Videos?

We're told the FOP is going around to Districts, one-by-one, and filming the overcrowded and unsanitary disease-ridden lobbies that we're all working in. 

Mattresses stacked up, filthy floors and windows, candles and incense fighting against the stink of the unwashed bodies, fans and other room filters in a losing battle against 70 or 100 human beings crowded into an area meant for business, not occupation.

If anyone has links to these videos, let us know. The bigger the platform, the more we can help make the public aware of what is actually going on.

Buyer's Remorse

Not here of course. Illinois politicians haven't had an original idea in decades:

• A California Bay Area county supervisor, frustrated by rising retail theft in the area, admitted that state laws were "not working" to deter criminals, as he announced a new proposal to crack down on crime.

  San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa on Tuesday told reporters he would propose a task force at the next Board of Supervisors meeting to address a wave of retail theft in the county. He also wants state lawmakers to toughen laws to lower the dollar figure when shoplifting becomes a felony, NBC Bay Area reported.

  "Enough is enough! All this retail theft. All this sort of crime. Enough is enough. We really need to look at state laws. What we have in place right now is not working," Canepa stated. "We can't go on like this." 

  The Democrat admitted he regretted supporting California's Prop 47, which voters passed in 2014. Prop 47 downgraded certain thefts and drug possession crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor if the value of the stolen goods was less than $950.

Of course, this is a political stance as California voters are belatedly realizing that the democrats lied to them and the massive upsurge in crime is directly related to democrat policies. So now, democrats are saying that they have some magical insight that was hidden from them last time around, so now only they can fix the problem that they created.

And morons will vote for this again....in California and elsewhere.

President Porky?

A couple of people who still have landlines wrote to us and said they received telephone calls from an unnamed survey company this weekend. The questions started with a computer program asking stuff like:  

• Do you support Biden?
• Would you support Biden in the general election?

The usual claptrap. It's one of hte reasons we got rid of the land line.

But then the questions took a turn:

• Would you support an alternate candidate to Biden
• Do you have a positive impression of Governor Fatass
• Would you consider supporting Governor Fatass in the general election

The writers didn't say who was taking this survey, but with the National Convention being held in Chicago, Illinois and Porky advising the national party he could self-finance a campaign, it looks like there's a movement afoot to see what the gov's chances are.

Even the media has started planting the seeds of doubt in the low info voters:

• President Biden, in private, “would occasionally admit that he felt tired,” during his first two years as commander in chief, according to a forthcoming book.

  The 80-year-old president’s “advanced years” have been a “hindrance,” stripping him of his vigor and leaving him unable to quickly recall peoples names, Franklin Foer writes in “The Last Politician,” according to an excerpt published by The Guardian Tuesday.
  

Whatever is happening behind the curtain might be a bit clearer?

Recession or Depression

We know people don't usually like reading national news. Cops are human bullshit detectors, and you'd have to be a genuine moron (or a lib-tard) to not realize what the national media is feeding everyone right now is 100% Grade A bullshit.

You probably need to know this:

• The confidence of American households in the health of the U.S. economy unexpectedly declined in August, with optimism about the future dropping near to levels typically associated with the approach of a recession.

  The index of U.S. consumer confidence fell to 106.1 in August from a revised 114 in the prior month, the Conference Board said Tuesday. Economists had forecast a reading of 116.6, down slightly from the initial reading of 117.0 for July. The prior month’s figure was revised down 114.0.

Keep an eye on things. The signs all point to a re-imposition of COVID nonsense, a slowing economy, a destabilizing global situation, civil unrest as the national campaigns begin, and manpower lows.

CFD Casualty

Seriously injured almost three weeks ago and perished yesterday:

• A Chicago Fire Department firefighter seriously injured while responding to a Norwood Park residential fire earlier this month has died, the Fire Department said Tuesday morning.

  Lt. Kevin Ward, 59, died at Loyola Medical Center surrounded by family, the department said. He will be transported to the Cook County medical examiner’s office Tuesday in a noon procession.

  Ward was one of three firefighters transported to hospitals after an Aug. 11 fire at the home at 8336 Balmoral Ave. on the Northwest Side. Two firefighters were inside the home when an emergency occurred, CFD spokesman Larry Langford said at the time.

We had no idea he had still been in the hospital. Deepest sympathies and condolences to the Fire side.

RIP Lt. Ward.

Shortage Ends!

At least until the 15th of next month, when retirements tick up again:

• Over 250 officers were sworn into the Chicago Police Department, slightly less than the last class graduate in June.

  Among 83 percent of the graduates are people of color and 32 percent are women. As the new officers begin their work in the city, a constant issue they face is tackling crime.

  Over the weekend, CPD reports that 24 people were shot and one person was killed.

WGN is more concerned that everyone knows that the diversity numbers are up to snuff rather than the total number of officers, which continue to lag behind manpower strength three years ago and a far cry from the roaring 90s.

And most of these officers have already been on the street for months, finishing their cycles and getting their permanent assignments. BJ needed a photo op, so they "graduated" numerous classes all in one go.

One for Three?

If this were baseball, that's a Hall of Fame statistic.

In the realms of criminal justice though, that's a fucking sad number:

• The man convicted of killing a Chicago police officer will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

  On Monday, Alexander Villa was sentenced in the murder of Officer Clifton Lewis. Villa, however, says he will appeal the conviction.

  Lewis was killed while working security at a convenience store in 2011. Villa claims he was framed.

  Charges against his two co-defendants — Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay — were dropped this year after their legal team successfully argued their confessions were coerced by police.

Clifton was a good guy working a shitty side job for some extra money and he deserves far better than only one of the three assholes doing life.

What's that Flushing Sound?

We will never ever see a less-lethal shotgun again:

• A jury awarded $3.75 million in damages this week to a protester shot twice with hard-foam projectiles fired by Los Angeles police during demonstrations in 2020.

  Jurors on Wednesday ruled that the LA Police Department was negligent when one or more of its officers fired the so-called less-lethal devices at Asim Jamal Shakir Jr., the Los Angeles Times reported.

  Shakir had been filming a police skirmish line when he recognized his LAPD officer uncle among the formation and confronted him, shouting, "Our ancestors are turning over in their grave right now!" Shakir alleges that his uncle, Eric Anderson, then directed other officers to fire a hard-foam projectile at him.

  Civil rights attorney Carl Douglas, who filed the suit on Shakir's behalf, said he hopes the sizable damages awarded will signal that similar acts of police violence cannot be tolerated. The award must still be approved by the City Council.

Frankly, we're surprised if SWAT still has them either. Blue shitholes have surrendered the Rule of Law to the mob, and until we start seeing some vigilante-type repercussions it's going to be this way for the foreseeable future.

Again?

This is becoming a nasty habit:

• The armed robbery problem has become so bad in Chicago that armed robbers this morning robbed a TV news crew doing a story about an armed robbery in West Town.

  That unbelievable development came as at least 30 people were robbed or carjacked during sprees between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.

Why would this be an "unbelievable development"? 

We would classify it as "very believable. Perhaps even "inevitable" given the proclivities of the electorate, the open support for "progressive" policies advocated by the media, and the speedy descent of a previously civilized society.

No Shit Fred (UPDATES)

This story fell apart faster than a Blackhawks winning streak:

• A shooting incident that wounded two people at a Chicago White Sox game over the weekend most likely involved a gun going off inside Guaranteed Rate Field, the interim Chicago police superintendent said Monday.

  Two women suffered gunshot wounds as they sat in the left field bleachers of Guaranteed Rate Field during the Friday night game between the White Sox and Oakland A’s. Officials have so far said little about where the bullets came from, or if someone brought a gun into the stadium, but interim Superintendent Fred Waller on Monday said investigators have nearly ruled out the possibility that the shots came from outside the ballpark.

The Slum Times also wonders why the game was allowed to continue:

• Chicago’s top cop defended the decision to allow Friday’s White Sox game to continue after two fans were struck by gunfire in the bleachers, but he still couldn’t provide a clear explanation of what happened three days after the alarming incident.

  Interim Police Supt. Fred Waller told reporters Monday that investigators have “almost completely dispelled” a theory that one or more bullets were fired from outside the stadium, wounding two women.

  “But we’re still looking at every avenue,” Waller said after a police graduation ceremony. “It’s still under investigation.”

The reason the game was allowed to go on was 100% political and 100% the ball-less command structure of the CPD that couldn't even implement an existing emergency plan.

Let's review:

• an "ear witness" heard a pop;
• two people ended up wounded;
• we haven't seen this published anywhere yet, but we have sources who claim the woman refusing medical attention for a "graze wound" to the abdomen was actually a powder burn.

Think either "fanny pack" or more possibly "fat flap."  

As in "where the small caliber handgun was secreted." That would explain the abdominal wound. But the media, so unwilling to do any heavy lifting, ran with the "Shotspotter" alert from a mile-plus away.

Now, some questions the media should have asked days ago. Did the person actually go through a metal detector or a physical wanding? Or is there a security door that employees and VIPs go through without being searched that this person made entrance through? And how politically clouted was the person getting the gun inside?

And we didn't even go to J-school.

UPDATE: The third-to-last paragraph in the article:

• As the EMT tended to the woman’s wound, a second woman showed her injuries to Farnan. She had a graze wound on her abdomen that resembled a cigar burn, the doctor said.

You mean like something a muzzle flash might produce? Golly.

UPDATE: A CPS teacher had the gun?

UPDATE: A CPS teacher with a suburban home address?

Another Crimesha Success!

Crime will almost certainly be down after this victory!

• When Cook County prosecutors finally filed a felony charge against a man accused of catalytic converter theft one year ago, it was pretty exciting stuff. In Chicago, the thieves typically catch nothing more than a misdemeanor charge. Even those are usually thrown out or settled with minimal consequences.

  But one year ago, on August 25, 2022, Diamonte Saterfield became the first person we’ve found to be charged with a serious felony. Prosecutors hit him receiving or possessing a stolen motor vehicle under a section of state law that makes stealing an “essential part” of a car equal to stealing the entire vehicle.

  His case wrapped up this month when he pleaded guilty to the charge. His sentence from Judge Domenica Stephenson? Probation, 40 hours of community service, and two days in jail, which he already served.

We are assured there is no truth at all to the rumor that he paid his lawyer with the proceeds of palladium sales from numerous recycling yards in the year since he was initially charged.

Remember - lack of consequences leads to even more "consequences."

Look Poor - Avoid Victimhood

This article is written as a spoof, but there might be something to it:

• August 11, 2025: Oakland Police advise residents to “appear as poor as possible”

  Residents of Oakland, California are being urged by police to pursue degrees in psychology in order to ward off violent attackers.

  “The real victims are the people who, because of their dire circumstances, have been pushed to violate the law,” said a spokesperson for the Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland, or MACRO.

  “And we believe we can better serve this community if more of those being attacked know how to provide professional psychiatric help at the scene of the crime, in real time.”

  In 2023, police urged residents of crime stricken areas to use air horns to try to scare off attackers and alert their neighbors to a crime occurring. But last year, Oakland residents voted to outlaw air horns after it caused psychological distress to the attackers.

  Instead, those being attacked should start by sympathizing with the attacker in order to gain rapport. For beginners, it’s best to start by telling an attacker that you appreciate how frustrated they must be, or even to offer them some food or hot tea.

That airhorn thing is legit, but the rest....

RIP Officer

This happened in 2013:

• City officials presented the top awards for extraordinary bravery to Chicago police officers and firefighters Tuesday morning at a ceremony at City Hall.

  WBBM Newsradio [...] reports, the city's Carter Harrison Award was presented to Police Officers Jeffrey Friedlieb and Ruben Del Valle, who shot and pursued a drug suspect, after he shot them.

  Friedlieb managed to shoot the suspect after both officers had been shot in the head.

  "After I got shot, I went down, and luckily I was still conscious, so I was able to fire back, and wound the offender," he said.

Unfortunately, the doctors couldn't remove the bullet from Officer Friedlieb's head, and he suffered from continual headaches, loss of motor skills, pain and balance issues. The shooting may have also triggered/exacerbated PTSD after a stint with the Marines in Iraq participation in numerous engagements.

After winning the Department's highest award, Officer Friedlieb returned to duty, but was on Duty Disability and passed this weekend by his own hand following a decade of fighting his injuries. We can't even imagine his struggles. Deepest sympathies to his family, friends and co-workers.

RIP Officer.

Illegal Criminals

The vegetable's administration importing more crime:

• Ten migrants ran in Home Depot on 87th and Dan Ryan and got away with tools, now Home Depot has off duty Police officers, Sheriff’s and State police in the lot. Migrants are barred from the lot.

The sarcastic side of us wants to say, "Well, at least they're stealing tools."

Actually, our normal side says the same thing, too.

$hit Floats to the Top

A few years back, someone released a "merit" list. This list was amazing for the one bit of data that no one had ever seen before. We don't remember if it was accidental, on purpose, or an internal document leaked to us from a source, but there was a column that showed how many spaces the undeserving had skipped to get promoted. 

Here's the link to the post back in 2018.

Here's the list (click for larger version):

We bring this up because of a comment the other day:

• Doing a little research it is embarrassing to see how corrupt the merit process is and the damage it does later on. Both Arleiseiu “Nicki” Watson and Melvin Branch were promoted to merit Sgt after both being merit Detectives in 620. This is revealed in SCC post in September 2018. It was also revealed how many spots they moved up after getting their unearned promotion (Watson moved up 1982 and Branch 2069). They had promoted about 750 Sgts prior to this class. So these two scored near 3,000 on the test. Embarrassed right?
  
  Yet they are still given their second merit promotion when they obviously have no job knowledge. Fast forward to 2022 and both bomb or don’t study for Lts test. Again, both are given their third merit promotions to Lt. Watson in the first class and Branch in the third. Now both are Commanders. Can someone please explain how anyone is supposed to respect either one or the merit process??
  
  Branch’s merit sponsor was the current 1st deputy Bradley. Watson is family friends with Carter and was promised her command spot years ago.

Two "merit" detectives (passing 2,000 better test takers), become "merit" sergeants, become "merit" lieutenants," never passing a promotional exam high enough to earn a spot, now in a position to nominate the next generation of undeserving.

This is a problem and contributes to problems. Morale issues, of course (there is no list of "merit goals" one can strive to attain), but also undeserved and unearned pension bumps for a fund that is currently under 25% of obligations.

Good Question

Taken to its logical extreme, this makes perfect sense:

• The Fraternal Order of Police President in Chicago proposed Thursday to use the lobbies and open hallways in City Hall to house illegal aliens. How does that sound?

  Currently, hundreds of illegal aliens are living in district police stations. As it turns out, Chicago police officers are tired of babysitting them. Catanzara said the situation is ridiculous. Migrants are using the police stations for their mailing address. How permanent is this arrangement supposed to be?

A couple points:

(1) Ever been to many suburban or out-of-state police stations? Their lobbies are tiny, barely the size of some living rooms. They're secure and the cops are behind bulletproof plexiglass. The "open lobby" designs of Chicago stations are tactically unsound and we could spend hours demonstrating how and why. 

(2) It is a fact that these overcrowded conditions are unsanitary and disease vectors. In our lobbies alone, we've had chicken pox, TB, measles, coughs-of-unknown-origin, not to mention colds, flu and COVID. We have reports of public intoxication, drug use, drug sales, sex offenses, fleas, lice, scabbies. Any private building would have been shut down by OSHA months ago, but hey, screw the cops.

(3) They're getting mail there? They're residents? That's a whole other can of worms that the ACLU is going to start whining about shortly. Combine that with the illegal and unlicensed businesses they're running nearby....

It's going to get worse as winter set in. It's going to get worse as the Convention approaches. And once they throw COVID restriction into place in the next month or so, it's going to be damn near intolerable.

SIDE NOTE: We're going to start deleting the comments that are blaming Catanzara for the illegals. He didn't send them, didn't house them, can't move them - it isn't his police station. He can file and encourage officers to file grievances, but he has no power to settle them, enter sanctions against the city, force BJ to do his bidding - and we can't strike. OSHA has refused to take action and most government buildings aren't subject to OSHA oversight anyway.

A lawsuit might work, but in Cook County with a Cook County jury?

Assist Car Denied

A "merit" supervisor denies backup to a detective asking for an assist:

• LISTEN: 5241-Boy went over the air for a man wanted for a robbery. 699 (6th district lieutenant) immediately declined the request for assistance because there was apparently too much going on. Eventually, the detective was able to apprehend the wanted robbery offender. 5241, a sergeant for Area 2 detectives, asks for clarification on whether 699 declined a request for assistance to apprehend a robbery offender. The dispatcher essentially confirms this for him where 5241 (sarcastically) thanks 699 for the help and 699 snarkly says you're welcome. Car 42 then says to keep this off the air and says she will contact 5241. This is the state of Chicago Police "leadership." A robbery offender is wanted, the lieutenant refuses to help with catching him and with helping the officer trying to make the arrest. It's embarrassing.

The link contains the actual audio of the incident. This wasn't a foot chase, but an observed and identified robbery offender exiting the train. So we aren't chasing on-view robbers....and now we aren't arresting identified offenders from previous robberies.

699 is supposed Lt. S.D. You can find the name in some of the comments in yesterday's post about the Sox Park shooting - and there are some interesting theories / second-hand information about how that shooting went down - negligent discharge anyone?

Now we have to see what Car 42 is going to do. An Area sergeant (5241) is a phone call spot, and can be dumped without reason or explanation. The Watch Operations Lt (699) is also a phone call spot, and a "merit" promotee to boot. For that matter, so is the Area Chief (Car 42).

We're about to see the Phone Call Wars play out in real time.

Tax Base Still Imploding

Since downtown is more a ghost town lately, with Groot's policies still driving out high-end tax generating businesses three months after she left, one has to wonder what BJ might do to top her reign of error.

Drive out the smaller tax generators it seems:

• GRANT PARK — A summer of park closures, rising rents and competition from unlicensed vendors has some Grant Park concessionaires at their breaking point as they allege “subpar management” from the Chicago Park District torpedoes their businesses.

  Bill Prahofer has had concessionaire contracts with the Park District since 2013. Over 11 seasons, Prahofer has gone from operating two restaurants in Grant Park and one at Osterman Beach to just one after he couldn’t afford rent on three places after COVID.

  Prahofer’s last standing restaurant is Pie Life, which sells pizza, gelato, pie, beer and wine on the north end of Buckingham Fountain. He pays steep rent for the prime spot: $62,000 for the 2023 season, which lasts roughly Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend. When Pie Life opened, the rent was about $50,000, Prahofer said.

  But it’s not just rising rent that’s ailing Prahofer. In recent years, he’s increasingly had to compete against unlicensed vendors in Grant Park who can sell cheaper ice cream, water and other goods with lax enforcement from parks officials. Special events like NASCAR and Lollapalooza that shut down parts of Grant Park and nearby roads means fewer customers and less time to operate, Prahofer said.

This owner says he's losing $100,000 year-over-year from previous summers (meaning if he made $400K in 2021, he's down to $300K in 2022, $200K in 2023). He's not operating at a loss.....yet. But he's losing profitability. He probably won't be back next year.

He blames a majority of his problems on unlicnesed vendors, and no doubt that's a big part of it. But the other part - in typical city fashion - is over-regulation. These licensed vendors have to go through "pre approved suppliers" meaning someone connected is getting a piece of the pie. 

Where have we heard this before? Oh yeah, McCormick Place. We can't remember how much they were charging for a case of soda. We had a price list up on the blog years ago, and a 24-pack of soda was something like $40 or $50. If someone has a current list, let us know. It's Goodfellas writ large - "Fuck you, pay me."

Unfortunately, the pie is shrinking. Quickly shrinking. And the upcoming September COVID lockdowns will shrink it even more.

No More Beer

Remember the "outrage" a few months back when the media claimed republicans were lying that president vegetable wanted to outlaw gas stoves? That was in the news cycle for days, maybe a week. Then New York and California outlawed gas stoves in new construction.

And those EPA regulations on air conditioners were just another right-wing lie....until the EPA published the list of approved refrigerants.

Or how wind and sun was going to save us all. Don't look over there at near constant brown-outs across the nation, solar farms destroyed by hailstorms, tens of millions of trees cut down for alternative energy farms, billions of birds sliced out of the sky and dead whales washing up on the east coast.

Don't even get us started on meat consumption and light bulbs.

Now there is an alcohol czar about to impose more "guidelines" on you:

• Americans may be urged to drink no more than one or two beers weekly as part of stricter new alcohol guidelines.

  President Biden's alcohol czar, George Koob, the director for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), told Dailymail.com that the USDA could change its Alcohol laws to match Canada, where people are advised to drink that drink per week. 

  He said: "If there are health benefits, I think people will start evaluating where we're at (In the US)."

  Currently, the US recommends that women have up to one bottle of beer, a small glass of wine, or a shot of spirits a day, while men can have up to two.

One-a-day currently. One-a-week on tap (pardon our pun.) This is what happens when you vote for democrats - Trust the Science!

Good thing we're retiring before 2025 when this is slated to take effect - we'll be able to have a decent party.

Don't Panic (Again)

Remember, follow the science (the real science):

• Well. There is a new variant of Covid. I suppose some are surprised by this. I’m not. It’s a single strand RNA virus and massively prone to errors in replication and damage to its genetics by simple things like sunlight. You’ll get several hundred variants with every single infection.

  Most of those will be nonviable, meaning they might be able to get into a cell but their RNA is so mutated it can’t produce new viruses. A few will produce nasty versions, a few will produce mild versions of the illness and if it’s really lucky, some will infect and produce no symptoms at all.

  [...]

  So, we are now to be scared of the ‘highly contagious Pirola variant‘ that is so mutated you’ll need to get yet another shot of mRNA death juice because the seventeen or so jabs you’ve had won’t protect you. Look at the symptoms. This virus is doing what they all do. It’s become a bloody cold. Seeing much of SARS or MERS or swine flu or bird flu lately? Of course not. They’ve joined the ranks of hundreds of viruses that have become just a cold or mild flu.

This author follows the real science:

• mutations trend toward "more contagious, less illness"
• masks don't and never worked
• everyone is going to catch it or already has
  
• 99.99% survivable
  

As stated before, don't get caught up in the BS. They're lying to you. If they want to stop disease vectors, they'll empty the lobbies and that ain't happening. If they wanted to protect the country, the border would be closed.

Fireworks at Ballpark (UPDATE)

Shooting at Comiskey US Cellular Guaranteed Rate Sox Park last night:

• A shooting injured two women in the outfield seating area at Guaranteed Rate Field during Friday night’s White Sox game, Chicago police reported.

  A police spokesperson on social media said late Friday that the department would soon provide information on a “shooting incident,” and a news release was made available early Saturday.

This is probably not true:

• A statement from the White Sox said it was unclear whether the bullets were fired from inside or outside the park.

You ever think about shooting into what is essentially a giant bowl? You have to shoot across a parking lot, over a wall, then have the bullet drop. Given that there's at least one witness who heard a pop, it would seem a safe bet that someone got a gun in past security. But maybe we're wrong.

MLB and the White Sox can't be happy with a "lax security" story getting out there or the old ball park will become a shooting gallery for ne'er-do-wells who know how Swiss-cheesy security is and what's left of the Sox fan base fades away.

UPDATE: this is a stretch...but the media is going to roll with it:

• A bullet that struck two women at a Chicago White Sox game on Friday evening may have landed inside the ballpark after being fired about a mile away.

  That’s the current line of thinking among Chicago cops tasked with investigating the incident, which unfolded a little before 7:30 p.m. as the Sox were blistered by the Oakland Athletics.

The CWB report even has an alleged photo of the bullet. Looks to be 9mm or smaller, but by golly, the Department tracked down a "shotspotter" incident a mile away and is going to claim it came from there.

Any physics majors reading? We know a 9mm can travel upwards of two miles in optimal conditions, but in thick, humid air, 600 feet above sea level, launched at what angle to clear a wall that's four or five stories high.....

Color us skeptical.

Oh Larry

Following in a long line of shady supernintendos:

• In 1997, Larry Snelling was implicated as one of several officers who coerced a man into bringing them a gun by threatening they’d plant drugs on him if he didn’t cooperate. According to records obtained by the Weekly, a sting operation conducted by Internal Affairs as a result of a complaint the man filed snared three officers close to Snelling, including his partner at the time, in the scheme.

  Snelling is Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pick to be the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD’s) next superintendent. He was short-listed for the top position by the new Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) after a months-long search, and Johnson announced he’d be his choice on August 14. The City Council has yet to confirm him. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to the Weekly’s questions by press time.

This would follow in a long a storied tradition of a superintendent having one of more skeletons in the closet, enabling the political administration to keep a tight hold on them. Just picking over the last 30 years:

• Rodriguez hanging with Mob felons
• Cline on the periphery of the Marquette 10
• Weis ran from gunfire and was part of assorted feeb malfeasance
• McCarthy had his NYPD scandals and that thing over in Niles
  
• (interim) Escalante sidejob as Mr Six at Great America
  
• (interim) Starks - good lord!
  
• Johnson's johnson
• (interim) Beck....we don't remember a Beck scandal
• Brown's son in Texas and the Consent Decree teaching connections
• (interim) Waller...TBA, but he's a COVIDiot tool
  

Snelling was cleared of any wrong doing while his three partners took five days each. 

You know what this "scandal" tells us? That he was working the streets, same as we were. That he was making arrests, same as we were. That he may have been making deals....like almost everyone was! Little fish gives up bigger fish gives up huge fish.

It was a different time. Different rules. Different expectations. To judge yesterday's actions by the new restrictive rules, laws, decrees, whatever, is a media trick to hamstring the police, in this case, before Larry even makes his first official move. It's crap. Other realistic, more recent "scandals" may come to light in the near future, but this one was adjudicated and closed in the 90s.

Scaring the Ivy Leaguers

Kids went back to college this week. The children of the "elite" arrived at their Ivy League residences, ready to make connections and learn how to be the future "elite." We don't say they arrived to learn, because they didn't - they arrived to be indoctrinated into the secrets of "elite-hood."

Then that nasty police union went and frightened them by exposing them to reality:

• Yale’s police union helped introduce first-year students and their families to New Haven this weekend with death-decorated flyers warning them not to go out after dark, to stay on campus, and to avoid using public transportation — inspiring the mayor and a host of top city and Yale officials to denounce the apparent contract negotiation ploy as ​“shameful” and ​“unbelievably offensive.” 

  According to Yale Police Chief (and former New Haven top cop) Anthony Campbell, Yale’s police union — known as the Yale Police Benevolent Association — handed out flyers to new Yale students and their families this past move-in weekend that were entitled, ​“Welcome to Yale: A Survival Guide for First-Year Students of Yale University.”

These flyers are full of facts that frighten "elite"  people:

• “The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high,” the flyer reads, ​“and it is getting worse.” It states that murders have doubled so far this year, and burglaries and motor vehicle thefts are way up.

  “Nevertheless, some Yalies do manage to survive New Haven and even retain their personal property,” the flyer continues. ​“The following guidelines have been prepared by the Yale Police Benevolent Association to help you enjoy your stay at Yale in comfort and safety. Good luck.”

  Beneath that message is a drawing of a cloak-enshrouded skull, followed by five survival tips, including: 1) Stay off the streets after 8 p.m.; 2) Do not walk alone; 3) Avoid public transportation; 4) Remain on campus; and 5) Protect your property.

There's a picture of the flyer at the link. It's a work of art. 

The snowflakes were outraged and pointed to the fact that the Yale PD is in the midst of contentious contract negotiations with the college and this tactic of exposing the snowflake children of "elites" to the realities of voting like a "progressive" was just plain mean!

The flyer was a knockoff of a 1975 NYPD scare tactic, but the reaction from the Yale college and police administrations is priceless.

City Lawsuit

When we first heard this, we were cynically amused that BJ is trying to distract from his so-far useless administration's first one-hundred days:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson announced today that the City has filed a civil lawsuit against Kia America, Inc., Kia Corporation, Hyundai Motor America, and Hyundai Motor Company for their failure to include industry-standard engine immobilizers in multiple models of their vehicles, resulting in a steep rise in vehicle thefts, reckless driving, property damage, and a wide array of related violent crimes in Chicago.

  The complaint, which was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, alleges that Kia and Hyundai failed to equip their U.S. cars, sold between 2011 and 2022, with vital anti-theft technology, which almost all other car manufacturers made a standard feature over a decade ago and which Kia and Hyundai include in their vehicles sold outside of the country. The Complaint alleges that Kia and Hyundai deceptively assured consumers that these vehicles possessed “advanced” safety features, despite knowing about this critical defect and its consequences.

So the basis is deceptive advertising? That Kia and Hyundai didn't include a non-required piece of equipment that didn't affect safety at all? How many Kias/Hyundais does the city own? Oh, they're trying to recover costs from having to...enforce the law? What?

That sounds like a non-starter we told ourselves.....until we read this:

• Kia and Hyundai have agreed to a class-action lawsuit settlement worth about $200 million over claims that many of the Korean automakers' cars are far too vulnerable to theft, according to lawyers for the companies and the owners.

  The settlement covers some 9 million owners of Hyundai or Kia vehicles made between 2011 and 2022 and have a traditional "insert-and-turn" steel key ignition system, lawyers for the owners said in a press release on Thursday.

  Compensation to owners includes up to $145 million in out-of-pocket losses that will be distributed to people who had their vehicles stolen. Affected owners can be reimbursed up to $6,125 for total loss of vehicles, and up to $3,375 for damages to the vehicle and personal property, as well as insurance-related expenses.

Kia and Hyundai were trying to settle? For $200 million? Again, for a non-required piece of equipment that didn't cause a single crash, injury or fatality by its non-inclusion. We're not talking about design flaws, tearing seat belts or Pinto gas tanks.

So now we don't know if BJ is some kind of legal savant or what. But oh no! A judge has refused to approve the settlement:

• The proposed settlement would offer vehicle owners cash payments for theft-related damage and a voluntary recall to update theft-protection software. But U.S. District Judge James Selna raised concerns about the process for calculating payments and the adequacy of the software update in preventing future thefts.

As usual, the only ones getting rich are the lawyers.

Coming Soon?

This is the direction all blue shitholes are headed:

• Seattle Councilwoman Lisa Herbold (D) recently announced they are hiring to have six people to be an alternative response to some 9-1-1 calls as the city is grappling with an undermanned police force, a problem the city has faced since the BLM riots in 2020. 

  Herbold explained the people who will be responding to calls will be unarmed and the police department will be aware of the calls and it will be up to them if they will be on the scene as well.

  "Well, you know, usually I’m complaining about how delayed we are and how frustrated I am that we’re not meeting our benchmarks for developing this program. But today I’m really, really happy to report that the city is hiring for the six positions for its first pilot alternate response team. It’s going to be a way for 911 operators to dispatch calls to somebody other than police somebody other than fire, a crisis responder who is unarmed," said Herbold.

We don't know their hours, if they work "watches," if they're all out there at once, or only working weekends. 

There are only six of them.

We're setting the over/under at an "alternate response team" casualty (wounding, maiming or fatality) at forty-eight hours or two tours of duty. The first twenty-four hours, the hypes in the hood are going to be amazed that this program is actually sending them unarmed victims and the police aren't required to escort them anywhere.

Check out the embedded links in the article - the ...um... conditions of employment are ...um... amazing.

Mystery Solved

16th and 17th District Chicago Police Scanner page covering some downtown issues:

• According to Chicago Police, 7 people were taken into custody for operating illegal businesses without licenses on public park property at on the 0-100 block of W Van Buren. There have been numerous complaints regarding fights, drug usage, prostitution, drinking by local residents. Pritzker Park was recently the focus of a Block Club story that detailed haircuts at the park by migrants. Alderman Lamont Robinson recently placed a temporary police camera at Plymouth and Van Buren as a result of the complaints.

That must be the plan:

• trash the economy via a "pandemic"
• import tens of thousands of illegals
• arrest and cite them for operating illegal businesses without paying taxes, license fees or permits
• economy recovers and all of our city, state and national debt problems are solved!

Ah democrats, is there anything they can't do? 

Besides the usual we mean.

Interesting Map

It's a precinct by precinct breakdown of how each voted:

• Block Club Chicago link
  

Aren't computers wonderful? 

We hadn't seen a map that drilled down this far into the databases. You hover over the map with your cursor and it'll show you exactly how the area voted. There are some very....distinct....patterns we can see.

Friendly Reminder

Some commentators have been posting entire articles in the comment sections. We've requested you not do that on numerous occasions. We even have a note in the right hand side of the blog.

• RULE #8: Post a link, not the whole article - "fair use" is OK, but people frown on stealing entire content.

A lot of sites (not this one) are paid "per-click" or set ad rates on a "per-visit" basis, which is why we link to articles with a sample paragraph or three and often say, "click the link for the full story" or something similar. Those writers spent time and effort on the article and deserve a true accounting of visits.

Plus, a massive WALL OF TEXT isn't attractive to readers and they skip it.

Comments closed here.

Risk Manag....WTF???

We had a comment last night in the post about how police actually saw an armed robbery taking place, but were ordered to not chase the criminals. It said something along the lines of (paraphrased):

• Thanks for showing that you support the criminals and have abandoned the honest citizens

As that ran afoul of Rule #9 posted on the right side main page, we deleted it. We didn't voice support of any such thing. What we said was:

• If it comes down to observing crime and writing paper versus a few years at 219 S Dearborn listing our assets before a judge, we'll be the best damn observer that the politicians and voters want us to be. We'll be gone soon anyway, and far away from here.

Then we went through our e-mail (thanks to everyone who writes by the way). Someone sent us two links about the NYPD, both dealing with the recent firing of a Police Chief.

Chief of what, you may ask?

• A top chief who was in charge of the NYPD’s risk management bureau — and who expressed concern about the department’s massive surge in vehicle pursuits — was ousted last week by the newly appointed police commissioner, according to multiple sources.

  Chief Matthew V. Pontillo, who served as chief of the Risk Management Bureau since 2021, .... 

  As the number of vehicle pursuits skyrocketed by nearly 600%, as THE CITY previously reported, Pontillo was critical of the aggressive practice, recently going so far as to flag 20 officers involved in such pursuits for additional training or supervision.

Comedy things first - a "Risk Management Bureau"? How the Hell didn't CPD steal this idea? We've been stealing borrowing NYPD policy since the days of Phil Cline, and we didn't grab this one? For f#$%s sake, we even took one of their top brass, got him a divorce and a stalker before he settled down, and we couldn't steal acquire a "Risk Management Bureau"????

We are sorely disappointed.

Now the serious part - a "Risk Management Bureau"? Are you f#$%ing kidding us? Go back and read that description of this jagoff's job:

• ...who expressed concern about the department’s massive surge in vehicle pursuits...
• ...was charged with identifying potential misbehavior and taking steps to prevent it...
• ...was critical of the aggressive practice, recently going so far as to flag 20 officers involved in such pursuits for additional training or supervision.

The second link is the old NYPD Rant.

New York is similar to Chicago in many ways - out of control crime, robberies/car jackings out the ass, thefts at every turn, taxpayers fleeing, businesses closing, illegals flooding social services....your basic democrat run shithole city. And in the middle of all this, you have a pencil pusher looking for cops who  he thinks (or he has been told to think) are "too aggressive."

You know what we used to call those officers back in the day? The ones always in with an arrest or three, recovering hot cars and guns  all over the District, Felony Court a couple times a week?

• Good Cops

Behind their backs, we'd teasingly call them "shit magnets" but the fact is, they were good cops, doing good work, making good arrests. Now, there's an entire Bureau of the NYPD dedicated to stomping this trait out of their police officers. Read some more of this article:

• Pontillo also served as a liaison to the federal monitor installed in November 2014 to address the NYPD’s unconstitutional implementation of the policing tactic known as stop-and-frisk. In that capacity, he also expressed concern over the NYPD’s new enforcement unit known as the Community Response Team (CRT), the sources said, for operating with a lack of transparency.

Ah...part of a federal monitor team! Hello Consent Decree people! And a CRT group??? See, CPD steals everything from NYPD! We just changed one letter!

The rest of the article outlines how crime, particular false registrations and unlicensed vehicles were terrorizing Big Apple citizens, so this CRT unit concentrated on enforcing actual laws...you know, those pesky things passed by the City Council. When enforcement got too effective, a boatload of officers were tagged for counseling and discipline for having the audacity of doing what they were hired to do. 

Our anonymous (and now deleted) commentator who thinks we sided with the criminals?

• You elected "progressives" 
• You bought into the "there's no such thing as a bad boy" narrative
• You probably even believed a nearly 18-year-study on racist CPD traffic stops that hasn't produced a single incidence of racial profiling

YOU abandoned US cupcake. Go play in traffic. 

Maybe a hijacked Kia will run your dumb ass over.

They're Baaaaaack!

Well, not yet. but they're coming:

• Nearly 100 asylum-seekers who made a home at a community-run shelter in Pilsen must leave the building by Sept. 3 due to a confluence of bad luck that includes a lack of funding and volunteers.

  Officials learned last week of the fate of the building said Lucia Moya, chief of staff of Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, whose office initially helped to gather volunteers and stakeholders in the community to open the space as a shelter in May to relieve crowding at the 12th District police station on the Near West Side.

012 had been consistently among the top couple of stations housing one-hundred or more illegals on a daily basis this year. The assorted outbreaks of diseases would keep a third-world shithole on a UN warning list, but the city keeps stuffing them in. And now there are a potential hundred headed back.

Kind of Toasty Out There

Good thing Fatass and other democrats have been shutting down nuclear plants, outlawing coal plants and refusing to approve any reactor plans. Not that we'd need the power for air conditioners and electric vehicles:

• Thousands of customers were left without power in Wisconsin and Illinois amid a heat wave that has driven heat indices north of 115 degrees on Wednesday.

  According to WE Energy in Wisconsin, nearly 4,000 customers without power in areas around Kenosha County at approximately 3 p.m., but nearly all of those customers had seen their power restored by the mid-afternoon.

  [...]

  According to ComEd, approximately 1,146 customers in Illinois were without power as of 5:30 p.m., primarily in Cook County, with 1,018 customers impacted.

Alternative power is a freaking pipe dream at this point. Everyone saw the report out of Scotland, right?

You didn't? Oh...the American media must not have covered it:

• Amid a push to build more wind turbines, Scottish Tory MSP Liam Kerr said almost 16 million trees had been felled in Scotland to accommodate wind farms. He cited that concerns over this development had been raised to him “by communities all over the country” and said the public would be “astonished” by the total number of trees cut down.

  According to a report by The Telegraph: “Mairi Gougeon, the Rural Affairs Secretary, estimated that 15.7 million trees had been felled since 2000 in land that is currently managed by agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) - the equivalent of more than 1,700 per day.

Sixteen million trees - just in Scotland - destroyed in the name of "green energy." We could go on for days, but the heat is supposed to break tonight after just two days, so we won't. 

Stay hydrated boys and girls.

Fix All of This...Or...

Everyone is whining about this:

• If you were in Logan Square yesterday and you did not get robbed, you probably know someone who did. The neighborhood was the hardest hit, as no fewer than 23 robberies involving nearly 30 victims were reported, mostly in two surges: overnight and early evening.

  And, for the second time in less than a week, Chicago police officers witnessed an armed robbery in progress but did not try to catch the offenders, who continued to rob innocent victims on the street freely.

But almost no one (except some alternative media outlets) is reporting this:

• In the steamy summer of 2020, months that were full of violence and social unrest, one of the highest-profile crimes was a murder that occurred on the Wabash Avenue bridge, steps from the Trump Tower.

  Chicago police released surveillance video of the shooting, resulting in two men being charged with first-degree murder.

  Two weeks ago, a judge found one of them not guilty in a bench trial. Prosecutors immediately dropped all charges against the second man. And a third man authorities identified as a shooter in the case has never been charged.

  Curious to know how a case that prosecutors said included video evidence of both accused men at the scene could end without a conviction, we ordered a transcript of the court hearing in which Judge Carol Howard handed down her finding.

The judge didn't think the object being pointed was a gun, despite numerous shell casings recovered from right where a gun would have been fired. Message Received Your Honor!

We aren't big fans of not chasing criminals. We did it for years, tens of years. We put a few in prison, too. Even got to shake the supernintendo's hand once.

We aren't big fans of losing our pensions though. Nor are we fans of giving what we've earned in terms of property, retirement deferred compensation, and other assets over the years to some bust out. We learned the risks of that at Federal Court when an outside lawyer - not Corp Counsel - destroyed the plaintiff's case. After that, we were more meticulous....and wrote better paper.

If it comes down to observing crime and writing paper versus a few years at 219 S Dearborn listing our assets before a judge, we'll be the best damn observer that the politicians and voters want us to be. We'll be gone soon anyway, and far away from here.

Amusing Observation

So this was brought to our attention by the lame-stream media:

• A woman arrested Monday in Chicago faces federal charges for allegedly sending emails threatening the lives of former President Donald Trump and his teenage son, Barron.

  Tracy Fiorenza, 41, made her initial court appearance at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, hours after being arrested at her Chicago residence Monday morning.

  Judge Jeffrey Cummings told Fiorenza — who appeared in court wearing blue athletic shorts and a green tank top with a large skull printed on the front — that she’ll be transferred to Florida, where the charges were filed.

The Tribune article is similarly vague, but does note:

• A Facebook page linked to Fiorenza and still publicly viewable stated she is a former social studies teacher and attended Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park.

A teacher? Who would have thought a mentally deranged loon would be a teacher?

And we did a a little more digging, all the way to WTTW.com:

• According to Fiorenza’s social media, she previously worked for Chicago Public Schools. The district confirmed Monday that was a CPS employee from Sept. 22, 2019 until her termination Aug. 30, 2020.

Someone far wiser than us said that the most insidious and corrupting power the media has is the power to ignore. By leaving out certain facts - refusing to cover a story fully - they dictate the narrative by the news cycle, hour by hour.

We titled this "amusing" because we noticed whenever anyone even spends a few weeks at the Police Academy, they are always and forevermore referred to as "former Chicago Police Officer" no matter the situation? Doesn't matter if they were previously a tradesman, Gold Coast professional, airline worker, whatever. 

But a psycho teacher? You gotta dig for the info.

Na Na, Hey Hey

MLB's red-headed stepchild might be leaving?

• What’s the future for the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field?

  According to a Crain’s Chicago Business report, the Sox are considering a move from the place they’ve called home since 1991 when the team’s lease expires six seasons from now.

  No decision is imminent, according to the report, which lists a new stadium in the city or suburbs and relocating to Nashville, Tenn., among the possibilities.

  The article also details that Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf might look to sell the Sox.

Well, the White Sox have always been an afterthought in this town. The only team receiving less coverage from the media was the Blackhawks until the multiple Stanley Cup runs, and even that is a distant memory. NHL coverage is headed back to what it was in the 80's...and deservedly so after the past few years.

Usually in these cases, the team/team owner is looking for some sort of leverage for their bottom line. Reinsdorf got a $137 million stadium while threatening to move the team to Florida. Thirty-one years later, the stadium ashtrays must be full, and Jerry might sell the team to a consortium looking at Tennessee for a new home, so there isn't an obvious end game aside from getting out.

Chicago is broke, Illinois is broke, the state population is shrinking, the Bears are thisclose to leaving. We can only imagine what BJ and JB might offer with the cupboards barren.

Inspectors Attack!

Unsubstantiated rumor, blowing up all over the comments and (we're told) assorted social media:

• All those rumors about inspectors were spot on. Area and TAC teams got hit today.
  
  Inspectors got 25 SPAR’s today on 1 Homan team, 1 area team and 2 TAC teams and a detective during 2nd watch
  
  - 4 no seatbelts
  - 3 no in-car-camera
  - 9 no vest cover
  - 3 beards / no bump card
  - 1 dark windshield tints
  - 1 suspended license plate
  - 1 replica star
  - 1 multi-colored Jordans as uniform shoes
  - 1 mullet haircut
  - 1 no taser / mace / baton
  
  Buckle up, boys and girls and bend over.

We saw Larry at a press conference today, still wearing two-stars, so he isn't "in charge" per se. But we could see this and we offer the following advice:

• wear your seatbelt - it's actually a State Law;
• get a camera ticket number if it's non-functional. It's easy, just ask your sergeant;
• no vest cover? you get a uniform allowance, go get one. If you order a vest thru the Memorial Foundation, you even get a voucher for a free cover;
• if you don't have a dermatologist willing to sign a bump card, we can't help you;
• personal car infractions are the easiest thing to remedy;
• they still make replicas? We had to hunt down a jeweler two decades ago for ours and then we only carried it in our wallet;
• plain clothes sneakers for plain clothes is cool. If you're in the blue suit, it isn't difficult to find black sneakers;
• mullets? We harped on this years ago - if you get tagged for a haircut, make sure that EVERYONE gets tagged for a haircut. You know what we're talking about. Same for jewelry and dreads - the standards are STANDARDS...across the board. Document it;
• taser/mace/baton? Good lord people, how much do they have to emphasize "de-escalation"? Everything is deescalation now. At least have the tool nearby, even if you never intend to use it.

Don't give the inspector the easy movers. Make them work for their numbers....actually, maybe don't fix any of the easy ones. That way we smarter and older guys can skate on the other stuff.

Porky Pissing Away $$$

Governor Fatass retreats behind the typical government solution to all problems - throw money at it:

• Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation Friday that aims to combat the state’s food deserts by sending $20 million to grocers to open and expand stores in underserved rural towns and low-income neighborhoods.

  The measure establishes the Illinois Grocery Initiative, a new policy that will support existing grocers and help encourage new grocers by allowing stores getting grants to be able to receive tax credits and other incentives.

  According to a 2021 Illinois Department of Public Health report, there were 3.3 million Illinois residents living in a food desert.

Anyone know why there are food deserts around? 

Because the corporations can't do business at the prices it would require to actually, you know, make a profit. So here comes the State to make the corporations profitable....at taxpayer expense....which isn't the function of government.

Anyone know what the typical "shrinkage" rate is for a big box store? It's usually built into the prices you pay at checkout. We're told that at certain addresses in certain neighborhoods catering to non-demonized demographics, the rate is in the tens-of-thousands of dollars on a daily basis.

It's usually known as "sleeping in the bed you made."

San Fran Tours

In the city formerly known as The Golden City, some joker had actually laid out a tour route of the crappier areas. The New York Post actually drove/walked it:

• San Francisco’s ‘doom loop’ route really does give people a front row seat to the city’s descent into homelessness, drug use and urban decay.

  Spurred by a local joker who has organized a tour of the California city’s most blighted areas, The Post walked the proposed route to see if the “worst of San Francisco” really was on offer.

  Community activist JJ Smith generously acted as an ad-hoc tour guide for the “landmarks” on a 1.5-mile trip, which took in City Hall, Union Square, Mid-Market and the Tenderloin District — areas where a one bedroom apartment typically retails for $750,000 and upward.

  The once bustling areas of Market Street and Union Square were homes to such esteemed stores as Nordstrom Rack and Old Navy until they recently left.

  Floors and floors of completely vacant space in various storefronts are visible from the street, save a few lonely mannequins staring forlornly from windows.

Perhaps a local entrepreneur can hire some of those "party buses" to drive the more "exotic" routes of Chiraq. We'd advise bulletproof glass for some of the rougher parts of town.

At Least He's Honest

Ladies and Gents - our illustrious command staff:

• At his first staff meeting the new merit Cmdr of 006 said to his Sgts and Lts that he literally doesn’t know how to do their job because he was admin as a Sgt and Lt and never worked the street or in a District. Earned not given……….

Just another in a long line of incompetent people over-promoted and sure to be drawing a completely undeserved gold braid pension in a few years.

Why aren't the unions demanding that pensions top out at your last tested rank? An over-inflated pension based on phone calls, blood lines and blow jobs should be outlawed.

Crime is Still Up

Yeah, we covered this a few days ago, but there are other sites digging into the numbers, like the Illinois Policy site:

• When Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson took office on May 15, he inherited numerous challenges plaguing the city.

  According to a survey conducted by Echelon Insights on behalf of the Illinois Policy Institute in February, 75% of Chicagoans were dissatisfied with public safety, with 60% dissatisfied with affordability in the city. Just 33% of Chicagoans were satisfied with public education in the city.

  Johnson has had 100 days to begin addressing these issues. To date, he hasn’t started seriously tackling any of it.

Well he did fire that Department of Health tool because she pissed off the teachers union.

And he quotes Tupac on a regular basis.

He even sounds like he got hold of Jesse Jackson's Rhyming Dictionary at times.

Things aren't bad enough yet, but they're getting there.

Shutdown Again?

The usual black helicopter sites are reporting with certainty that the feds, specifically the CDC, TSA and Border Patrol, are about to bring back mask mandates, travel restrictions and assorted shutdowns. We'd like to think they're blowing smoke, but check out the headlines here and there in mainstream media outlets:

• Weekly COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen by more than 12% across the country, according to new data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, marking a second straight week of this key indicator of the virus climbing. 

  At least 8,035 hospital admissions of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 were reported for the week of July 22 nationwide, the CDC said late Monday, up from 7,165 during the week before. 

  Another important hospital metric has also been trending up in recent weeks: an average of 0.92% of the past week's emergency room visits had COVID-19 as of July 28, up from 0.51% through June 28.

  The new figures come after months of largely slowing COVID-19 trends nationwide since the last wave of infections over the winter, and again mark the largest percent increases in these key indicators of the virus since December.

Four-tenths-of-one-percent, and it's getting play over all the airwaves.

And this:

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday it is tracking a recently discovered COVID-19 strain, BA.2.86, after a case of the highly mutated variant was discovered in Michigan. 

  "Today we are more prepared than ever to detect and respond to changes in the COVID-19 virus. Scientists are working now to understand more about the newly identified lineage in these 4 cases and we will share more information as it becomes available," CDC spokesperson Kathleen Conley said in a statement to CBS News. 

  Experts say reports of BA.2.86 being spotted in countries on multiple continents — Denmark, Israel, U.K. and U.S. — suggest it is at least capable of transmitting widely and could have been spreading undetected for some time.

As we told everyone (backed by all the scientific research) COVID would eventually infect EVERYONE. Science cannot stop it. And as we told everyone (backed by all of the scientific research) COVID would become more transmissible as time went on....and less deadly, the same as every other virus.

But that isn't going to stop the administration from attempting yet another full scale shut down, a further ruination of the economy and a possibly fatal wounding of the Constitutional protections ignored during the last "pandemic." 

We'd hope Americans would resist this latest tyranny and certainly that the police wouldn't enable it, but we're not optimistic. Last time, Big Tech was going to out us because we didn't follow the approved narrative. We expect more of the same this time around.

Scandals Abound

As we related a few weeks ago, the PPP scandal is percolating and should ensnare a bunch of connected exempt members. Looks like the low-hanging people are getting picked off:

• Two former Chicago police officers have been charged with bilking federal Paycheck Protection Program coronavirus pandemic relief programs out of more than $2 million.

  Torrey Price and Aaron Price were indicted on federal fraud charges unsealed Aug. 8.

  Torrey Price, 55, was a member of the Chicago Police Department for 23 years. He had worked in the Morgan Park district and retired July 15, according to law enforcement sources. 

  Aaron Price, 61, was a Chicago police officer who retired in 2017 after almost 18 years with the department, a source said.

Old enough to have known better, that's for sure. Are they going to go higher?

But this....this one makes us want to throw up:

• A Chicago police officer who was charged with sexually abusing a minor in suburban Norridge earlier this year was charged Friday with a host of new felonies involving three victims.

  Judge Barbara Dawkins held David P. Deleon, 30, of Dunning without bail after prosecutors laid out the new allegations.

  Norridge police obtained a search warrant for Deleon’s phone while investigating the earlier allegations. They turned the matter over to the Cook County sheriff’s police upon finding evidence of “multiple crimes against children,” according to the state’s written proffer of the allegations made Friday.

According to the CWB reporting linked above and the Tribune article, this piece of garbage was active across the northwest side and surrounding suburbs for years. Shorteyes has been with the Department for six years, so around the time that background checks were falling apart. Did he slip through the system or what?

Giving Away the Money

Something like this might make us want to quit:

• 2 units from 1st watch were in the hospital all night on prison detail, for an outside unit. 1st watch Sgt. asked 2nd watch Lt if they could send one 10-4 car from days to relieve them both and got yelled at because she asked. 
  Then 299 (Williams #709) gets the message to the zone that 2nd watch will not be giving relief to 1st watch in the hospital. Officers from 1st watch never got relief and were told they have to sit until the arrestees are released. 3rd watch officers came in early for traffic mission OT and offered to go to hospital but were initially told no. An hour and a half later they were finally allowed to go give 1st watch relief.

Remember when, in an effort to cut overtime, there was an effort to have oncoming watches in the Detective Division pass along in-progress cases to oncoming watches? Never mind that it destroyed continuity, broke up the rapport detective had built with victims, witnesses and even offenders, rendering countless cases un-prosecutable. That worked wonders for Clearance Rates across the board.

Now, you have dickhead lieutenants screwing over people who are already working midnights, sitting at hospitals at time-and-one-half, doing pretty much nothing FOR AN OUTSIDE UNIT and adding undue stress to their family lives for what - to prove you have a bigger dick than Groot?

Score one for you Lt.

Connected People

Yesterday, we posted about fake credentials. Today, we ask about criminal credentials....and no one in government knows squat about it:

• Years before Rick Heidner became a major force in video gambling in Illinois, he was the landlord of a west suburban bingo palace whose operators went to federal prison for skimming $2.9 million in profits from veterans charities.

  Federal agents busted the operation in Northlake, and 10 men were indicted in 2002 on charges of racketeering, operating an illegal gambling business and money-laundering.

  Heidner, who wasn’t charged with any crime, says he had no involvement in the bingo operation. "I was just the landlord,” he says.

It's the Chicago/Cook County/Illinois Way for sure. Sons, nephews, daughters, uncles, wives, all sorts of relatives of mobsters always seemed to land a decent city job. Not to dissimilar the way aldermanic relatives always landed some sort of supervisory role via horsetrading amongst the City Council members.

Or in the CPD.

Funeral Home Shooting

Weren't we just talking about a shooting at a funeral home where the corpse was catching rounds? Here's the radio traffic from the shooting at Leak Funeral Home the other day:

• Twitter (X) Link
  

And what happened inside the funeral home?

• A person who was inside the funeral spoke to CBS 2 [...] off-camera and said a man wearing a black backpack and black hoodie walked into the funeral, and people inside started to duck under the pews. Some recognized him as a gang member. The man went to the casket and took pictures of Johnson, then left.

  The witness said the man went to a car, then pulled in front of the funeral home and started shooting back at the man in the car.

Well done refraining from abusing the corpse!

Fake Credentials

This should be disqualifying on every level:

• A progressive who may be in line to lead Chicago’s Department of Public Health was forced to issue an apology for publicly "misrepresenting" himself as holding a Ph.D. from Harvard. 

  "I am writing to publicly apologize for misrepresenting the completion of a PhD on my personal website for a period in Summer 2021," Eric Reinhart said in a statement posted to his account on X Sunday evening. He added in his post that he is "deeply sorry and embarrassed" by the incident. 

  Reinhart is a political anthropologist of public health and law, as well as a psychoanalyst and physician, according to his biography on the "Scholars at Harvard" website that was reviewed by Fox News Digital earlier this week. Reinhart's apology letter does not specify Harvard as the school where he claimed to attain the Ph.D., but the Harvard scholars website and a Harvard Gazette report from 2021 show he was working on a Ph.D. in anthropology at the esteemed university.
  

You see the pictures on the right hand side of the blog? That Nobel Peace Prize we have? It's fake. We awarded it to ourselves with as many qualifications as this mope, but we weren't applying to be in charge of the DPH, trying to force everyone to stay home, closing schools, shuttering businesses and pretending to have medical knowledge to back it all up.

The BJ administration pretty much denies ever having known this guy, which is to be expected. But that his name ever appeared in their rolodex doesn't inspire confidence in who's running the show.

Weed is Bad?

We thought weed was going to solve all the State's problems....the way the Lottery did and the way the Skyway/Parking Meter Deals solved all of Chicago's problems:

• Decades of federal and state policies and efforts from many nonprofit organizations led to aggressive campaigns to decrease the use of tobacco and nicotine products and exposure to secondhand smoke. These have been credited with dramatically reducing the prevalence of adult cigarette smoking and creating safer smoke-free environments, which in turn, reduce secondhand smoke exposure.¹ In contrast, there has been increasing legalization and use of cannabis for medicinal and recreational purposes, with rates of adult cannabis use more than doubling from 2001 to 2012.² Although other forms of cannabis are increasing in popularity, smoking is still the most common form.³ Studies of cannabis use found that it was associated with multiple negative health outcomes, including cannabis dependence, increased respiratory symptoms, worse cognitive performance, and increased incidence of psychiatric disorders.^4-7 Despite this, regulation of cannabis has tended to be less restrictive than that for tobacco, with many smoke-free laws being amended to make exclusions that allow smoking or vaping of cannabis.⁸

We don't know what we'd do if they told us gambling was addictive and whiskey was dangerous!

Rumors, We Got Rumors

From the comments:

• Rumors rumors…
• Johnson is pulling for Ursetti to be first deputy which means it will happen. How the hell is a clueless wonder like Ursetti going to run the day to day of this department?? She’s an incredibly nice person but not what we need.
• Inspectors are coming back in a big way. McKenzie is in charge of them and uniforms and job response time are the first priority. 
• Marxist and gang investigations to get beefed back up with about 75-100 going back to each unit. 
• City wants to add spots of 40 sgts, 32 Lts and 119 detectives to the budget and is going to attempt to keep 100-125 recruits going through the academy each month in 2024. 
• Squad policing prob going to the wayside finally in 2024. 
• City is going to float 10 or 12 hour days in these renewed negotiations with the Fop. Interesting info…

No idea what "Marxist and gang investigations" means. We didn't realize there were that many commies in Chicago, but with the recent election results, maybe it's true.

The rest of it might be labeled "Larry's second, third, fourth, fifth" Missteps" in future posts, but we'll see.