Joseph Smiles

Doesn't matter if it's true or not, there's always going to be this unconfirmed rumor in every media story:

• Chicago police are looking for the driver in a hit and run accident that injured a young woman on the West Side.

  On Wednesday night, 19-year-old Satoris Hall and her boyfriend were injured while driving. Police said someone driving a gray Durango hit the car they were riding in causing it to smash into a church in the 4100 block of West Harrison.

  Her father says his daughter and her boyfriend were out getting food when the crash the happened. He said he heard police were chasing the SUV, which he believes was stolen.

"...he heard police were chasing..."

No names, no attribution, no actual facts.

"...he heard police were chasing..." 

Any future jury pools, for this incident or any incident, are now polluted by the horseshit reporting so prevalent in the media today.  

We trust that everyone has seen/heard the XiNN reporting about the Colorado Supreme Court receiving all sorts of death threats over their decision to keep Trump off the ballot? Did anyone see the admission XiNN made that the FBI hasn't found a single threat yet? ZERO, and we all know that the feebs would be holding hourly press conferences if they found even one.

Who was it who said, "Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth." Oh yeah, nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels - the godfather of modern American journalism.

Re-Defining Age Groups

Got to embrace the "progressive" stupidity:

• Adult - A person who is age eighteen years or older
• Child - A person under the age of thirteen years old
• Juvenile - A person who was seventeen years old or younger when the offense occurred
• Youth - A person of the age thirteen to twenty-four years old

As far as we can tell, this is not a LEGAL definition, but rather a POLICY definition. The order encourages alternate responses to arrest and juvie court, meaning if you encounter such a situation, you will be hung out to dry should you deviate from POLICY, even if you can't be tagged legally.

Amusingly, the Order also states that youths and children are developmentally different from adults which is probably the reason we don't let them drive, vote, enlist or drink until certain ages. Maybe we shouldn't be letting them be cutting off their man and lady parts if they don't have the mental capacity to make those decisions?

New Year Predictions

Any predictions on tap for the coming year?

Besides the shitshow on tap for the DNC in August we mean.

It's going to be a bad year all around, so keep your head on a swivel.

Disturbing Development

Criminals have habits called an M.O. or modus operandi (that's Latin for "method of procedure"). 

Essentially, if something works, they use it again and again. It can be a word/phrase to intimidate, it can mean using the roof to enter a building, it can be stealing a certain type of car at a certain time of day.

It can also mean this:

• Another robbery victim was shot during a holdup on Friday afternoon, Chicago police said, making him at least the seventh person shot during robberies since last Saturday.

  He was in the 6900 block of South Marshfield when a white car pulled up around 3:24 p.m., according to CPD. Two men got out of the car and demanded his property. He did not immediately comply, so one of the robbers pulled out a gun and started shooting, police said.

Once they start shooting potential victims, and it works to get what they want - they're going to keep doing it until stopped. Seven in a week?

But with the current political climate arresting, stripping, charging and vilifying police for actually stopping crime, the Department isn't about to put JF or DS out there to put a permanent stop to crime.

Victims are going to start dying very shortly.

"Adequate Number"

This guy, like the last few guys, is pulling manpower numbers out of his ass:

• With several events taking place on New Year’s Eve in the city this weekend, Chicago police say there will be an “adequate number of officers” to ensure celebrations are safe.

  The Chicago Police Department will ramp up security, sending more officers to patrol the streets and work large celebrations downtown, including fireworks displays at Navy Pier and on the Chicago River.

  Chicago Police Deputy Chief Jon Hein didn’t specify the number of additional officers to be deployed throughout the city, but told reporters during a news conference Friday there will be “enough” to handle the many events such as fireworks, concerts, events in entertainment districts, protests and the Bears game.

He didn't specify numbers because they don't exist.

"Enough to handle" assorted events means "We're going to pray nothing bad happens" which has been the "plan" for a good number of years as of late.

Twenty Lieutenants

Promotions on a Friday....as usual.

Post it if you got it.

UPDATE: 

How Much SSI?

Anyone interested in president roomba's tax returns? It's publicly accessible:

• 2021 Redacted Tax Returns

This is contained within:

• In their 2021 tax filings Joe and Jill Biden received a monthly Social Security check for $4,555.00 monthly or $54,660.00 yearly.

Is this all potato-head? After all, Jill was a teacher and ought to be subject to the Rostenkowski restrictions, yes?

McDermott McOut

The former Chief of Patrol is now listed as a Captain in the Inspection Division. This "demotion" is typical thirty days before resignation among the exempts for insurance purposes and such.

Hein is now wearing two hats:

 So who's on deck? 

Is it going to be Ben? If so, hold onto your hats.

Number Fudging Again?

Some things never change:

• Detectives are closing old homicides per uncooperative witnesses to pump the closure percentages 

You can't truly make a homicide "X-Cleared/Closed" solely for non-cooperation. 

At least you didn't used to be able to when you had actual bosses and investigative reporters around to lend the illusion of honesty to the process.

Highway Signs

No one in Illinois wants the illegals, so they ship them all to Chicago. And they're warning the bus companies:

• Grundy County has joined other Chicago suburbs in an effort to deter buses from dropping off migrants from Texas outside of the city. While the migrant crisis continues to challenge Chicago, some surrounding suburbs are now scrambling, with new regulations in place in the city.

  Buses have been dropping off asylum seekers unannounced in towns like University Park, Aurora and more. Two more buses are expected Thursday near Des Plaines and Polk streets in Chicago, and more migrants were dropped off there Wednesday night, huddling in the cold.

  Just days before Christmas, Grundy County, which is southwest of Chicago, put up two digital signs along Interstate 55 to deter buses from stopping in the fairly rural area. "The mayor of Chicago has created a situation that's creating a crisis for us in setting their standards much more difficult for their buses to arrive in Chicago," Grundy County Sheriff Ken Briley said.

  Grundy County leaders made a plan over the weekend to encourage buses to move on if they stop there, or, if migrants are abandoned, they will get them to Joliet and put them on trains to transfer them to sanctuary cities.

We truly enjoy that they're blaming Blow-job for the situation and neglecting to name Fatass or president roomba. At this rate, he'll be back with his psychiatrist for a medication increase.

And shortly, the suburbs will be dusting off the "No Irish" signs and calling in a painting crew to update the wording.

Nice Orders

As suspected:

• Chicago Police were reportedly prompted by an order from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to stand down as pro-Palestinian protesters, organized by the "U.S. Palestinian Community Network," brought traffic to a standstill in Chicago on Dec. 23.

  A caravan of nearly 100 vehicles disrupted traffic on I-190 and Mannheim Road near O'Hare International Airport, causing a temporary standstill before roads were reopened.

  The demonstrators obstructing traffic near O’Hare changed slogans such as "No Christmas as Usual."

  [...] The move raised questions about the city's response strategy and its alignment with the mayor's directive.

There's no "question about the city's response strategy." 

There is none.

The city (mayor) has decided the path of least resistance is the path to be taken and that means "mob rule" for the foreseeable future. Laws aren't even suggestions or guidelines now, and that isn't going to bode well for the lawbreakers at some point when the regular folks get irritated enough.

Me Fail English?

What the actual f#@$% is this word salad?

• The People’s Plan for Community Safety is a community-led initiative that mobilizes full-spectrum stakeholders to tackle community issues by asking stakeholders to mobilize fully. It will ensure that all the relevant parties are involved in the process of addressing community challenges by challenging the processes of addressing parties that are involved and relevant. This bottom-up approach seeks to utilize top-down input from the community by addressing the most pressing issues that need to be addressed. The Plan will help all Chicagoans get a better understanding of the challenges facing the community and the resources that are needed to understand them.

If you do a search of any of that mish-mash, you get directed to a couple of City of Chicago websites, so it's evidently some "mission statement."

Whether or not it's English isn't really debatable. Anyone who talks or writes like this deserves to be drawn, quartered and fired from meaningful employment. Same for anyone who votes for someone who produces this crap.

Skool is Kool!

What's it called when you pay more and more for a product that gets worse and worse?

Failure?

• One-fifth of Illinois adults are functionally illiterate, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That means they cannot understand the meaning of sentences, locate information on pages or complete simple forms, all of which would affect their abilities to hold many jobs.

  In Cook County, 25% of adults are functionally illiterate.

At City Hall, the rate climbs to about 33%

On the fifth floor of Police HQ, it's nearer to 40%.

And what does it cost, compared to years past? Someone did the math:

• Chicago Public Schools (CPS) now spends over $29,000 per student, compared to $17,800 per student in 2020. According to the Illinois State Board of Education, CPS enrollment has decreased by 8.9% since 2020, with the Chicago Sun-Times projecting an additional 2.8% decrease in 2023.

So it costs over $12,000 MORE per pupil than it did in 2020....and there are nearly 9% FEWER kids in school.

Funny, less kids should mean less expenditures. There's got to be some room for cuts, right?

That Time of Year

(If you're easily offended libtarded snowflake - skip this post. This is dark humor)

Hey there. Time for the annual Ghoul "Random Crime" Pool. Print this or make your own and follow the below instructions:

• since there are only 22 Districts, cross out three squares at random;
• sell the remaining squares for a set number of toothpicks (gambling is illegal!);
• once everything is "sold," make 22 separate cards or chips or whatever with District numbers on them - 001 thru 025 (EXCEPT 013, 021, and 023 which don't exist anymore);
  
• pick from a hat and assign each to a box;
• wait for mayhem to ensue.

Make sure you get the variables out of the way - decide beforehand if the winner is by timestamp or RD number or notification - this is a point of contention in many pools. Remember that occasionally something can prolong the time determination while someone else is waiting for the detectives.

Don't use this work sheet for anything untoward.....or at least don't mention it to some "merit" tool with no sense of humor.

Interesting Year on Tap

We've stated, time and again, how Groot (and now Blow-job) have based budget revenue on complete fantasy numbers. From our comment section:

• Bally revenue at only 17% of Groot's expectations what a surprise at falling short.
  
  [...] Bally’s has generated about $2.2 million in local tax revenue during its first three months in business - far from the $12.8 million projection of gaming tax revenue for 2023 set by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot before she left office.

So we started looking around and found this from early December:

• Since opening, Bally’s has taken in nearly $21.9 million in adjusted gross receipts — the money kept after winnings are paid out. That has generated about $2.8 million in state tax revenue and more than $2.2 million in local tax revenue over three months, according to Gaming Board data.

  The temporary casino, which was initially slated to open in June, was projected to generate more than $100 million in adjusted gross receipts this year. The city expected to receive nearly $70 million from the casino in 2023, including a one-time $40 million upfront payment from Bally’s and about $13 million in gaming tax revenue.

  With the launch pushed back to September, Bally’s reduced projections to between $15 million and $25 million in adjusted gross receipts for the temporary casino this year, according to an August investor presentation.

Those numbers are pretty damn close to the "17% of expected revenue" appearing in our comment section and this is 17% of what Groot based her budget numbers on.

Now Blow-job has to make up 83% of Groot's bullshit number with downtown even emptier than last year, expenditures far outpacing revenue and tens-of-thousands of illegals who go through probably three times (or more) of the "projected" casino tax revenues every month.

Going to be an interesting year.

OEMC Scandal to Break?

This one has been brewing in the background for a bit:

• I heard 26 Police Dispatchers getting fired. Confirmed. 40 people total out of 911.
  
  Anonymous said...
  Close to 20 civilian employees at 3-11 getting the hammer dropped on them for fraudulent PPP loans and about 40-50 police dispatchers & call takers at OEMC.

And supposedly, the only reason the hammer hasn't dropped is that the sudden manpower shortage would gut the call taking floor, decimate the dispatchers and increase wait times for all sorts of 9-1-1 calls.

NYPD Level III

Mass protests in NYC declaring "Christmas is cancelled!"

Why would holiday revelers want to cancel Christmas?

NYPD goes to Defcon 2:

• The New York Police Department (NYPD) is stepping up its action in the wake of a large-scale protest in Manhattan. The NYPD has requested a Level Three mobilization for better handling of the Pro-Palestine protesters, who are reportedly engaging in fights with the police.

  Between the two, there have been several altercations that have resulted in numerous officers being reported injured. At present, it is uncertain how severe the injuries are. There have reportedly been several arrests made by police.

We're told there is only one level higher than a Level III for NYPD, so this is (was) a pretty serious event. 

Compare that to the I-190 takeover on Christmas Day.

What about everyone else's Right to move freely about their own business?

Jolly Olde England

HeyJackass.com is the only place we trust for actual Chicago crime stats. They've consistently been on top of the numbers for years. As we write this, the hourly/daily counter has the following:

• someone in Chicago is shot every 2 hours and 50 minutes
• someone in Chicago is killed every 13 hours and 29 minutes

That works out to just over 8 casualties a day, 1.7-ish who end up dead.

Lib-tards say "Let's outlaw guns! Like England!" 

Here's England in 2023:

• Gang violence in London has seen knife crime reportedly surge at its fastest rate in five years, with over 40 incidents logged with police per day, according to an analysis conducted by a top British broadsheet.

  A report from The Telegraph newspaper has claimed that over 200 gangs are operating in the British capital, with around 46,000 members at their disposal, some of whom are as young as ten years old.

  The prevalence of criminal gangs and inevitable turf wars and other disputes have contributed to increasing violence on the streets of London, with knife crime rising at its quickest pace in five years and gun crime rising by six per cent over last year.

Forty-three incidents of "knife violence" per day....five times Chicago's reported gun rate.

HeyJackass.com would probably have to triple it's staffing just to keep up with record keeping.

650 on Tap?

HeyJackass.com has the current mayhem at 638 bodies as we close in on the New Year.

Usually, we'd say a dozen bodies in six days in December was a long shot.

But....temps aren't dipping below 40 degrees during the daylight hours for the next week and barely touching freezing overnight. Not only that, but New Years Eve is a weekend this year.

It's completely possible.

Make Cops the Enemy

This amendment to an existing law was tucked away in the Labor Dispute Act:

• (e) A person who, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding a picket or other demonstration or protest, places any object in the public way commits a Class A misdemeanor with a minimum fine of $500.

On its face, this supposedly had to do with picketing by unions.

But given the recent history in Europe of citizens dragging protestors out of the streets / highways, and the continuously deteriorating civility in the US where we are about to see irate citizens doing their own dragging of "protestors" (or running them over), how is this amendment meant to be interpreted?

It seems to be giving complete control over to the protestors. What does that mean for police? Why would cops be assigned to a protest if there's no enforcement action to be taken?

Or (and now you see what democrats want) the police will be required to take action against the pissed off citizens who can't get to their flights at the airport, their shopping trips downtown, their visits to suburban relatives, or their ambulances to the hospitals?

Officer Injured

We can't say we're missing the snow, but that doesn't mean people aren't driving like assholes:

• A Chicago police officer was hit by a car while responding to a domestic disturbance call late Sunday night, according to police.

  The officer was responding to a domestic disturbance call that reported two people in a vehicle in the 4500 block of West 59th Street, according to police. Once on scene at about 9:24 p.m., an officer was exiting a police vehicle when a car hit them, and they were taken to Little Company of Mary Medical Center in good condition with arm and leg swelling.

Part of this derives from the lack of traffic during the "covid" plandemic....everyone who did go out driving found wide open roads and reacted like a Formula One track had materialized in Chicago. Combine that with the lack of enforcement going forward (shortages, a discouragement of actual traffic stops, and courts letting everything go) and you have a dangerous environment for anyone attempting to cross streets.

Be careful.

Merry Christmas!

Been a couple of Christmases since we posted this:

A very Merry Christmas to you and yours. 

If you're off, enjoy the blessings of the day. 

If you're working, stay alert, especially when responding to calls where the "Merry" isn't quite so Merry. Hopefully, someone sprung for a plate of Christmas cookies for the watch.

As always, light posting today. Comments may be delayed.

Naughty List

CWB has been on fire this week with stories, topped by this happy event:

• Chicago police are investigating after a 19-year-old man was shot and killed in West Town on Saturday afternoon. A concealed carry holder told police he shot the man because the man and three other people targeted him in an armed robbery.

  The shooting occurred in an alley behind the 1700 block of West Cortez around 4:51 p.m.

  In a media statement, the Chicago Police Department claimed “a 19-year-old male victim was in the alley when he sustained a gunshot wound to the chest by an unknown offender. The victim was transported to Stroger Hospital where he was pronounced. Area Three Detectives are investigating.”

  However, officers at the scene said the shooter was a 68-year-old concealed carry holder who remained on the scene. He reportedly told them that he shot the man, who celebrated his 19th birthday last week, in self-defense during an armed robbery. Three other people who participated in the robbery ran from the scene, according to initial information.

Well done old timer.

The investigating Detectives really ought to have an ammo fund for those CCL's making our jobs that much easier.

Big Deal, but No Coverage

Little to no local news coverage once again, but they pulled cops in from all over the north side (this is a Twitter feed, so short messages and lots of breaks - to read it all, go to this link):

• ...has east and west I-190 ramps blocked, so caravan turned right and headed east on Lawrence toward River Rd May be attempting to get to the Kennedy
• ...credible information the caravan will attempt to get to OHare Units setting up at River Rd and Cumberland entrance ramps
• Caravan has part of it stopped northbound blocking all 3 lanes of traffic on Mannheim on the bridge over I-190 CPD, #ISP and #IDOT have units blocking all I-190 access ramps at Mannheim
• All non-caravan traffic from northbound Mannheim is being forced east on I-190 CPD requesting Schiller Park to close NB Mannheim at Lawrence 
• “Can we get some tow trucks? These people are getting out of their cars…. Get as many tow trucks as we can and start towing these people” NB Mannheim at I-190
• “Did we notify Park Ridge?” “They’ve already taken over Lake Shore Drive downtown. If we can keep them contained somewhere that might work too and maybe they’ll go” 
• ...sending a unit to the Uber lot off Balmoral at OHare Way to direct traffic there and keep cars off of Mannheim
• Not towing, just writing parking tickets CPD now requesting OHare CPD SWAT to the scene on Mannheim
• Two pickup trucks just broke contain and are headed west along I-190 in the grass. Command given to stop arrest and impound O’Hare now requesting citywide units to assist, ISP units are leaving the scene. 7200, CPD OHare commander now on scene
• ...remaining on scene, CPD calling for more units at this time CPD will be setting staging area to log cars coming in Requesting 4 cars from the 16th district and 2 cars from 25th and 2 cars from 17th districts 
• Requesting all available OHare tow trucks to staging area

The media wrote about the fog screwing up Midway, but again, the casual viewer visiting media sites - without doing a deep dive - won't find a thing about O'Hare access being denied by terrorist sympathizers.

Minus One

Expect more of this as the disruption / realignment of gang alliances shake out :

• A Venezuelan migrant was shot and killed near the Gage Park fieldhouse shelter on Saturday afternoon, officials said.

  The 28-year-old was on the sidewalk in the 2400 block of West 55th Street when a car pulled up and someone fired shots at him around 12:44 p.m., according to a Chicago Police Department media statement.

  EMS transported the man to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:32 p.m.

  Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) said on Twitter that the man was a migrant but “was not a current resident of the Gage Park facility.” He was, however, “definitely the intended target,” Lopez continued. The Chicago Tribune reported that migrants at the shelter told a reporter that the deceased man was known by the nickname “El Chavelo.”

Anyone want to interpret the "chavelo" name? We've heard "incompetent" or similar.

What's Spanish for "flying lead backstop"?

Only 38?

Should be a lot higher:

• Ed Burke has seen ‘em all — and now he’s joining their ignominious ranks. 

  Chicago’s longest-serving alderperson worked alongside all 37 previous City Council members found guilty of a crime since 1973. This week a jury tagged him as No. 38 in the chamber’s caucus of convicts. 

  The Southwest Side political kingpin goes down as perhaps the biggest fish caught yet by federal prosecutors, with racketeering, bribery and attempted extortion convictions that were secured partly due to Burke’s famously fishy question.
  

Always remember, the corruption of Chicago started (and continues) with the politicians.

Action / Reaction Again

We're pretty sure this was predicted by our readers, once again:

• A bus carrying migrants from Texas made a drop-off at a gas station in Kankakee Thursday, and the bus driver reportedly told the migrants they had arrived in Chicago.

  The Kankakee County Sheriff's Office said they discovered 30 to 40 people walking along the side of the highway wrapped in blankets around 7:30 a.m.

  After talking with the people, officers determined they were Venezuelan migrants were dropped off at a gas station at 4:30 a.m.by a bus that came from El Paso, Texas.

And where were they immediately sent to?

• Midway Airport

So buses are avoiding Chicago:

• A busload of approximately 40 migrants was dropped off at the Metra station in west suburban Westmont late Saturday morning, continuing an escalation of suburban drop-offs that began earlier this week.

  The drop-off in Westmont was witnessed by NBC 5 Investigates reporter Bennett Haeberle at around 11:45 a.m., who noted that the migrants boarded Metra trains toward Chicago shortly after arrival at the station.

So much for a "sanctuary state," the burbs are just dumping them in Chicago anyway. And Aurora is following Blowie's lead for enforcement:

• The Aurora City Council passed an emergency ordinance Friday which will affect busloads of migrants sent to the suburb from the southern border.

  The ordinance would require at least five days notice to the city for a bus planning to transport migrants to Aurora.

After all these suburbs outlaw dropping of illegals, maybe we'll finally get some border enforcement?

This is Not Good

Reading various articles, we have a lot of questions:

• Two Denver-area paramedics were convicted Friday for giving a fatal overdose of the sedative ketamine to Elijah McClain in 2019 — a jury verdict that experts said could have a chilling effect on first responders around the country.

  The case involving the 23-year-old Black man’s death was the first among several recent criminal prosecutions against medical first responders to reach trial, potentially setting the bar for prosecutors for future cases.

  It also was the last of three trials against police and paramedics charged in the death of McClain, whom officers stopped following a suspicious person complaint. He was injected with the sedative after being forcibly restrained. The case received little attention until protests over the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

  An Aurora police officer was convicted of homicide and third degree assault earlier this year, while two other officers were acquitted.

We highly doubt there was any criminal intent - paramedics don't just show up to scenes. They're called there, and when they arrive, it certainly isn't with the intent to kill anyone. And medical errors are usually just that - medical errors. 

You know what kills tens [correction - hundreds] of thousands of people in this country every single year? Preventable medical errors, and the number of doctors serving prison time is minuscule. And we certainly don't want paramedics hesitating if we're in need of an ambulance.

More PPP Fraud? (UPDATE)

The guilty will be punished?

• Cook County’s chief judge announced more than a year ago that he’d hired a Los Angeles law firm to investigate staffers who’d gotten federal Paycheck Protection Program COVID-19 relief loans to make sure they were legitimate.

  Chief Judge Timothy Evans sent a letter to Cook County’s 2,700 court support employees, saying the investigation would take about two months. That was in late 2022. A spokeswoman for Evans says the investigation remains “ongoing” and won’t discuss what the firm has found or the cost of the effort.

  But county payroll records and other public documents show nine of Evans’ highest-paid staff members have left his office this year between April and October, and their names match those of recipients of government-backed, forgivable PPP loans from a program that federal officials have acknowledged was rife with fraud.

They'll be held to account, right?

• None of Evans’ employees appears to have been charged with any crime in connection with the loans.

  Declining an interview request with Evans, his spokeswoman Mary Wisniewski says she won’t answer any questions about the employees or the PPP investigation, citing an “ongoing investigation.”

The "continuing investigation" schtick is the latest political trick for covering up wrongdoing. Once you hear about it, you can't unsee it.....and you'll see it everywhere. They'll make that statement, then ignore it for a few months until the heat dies down. By then, the guilty will have resigned or been reassigned and since there weren't any charges, they'll never release the names.

The feebs did it all through the Hunter Biden investigation and continue doing it for the rest of president roomba's criminal connections.

UPDATE: Bingo! Someone just commented that the "continuing investigations" BS.....Sox Park shooting anyone? We all know who had the gun, how they got it past security, etc., but no names for a suburban dwelling CPS teacher.

We're sure there will be further examples.

How Very....Odd (UPDATE)

We heard about some shooting in Europe - fourteen dead in Prague, so we went to the sidebar of the blog to check the news links.

Channel 2, Channel 5, Channel 7, Channel 9, Channel 32, Slum Times, Tribune....and guess what we found?

• nothing, not a single mention on their main pages
  

In less than twenty-four hours, all coverage from the Chicago media disappeared, if it existed at all.

We even went to ::puke:: CNN to look around, There was a single mention of "Stories you may have missed" at the very bottom of their page, approximately thirteen clicks down.

We're told mass shootings never happen in Europe. Seems the media here and nationally is making sure that anything contrary to that narrative is not easily seen.

UPDATE: More than a couple of comments saying "Just search Google" or "such-and-such had a couple stories just the other day."

No shit.

That wasn't the point. The point was that in under twenty-four hours, all mention was GONE from the front pages of the local media. They spout the national line for "mass shootings" in an effort to curb everyone's 2A Rights, but ignore the weekly carnage in Chicago every single day. 

Hell, they're mentioning Jon Burge thirty years after he was fired for their narratives, but not a European shooting that goes against everything they've been telling us for years.

Our point was the media dishonesty.

Economic Warning

Is there a number cruncher in the house?

• As Americans struggle to cope with Bidenflation, one US economist has an ominous forecast of a looming depression.

  Economist Harry Dent was unfortunately not full of holiday cheer in his comments to Fox News Digital. “Since 2009, this has been 100% artificial, unprecedented money printing and deficits; $27 trillion over 15 years, to be exact. This is off the charts, 100% artificial, which means we're in a dangerous state,” Dent argued. “I think 2024 is going to be the biggest single crash year we'll see in our lifetimes.” Of course, as we all know, economists can be wildly wrong in their predictions. But it’s undeniable that America is deeply in debt, over-printing money, and, under Biden, laboring under disastrous economic and financial policies.

Of course, economists are like assholes opinions - everyone has one. And this guy is just one of many....but he's swimming against the lame-stream media that has been touting "bidenomics" in the face of rising grocery prices, rising mortgage rates, steadily increasing inflationary pressures and an unstable world picture. And that - to us - means he's worth listening to, because anyone preaching sunshine and rainbows the past three years, is likely a propagandist.

Nice Job

Take the praise wherever you can find it:

• A Chicago police officer is being lauded for going above and beyond the call of duty when she helped deliver a baby to a young couple while at the scene of a shooting.

  Field training officer Josie Christopher declined the label of "hero" for helping a young couple in distress.

  "Any officer would have done what I did," she said. "She was very scary. I was very scared. I had never done anything like this before. It was just the right place at the right time.

  The 17th District officer and two of her fellow cops assigned to the Albany Park police station were honored for their exceptional actions Friday.

Switching from a "shooting scene mode" to an "assist mode" might seem difficult to an outsider, but it's what cops are expected to do and all personnel were up to the task.

Well done.

Early Warning

The Contrarian looks at the race to replace Crimesha:

• Despite the enormity of the task, it is plausible to believe O'Neill Burke or Fioretti, if elected, could orchestrate the sort of necessary course correction of which the State’s Attorney’s office is in dire need. However, there is every reason to believe Harris will succeed Foxx. A former assistant in Dick Devine’s State’s Attorney’s office, Harris’ resume includes experience serving former Mayor Richard Daley, representing Daley in Springfield and as Counsel with the Chicago Department of Transportation.

  Following his service with Chicago, Harris worked in a string of administrative positions with the State of Illinois. Outside of his government service, Harris has twice served as a corporate lobbyist with ride hailing firm, Lyft, and Colorado-based CH2M. Since 2009, Harris has also taught a course on Policing Race in America: Black, White & Blue through the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.      

  Though Mr. Harris has affected a bow tie to give him a professorial image, this is but a makeover to portray him as academically brilliant and determined to administer justice with dispassion. The rebranding of Harris serves one purpose: To disguise his radicalism.

Harris is a known racialist and progressive anti-cop commie, backed to the hilt by Prickwrinkle and the current favorite based solely on the County Machine manufacturing votes.

As we've said in the past, go to the link up top and read it all. And after that, start telling any friends and relatives remaining in Cook County what awaits them should this asshole get in.

Blowie Walking to Work

Or taking an Uber:

• The city of Chicago has issued seizure orders for two SUVs that shuttle Mayor Brandon Johnson around town because no one has paid a growing pile of speeding and red light camera tickets issued to the vehicles.

  Four SUVs dedicated to Johnson have collected 21 citations and one warning since he became mayor seven months ago. As of Wednesday night, the unpaid fines and penalties total $2,130.

  Johnson’s motorcade has picked up tickets at a dizzying pace. In fact, his SUVs have been tagged speeding and running red lights more often in seven months than Rahm Emanuel, Lori Lightfoot, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle received within four-year terms.

  Johnson’s SUVS owed the city $855 for eleven moving violations when we first reported on his motorcade’s driving habits on October 18. The debt ballooned to $1,725 by November 30. Now, the debt is $2,130…and growing.

If we recall, the mayor's SUVs have "soft plates," not the MP plates that most city vehicles carry. We remember back when the red light/speed cameras were installed, the City sent a letter to the company running the system to "exempt" all the M plates on city vehicles. All well and good, except when the city switched to MP plates, the Department was suddenly getting tens of thousands in fines until someone updated the automated software to stop citing city vehicles again.

Evidently, no one updated the software. Let's face it, no one is coming to take Blowie's cars.

Another Toxic Site?

Who is running this program?

• Various contaminants were discovered at a proposed Morgan Park migrant camp site, according to a report released by the city of Chicago.

  According to officials, AE3 Consulting, a consulting company hired by the City of Chicago Department of Assets, Information, and Services completed their Phase I Environmental Site Assessment Report of the migrant camp site located on 11414 S. Halsted.

  The report indicated there may be a 275-gallon fuel oil underground storage tank that is still underground. The federal TANKS CHICAGO database reported that the tank existed in 1952. Due to a lack or removal records of the tank, this raised a red flag on the location.

  Other concerns that were listed in the report was a release of chemicals impacting the subsurface soils and groundwater caused by a dry cleaning facility that occupied the space prior. Remnants of a gas station dating back to the 1960s were also discovered at the location, the report showed.

  The findings of this investigation come just a few weeks after the shutdown of the Brighton Park migrant camp.

So if we've got this straight:

1. declare a sanctuary city - don't let the voters have any say;
2. accept tens of thousands of illegals from the border;
3. bitch about it;
4. pollute police stations where the public goes for reports and meetings;
5. tell the cops to stop bitching about it;
6. find what should be an EPA superfund site full of cancer causing chemicals that dozens of businesses have refused to build on due to the contamination;
7. put the illegals there as future plaintiffs when the inevitable breathing issues, cancer clusters and birth defects occur;
   
8. blame Texas.

Someone needs to be fired.

 

Private Planes?

So blue shithole mayors and governors are up in arms about Texas shipping illegals to their sanctuaries.

Why no complaints about president Roomba using Delta Airlines for the same thing?

• Author Ashley St. Clair took to X, formerly Twitter, on December 19 to express her dismay at the airline for flying people she claimed were migrants on her flight from Phoenix, Arizona, to New York.

  "Why the hell is @delta complicit in shipping illegal migrants from border states like Arizona to New York City?" she wrote. "Our own mayor (a Democrat) has begged Biden to stop sending the migrants here because we are overwhelmed. Is Delta being directed to transport these migrants or are they willingly shipping illegal migrants to cities they know are crumbling for a paycheck from taxpayers?"

  Newsweek reached out to Delta Air Lines via their website and contacted St. Clair via X for comment on Wednesday.

  At the time of writing, "Delta" was trending on the platform, and the post had been viewed more than 407,000 times, even catching the attention of Musk, X's owner.

The administration has been doing this since the manufactured crisis began, flying illegals all over the place and dumping them in the dead of night, mostly in Florida if we recall. DeSantis objected and it got a tiny bit of coverage before the media buried it.....but then Texas and Florida started busing illegals to blue shitholes and suddenly, coverage AND blame, but directed at red states.

Welfare Collapse Coming

Another job Americans won't do, filled by illegals:

• Close to 60 percent of households headed by illegal aliens use at least one major form of welfare, an analysis conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reveals.

  The CIS analysis from Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler shows illegal aliens and legal immigrants, in general, use “significantly more” welfare than native-born American citizens.

  For example, about 59 percent of households headed by illegal aliens use welfare and about 52 percent of households headed by legal immigrants use at least one form of welfare. At the same time, fewer than 4-in-10 households headed by native-born American citizens use welfare.

A long time democrat party constituency is being replaced and conditioned to believe the government will supply them with cradle-to-grave benefits, all in exchange for their vote.

Except the government is broke and over-extended on its credit limits.

Former Chicago Cop Burke Guilty

All we've heard so far is a single count of racketeering.

More to follow if we get it.

Check the media links on the right for more.

UPDATE: possible twenty years on the racketeering alone.

The media isn't broadcasting that Burke was a former cop yet, so we thought we'd help them out.

UPDATE: Thirteen counts of corruption.

A Burke aide skated on his charges, but a developer caught a guilty finding.

UHaul Man of the Year

Fatass himself:

Ten straight years of people leaving Illinois.

DUI Kit Lost?

Dear lord:

• Anonymous said...

  You really should also mention in this article about how the DUI kit got "lost" at Homan Square. The off duty consented to blood/urine, and the sealed kit got lost after being dropped at at forensics. I'm not seeing that in the news anywhere. I wish I was making this up.

If this is true, Larry and a whole slew of exempts aren't going to last a full year, and the Department is going to be blamed again for the actions of a a bunch of morons.

Pander Pander Pander

Trump, who won more of the black vote than any republican in living memory, is polling even higher this time around. Time for dems to pander! (you'll have to find your own links to this leftist tripe.)

Quick quiz!

• What do New York California and Illinois all have in common?

Answer: large black voting populations that are pissed off at democrats supporting illegal sanctuary cities and states.

• What else?

Answer: these states outlawed slavery before the Civil War, and in fact, sent thousands of soldiers to end it.

Note, that these blue-shithole states are just authorizing "commissions" to "study" reparations. The likelihood of a single dollar ever being doled out on a mass scale are close to zero. But since dems consider the black vote "theirs" and are worried that what they've taken for granted since LBJ is falling apart, they're pandering to the what they consider the low-information voter with the basest of ideas - free money.

"Check In Date" for When?

Guess how long it takes to get an asylum hearing?

• NEW: A Colombian woman who crossed illegally into El Paso, TX & was released into the U.S. was given an ICE check in date in NYC in 2031. Her immigration attorney, @mkolken, tells me it’s one of the most shocking things he’s seen in his nearly 30 years of immigration law.

Eight years. To get a status hearing. With zero restrictions or enforcement options.

Any guesses as to how many "anchor babies" can be produced in those eight years? 

It's another "amnesty" program disguised as.....Hell, they aren't even disguising it.

Action / Reaction

So Blowie impounded a bus the other day.

Guess what happened next?

• The governor of Texas flew about 100 migrants to Chicago on Tuesday night, using a chartered private plane, following Chicago's crackdown on "rogue" buses that have been flouting the city's rules for dropping off asylum seekers in the city.

  Mayor Brandon Johnson's office said a private plane chartered by the Texas Department of Emergency Management landed at O'Hare International Airport around 7:15 p.m., and dropped off about 100 asylum seekers at Signature Flight. A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said there were more than 120 passengers on the plane.

  Because the flight arrived without warning from Texas, airport officials called police when it landed. The mayor's office said two unidentified people who flew with the migrants fled the Signature Flight office at O'Hare in an Uber before police arrived.

Flights just don't "arrive without warning." Federal Law requires a flight plan to be filed long before departure. And two illegals fled in an Uber? So they're arriving with money, phone apps and some sort of support system?

Blowie blames the Texas governor for the crisis and for the death of the illegal child the other day. 

Texas never declared itself a sanctuary city or state and isn't responsible for national borders - that would be potato brain's administration. 

And Texas isn't responsible for screening the illegals for illness and disease - that would also be the purview of the child-sniffer-in-chief.

And if Blowie doesn't think Texas has a few more tricks up their sleeves, be prepared for the lobbies to start filling up again.

Larritorious's First Scandal

We KNEW there was an order somewhere that said that any crash involving CPD personnel involving death or great bodily harm required a response from an exempt member. Now Fred is falling on his sword.....or he's being stabbed in the back, take your pick:

• A Chicago police supervisor retired while facing demotion for failing to respond to the scene of a fatal crash involving an off-duty cop earlier this month in River North, the Sun-Times has learned.

  Street Deputy Frederick Melean was charged with overseeing the response to the collision early Dec. 8 in the 300 block of North State Street, where an officer had veered onto a sidewalk near the House of Blues after dropping her phone and taking her eyes off the road, according to a police report.

  [...]

  Despite the serious — and potentially criminal — nature of the crash, Melean didn’t show up to assume control of the scene as required by a departmental order, according to law enforcement sources. That means he didn’t notify the Bureau of Internal Affairs, so no one from the department came to administer a Breathalyzer test to the other officer. 

  Melean, a longtime police official who previously served as deputy chief of Area One, tendered his resignation after it was clear he was being demoted, sources said. His retirement was effective on Dec. 12, a police spokesperson said.
  

Larry has been nearly invisible since getting the top spot, and this lack of direction among the command staff is reflective of the feeling that no one is in charge. 

But as usual, a (multiple?) meri-clout-orious supervisor is allowed to retire without facing discipline, sanction or loss of credentials. 

Now how about that other rumor involving the white shirt making up her own "house rules" for Special Employment? Is she gone?

UPDATE: Bunch of comments saying Fred made it by score....twice? 

We suppose there are a few out there (current rumors are two or three tops), but everything past lieutenant is "merit" and it's hard to believe someone allegedly that smart would fumble something like this.

Podcasts

Someone mentioned this podcast of Bob Cooley being available, talking about his book and his long career spent in the darker corners of Chicago politics:

• The Cooley Account
  

And speaking of dark corners of Chicago scandals, here's another one we just started listening to:

• Finnigan's Take
  

The SOS scandal revisited by the main player. The teaser trailers and the first episode paint a more expansive picture than what the media portrayed. Not that it absolves anyone of anything, nor the damage they did to the Department.

We find ourselves wishing Blago does one of these, naming names, from Shortshanks to Burke to Mell and right on down the line.

Confiscation?

Compliance is still under 2% for Fat-ass's gun registry and confiscation scheme, almost 100 county sheriffs have declared their intent of non-enforcement, and there are voices out there warning of what may be coming:

• Bishop On Air video link

This vlogger interviews a firearms instructor and ex-cop who thinks there is going to be a bit of heavy-handed enforcement within Cook County to set an example for the rest of the state. He makes a few good points, and we sincerely hope he's wrong.

Sincerely.

Follow the Science!

So along with cow farts, guess what else is allegedly causing "global warming"?

• Humans may be fueling global warming by breathing, a new study suggests. “Exhaled human breath can contain small, elevated concentrations of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), both of which contribute to global warming,” according to research released last week in the UK  journal PLOS.

  The methane and nitrous oxide exhaled by humans make up about 0.1 of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, the writeup said. The gases are in addition to the carbon dioxide that humans exhale.

  The study, led by Dr. Nicholas Cowan from the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology, involved 104 adult volunteers and found that nitrous oxide was breathed out by every one of them, while 31 percent exhaled methane.

  Those who did not exhale methane in their breath still probably released the gas “ion flatus,” the study said, referring to burping and flatulence.

Yup....people farts....and breathing.

The only solution would appear to be selective elimination of useless elements of society - criminals, politicians, liberals, communists, etc. That and eating bugs....once they get rid of the cows.

Oh, and moving out of blue state shitholes? That also causes global warming!

• Far-left Axios is gushing over a new study that blames climate change for people fleeing Democrat-run cities like the “metro areas of Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. (specifically, Alexandria, Va.).”

  “Climate migration is already taking place within American communities, new data finds, as people flee flood-prone areas, and create ‘climate abandonment’ zones,” writes an unquestioning Axios.

These morons can't solve illegal border crossers and under-performing schools with trillions in tax revenues, but if we pay them even MORE money, they'll solve climate change.

It's Been a Few Months

Any updates on this lawsuit?

• Chicago Police Department officers and supervisors are owed about $165 million because the city miscalculated the overtime that they were paid for over a decade, according to federal court records from a case filed on behalf of the cops.

  More than two years have gone by since a federal judge ruled in favor of the two plaintiffs – a former police union official and a CPD sergeant – in the overtime case filed in Chicago in 2015.

  But the city and the lawyers who filed the case continue to fight in federal court over how to calculate the amount owed to cops affected by the overtime problems, court records show.

The article is from March, and we don't think it was ever resolved....if it was, apologies for missing it. We've been on-and-off busy with some issues.

Disease Vector

As predicted here and elsewhere, a mysterious illness is felling illegals....the same illegals who were residing in Police Stations up until two or three days ago:

• A 5-year-old migrant boy staying at a Pilsen shelter died Sunday evening after a medical emergency, authorities said, capping what has been a tumultuous 16 months for over 26,000 migrants who have arrived in the city since August of 2022 on buses sent from Texas border cities.

Good thing it's an isolated incident!

• Even after the child’s death, Chicago Fire Department transported to hospitals from the shelter five people with fevers Monday in separate incidents. The ill people included children ages 1, 4, 8 and 9, CFD spokesperson Larry Langford said.

We don't trust the Chicago Department of Health any farther than we could throw it. In the meantime, keep an eye on your own health and that of your families. Who knows what fucked up diseases these illegals brought from third world backwaters.

Another Sentencing Debacle

With assistance from the legislature, the Bureau of Prisons and a bunch of other politicos:

• On Wednesday, six years to the day after he was shot and nearly killed by a Chicago police officer that he pinned between two cars while trying to escape in a stolen SUV, Kayin Wise was back in court.

  Prosecutors say he was one of three people who crashed in a stolen car that burst into flames as a federal law enforcement helicopter surveilled them from the air. Cops say they found four handguns, two of which were stolen, inside the car.

  But let’s start at the beginning, on May 24, 2017.

You can read the entire story over at the CWB blog, but in summary:

• arrested in 2017 after being shot while pinning a 015 District PO between two cars
  
• convicted of numerous felonies in 2019 relating to the attempted murder of the cop
• sentenced to twelve years
  
• out in less than six
  

How about an actual "truth in sentencing" law be run up the flagpole in Springfield so everyone can see exactly which politicians are coddling criminals and causing past, current and future mayhem on the streets.

Shots Fired

And thirty days off the street:

• Police are investigating a shooting involving a Chicago off-duty officer.

  According to police, the incident happened just before 11 p.m. Sunday near the 7900 block of South Sacramento in the Ashburn neighborhood. Police said an off-duty officer discharged their weapon during an attempted carjacking. No one was injured during the shooting. It is unclear how many shots the off-duty officer fired.

  [...] The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) is investigating the incident. The officer involved will be placed on routine administrative leave for 30 days.

How does anyone else feel about the "thirty days" rule? We realize any shooting is going to be a high stress event, but if you're good with it and you're coping well, is the thirty days absolutely necessary?

Great Job Kwame

It isn't often a Federal Judge calls politicians morons, but that's the message here:

• A federal judge permanently blocked an Illinois law on Dec. 14 that he previously called “stupid” that targets maternal health care centers and sidewalk counselors for expressing their pro-life message.

  The state of Illinois consented to the injunction and the dismissal of the underlying lawsuit filed against it. Plaintiffs who sued to stop the law objected to it because it declared that the pro-life speech engaged in by pregnancy help ministries was a “deceptive business practice.”

And in news for taxpayers:

• The defendant, Mr. Raoul, was sued in his official capacity.

  [...] The judge dismissed the lawsuit “with prejudice,” meaning the case cannot be litigated again. The court “shall retain jurisdiction over this action to enforce the final judgment,” the order states. The order also states that NILFA “may file a motion seeking the costs of litigation, including reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses[.]”

Which means taxpayers are on the hook for Kwame not knowing what  "Freedom of Speech" means.

Dems Love Criminals

And the higher up in the court system they are, the bigger the damage they can do:

• President Joe Biden’s latest judicial nominee, whom the White House is hailing as "historic" due to his Muslim faith, serves on the advisory board of a left-wing group with extensive ties to convicted cop killers, the Washington Free Beacon has found.

  Adeel Abdullah Mangi, whom Biden tapped to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, is an advisory board member of Alliance of Families for Justice. The organization, which works to end "mass incarceration," was formed in 2016 with Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin as a founding director. Boudin pleaded guilty to the murder of two police officers and a security guard during an armored truck robbery in 1981. The FBI named Weather Underground a domestic terrorist organization following a string of bombings and robberies in the 1970s and ‘80s.

  The Alliance of Families for Justice, where Mangi has served since 2019, organized an event in 2021 to urge the release of six Black Panther and Black Liberation Army members serving life in prison for murdering police officers. The Alliance referred to the cop killers—including Black Panther members Mumia Abu-Jamal, H. Rap Brown, and others—as "freedom fighters" and claimed they were illegally targeted by the FBI.

The left has fully and openly embraced the criminal over the working class. It used to be a wink-and-a-nod, but it's out there in the open....and there are still mopes who vote for these assholes.

Old Quota Fax

The Department Intranet is a treasure trove to the curious.

Remember the on-going VSWO grievance? The people in charge (like Cmdr Stevens) making up their own "house rules" and denying Officers the opportunities to work OT based on numerous Contract violations that is going to end up costing the City hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here's something from 2013, posted by then-Sgt Jill Stevens making up a work rule that violated quite a few General Orders, Department Policy and perhaps a State Law? We aren't sure what dates conflict with which (click for larger version):

All those numbers? Those are what are called quotas.

And what do we know about quotas?

This took years to be put into writing, but....:

After years of Department denials and years of being confronted with evidence to the contrary, someone was finally forced to put the "no quota" directive to paper. But it went on for years before and continues to go on behind the scenes in Units where if you bitch about it, you get dumped back to the District.

Maybe the VSWO grievance will finally put an end to one part of it.

We Have a Mascot?

This monstrosity appeared at a "Shop With a Cop" event:

Who is getting paid to dress up like this? You couldn't just have a regular cop in uniform show up?

At least it wasn't this guy:

Cop Injured

Assisting ISP perhaps? The article isn't clear:

• A Chicago police officer was injured in a crash while assisting a motorist Sunday morning on the Dan Ryan Expressway.

  About 6:10 a.m., the motorist was in the southbound lanes of Interstate 94 near 31st Street when they lost control of their vehicle and struck the left concrete barrier, Illinois State Police said.

  A responding officer was parked behind the motorist with their emergency lights on while providing traffic control when another vehicle struck them, causing them to hit the motorist in front of them, state police said.

  The officer was taken to an area hospital with unspecified injuries, officials said.

Maybe ISP hadn't gotten there yet? In any event, prayers for a quick recovery.

No Illegals in Lobbies

We'll expect this to last about forty-eight hours, if that:

• For the first time in at least eight months, no asylum seekers were being housed in Chicago police district buildings as of Saturday morning, according to the city.

  Nearly 190 new arrivals were still awaiting shelter placement at O’Hare Airport, but the clearing of CPD stations marks an ebb in a crisis that has exhausted city resources and highlighted racial tensions across Chicago.

  In mid-October, a peak of about 3,300 asylum seekers were living inside or outside police stations, though the 24th District had been clear since July 21, officials said.

  Mayor Brandon Johnson had pledged to move the asylum seekers to other shelters before winter, which officially begins next week.

We've had numerous e-mails about the damage left behind. Not just the bugs and smells, but the camping in the lobbies of many of these new stations with heating units by the windows? Seems the illegals bent, broke and disabled many of the thermostats. pipes and wires regulating temps, so lobbies are either iceboxes or saunas at the cost of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Trial Wrapping Up

So is Ed Burke going to prison for a few years?

• Lawyers for ex-Ald. Edward Burke on Thursday sought to portray the once-mighty Democratic machine politician as an honest broker of city business who respected the guardrails between public and private life but fell victim to an unscrupulous FBI mole out to save himself.

  Yes, there was a scheme, Burke’s attorney Joseph Duffy told jurors in closing arguments at his corruption trial, but Burke was its target, not its mastermind. He never took any official action in exchange for anything of value, Duffy said. In fact, the evidence showed he never got a dime.

  Instead, the case is a product of overzealous government agents and their puppet, alderman-turned-FBI cooperator Daniel Solis, according to Duffy, who noted with indignation that it was the defense side that put Solis on the witness stand, not prosecutors.

Solis is that most despised of politicians - a "rat" who wore a wire to save himself an overly long stint in prison. We aren't fans of aldercreatures, but the only way any corruption is ever rooted out is by rats wearing wires and turncoats testifying against their corrupt colleagues. The trouble is, when one squeals, then their entire family - personal and political - is frozen out of feeding at the public trough for years, decades, even forever, and that's the only way they know to make money. They certainly aren't going into the trades or selling used cars.

But after all of his being a mole, the prosecution never even called Solis to the stand. Burke's lawyers called him as a defense witness of all things. We don't want to say the fix was in, but what the actual Hell?

Long time readers will recall that we've been cops for decades now and are rapidly approaching retirement. We can trace back cops in our family for six decades and counting in-laws, close to a century. We were raised on these stories and we've read many books. 

One of the best is still "Boss" by Mike Royko. Another is "When Corruption Was King" by crooked mob lawyer Robert Cooley about Outfit influence over all sorts of stuff, culminating in the Operation Gambat indictments. But Cooley's closing chapters touched on an as-then-un-indicted aldercreature and his lawyer wife. Guess who?

We've been cheering for Burke to go to prison for a long time now, and now we have actual doubts it might ever happen.

Hey Blowie?

How can you NOT demonize these assholes?

• Four teenage boys beat, robbed, and carjacked a man inside a Loop parking garage on Friday evening, Chicago police said. Charges have been filed.

  The attack began as the victim, 52, was getting into his 2023 Audi Q5 in a parking garage on the 200 block of North LaSalle around 5:12 p.m.

  A group of assailants struck the victim in the face with an object, causing him to fall to the ground, a CPD spokesperson said. They continued to hit him in the face and body while he was down.

  After robbing him of his valuables and keys, they drove away with his car.

If only.....ah, nevermind. It's Chiraq Jake.

ARS Safety Issue

More crime by the Callback Unit:

• I am writing this email to notify the members of our unit that yesterday we had two 3rd watch officers the victims of crimes yesterday. One incident was an attempt robbery, where a weapon was implied and the other was an aggravated assault near Jackson and Halsted in which an offender pointed a firearm at our officer. The attempt robbery occurred just outside of our lot on Polk Street. Luckily our officers were not injured. Please be careful when leaving on your breaks and lunches. This is the 3rd incident we have had in recent months. Let a co-worker know where you are going and try to go with someone if possible. Always be aware of your surroundings. I have reached out to the 12th District in the past and will again about a Special Attention in our are and our facility. Look after one another and please have a safe and happy holiday season.

It's important to be aware over that direction because a lot of the Officers there are stripped of police powers, and that includes carrying. We reported on the carjacking attempt a few months ago, so things don't appear to have gotten better.

Another Red Flag

Someone posted this link from October:

• With Stacy Davis Gates as president, the Chicago Teachers Union for the first time reported spending more money than it took in during its 2023 fiscal year, according to a report the union filed last month with the U.S. Department of Labor.

  It underscores members’ concerns about union leaders failing to properly handle union funds or to provide required reporting to members.

  Specifically, CTU reported receipts of $35,506,529 in 2023. But it spent nearly a half million dollars more than that, reporting $35,996,684 in disbursements.

Additionally:

• ....the union has failed to provide its audits to members for at least four years, according to a CTU member who requested the audits in a private Facebook group for CTU members.

And the head of the union has failed to pay government levies in two states despite a salary of nearly $300K?

The red flags just keep on popping up (cartoon from Illinois Policy site)