Lasers

Someone was griping about the 3-day Field Force training. One way to avoid it (as we found) was to announce your intent to retire prior to the DNC. They didn't even schedule us for it.

But we were more concerned about something else:

• eye protection against laser damage

We've seen dozens of reports, from here and abroad, about laser pointers being used to "paint" aircraft cockpits, potentially blinding pilots. The FAA has issued all sorts of warnings, many LEO Confidential, so we'll not be posting those.

There are also reports, again from here and abroad, of lasers being used against police in riot/mob situations and Officers suffering significant irreversible eye-damage.

Is there a plan to address any of this? We'll be gone, but we can be concerned for those who are left.

Twitter as News?

So this happened prior to the funeral Monday:

• As a nationwide search for the man accused of murdering Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca continues, his family is asking Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker to stay away from his funeral today, according to three reports and the Illinois State Comptroller.

  Mary Ann Ahern of NBC5 and Courtney Spinelli of WGN-TV both shared that information on Twitter, citing sources. Ahern said the governor would honor the family’s request.

  The reports both said Huesca’s family shared their wishes with Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza when she attended the officer’s wake on Sunday. Mendoza confirmed on Monday morning that she and Rep. Angelica Guerrero Cuellar (22nd) relayed the information to Johnson personally.

Fata$$ immediately said he'd stay away. There's wasn't a buffet anyway, so it was an easy decision.

It took Conehead until an hour prior to the funeral to decide to cancel his plans to exploit the death of an Officer. 

Lib-tarded "progressive" scumbag head of COPA Andrea Kersten had to be asked to leave the wake twice as she positions herself to run for mayor in three years.

The obvious message here is that politicians who condemn the police with one breath, are not welcome to express insincere condolences when the laws and policy decisions they champion directly contribute to the deaths of those same Officers so they can pretend to be law-and-order candidates next election.

And aside from the CWB reporting and the Contrarian X/Twitter feed, no mainstream media outlets reported the family's wishes....because it would have been embarrassing to those exploiting the Officer's death.

But....do you see the highlighted links in the CWB report up top? Those are X/Twitter feeds to reports that the editors refused to broadcast, but the reporters tried to get the word out anyway. Maybe to preserve the "scoop" but also, to actually do their jobs and inform the public.

We have no real idea how X/Twitter works. We can barely understand eBlogger and we keep our social media footprint deliberately small. But it is looking more and more like the big media companies are dying and the smaller micro-platforms may be the only truth being told.

UPDATE: The Tribune Editorial Staff takes a swipe at Susana Mendoza for revealing the family request for un-supportive politicians to stay away from the funeral, calling it a "political opportunity for a mayoral humiliation." 

Fuck them. If anyone needs to be humiliated, it's Conehead. And Fata$$. And Kersten. Bravo to Mendoza for letting everyone know that if you support a anti-police agenda, you aren't welcome at police funerals. That should be the bottom line.

We're still holding out hope she runs for mayor again in a few years.

Crime is NOT Down

Hey, if it's in the Wall Street Journal, it's got to be more accurate that the New York Times:

• Americans think crime is on the rise, but the media keep telling them they’re wrong. A Gallup survey last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that 61% of likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse, while only 13% think it’s getting better. Journalists purport to refute this by citing official crime statistics showing a downward trend.

  Americans aren’t mistaken. News reports fail to take into account that many victims aren’t reporting crimes to the police, especially since the pandemic.

This is an opinion piece, but the author is John R. Lott Jr., the well-known expert on Gun Rights and probably best known for applying actual scientific analysis to crime statistics - something the media and anti-gun people refuse to acknowledge:

• The U.S. has two measures of crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting program counts the number of crimes reported to police every year. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, in its National Crime Victimization Survey, asks some 240,000 people a year whether they have been victims of a crime. The two measures have diverged since 2020: The FBI has been reporting less crime, while more people say they have been victims.

  The divergence is due to several reasons. In 2022, 31% of police departments nationwide, including Los Angeles and New York, didn’t report crime data to the FBI. In addition, in cities from Baltimore to Nashville, Tenn., the FBI is undercounting crimes those jurisdictions reported.

31% of jurisdictions DIDN'T EVEN REPORT CRIME DATA to the FBI? Including New York and Los Angeles? 

Gee, you think that had an effect on the crime statistics? 

And you think that doesn't prove (again) that the FBI is not to be trusted in anything? They should just change their name to the "Ministerium für Staatssicherheit" now and save the printing costs.

Go read it all.

Weekend Wilding Coverage

We had pointed out that not a single media outlet appeared to cover the Saturday night mayhem downtown this past weekend, and we lamented that the violence had become so commonplace (and expected) that it wasn't worthy of coverage according to the lib-tarded media.

But we discovered that someone is still out there covering it on the X / Twitter platform:

• William J Kelly twitter feed

This person is the reporter who got under Groot's skin, had his press credentials pulled and then sued her to get them back. He appears to be a bomb-thrower with some talent for digging out stories City Hall would rather no one saw.

Thanks to the reader that let us know.

Funeral Today

Some (or most) of the media links on the right hand side will have streaming coverage of the service and / or funeral procession.

RIP Officer Huesca.

Cops Wanted

But very few are applying, according to our old friend Jack Dunphy:

• Gentle reader, are you looking for a job? Are you interested in one in which you’re regularly exposed to staph infections, lice, scabies, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and every other imaginable parasite and infectious disease as borne by America’s largest population of drug-addicted vagrants?

  Would you like to work for a city whose municipal government is rife with socialists, people who would more quickly blame you for their city’s ills than the criminals who prey on their fellow citizens? Are you thrilled at the prospect of a job in which the split-second decisions you make in defending yourself and others from death or serious injury are endlessly scrutinized by people in your chain of command who have spent their careers avoiding situations requiring such decisions?

  And finally, are you hoping to work in a city where the district attorney is more eager to imprison you than the criminals you’re expected to confront? If all of that describes you, gentle reader, you’re in luck. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wants you to know the LAPD is hiring.

And this hiring shortfall is hitting all of the usual blue-state $hitholes you'd expect. Including Chicago.

Go read it all.

Police Ain't Coming

As we suggested just yesterday:

• From the university’s perspective, it seemed like the perfect time for the police to move in and break up the students’ anti-genocide camp: 3 a.m.

  George Washington University had given the students until 7 p.m. on Thursday night to clear out. Instead more than a thousand students from other area universities and other supporters flooded the university yard, forming a circle around around the camp.

  As the time advanced beyond midnight the crowd dwindled, leaving the encampment less protected. It seemed logical that under the cover of darkness, with fewer media also present, the police would intervene, as they have on a growing number of campuses around the United States.

  And that’s what the GWU president wanted. But the Washington mayor and the police brass refused, according to The Washington Post.

This is Washington DC - ground zero for lib-tarded politicians and their sycophantic police officials since Ramsey left over a decade ago. 

And they're refusing to eject semi-peaceful political protestors from private property.

Maybe this catches on in time for the convention? Give the mob their "room to destroy."

Wilding is now Normal

Scanning the major media outlets and nary a mention of this weekend's wilding downtown.

Even the alternative media didn't mention it.

We guess it all went away?

• Anonymous said... Saturday night was Another shit show downtown, by Colombus & Illinois Streets . Again Mayor Conehead's [non-demonized] kids .. 60+ CPD Officers at least kept the assswipes off the street
  Of Course No comment from Fake Mayor Johnson
• Anonymous said... No coverage of the [mono-chromatic] mobs roaming downtown last night.. in prime tourist spots,,,, by any fake Chicago media.. Lets go brandon biden  

So unless someone gets shot or there's a "street takeover," it doesn't exist any more.

Good to know.

Good Idea?

We think it's the start of a good idea:

• In recent years, unofficial street parties celebrating Mexico’s Independence Day have surged in popularity: car caravans clog the Loop with bumper-to-bumper traffic as people dance in the streets, drivers do burnouts, and an orchestra of car horns fills the air.

  [...]  Now, there’s another plan—a plan to host a two-day Mexican Independence Day festival in Grant Park. The Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Mexican Consulate in Chicago are proposing the idea, which Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) revealed in his weekly newsletter on Friday.

  Organizers say Choose Chicago and the state support the event, which will run from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. on September 14 and 15. According to a promotional flyer, the festival will include food, “family fun,” arts and crafts, live music and performances at the Petrillo Bandshell, and “some of the best Margaritas in town.”
  

This should be the pattern for ALL parades and big festivals moving forward. Once it hits a certain point, becomes a certain size, has a certain number of parade units / floats, then it goes down to Grant Park and travels down Columbus Drive. The advantages are monstrous:

• the staging area becomes Solidarity Drive for floats and parade units;
• easy storage of the iron fencing for crowd control;
  
• tons of paid parking - all money in the city coffers;
• one single route for clean-up, so less muss, less fuss, less Streets and San OT

Think about the regular parades calendared years in advance. Set a price for the permit, set manpower numbers for Traffic Aides, require certain numbers of security personnel paid for by the parade committee.

You could even work in the usual bribes and graft that follow these events.

UPDATE: We forgot to mention this, but with a single authorized parade / festival, then ALL other "celebrations" and street takeovers are now illegal. Politicians can hide behind the "....but there was an authorized celebration on...." while the Department comes up with a plan to take back the streets.

Of Course They Lied

Funny how someone who wants taxpayer money, always underestimates the eventual cost:

• The Bears’ pitch for a new domed lakefront stadium came with a $4.7 billion price tag. In reality, though, Chicago and Illinois taxpayers would end up paying $5.9 billion to help the Bears build and finance the stadium and retire existing debt used to renovate Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate Field, where the White Sox play.

  Add to that the $1 billion already paid to revamp Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate Field, and the overall cost to taxpayers is $6.9 billion, says Frank Bilecki, executive director of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority.

  The higher costs were gleaned from figures provided by the Bears during their initial meeting with the stadium authority and in follow-up conversations with the team, Bilecki said.

And that's not even counting the under-the-table "asks" that the Bears are trying to sneak through:

• Although a new domed stadium would be built on lakefront parkland and owned by the Chicago Park District, the Bears are also seeking to dramatically sweeten for themselves the terms of a stadium lease that has been an almost constant source of contention between tenant and landlord over the years.

  “They’re asking to keep all of the revenue from other events that might take place at the stadium,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Thursday. “If there’s a Beyonce concert, they want all of that revenue, too, and everything else that might happen there. There are aspects of this that are probably non-starters.”

  Pritzker went further on Friday: “The deal that was presented didn’t take into account that taxpayers really aren’t going to do well under that proposal.”

All we're seeing is that Fata$$ and the other politicians haven't been offered enough bribe money to sell out taxpayers yet.

This also explains why Reinsdorf was opening his wallet suddenly - he wants to get inside of the Bears management who were demanding ALL of the ISFA bonding authority money to freeze out the White Sox new stadium efforts.

Think what all of that tax money could do for under-funded pensions if it was directed properly.

UofC Protests on Tap

Can you believe someone in the media is doing the surveillance that the feebs refuse to do?

• Startling group chat messages exposed by the Chicago Thinker reveal that on Wednesday, May 1, Students for Justice in Palestine at The University of Chicago (SJP UChicago) plans to emulate recent protests at Columbia University. It becomes the latest development in a wave of protests at colleges across the country, including Yale and New York University, as tensions around the Israel-Hamas war rise. 

  [...] At UChicago, SJP protestors are aiming to take over the university’s Main Quad and camp out for an extended period. A Telegram group chat details their plans to occupy campus buildings and get arrested for trespassing in order to draw attention to their cause. The demonstrations will last “at least for… two nights.”

Tuition at U of C is around $65,000. The University is associated with something like 99 Nobel Prize winners in assorted disciplines. The atomic bomb was pretty much created there. The Hyde Park neighborhood is a hotbed of lib-tards. Sparklefarts taught there.

Maybe they'll burn it to the ground. 

We can always hope.

In any event, don't get roped into a political protest on private University property. The Department will need everybody available in August and you don't want to be sitting at callback for any potential missteps.

Adressing Underfunding? Haha

Can anyone explain what this means to the newer Tier 2 kids?

• With a month and a half left in the General Assembly’s spring session, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration is readying its proposal to address Illinois’ chronically underfunded pension system.

  But the governor this week also acknowledged in the strongest terms yet that any plans to finally get the state on track toward fully funding retirement plans for public school teachers, university employees and state workers could be derailed by a looming legal fight over a 14-year-old law.

  Pritzker’s comments came as Illinois’ two influential statewide teachers unions were wrapping up a “week of action,” encouraging their members to call and email lawmakers and urge them to essentially “undo” a 2010 law that created a new less generous pension system for those who began their jobs after Jan. 1, 2011.

  The General Assembly and then-Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn quickly approved that law in the wake of the Great Recession, which forced state leaders to grapple with decades of underfunding in Illinois’ pension systems.

  But in the years since, economists and labor leaders have repeatedly warned that the retirement benefits in the Tier 2 system are so low that they might violate federal “Safe Harbor” laws. Those laws dictate Social Security replacement plans, like pensions, can’t offer benefits that don’t at least match Social Security.

We'll tell you what we think it means:

• massive tax increases and raising the retirement age
  

There might be more, but Fata$$ and the democrat super-majorities would rather spend hundreds of millions on illegal aliens than fixing a broken system.

Crimesha's Double Standard

Everyone always knew she was a useless "prosecutor."

And here's more proof that she's simply a useful idiot for the Machine:

• You may not be aware, but for the last four years the public policy of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office has been not to prosecute criminal violations tied to protests and demonstrations if the office deems those actions “peaceful.”

  That means the office as a matter of policy won’t prosecute protesters arrested for disorderly conduct, unlawful gathering or criminal trespass to state-supported land, among other laws.

  Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx reinforced these positions to her staff in a Nov. 15 memo, just as the protests over Israel’s campaign in the Gaza Strip were gaining momentum. Foxx’s office confirmed to us that the policy remains, even as aggressive protests on campuses have reached a point where some of America’s most storied universities have shut down in-person learning. She says it’s right there on the office’s website.

So political non-violent political protests were not going to be prosecuted....until August:

• She told us Thursday when we asked about the Nov. 15 memo that her office’s policy on protests won’t be in effect for the convention. Her office is huddling with other agencies such as the Chicago Police Department, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, the FBI and the Secret Service on how to handle law and order at the event and are developing a cooperative strategy.

  Foxx, understandably, didn’t tell us the precise tactics envisioned in this multigovernmental initiative, but she was clear that her Nov. 15 memo wouldn’t apply during that time.

So protests that might embarrass democrats at their convention will be arrestable and prosecutable.

Two sets of rules. 

Everyone better do themselves a favor and not be anywhere near Box 1 or Box 2 or named in the narrative of any arrest at the DNC.

Um...WTF? (UPDATES and Post Moved)

(This post was originally published at 2201 hours last night. We moved it to the top due to the ongoing nature of the incident)

From the comments:

• Off Topic:
  
  Dateline Chicago, Crook County
  
  The Person of interest in the murder of Officer Huesca hade a court date the other day at 26th and Cal for a prior Misdemeanor arrest. Of course he didn't show up. Detectives and the ASA wanted to get at least a warrant for missing court but under the "SAFETY" act the judge could not get one under state law since it was a misdemeanor and only his 1st appearance.
  
  This State is totally messed up.

So as suspected, another one of Crimesha's and Porky's "SAFE-T Act" $hitbirds walking around with ZERO restrictions? 

Great job you worthless fucks.

UPDATE: An arrest warrant has been issued according to media sources. Not in custody yet, but they know who they're looking for.

UPDATE: Raid overnight at 106th and Hale. Offender is in the wind, but his cousin was arrested for attempting to sell the Officer's gun.

Are These All DEI Hires?

Larritorious, check your staff:

• OT Rumor - Any truth to it that the Cmdr of Area 1 Det’s didn’t go to scene of the Huesca murder
  
  It gets better than that. None of the three Lts at the Area went to the scene that night and showed up the next day and had no clue what was going on. Why do u think this investigation is so messed up. Look who we have as the supposed “leaders” here

And after you check your staff, start replacing a few of these assholes.

Rahm, You Naughty Boy

People with money or influence (like politicians) have always done things like this:

• act immoral;
• learn someone in the media got info of the immorality;
• contact the person who was a party to the immorality and - through intermediaries - offer to "buy the rights" to the story for a mutually agreeable sum;
• sign contracts to this effect - non-disclosure agreements

And a compliant media plays along, dismissing other leaks as "mere rumor" or "unsubstantiated." 

Unless it serves "The Narrative" by destroying the immoral person (see Trump trial).

But then this leaks out:

• While testifying in former President Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial Thursday, the former publisher of the National Enquirer reportedly said he buried a story about an alleged affair by Rahm Emanuel before the former two-term Chicago mayor’s first City Hall campaign.

  David Pecker said under oath that he paid $20,000 for the story and then suppressed it, as he did for other celebrities managed by Emanuel’s brother, Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel, Politico reported.

  Ari Emanuel approached Pecker about killing the story soon after Rahm Emanuel stepped down as chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, Pecker testified on cross-examination by a Trump attorney.

Because back then, it wouldn't have looked good for Sparklefart's Chief of Staff to have had an extramarital affair. It could lead to uncomfortable questions, like the one that we have:

• who was the lucky guy?

9.5 is currently hiding in Japan, so he's not picking up the phone.

Hi Paul!

Rejected by voters, but in a few years, will be seen as a Voice of Reason:

• Paul Vallas, policy advisor for IllinoisPolicy.org, said the Chicago Teacher’s Union’s contract negotiation proposals are all moving towards having “more members, higher pay, less work, less accountability, and less school choice.”

   “Clearly the district has been losing enrollment in dramatic numbers. And plus the Union support for Sanctuary cities and unlimited migration,” said Vallas on a recent edition of the Chicago Morning Answer show. “I think this is part of their effort to capture that constituency and to fill the school district’s ranks,” he said about the CTU’s proposed $2000 newcomer package for asylum seeker students. 

  “I think half the schools are far from their enrollment levels and larger schools have only a small percentage of their seats filled. So clearly they’re embracing the sanctuary city concept; it’s a way to increase their enrollment after losing enrollment for about twenty consecutive years,” said Vallas. “ This contract is really all about more members, higher pay, less work, less accountability, and less school choice. That’s the bottom line, that’s what they want, and that’s ultimately where they’re going to end up.”

Chicago voters had a choice....and they (mostly) chose to stay home, leaving Conehead to win with something like the smallest mayoral turnout in history. 

So now the CTU is pretty much negotiating against their former lobbyist and aside from a few aldercreatures who know a bit less than we do about basic economics, Conehead is going to try to give away the non-existent store with the empty shelves.

Recall Petition

For anyone interested, there's a website for the ballot initiative to recall Conehead or any future Coneheads:

• Recall This Fall petition site

There are specific rules and legalities involved in collecting signatures....which we used to be familiar with during the petition drive we supported nearly ten years ago. They are listed on the website along with the procedures for submitting and deadlines.

This is actually a decent opportunity because you need 20% of the total number of voters who participated in the previous election. And seeing as how it was a record LOW turnout, the number of signatures needed is probably attainable with a concerted effort. 

It would probably take a day or three to get signatures from Roll Calls. Maybe the FOP could take a hand, make some appearances, collect a few thousand signatures over the course of a month? It wold certainly help this guy's efforts.

(Plus 10% or so for challenges that are sure to be mounted by assorted lawyers and politicians who fear a recall effort.)

Rumor - Bikes

We could see this happening:

• The city wants 500 officers on bicycles for the convention. A lot of them will be pulled from district manpower which is already critically low.

Over the past ten or twenty years, the Bicycle Officer has proven an adept counter-force against mobile groups of protestors who coordinate via cell phones and social media apps. They're able to re-deploy quickly, block streets temporarily, create mobile barricades, and shadow moving mobs.

Unfortunately (but accurately) it is said that generals and armies always prepare to fight the previous war. No doubt the "protestors" have been developing ways around this and the CPD will likely be caught using NATO tactics that are a decade in the past. They'll try to get around this by roping in every single bike "trained" officer. 

Whether or not it works....

"Completely Justified"

Here's the actual interview that Marty Preib was writing about:

• Law enforcement experts not affiliated with Chicago Police Department have an entirely different take on the shooting.

  “The shooting is completely within policy and completely justified,” Scott Ando, former head of the Independent Police Review Authority, COPA’s predecessor, recently told Crooked City author Martin Preib.

  “As such, if COPA were to recommend discipline for these officers relative to the shooting, I would gladly testify on their behalf before the Police Board, an arbitrator, or the court,” Ando said.

Read it all. It's important.

Unlikely Numbers

Someone answered the question posed yesterday about retirement numbers, but we have our doubts:

• 780-800 Police Officers, 300-350 Sgts are set to retire.

For 780 Officers (from Patrolmen to Detectives to ETs to all sorts of specialized title codes) seems likely and almost aligns with our estimates, but we don't think there are 300 sergeants even eligible to leave.

Still Supporting the NFL?

They haven't changed their left-wing stances....they've merely attempted to out-wait the bad publicity and lure gullible low-information consumers back:

• The left-wing nonprofit that bailed out anti-Israel protesters who blocked bridges and highways across the country last week was a multi-year partner of the NFL's "Inspire Change program" whose work is still promoted on the NFL's website.

All those hamas-holes blocking traffic, disrupting commerce and impeding traffic? The NFL supports that...or did until a couple weeks ago.

A leopard doesn't change it's spots, and an organization always tends to drift leftward politically. We could cite hundreds of examples without batting an eye.

Who's Got the Numbers?

Last year, it was reported that beat cops were down nearly 20% under Groot:

• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s recent campaign ad claims “she’s put more police on the streets.” But the city’s own data shows that claim is simply not true. The number of beat cops has declined. 

  Sworn police officers assigned to the city’s 22 police districts for regular patrol duties are down 19 percent since Lightfoot took office in April of 2019. That’s according to updated February 2023 data from the city’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) dashboard on sworn police officer allocation by unit.

The numbers and graphs are there. Part of it was hiding more people in Units or HQ or the Academy. That hasn't improved much, though there are rumors of hiring retirees to man Academy spots and background investigations for Personnel to free up sworn officers for street duty.

But we're still hearing that beginning 15/16 May and continuing up until 15/16 August, nearly 1,000 officers of all ranks are retiring. That doesn't count resignations, firings or lateral moves, which an educated guess would account for another 100-to-who-knows how many on top of that thousand.

Our usual spies at Personnel left during The Hiatus, but someone has to have accurate numbers.

Terror Warnings

A side effect of the Open Border policy of president $hit-for-brains is no one has any idea how many potential terrorists are roaming the country right now....and that makes the feebs nervous:

• The FBI is "increasingly concerned" about a "coordinated terror attack" on the US amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, warning a potential attack could play out similarly to the deadly Russian concert hall massacre that killed 144 people.

  FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed that while the terrorism threat to America was "already elevated" prior to Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel the conflict has now raised it to a "whole other level". He chillingly warned that a terror attack on US soil may "not be that different from what you saw against the concert hall in Russia a few weeks ago from ISIS-K."

  Wray admitted that "lone actors or small radicalised groups" on US soil could be influenced to carry out a terror attack in a public place. It comes as he reveals the threat environment the US is currently facing is at an all-time high.

So when the feebs aren't...

• chasing down peaceful anti-abortion protestors 
• or missing the next "known wolf" mass shooter
  
• or unarmed grandmothers who toured the Capitol 
• or covering up mass rapes of female gymnasts 
• or committing hundreds of thousands of Civil Rights / FISA violations

...then they're issuing near-useless warnings about a potential mass casualty event.

How useless is the FBI nowadays?

• “We don’t monitor protests, but we do share intelligence about specific threats of violence with campuses and local law enforcement,” (FBI Director) Wray answered.

  He added, “But we don’t monitor protests.”

Sure. Why bother monitoring (or infiltrating) the groups preaching and supporting the most anti-American hatred? 

Unless they're "right wing" conservatives unhappy with the current trajectory of the political discourse in the US. Then they're the "biggest threat" ever heard of....unlike the "mostly peaceful" #blm and antifa mass lootings / burnings of a few years ago.

These federal morons are going to be sooooo helpful come August.

Right on Time....a Lawsuit

The body must have cooled off enough?

• A federal lawsuit filed by the mother of Dexter Reed contends he was killed by Chicago police officers who unlawfully pulled over his SUV last month and were “outrageously” aggressive as they approached him.

  The lawsuit accuses Chicago police of promoting “brutally violent, militarized policing tactics,” and argues that the five officers who stopped Reed “created an environment that directly resulted in his death.”

  Reed, 26, was driving in the 3800 block of West Ferdinand Street in Humboldt Park on March 21 when tactical officers in an unmarked car stopped his GMC Terrain. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the oversight agency investigating the shooting, has said Reed was stopped for a minor seatbelt violation.

  But video footage released by COPA shows the officers aggressively approached Reed, drawing their guns as they yelled for him to lower his window and open his door. Instead, Reed opened fire and struck one of the officers in the wrist, according to COPA.

  The other officers shot back, firing as many as 96 shots in 41 seconds, COPA said.

Firstly, it's still a violation, big or small, doesn't matter. Police are tasked with enforcing them all. You want it changed, there's a legislature in session....change the law.

Second, the "militarized policing tactics" is just a nonsense word salad. Define it and we'll guarantee nothing like that occurred or is taught or written in CPD directives.

Thirdly, Reed shot first, Reed shot at the police, Reed wounded an Officer....who happened to be black. We mention that to head off the inevitable accusations of racial profiling.

And lastly, can someone at the FOP sue the media outlets who keep saying "96 shots." All of the official documentation that COPA put on its website shows this to be a lie and the media continues to misrepresent the scumbag lib-tarded head of COPA Andrea Kersten's bullshit e-mail as an "investigation" that still hasn't reached completion.

Still a "No"

Taking public property and also asking (demanding) taxpayers foot half the bill for a private corporation....we're not on board:

• The Chicago Bears unveiled plans for a new stadium on the city’s lakefront Wednesday afternoon, the newest update in a years-long process by the NFL franchise to replace Soldier Field with a state-of-the art venue that would allow Chicago to host major sporting events like the Super Bowl and the NCAA Final Four.

  The Bears unveiled the plans during an afternoon press conference at Soldier Field. Mayor Brandon Johnson attended and delivered a speech following opening remarks from Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren. The Bears said they are aiming to break ground in the summer of 2025, with a planned grand opening in the summer of 2028. 

  But there are a few financial questions to be answered. Last month, Warren announced the team would provide more than $2 billion in funding to build a publicly-owned domed stadium and park space along the lakefront.

  On Tuesday, however, the Chicago Tribune reported the Bears’ plan will ask taxpayers to cover about half the costs to build the new stadium. According to the report, sources speaking on condition of anonymity told the Tribune the plan is estimated to cost $4.6 billion to execute, with $3.2 billion directed toward building the new stadium itself and another $1.4 billion dedicated to infrastructure improvements around and outside the stadium.

  Sources told the Tribune the Bears plan to put forward $2.3 billion in private capital, which would include some financing coming from the NFL. But the Bears’ plan will also ask for $2.3 billion in public financing.
  

We're pretty sure there have to be a number of hearings at various levels of government, along with a bond issue and the inevitable lawsuits by Friends of the Parks and other parties looking for either a payout or a piece of the action.

And after the convention riots this fall, no one is going to want to commit billions of non-existent taxpayer dollars to a stadium. Those non-existent dollars will have to be earmarked to rebuilt other burned down buildings.

UPDATE: Reinsdorf is sensing public mistrust of stadium spending and is (finally) offering to pay an unspecified portion from his own team money.

PO Huesca - Line of Duty

With all the honors that go with it:

• The procession carrying fallen CPD Officer Luis Huesca's body arrived at the funeral home at about 4 p.m. Tuesday. It is the same funeral home his close friend and fellow officer, Andrés Vásquez Lasso, was mourned at just over one year ago.

  On what would have been his 31st birthday, Huesca's flag-draped coffin was transported from the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office to Blake-Lamb Funeral Home in Oak Lawn. His family followed close behind as hundreds of Chicago police officers escorted Huesca to where his body will now be prepared for burial.

  Visitation is Sunday from 1 p.m. through 8 p.m. at Blake Lamb Funeral Home in Oak Lawn. A funeral mass is planned for Monday at 10 a.m. at St. Rita of Cascia Catholic Church on Western Avenue in Chicago.

Hopefully, before the funeral, there will also be some good news in the manhunt to bring closure all around.

Foot Traffic is Up?

We're going to go out on a limb here and say, "bullshit:"

• The Loop is showing some signs of a revival as the average weekend foot traffic exceeded pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter, the Chicago Loop Alliance said Tuesday. But the group’s report said weekday activity still lags.

  The average weekend pedestrian activity on State Street was at 107% of 2019 levels. During the workweek from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., foot traffic was about 91% of pre-pandemic activity.

  Total pedestrian activity on State Street was up 7% compared to the first quarter of 2023, representing 1.5 million “impressions” per week, and at 94% of 2019 levels. The impressions are counted by analytics firm Springboard MRI, which collects data daily from counters on top of buildings along State Street, from Ida B. Wells Drive to Wacker Drive, that track silhouettes of people but not any identifying features.

Have you been downtown during the week? It's a ghost town. 

And the buildings? Plywood forests.

The article admits as much:

• Hotel occupancy was 51%, up 3 percentage points from the same period in 2023, and 11 percentage points lower than the first quarter of 2019.

  Chicagoans and visitors are returning to the Loop, “but we have to give them a reason to stay,” said Michael Edwards, president and CEO of the Chicago Loop Alliance. “The Loop needs more investors to bet big on our district right now,” he said, citing wins from Google and JPMorgan Chase for their plans to open or refurbish offices in the Loop.

Google and JP Morgan aren't going to revitalize a dying restaurant industry or a dead convention industry. And tourists are correctly nervous about the wilding season ramping up. You know how bad it's gotten? Are you aware that there are only two McDonald's locations in the actual downtown area anymore?

We're willing to bet these automated tracking devices are getting their weekend number bumps from two-or-three-or-four-hundred jackass teens running around, taking over street corners, looting what businesses remain and beating whatever visitors stumble across their paths. Remember, these devices are only tracking silhouettes - nothing identifiable. You get a robot to count them multiple times as they run back-and-forth from the bikes and arrest teams and you can fake a few thousand "visitors" without any effort.

Get Rid of ShotSpotter!

Conehead is going to have a hard time justifying his previous decision to unload ShotSpotter:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson dodged questions when reporters asked him on Monday to square his decision to cancel the city’s relationship with ShotSpotter given that an alert from the gunfire detection system is how Chicago police officers first learned of a shooting that left an off-duty officer dead over the weekend.

  Many aldermen representing wards struggling with violent crime want to keep ShotSpotters in their wards. But Johnson’s allies—mostly aldermen representing more affluent, safer neighborhoods that aren’t even monitored by ShotSpotter—are blocking those efforts.

  Meanwhile, the technology continues to help Chicago police officers bring charges against people for allegedly firing guns on the city’s streets.

CWB goes on to list three recent cases, all resulting in arrests, gun recoveries and charges.

It's amusing to see the "more affluent, safer neighborhood..." aldercreatures representing the....let's just say "more pale" segments of Chicago telling the bleeding, broken and maimed parts of town that they don't need ShotSpotter since it only seems to point cops in the direction of minority shooters who are actually doing 90% of the shooting.

Tennessee Shooting

An amusing little bit of video from Memphis:

• X / Twitter link here

A "teen takeover" where a Corvette is doing donuts in the middle of the street.

Sixteen people ended up shot (2 dead) about seven seconds into the video. A captured still photo shows no less than what appears to be four rifles being brandished over the heads of the crowd:

These are the blue $hithole cities now.

Wanted - Armed and Dangerous

This has been presented at every Roll Call citywide:

• Detectives have distributed surveillance images to Chicago police officers citywide of a man they want to speak with in connection with the murder of CPD Officer Luis Huesca as he returned home from work on Sunday morning.

  On Monday evening, CPD went public with this video compilation, which shows the suspect walking in the area of the murder and shopping at two convenience stores. Police said he should be considered armed and dangerous.

Hopefully it's only a matter of time.

Time for a Referee

The feud between Larritorious and Scumbag Andrea Kersten has attracted the attention of another political realm:

• Following days of public sniping and sassing in the wake of the Dexter Reed video release, Chicago’s top cop and the head of the agency that investigates CPD shootings are being given a timeout.

  Anthony Driver, President of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, announced Friday he will meet this week with Supt. Larry Snelling and COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten to discuss “professionalism and mutual understanding” as Kersten’s agency continues its investigation of the shooting.

  A rift developed almost immediately upon COPA’s April 9 release of video and other evidence related to the March 21 shooting in Humboldt Park. Reed is believed to have fired shots at police officers during a traffic stop, striking one in the arm. Four other officers at the scene returned fire, killing the 26-year-old.

  Snelling appeared at a town hall on the evening before the video release, and he sounded like he was ready to present the police department’s version of events when the videos came out. But he was a no-show at a press conference the next morning, where Kersten and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx discussed the case.

As we pointed out, lib-tarded "progressive" Scumbag Andrea Kersten started the ball rolling by writing a letter claiming Officers should be suspended without any investigation taking place and zero interviews being conducted with any involved Officers, then tipping off the media to FOIA the e-mail, bolstering the narrative that the Officers acted improperly (which they didn't). then she went to media outlets, including ESPN for some reason (a sports network) to answer questions about an e-mail she manufactured specifically to circumvent a proper and professional investigation.

And now, Marty Prieb has located someone who has declared that Officers should not be facing any disciplinary proceedings in this shooting. Guess who?

• The former head of the civilian oversight agency for the Chicago Police Department stated Wednesday that he would testify on behalf of any police officers charged with misconduct in a high-profile shooting that left the offender dead and one officer wounded.

  Scott Ando, who headed the city’s oversight agency from 2014 to 2015, stated he would be willing to testify at any police board hearing that could take shape from an investigation by the city’s current oversight agency, COPA, led by Andrea Kersten, into the March 21 shooting death of Dexter Reed.

The former head of IPRA (predecessor of COPA) and the guy who supervised dozens upon dozens of police shootings, disagrees entirely with the politically motivated persecution of Police Officers by lib-tarded "progressive" Scumbag Andrea Kersten....and he's willing to go to Court to testify in support of Officers.

That one is going to sting.

FOP Appeals Arbitration Ruling

We recognize the FOP's intent....as long as everyone alsoe recognizes the spin that will be applied from the "progressive" lib-tards:

• Chicago’s largest police union has given formal notice that it will appeal a court ruling that would open hearings on major disciplinary cases to the public. In a court filing, lawyers for Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 said they would challenge an order by Cook County Judge Michael Mullen issued last month.

  That order pared back a 2023 ruling by a labor arbitrator that gave officers facing dismissal or long-term suspensions the option to have their case decided by an independent arbitrator instead of the Chicago Police Board. The arbitrator’s ruling also required the city to pay officers who were suspended while their cases were pending, a provision that also was rolled back by Mullen’s order.

  Mullen had said before releasing his ruling that he expected it would please neither side.

  Mullen affirmed officers’ right to have an arbitrator decide their fate in serious cases, but he did say those hearings could be open because of the public interest in misconduct by police.

The argument that the politicians are going to make is that "secrecy" prevents oversight.

Arbitrator Benn has said the city is unlikely to prevail in court, and that this may result in years of litigation. It's going to be a long and bumpy road, outlasting our careers for certain and thousands of others.

Check Out This Einstein

Out on bail with a helluva story:

• Around 1:45 p.m. on April 12, Chicago police responded to calls of a man with a gun provoking people on the street near 130th and Indiana on the Far South Side. They saw Christopher Woods in the area and thought he matched the suspect’s description, according to a report they filed later.

  As the officers stepped out of their squad car to speak with Woods, one of them noticed he was holding a gun inside his right jacket pocket, the report said. The other officer saw the grip of a firearm.

  Woods, 45, complied with the officers’ commands and they recovered the loaded pistol from his pocket, according to the report.

  The officers’ report said he “was going to turn the firearm in.”

Sure he was. People with guns always want to turn them in.

And then....:

• Prosecutors charged Woods with Class X armed habitual criminal because he has been convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm twice before. However, they did not ask Judge Charles Beach to detain Woods during his court appearance on April 13, so the judge sent him home.

  Less than 24 hours later, around 12:45 p.m. on April 14, Woods flagged down a CPD tactical unit near 116th and Michigan.

  He told the officers that “he wanted to turn a gun in as well as turn himself in,” the officers wrote in their report, adding that Woods told them he had a gun in his jacket pocket.

  The officers recovered a loaded revolver and a box containing 48 rounds of ammunition from his jacket, the report said.

Good Lord....we guess he really really wanted to turn in a gun so badly, he went out and found another one within fourteen hours.

For those keeping track at home, he has somehow acquired at least FOUR different guns, while being a felon, and without the benefit of an FOID card.

Cases Never Closed

In California, even after three years AND the previous District Attorney refusing to levy charges against involved Officers, all it takes is a "progressive" lib-tarded new DA to be elected and all bets are off:

• District Attorney Pamela Price on Thursday evening announced she plans to file charges against the three Alameda police officers involved in the 2021 in-custody death of Mario Gonzalez.

  Price made the announcement at a press conference at around 6 p.m. Thursday. She said the officers would be charged with involuntary manslaughter. 

  During the press conference, Price misspoke about the possible sentence the charge could carry, saying the officers could be in state prison for 15 years to life. Her office later clarified that the possible sentence was up to four years.

Even the Coroner determined the death was a combination of drugs in the offender's system and the stress of trying to resist arrest....what we now know as a "St. George of Floyd" fatality. 

But it proves once again, that democrats love them some criminals, regardless of the location.

Haunting

The death of Officer Luis Huesca took a hauntingly dark turn when it was revealed he had given a short video remembrance of his classmate and good friend, Officer Vásquez Lasso, who was killed in the Line of Duty just last year:

• Chicago Police Officer Luis Huesca was shot and killed while off duty, but in uniform, in the Southwest Side's Gage Park neighborhood early Sunday morning.

  Officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert just before 3 a.m. After touring the area, officers drove to the 3100 block of West 56th Street, near Kedzie Avenue, where the off-duty officer was found outside with gunshot wounds, police said.

  Just a year ago, Huesca eulogized one of his best friends – a fellow Chicago Police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty.

  It was just last year when Officer Huesca appeared in a tribute video for his good friend and colleague, Officer Andrés Mauricio Vásquez Lasso, who was shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence call on Spaulding Avenue near 53rd Street March 1, 2023.

  "Whether it was it was at work or outside of work, he did take the time to help others," Huesca said of Vásquez Lasso in the tribute video, and "he's one of those guys who deserves that star. He was proud to wear this star."

  The tribute video to Officer Vásquez Lasso now holds a while [sic] new meeting [sic] for those who knew both officers.

We see CBS's editors took the night off.....maybe they meant "...whole new meaning..."? 

We also see it took Conehead the better part of a day to arrive back in the city from his suburban hideout and even longer to release a statement regarding the death of an Officer. It barely took him a news cycle to comment on the video of a dead shithead who shot another Officer. We guess when you prioritize the criminal over the cops, nothing should surprise us.

Assign Responsibility?

Maybe we can get Crimesha to do this? It's a lib-tarded dream after all and Crimesha is a lib-tard:

• Ethan Crumbley’s parents were sentenced to between 10 and 15 years behind bars Tuesday for their son’s 2021 massacre that left four students dead — the first parents convicted in a US mass school shooting.

  James and Jennifer Crumbley were handed the prison time by Judge Cheryl Matthews in a Pontiac, Mich., courtroom after they were found guilty on involuntary manslaughter charges at separate trials in March and February, respectively.

Can you imagine if  Cook County courts were used to hold parents accountable for their children's crimes? All these carjackings, robberies, burglaries, batteries and homicides? 

Fata$$ would have to build a dozen new prisons, providing thousands of new union jobs for construction workers and thousands more unionized corrections officers.

Walk the walk Crimesha.

U of C Victim Fights Back

And she managed to disarm an offender:

• A University of Chicago student robbed at gunpoint this week fought back and grabbed a key piece of evidence that's now in the hand of detectives.

  The entire incident was captured on surveillance video. Madelyn, 21, a senior studying economics, was walking home from class Wednesday afternoon when a man approached her in the 5600 block of South University.

  [...]

  "In the tussle, I was able to take the magazine out of his gun, and I tossed it into a bush.

And that key piece of evidence may have led to an arrest:

• Chicago police said two teen boys, 16 and 17 years old, are in custody and are facing felony charges on Sunday morning in connection to armed robberies near the University of Chicago campus.

Detectives haven't linked the recovered magazine to the arrested juveniles, but it isn't too far of a stretch. The student has some regrets about fighting back....from what we're interpreting, she didn't realize it was an actual pistol until after the fact. She's awfully lucky.

Ironic Prophet

Remember that French actor guy that got beaten up by some Nigerian body builders he hired? He claimed that on a sub-zero winter morning, these "white guys" in red hats declared Chicago "MAGA Country" and beat his ass.

Who knew he was actually predicting the future?

Juicy was just predicting the future where MAGA support would be coming from unlikely quarters.

Off Duty Officer Killed

Headed home after work....and his car and gun are missing:

• A Chicago police officer was shot to death two days before his 31st birthday on the Southwest Side early Sunday, authorities said. Just before 3 a.m., paramedics responded to the 3100 block of West 56th Street for an officer shot, according to the Chicago Fire Department.

  The officer, a 30-year-old man, was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he died due to his injuries, Supt. Larry Snelling told reporters outside of the University of Chicago Sunday morning. The officer was heading home after his shift when he was shot multiple times, Snelling said. He worked for the department for six years.

  “We lost one of our own today,” Snelling said. “He was just a great officer, great human being.”

  He didn’t confirm that the shooting was the result of a carjacking but did say the officer’s vehicle was taken.

Deepest sympathies to his family, friends and co-workers. More info will be forthcoming when it becomes available.

ISP to Investigate?

From the comments:

• ...right from the 5th floor.
  
  ISP is going to be taking over all CPD OIS investigations. details are being worked out but the sticking points are transparency, timelines and the big one is the cost. ISP does not want to but we are going to pay them millions to do it. word will come down before the end of the year.

This would make sense, having qualified investigators handling Officer Involved Shootings instead of political hacks with axes to grind

Anyone from ISP care to confirm?

Based on the post just below this one, an outside agency is the only way to have a legit investigation.

Larritorious Must Resign?

The usual suspects are demanding Larry resign for being minimally capable at his job:

• Protesters showed up Thursday night at a Chicago Police Board meeting demanding the firing and prosecution of officers who fired 96 shots at Dexter Reed during a traffic stop last month.

Again, this is a LIE. All of the reports on the COPA website have the total number of shots fired by the Officers in the TRR's. Those add up to seventy-nine. Does no one in the media realize that these TRR's are Official Reports? And lying on an Official Report - intentionally or unintentionally - is a guaranteed Separation Charge. Anyone who would affix their signature - written or electronic - to a document containing any improper information would be foolish in the extreme.

Don't believe us? Ask the Sergeant who signed the TRRs for the McDonald case. He was ORDERED to electronically sign the forms because the Street Deputy wanted to complete his portion of the paperwork package and go home. The Sergeant did so even though he was never on the scene of the shooting. 

Guess who got fired for Falsification of Official Reports? And guess who retired with a full pension?

• Grace Patino, with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said during public comment that Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling — who was at the meeting — should be dismissed.

  “Dexter Reed should be here today,” Patino said. “The officers involved in the execution of Dexter Reed must be immediately fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.”

So....we should just lynch the Officers? With no hearings, no trial, no collection of evidence? Didn't society used to do things like that? We recall marches, lawsuits, protests, all sorts of history against this sort of behavior....and now it's suddenly acceptable again?

Can we use this against carjackers?

• Miracle Boyd, an activist with Good Kids Mad City, said Reed was “racially profiled,” and his death was detrimental to Black communities. “We demand the tactical units be banned, and Mayor Johnson, Supt. Snelling and COPA fire the officers,” she said. “We no longer need police to perform traffic stops because it’s not safe.”

Racially profiled....by a black Officer....whom Dexter shot? Evidently, Miracle didn't buy an education with her settlement money.

Larry and the COPA scumbag traded some shots:

• Snelling and Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, during the meeting sparred over transparency in the Reed case. Snelling had criticized Kersten for making public comments on the preliminary information in the investigation before interviewing officers.

  Kersten read a statement defending the sharing of preliminary information with the public as a crucial step in restoring trust between the public and the city’s institutions.

  “Given our city’s history and the lack of trust in our institutions and processes that resolve these issues, it is crucial to provide information to the public when we can,” Kersten said. “The recitation of preliminary facts that I delivered to the public last week was objective, fair, and struck the delicate balance between informing the public and maintaining the integrity of the ongoing investigations.”

We're pretty sure no one was talking about the "preliminary facts," though few if any existed. COPA still hasn't interviewed the Officers and were we providing legal advice, we'd decline any interviews and insist that Larritorious waive any Department requirements to cooperate.

COPA has proven it cannot be trusted to be impartial.She's giving interviews to....ESPN? "Revrunds"? Persons with ZERO official standing in the process?

Did everyone catch the "Libtard 101 Playbook" scumbag Kersten is using?

• write an e-mail to the administration demanding suspensions based on zero investigation;
• tip off the media to FOIA the e-mail thread from her office to Conehead and Larritorious;
• comment on the "public record" that she manufactured.

It's a typical trick used by leakers, whistleblowers (legit and not), the feds (looking at you FBI) and scumbag progressives with an agenda to push. 

And finally, they dig up a teacher with a typical sob story rooted in a long ago past life:

• During the rally before the meeting, Melina Lesus, who teaches at Westinghouse College Prep, where Reed was a standout basketball player, said teachers trusted him and were shocked to hear of his death. “I was talking to one of my colleagues who did teach him as a freshman, and she said, ‘Melina, how could this happen? He was the most respectful kid,’” Lesus said.

His high school career was eight years ago. A lot can happen in eight years. A number of arrests. A couple of felony charges. A gun arrests. An uncle shooting him for threatening the family with a knife. 

Maybe you and your colleagues were just really bad teachers.

Blogger Issues

Blogger is having some technical issues this weekend. We're assuming the publishing issues we've been experiencing are one of those things that gets addressed over the weekend when traffic is traditionally lower.

If we're late or delayed, it's the computer server issues, not us. 

We're still here. Be patient.

Open post in the meantime. Maybe discuss this....that $70 million that O'Shea and others approved for the illegals....that would have looked good in the underfunded pension, wouldn't it?

Cop Injured

 Car crash:

• Three people were hurt in a crash involving a Chicago police squad car Friday.

  The crash happened in West Woodlawn in the 6300 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue.

  Chicago police say the squad car hit a red Kia. One officer and a 31-year-old woman and 64-year-old woman were taken to the University of Chicago Hospital for treatment with minor injuries, CPD said. All three were in good condition.

Speedy recovery wished to the Officer....we need all hands on deck this summer. you wouldn't want to miss all the excitement, right?

Where is the Money Coming From?

Kicking the can down the road:

• The City Council authorized a massive $1.25 billion borrowing plan for economic development and housing projects on Friday, handing Mayor Brandon Johnson a key victory in his plan to wean the city off a longstanding reliance on tax increment financing districts.

  It passed 32-17 despite objections from opponents seeking tighter Council oversight of future projects.

With interest, the plan could cost the city $2.4 billion over 37 years, meaning just about everyone who voted for and against this monstrosity will be long dead, buried, or likely residing their last years in Federal prison. They are dooming anyone who remains in this dying blue $hithole to a dystopian future.

And along with this borrowing, are they planning on spending anything responsibly?

Hell no:

• City Council members on Friday approved $70 million in surplus spending that, with assistance from the county and state, is expected to cover expenses through the end of the year to care for the influx of asylum-seekers sent to Chicago from the Southern U.S. border.

  By a vote of 30-18, Council members backed the latest round of funding for a crisis that has highlighted racial divisions in the city, raising questions about committing money to new Latino arrivals without addressing decades of disinvestment in Black neighborhoods on the South and West sides.

  Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) said the measure amounts to “burning money” for “residents who are not paying taxes in the city of Chicago.”

As opposed to the last 70 years of burning money....

Nice Hats

A retiree has made a few hats:

If you know where to get them, let us know in the comment section.

Remember, Don't Demonize

And don't ever describe the offender either (right Cuck?):

• Two men were robbed by a group of suspects armed with handguns and rifles on the Northwest Side Thursday morning, Chicago police said.

  The two victims were standing on the sidewalk in the 3500-block of West Belmont Avenue at about 3:20 a.m. when police said a black sedan approached and four armed suspects got out.

  The suspects demanded the victims' property and then they fled westbound on Belmont Avenue, police said. No one was injured and no one is in custody.

  The robbery comes amid a CPD alert detailing more than a dozen similar armed robberies over the past week across the North and Northwest sides.

That "more than a dozen" they cite?

• it's closer to twenty across the city

But don't worry, NBC doesn't describe the suspects any better than ABC did. 

But they did describe the car as "black" though, so that's something.

Doom Loop

We didn't coin the term "doom loop" or it's cousin, "death spiral," but we were using it years and years ago. Maybe we helped popularized them a bit? Regardless, here's someone noticing what we noticed long ago:

• The downtown core of St. Louis, Missouri, which has not had a Republican mayor since 1949, finds itself trapped in a downward doom loop, plagued by vacant buildings, criminal activity, and shuttered businesses, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal paints a grim picture of a city center in distress, with boarded-up properties and occasional raids by emergency services searching for squatters and missing persons.

  Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson described the area as “a very dangerous place,” recounting a tragic incident during a 2023 raid where a search dog fell through an open window and later succumbed to its injuries. The city also faced a fire last year at a building, suspected to have been caused by copper thieves.

  The iconic 44-story building, formerly owned by AT&T, now sits empty, recently selling for a mere $3.5 million—a staggering drop from its 2006 sale price of $205 million. “Cities such as San Francisco and Chicago are trying to save their downtown office districts from spiraling into a doom loop. St. Louis is already trapped in one,” the WSJ reported.

The article goes on to describe a litany of population loss, increasing crime, diminishing business and declining tourist numbers....all things an observant reader will recognize as parallel to what's happening in the Windy City.

To that list, we'd also add increasing taxes, lost convention businesses, reduced city services, to say nothing about the teachers demanding a 51% raise for failing at their jobs.

And we almost forgot the high dollar businesses leaving town:

• Citadel, Boeing and Guggenheim all leaving Chicago and Illinois
  
• United moving out to the burbs
• Water Tower emptying, Blommers closing, McDonald's warning Conehead about crime
  

Even the CME is still talking about moving. We told people not long ago that they had trading floors built out-of-state and ran successful weekend tests with all the electronics. All it would take now is an ill-advised "transaction tax" and the CME flips a switch....no more tax revenue. (corrected)

Doom loop, death spiral, it all spells trouble.

No One Noticed?

All those GPS trackers and automated bus / train notifications to show how efficiently the CTA is burning through your tax dollars, and this happened last year?

• A Block Club Chicago investigation into the circumstances around Lyons’ death raises questions about the safety of CTA drivers as the agency is touting improved working conditions in an attempt to bolster its staff.

  Block Club’s reporting found Lyons sat in her bus unconscious for nearly an hour before someone eventually sought help. CTA supervisors neglected to check on her even though the bus never moved and subsequently failed to arrive at more than 50 scheduled stops.

  The CTA failed to report the incident to the Illinois Occupational Safety and Health Administration despite a state law requiring it. The CTA wouldn’t explain why or answer Block Club’s questions about this incident, saying it was limited by privacy concerns. 

  “Out of respect for Ms. Lyons’ family, we are unable to provide any more details about her service record,” CTA spokesperson Maddie Kilgannon said in a statement. “We can, however, note that as soon as our 24/7 Operations Control Center was notified of Ms. Lyons’ condition the night of July 20, 2023, first responders were on scene within a couple of minutes.”

A couple of minutes.....after she sat dying or dead for over an hour in a bus turnaround. Great system you got there Ms Kilgannon. 

No GPS reading on a non moving bus? No notifications that a "ghost bus" wasn't appearing where those automated notifications say it was? No CTA supervisor in an SUV checking on which routes and runs were operating on-time or behind? And after all these failures, the CTA even refused to make a report to OSHA as required by law.

The CTA eats up how much of the city budget with all these "modernizations" and they all failed?

Monkeypox - Election Variant

Just in time to gin up panic for the fall:

• A worrying new strain of monkeypox with "pandemic potential" has been discovered by scientists.

  Researchers have called for “swift action” from the international community to avoid another outbreak of the virus, which is now officially known as mpox.

  It comes after a study tracked a new outbreak in a mining town in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Authorities in the country have for the latest been battling a variant of mpox called "clade 1" for around a year.

  This variant is thought to kill 10% of all people who become infected - and researchers have now uncovered a mutated version of it which appears to be better at spreading. It's been named "clade 1b", and was discovered in Kamituga, a town of 13,995 people.

The last strain of "mpox" (called mpox so as not to offend monkeys) was spread via sexual contact, usually among the alternative lifestyle community. As with all viruses, it becomes more spreadable but less deadly (see COVID). But that doesn't mean there won't be an effort to lock everything down if democrats think they can get away with it again.

And don't forget the obligatory mpox shot someone will come up with, administered with a white wine spritzer.

Sixty-Five?

Why stay?

The city and many citizens hate us. The stress is through the roof. Every year you stay, you probably take at least three years off your life. The risk of a bankrupting lawsuit increases dramatically. Not to mention the continued damage to your already aging body.

We suppose if you die earlier, there's more pension to go around, and you're all old enough to make your own decisions, but we can't see this effecting more than one hundred people.

Little Late There Nick

This would have been helpful a week or more ago, when it was the hot topic around all the media outlets:

• An alderman from the city’s Northwest Side has filed a complaint against the head of the independent agency that oversees the Chicago Police Department for comments she’s made about the fatal police shooting of Dexter Reed, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday.

  According to the report, Ald. Nicholas Sposato of the 38th Ward sent a letter to the city’s Office of the Inspector General criticizing Andrea Kersten, the chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, for recent local and national interviews she’s given — including with WGN-TV — about the March 21 fatal shooting of the 26-year-old Reed.

  The report also says that Sposato’s complaint calls for COPA’s probe into Reed’s death, which remains ongoing, be turned over to state police.

  “Chief Administrator Kersten should not be participating in interviews or comment in memos regarding investigations that have yet to commence,” Sposato wrote, according to the report. “Her comments have led to a tainting of public opinion about the case, and of the brave members of the Chicago Police Department.”

All well and good. But shouldn't this rule about not discussing investigations been in place a while ago? Like maybe when COPA was founded? Like any competent and professional organization would do?

Oh wait, we just answered our own questions. COPA is neither a professional, not a competent investigative agency. 

And the City Council? Not them either.

Your "complaint" will go nowhere Nick. Propose and pass a Law forbidding COPA giving interviews to radio stations, media outlets, ESPN (what the actual fuck?), "revrunds" and Jamal. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke up everyone's ass.

CTU Can Get Bent

Taxpayers are being soaked for more and more money for a failing product. Kids can't read, can't write, can't do basic math at their Grade Level. Schools have been turned into grooming factories....

And they want more money?

• If the Chicago Teachers Union gets its way with the mayor they helped elect, their next contract will boost the average teacher’s pay by half to $144,620 in the 2027-2028 school year.

  The average now is $93,182.

  Teacher pay rose more than $43,000 since 2012 – nearly triple the private-sector salary increase. If CTU’s demands are met, another $51,438 will be added to the average salary by the next contract – a 55.2% increase.

Taxpayers would be completely justified asking for pay cuts.