this bit of nauseating theater:

• Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx stressed the weight of the charges against Legghette.
  
  “There is no more serious offense than the killing of a police officer in the line of duty,” she said.

The single biggest hurdle to getting repeat felons charged and keeping them in prison for the sentences imposed by State Law is the Cook County States Attorney's office. And to have her up there spouting off about "serious offense[s]" is an insult to crime victims across the County.

Cops Hurt in Crash

Three transported to the hospital:

• Three Chicago police officers were injured when their unmarked car was struck by a van on the South Side while they were responding to a robbery Wednesday morning, officials said.
  
  All three officers were taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. The driver of the car was listed in serious condition, and the other two officers’ conditions were stabilized, police said.
  
  They were answering a call for a robbery at a T-Mobile store around 10:15 a.m. when they tried passing a van on the left in the 8300 block of South Halsted Street, police said. The van tried to turn left and hit the unmarked squad car, sending the car into a light [pole].

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Funerals are Violent?

Gee, where have we hard this before?

• Police, funeral directors and cemetery owners are dealing with what they say are raucous and increasingly dangerous funeral processions that start in the city and end in the suburbs, a threat to mourners and anyone in the way.
  
  Most funerals and burials are reverent and safe, but sometimes the emotionally charged events result in violence.
  
  Police say the dangerous activity is usually sparked by gang retaliation.
  
  New bodycam video obtained by the I-Team, shows police responding to reports of shots fired at cemetery in south suburban Evergreen Park just days before Thanksgiving.

Body cam video? Well hell, we've posted links in the past to YouTube videos posted BY THE FUNERAL ATTENDEES THEMSELVES of bizarre traffic processions, crossing over into oncoming traffic, waving guns, firing guns. In fact, wasn't it a funeral rolling through the southside where an asshole with a bad habit of waving guns at people got himself killed by an off duty a while back?

We're going to say The I-Team owes the Chaplains at least $50 since we've covered this numerous times.

Killer Sentenced

Good riddance:

• A man convicted of killing an off-duty Chicago police officer in a botched scheme to steal his guns was sentenced to 76 years in prison Wednesday.
  
  Cook County Judge Lawrence Flood sentenced Bernard Williams, 26, to 55 years for first-degree murder and 21 years for armed robbery, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. The sentences will run consecutively.
  
  A jury deliberated for less than 3½ hours before convicting Williams in April 2017.

RIP Officer Blake.

"Swerve and Neglect"

An interesting study from north of the border...Canada:

• Ottawa police officers are “de-policing” — or avoiding proactive policing — out of fear of being scrutinized by the public, according to the groundbreaking study of an Ottawa police officer turned doctoral researcher.
  
  It is the first study of its kind in Canada that measures what has largely been anecdotal among officers who describe the F.I.D.O mentality of “F**k it, drive on,” when confronted with what many police see as un-winnable situations that will only get them in trouble or publicly embarrassed.
  
  But now, there’s evidence.
  
  “It’s definitely happening, there’s no doubt about it,” said Greg Brown, a Carleton University doctoral researcher and former Ottawa police homicide and drug investigator. Brown surveyed 3,660 front-line officers from 18 police services in Canada — from Halifax to Vancouver — and five departments in New York state. In this city, 382 Ottawa police officers participated from all 18 patrol platoons — nearly the entire front-line.

Officers are still responding to 911 calls, but so-called "discretionary policing" has fallen by the wayside. It isn't just a national phenomenon here - it's international.

A Voice of Reason

We would like to tell those reading today that Commander Bauer held a rare position in regard to this website:

• He rarely, if ever, appeared here in print, whether it was a post or in the comment sections.

Think about that for a second. We've been around in one form or another under assorted management for almost twelve years now. And coppers like to complain - it's a national pastime. The number of high ranking bosses who haven't felt the lash of the blog are few and far between. And we can't think of a single significant instance where he was the target of someone's ire. That, ladies and gents, is a rarity and it speaks to the type of decent, hard working, appreciative boss he must have been to those he worked with.

Part of the reason - he thought like a lot of us do. Here's an article from the CWB blog from a few months ago. We aren't going to borrow the whole article, but some highlights to show what we mean:

• Arrests are up from last year but what happens after an arrest is what frustrates the commander of downtown Chicago’s 18th police district.
  
  Commander Paul Bauer says there is a “high bar to prosecution” in Cook County, requiring Chicago police to get approval from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office before a suspect can be charged.
  
  “Sometimes they want to come out and...talk to the victim,” said Bauer at the annual meeting of River North Residents Association. “If you think about it, we’re sometimes victimizing this person twice. You just got your phone snatched from you. You got knocked down. Now you’re going to be in the station. You got to stay here for another couple hours until the State’s Attorney gets out here.”
  
  [...] According to Bauer, 75 percent of the crime in the 18th district is theft-related, whether it’s theft from a building or theft from a person, including a suspect who, while riding a bicycle, recently swiped mobile phones from people in River North.
  
  “We caught that guy,” recalled Bauer. “and we figured he did about 30 [robberies] over the course of a couple months. We were only able to charge him with one felony theft [because] victim identification was a little hazy.”
  
  [...] “Even when we catch somebody,” says Bauer, “there’s still a long way to go to get them off the street.”
  
  In August, Chief Judge Timothy Evans replaced all the judges who presided over bond hearings in Cook County and directed new judges to set bail in amounts more affordable to defendants. This is at odds with Chicago police, who would prefer to see higher bail amounts for career criminals.
  
  “That guy, Willie, he’s a case in point. He needs a high bond. We got him for a number of burglaries. He’s on parole for burglary. He needs to sit. We got to get him off the street. It’s just like if you have kids, if there’s no consequences to your action, those actions are going to repeat.”
  
  And when they do go to jail, they need to stay there longer.
  
  “The Sheriff of Cook County, for whatever reason, is very proud of the fact he has reduced the population of the county jail. Maybe I’m jaded, I don’t think that’s anything to be proud of.”
  
  Bauer would like to see more career criminals in jail. “You can say, we don’t know if that’s going to reduce recidivism. This is how I look at it, I want them off the street. We’re not talking about the guy that stole a loaf of bread from the store to feed his family. We’re talking about career robbers, burglars, drug dealers. These are all crimes against the community. They need to be off the street.”
  
  It is frustration police deal with every day as they try to make communities safe, says Bauer.
  
  “This has been going on for quite some time but it’s getting worse.”

We've been saying exactly this for years, and Bauer obviously saw the same things and wasn't afraid to call it like he saw it. It's certainly a refreshing honesty not often seen on this Department nowadays. And now it's silenced.

He will be missed.

Coverage

Assorted media coverage of the fallen Commander:

• Fox 32
• Channel 9
• Channel 7
• Channel 5
• Channel 2
• Tribune
• Sun Times

Comments are going to be closed here. We're sure more of the story and background of the shooter is going to come out in the coming hours and days. We will say we are bracing to hear that once again, the justice system has failed in its duty. There have already been a few posts (unconfirmed) that the shooter had a previous history of gun offenses while wearing body armor. Time will tell.

Officer Shot (UPDATES)

Downtown, Thompson Center.

Nothing further at this point.

News is sketchy, but our sources have info we aren't posting.

Prayers for the member and family.

UPDATE: Numerous news outlets reporting the member has passed.

UPDATE: Other outlets have identified him as "high ranking."

We're holding comments until official word comes down.

UPDATE: Press Conference - RIP Commander Paul Bauer, 018 District.

UPDATE: Stop with the speculating please.

Eureka!

We discovered why the clearance rate is so low!

• Since the Tribune and assorted other morons in the lib-tarded community have decided that all enforcement MUST be conducted on a racially equal basis (i.e. 33% of tickets must be written to each of the black, brown and white communities, regardless of where the crime occurs or who is committing the crime) the Detective Division is following the same model for solving homicides.

Therefore, if they solve a single homicide in the black community, no other homicide may be solved until one brown and one white homicide are solved.

The D-Unit is just being politically correct.

McCompStat Steps in It?

Rahm trots his tame aldercreatures out to attack a challenger:

• African-American aldermen on Monday lashed out at fired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy for suggesting that middle-class blacks have fled Chicago, leaving “trigger-pullers” behind on the South and West Sides.
  
  Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, condemned McCarthy’s sweeping characterization as “off-putting, disrespectful to black people” and bordering on racist.
  
  “I guess that includes me, too. I was born and raised on the South Side and still live there — happily. That also includes my neighbors and friends, who are teachers and CTA bus drivers and engineers and doctors. We all live on the South Side and West Side. We’re not ‘trigger-pullers,’ as he so callously described it,” Sawyer said.

So McCarthy pointing out that middle-class blacks have fled the city in record numbers over the past ten-to-twenty years is what? Truthful? Ouch.

And in case Rod didn't notice, 80% of shooting and murder victims are....black. And so are the "trigger-pullers." McJerseyShore didn't make the blanket characterization - that's all in Rod's interpretation. Garry just pointed out in a not-so-subtle manner what aldercreatures have completely failed to recognize in their own community. And for this, he must be attacked (at Rahm's behest.)

Who's to Blame

So maybe someone can answer this question:

• What changed in the car-jacking laws that Rahm and Special Ed have to call out Springfield to close some "loophole" that allows the criminals to escape the full weight of the law?

We have one part of the answer:

• Nothing

Sure they changed the part of the juvenile charging. But the biggest change was Toni Prickwrinkle deciding too many of one community were in Dart's jail, Dart deciding he wanted to stay in politics and agreeing with her, Evans making sure everyone could get bail for any offense (except airplane stowaways) and Kim Foxxx unilaterally re-writing State Law to undercharge repeat felons by setting the bar so high, almost no one could reach it.

Catch and Release Continues

Yet another "No Shit" moment in Cook County:

• Dozens of juveniles were charged last year in Chicago for allegedly pointing guns at motorists and stealing their cars, but most were not detained longer than 24 hours, according to court records obtained by the Sun-Times.
  
  Armed carjackings have become a major political problem for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Almost every part of the city has been plagued by the brazen holdups. There were almost 1,000 of them last year, compared with 663 in 2016.
  
  Last week, former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, who’s considering a run for mayor, criticized Emanuel for failing to take control of the problem. McCarthy said “criminals are getting released immediately after arrest. Many times, they’re not being prosecuted. If there’s no sanction, what the hell?”

We've been asking that since before Kim Foxxx got elected. We even pointed out that when Quinn released about 1,000 felons who barely served half of their sentences, crime skyrocketed.

The media has even taken notice of juveniles getting arrested for carjacking, then being re-arrested less than 24 hours later for the EXACT SAME CRIME. Or worse:

• About 700 juveniles were arrested in Chicago in connection with all types of gun-related crimes during the first seven months of 2017. Those crimes ranged from murder to armed robbery to carjacking to unlawful possession of a firearm.
  
  Of those 700 juveniles, 42 percent were arrested again. Of those arrests, half were for offenses involving guns.

The system is broken. Badly.

Correlation is Not Causation

Lib-tard "reasoning" is a sight to behold:

• The vast majority of Chicago bike tickets still go to cyclists in black neighborhoods, despite past criticism by community and cycling advocates that enforcement is uneven across the city.
  
  In 2017, about 56 percent of all bike tickets were issued in majority black neighborhoods, compared with 24 percent in Latino neighborhoods and 18 percent in white neighborhoods, according to Chicago police statistics. Blacks, Latinos and whites each make up about a third of the city’s residents, according to the U.S. Census.
  
  A Tribune story last year found similar results between 2008 and 2016. Nine out of ten tickets are for biking on the sidewalk.

So the Tribune and assorted aldercreatures aren't going to be happy until the ratio of tickets exactly matches the racial makeup of the city? Seriously? If we sat and thought about it for a week, we couldn't come up with a dumber conclusion than these morons obviously have.

How about this - most of the lawbreaking occurs in a certain portion of the city and therefore, enforcement efforts will be heavier where the lawbreaking is more obvious? Has anyone seen the homicide count for the past 50 or 60 years? Should the Department ignore the homicides until such time as they level out racially across the city? We don't think that idea would fly in the "community."

How about this?

• Some communities that saw high numbers of bike tickets, such as Austin and North Lawndale, are also disproportionately affected by severe traffic crashes, according to the city’s transportation department. Six of the city’s seven 2017 bike fatalities occurred on the South and West sides

Gee, would that be because bike riders aren't obeying the rules of the road?

Now, should tickets be the only option? Probably not. Aren't there any education initiatives underway to educate the public about how a bicycle is required to be ridden in and around traffic? Because it's a vehicle in traffic according to Illinois State Law, required to obey the Rules of the Road. It isn't "I'm a bike and I can do whatever I want." That's a good way to get a ticket....or get killed.Rahm has spent how many millions on bike lanes and bike stations in the "under-served" areas of the city, so is it too much to expect those areas to obey the actual law?

"I am SO Running!"

Here's that Signature Page we were talking about:

In the meantime, Garry insists he's running for mayor - just hold his beer:

• In a room on the Northwest Side filled with “Garry McCarthy for Mayor” signs, Chicago’s fired former top cop warned anyone who thinks he’s not serious to “wait a couple of weeks, and let’s just see how fake my candidacy is.”
  
  He also brushed off a protest by about 15 members of SEIU Local 1 outside his fundraiser Sunday at the Irish American Heritage Center as a game of “look at the squirrel” — a strategy he expects his political opponents to repeat.
  
  The SEIU members, including one in a Donald Trump outfit, marched outside the fundraiser and handed out copies of a Chicago Sun-Times article tying McCarthy’s possible run for mayor to a lucrative O’Hare janitorial contract up for re-bidding.
  
  “The theory is that I’m running a fake campaign so that somebody else can get a contract,” McCarthy said in his speech. “Now that makes great sense to me.”

We're pretty sure he was being sarcastic, but to anyone living in Chicago for more than ten seconds, it's completely within the realm of possibility.

Bad Week

At least five officers across the nation killed in the past six days, including two in Ohio:

• Two Ohio police officers responding to a 911 hang-up call were fatally shot on Saturday after entering an apartment in a Columbus suburb and a suspect was taken into custody, authorities said.
  
  Westerville Police Chief Joe Morbitzer said officer Eric Joering, 39, died at the scene and his colleague, Anthony Morelli, 54, died at a local hospital.
  
  Morbitzer said the officers were responding to a "potential domestic situation." A neighbor who heard the gunfire said it happened at a home where the occupants were "always arguing and fighting."

Be careful out there boys and girls. Watch your back and your partner's back.

Clearance Rate - Low

Murder isn't getting solved:

• Even as the Chicago Police Department touts technology-fueled successes in reducing the number of shootings in the city, detectives are struggling to solve killings, with their murder “clearance” rate falling to a level not seen since at least 1990.
  
  In 2017, the police solved 114 of the 650 murders that occurred in that same year — just 17.5 percent, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of police data.
  
  That appears to be the worst clearance rate in recent Chicago history for solving same-year killings.
  
  The clearance rate was above 60 percent in the early 1990s.
  
  In 2000, detectives were solving 41 percent of same-year murders.
  
  By 2009, the same-year solve rate for murder had fallen to 30 percent amid an outcry from the police that a “no-snitch” code of silence among witnesses, and even victims, was making it difficult to make a murder arrest.
  
  Since 2010, that figure has remained below 30 percent, falling to 19 percent in 2016 before falling even further last year.

And of those that are "solved," many aren't getting prosecuted. But that's not CPD's fault.

Texas ExamScam

This sounds so .... familiar:

• Dallas police officers who took a rigorous exam last year for a shot at being promoted to sergeant will have to try again later, officials said Tuesday.
  
  The integrity of the test had been questioned after a police major who helped shape the exam also coached clients through a test-prep business, reports the Dallas Morning News.
  
  Results from the test, which was offered in November, had been in limbo for several months while police investigated the assessment center portion of the promotional process.
  
  Police Maj. LaToya Porter, who runs a test-prep business to help officers prepare for the sergeant exam, has been under investigation.

A Subject Matter Expert abusing their position to advance those lucky enough, connected enough or willing-to-pay enough for their "expertise" in developing a promotional exam? Who'd have think it?

New Paint Job

Premiering at the Auto Show:

Looks like it's driving downhill.