Get the Popcorn!

Last year, Fred Waller laid a smackdown on Brownie:

• [22 May 2023] Chicago’s acting top cop is ending the department’s relationship with a Texas firm that has been paid more than $1.3 million to train officers and is owned by a colleague of the city’s former police superintendent. The firm, Professional Law Enforcement Training, is led by Byron Boston, who served in the Dallas Police Department with Fred Waller’s predecessor, David Brown.

  “I have been made aware of CPD’s training agreement with PLET and the significant cost associated with it,” Waller wrote in a terse email Friday to Tina Skahill, the police department’s executive director of constitutional policing and reform, who played an influential role in Brown’s administration.

  “Today, please send a letter to PLET notifying them that CPD will no longer need their services as of June 1, 2023,” Waller added in the message obtained by the Sun-Times through a public records request.

This resulted in tens of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of active CPD being pulled off the streets to fill the now vacant instructor positions.

Friday, the Slum Times reported:

• A Texas firm with ties to former Supt. David Brown is back training officers at the police academy after being dumped by the Chicago Police Department over cost concerns after Brown left the department. Last May 19, then-interim police Supt. Fred Waller told police reform chief Tina Skahill to notify Professional Law Enforcement Training that “CPD will no longer need their services as of June 1,” citing the “significant cost.”

  But PLET was brought back late last year. The department says it’s fulfilling the agreement the company had been handed, without competitive bidding, by Brown when he was the city’s top cop.

The excuses are flying fast and furious:

• After Waller told her in an email to notify PLET that it was out, Skahill said that email was “crafted to falsely appear that someone else informed him of PLET costs when I recommended cancelling the night before and he approved cancellation.” Skahill soon retired, saying Waller was retaliating against her for overseeing an internal investigation that led to his suspension. She said her role had been significantly diminished and that Waller had told her she was being demoted on the same day the email was sent.

A lot of connections to unravel in the Slum times article:

• Skahill v Waller for disciplinary actions taken and retaliation after Waller rose to the top;
• the Inspector General is refusing comment on investigating connections between PLET and Brownie, with everyone knowing PLET was run by Brownie's Dallas buddies;
• no one seems to be able to produce an actual Contract signed off on by the City agreeing to using this company for training;

And we'll just note that all of this appears to be paid for with 1505 Funds - narcotics seizure money - meaning the City council oversight pretty much doesn't exist. We would question whether superintendents - past, present and future - use this account to steer money to connected underlings as Brownie appears to have done with PLET without oversight. And while questioning that, what connections did Waller disrupt, what connections did Skahill want to reinstate, what favors did/does Snelling owe to bring back PLET....

A largish pool of unaccountable money? Maybe this was why the feebs were at HQ the other day?