Here Comes the Pain

Strap in for a whole bunch of BS:

• Chicago property owners reeling from reassessments will be hit with a double whammy — a $300 million property tax increase — to help Mayor Brandon Johnson balance his $17.3 billion budget for 2025 without layoffs.

  Johnson chose the property tax increase he campaigned against — and made it the city’s largest in a decade — instead of asking unionized city employees to give a little by accepting mandatory furlough days or targeted layoffs.

  Wednesday afternoon, the mayor’s office released estimates of the impact of the tax increase on homeowners. It ranges from $72 a year for a home valued at $100,000 to $481 per year for a home valued at $500,000.

About fourteen aldercreatures have already said they'll vote against the budget if it doesn't include reinstating the ShotSpotter program. A few more said the elimination of 400 unfilled CPD vacancies is not acceptable, seeing as how crime isn't really down. And even more will have further demands to buy their votes.

Conehead swore up and down that a property tax hike wasn't in the cards, but it this proposal turns out to be the largest single property tax increase in history. His approval rating now stands at 14%.

Nothing about closing under utilized schools and perhaps selling the land to developers, especially amid declining enrollment as more families flee the city. CPS raised their share of property taxes another $324 million over two years - the maximum allowable by law. Funny how they never aim lower....they just max it out every single time and find something to spend the money on....like huge fully staffed buildings with sixty students.

Um, What Now?

One of the secondary intents of this blog was to address rumors. This one would appear to need addressing, and damn quick, too:

• Hearing a guy at a bar put his fist through JCats loud mouth. Now Johhny boy is all butt hurt cause his mouth wrote a check his ass can't cash. So instead of taking his licks like a man he's suing the bar. And word on the street is that he's using FOP funds to pay his attorney fees. So now he's going after a small business owner who actually supports the police and is using officers money to do it. Well done.

This one sounds way out there.

Federal Charges

This is probably the only way to (A) get some real justice for a particularly violent crime and (B) the only way to put a stop to this out-of-control shit:

• Federal prosecutors on Tuesday slapped three men with carjacking charges, saying they took a man’s car at gunpoint from a Far South Side gas station. Two of the men are accused of trying to carjack another driver but they couldn’t figure out how to operate the victim’s vehicle.

  Marquell Davis, 22, Ramone Bradley, 26, and Edmund Singleton, 34, are already fighting state carjacking charges for the same crimes, which occurred on the evening of November 3, 2022.

  [...] When state prosecutors charged Singleton with the carjackings, they sought a no-bail detention because, among other things, he was on federal supervised release for unlawful transportation of firearms. 

  The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago said Tuesday that Bradley faces a maximum 30-year sentence if convicted. Davis and Singleton face mandatory sentences of between 7 years and life.

Long time readers will remember we advocated for a version of Operation Exile here in Illinois, where gun offenders were essentially "exiled" to federal prisons far away from their families and gang compatriots in the state penitentiaries. 

In Virginia, where it was pioneered, gun crimes dropped by over a third within months of word getting around that you weren't going to be housed locally, or even within a bus trip on weekends. Of course, once democrats saw how well it was working in Virginia, they ran against it since if affected such a huge portion of their voting base.

Bad News

The CFD Firefighter injured last week is paralyzed from the waist down:

• A Chicago firefighter has a long road to recovery after suffering a life-changing injury last week. He was hurt while battling a fire in the city's Burnside neighborhood. John Anderson is now partially paralyzed, but fellow firefighters are banding together to help Anderson and his family with his mounting medical expenses.

  Anderson is described as a character, known to always crack a joke. "You're not around him very long without laughing about something," Chicago Fire Capt. Chris Steinmetz said. Steinmetz has gotten to know Anderson very well. They're both firefighters working out of a fire station in Burnside.

  At age 50, Anderson is the oldest among his colleagues. He assumed a father-figure role and took on duties as the fire house cook. "It was one of the best things about being here, having great meals every day. He was outstanding all the time," Steinmetz said.

  But now, Anderson is being looked after by his colleagues, after suffering a catastrophic injury. On Friday night, the firefighters responded to a house fire at 90th Street and Langley Avenue, and Anderson was outside when a large object fell on him. He is now permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

He has a long road ahead of him and will need a bunch of support. While most will be no doubt handled by the CFD family, we would hope that they let us know about fund raisers and where we can contribute to assist moving forward. If anyone hears anything, post it in the comments.

fbi Out of Control

They're now a completely rogue agency:

• The House Judiciary Committee is examining a whistleblower report that the FBI targeted Donald Trump soon after he announced his presidential campaign in June 2015, an off-the-books operation ordered by FBI Director James B. Comey that predated the Crossfire Hurricane operation.

  An FBI agent involved in the probe revealed the off-the-books criminal investigation on Tuesday in a protected disclosure sent to the committee.

  The whistleblower disclosure said two female FBI undercover agents infiltrated Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign at high levels and were directed to act as “honeypots” while traveling with Mr. Trump and his campaign staff on the trail.

A whistleblower is alleging that the fbi has now engaged agents as essentially prostitutes in an effort to subvert the electoral process and is operating off-the-books, meaning ZERO oversight, which is shocking considering how many oversight bureaus, committees, councils and inspectors that local law enforcement is answering to - CPD answers to at least four or five.

• The FBI whistleblower said the off-the-books investigation was closed because a newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the undercover agents and was about to publish it.

  The FBI press office, according to the agent’s disclosure, misled the newspaper by claiming the photograph was of an FBI informant, not an undercover agent. The FBI said the informant would be killed if the photograph was published.

  Additionally, the FBI employee alleged that one of the undercover agents agreed to be transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness, and another bureau employee involved in the operation was rewarded for her activities with a promotion and now is a high-level FBI executive.

Gee, sounds like a bunch of whores.

Hiring and Firing

This is how "candidate screening" is supposed to work:

• A former Peoples Gas worker said he applied to become a Chicago cop because he wanted Black people to see someone like them working for the Chicago Police Department and “wanted to help create a safer life” for them.

  But his application was rejected because he’d been arrested 10 times — for reasons including an accusation that he’d punched his girlfriend in the face.

  None of his arrests led to a conviction. He later got them expunged. Still, his appeal to be restored to the department’s eligibility list was denied. He sued the Chicago Police Board, the oversight agency that handles such appeals.

  “I still feel I did not get a fair chance in Chicago,” says the 37-year-old man, who agreed to an interview on the condition he not be named. In May, the Harvey Police Department hired him, state records show.

Someone like this doesn't need to be anywhere near law enforcement....but Harvey we guess.

Now look at someone they're trying to fire:

• A Chicago police officer facing dismissal for fatally shooting an armed man during a foot pursuit is also under fire for paralyzing another man in a shooting months earlier, the Sun-Times has learned.

We remember many cops like this - we'd jokingly refer to them as "$hit magnets" because they always seemed to attract the worst of society. Two or three in particular were involved in multiple shootings - double digits worth, all justified, all legal and all felonious encounters that put very bad people in prison or six-feet under.

They were good cops, probably even great ones, who paid attention to all sort of small details most of us would overlook or miss, and they'd establish good reasonable articulable suspicion (RAS) and expand it into Probable Cause stops. They were really amazingly good at this job. But now, someone like that, they're trying to fire them after one or two incidents.

CCL Shooting

Expect more of these as manpower dwindles and more people realize that they are responsible for their own safety and the safety of family and friends:

• A concealed carry holder intervened in an argument between two people and fatally shot one of them Friday afternoon in the Washington Park neighborhood.

  About noon, a 26-year-old man was arguing with a woman he knew near a sidewalk in the 300 block of East 56th Street, Chicago police said.

  The man with a concealed carry license, 23, was driving by when he saw the two arguing, according to police. He stopped his car and intervened when he saw the 26-year-old man brandish a gun, police said.

  The 23-year-old retrieved a gun from his car and fired shots, striking the 26-year-old in his chest, police said.

  The still-unidentified victim was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

We'd really like to see someone start a program where members could send CCL holders a free box of ammo and maybe a gift certificate to a shooting range for every successful and legal shoot that eliminates an asshole.

Can it Get Worse?

We noted the other day that the Washington Post and the LA Times refused to endorse the Kackler for president. Now a third lib-tarded paper has refused their endorsement - USA Today said they won't play footsie with the dems.

Can it get worse? Yep:

• Gannett, owner of the nation’s largest newspaper chain, announced that its more than 200 publications, including USA Today, will not publish presidential endorsements in the run-up to the November 5 election.

  In a statement, Gannett said that while its USA Today Network of publications nationwide will not issue presidential endorsements this year, the outlets may still endorse candidates at the state and local levels at their own discretion.

The Washington Post also announced that they have lost 200,000 subscribers due to owner Amazon Bezos clamping down on the far left wingnuts infesting his newsroom. Maybe we'll finally start seeing some of these "newspapers" go under.

$225K Lottery Ticket?

For waving a gun around and threatening people with it:

• Chicago taxpayers should pay $225,000 to the family of an Indianapolis man shot and killed by two off-duty Chicago Police officers in 2016 after he pointed a gun at them during a brawl that exacerbated racial tension in Mount Greenwood, city lawyers recommended.

  The agency tasked with investigating misconduct by Chicago police officers ruled the officers were justified in shooting Joshua Beal.

  The proposed $225,000 settlement is set to be considered Monday by the City Council’s Finance Committee. A final vote of the City Council could come on Oct. 30.

At the time, we pointed out that there were photographs of Beal waving the gun around (click for larger image):

Not only that, but we also posted info that this wasn't the first time the dead asshole was waving a gun around (click for larger image):

But the city lawyers and the City Council are going to reward this type of bad behavior with taxpayer dollars for what turned out to be a completely legal, lawful and well deserved shooting.

Here's Comes the Pain

Conehead, elected on a litany of lies, prepares to announce he's a one-termer (paywalled article in Crain's):

• Mayor Brandon Johnson will propose a 2025 budget this week that backs away from a potential fight with the city’s unions.

  Instead, the mayor’s budget plan will largely rely on pulling dollars from the city’s tax-increment financing districts and a significant property tax increase to close a $982 million shortfall, according to City Hall sources not authorized to discuss the budget plan.

  The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.

  The mayor and his finance team had previously directed city departments to prepare for deep spending cuts that could only be addressed by furloughs, buyouts or layoffs, but amid stiff resistance from labor, the budget to be released Wednesday will not propose reductions that would have to be negotiated with the city’s labor unions.
  

There's still a chance he can't get it through the City Council, but it will be a battle. 

We certainly wish Chicago still had those hundreds of millions spent on illegal aliens over the past few years.

As Expected

It was terrorism at the very least:

• A 22-year-old Chicago man has been charged after allegedly shooting a 39-year-old Jewish man and firing at first responders over the weekend on the North Side, police and an alderman said.

  Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi has been charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm at a police officer or firefighter and aggravated battery, Chicago police said Monday.

But no hate crime charges, even after video surfaced of the shooter yelling, "Aloha Snackbar!" as he shot at CFD and CPD responders. Imagine any other combination of racial/religious make-up and you'd see Crimesha leaping at the chance to make headlines. Now, they just want it to disappear.

And he's an illegal who was supposed to be deported two years ago from the west coast, but he landed here.

Nice Business Climate Conehead

This was a shocker no one seems to have seen coming:

• Hundreds of PepsiCo workers are being laid off, after the company decided to close the plant in the Back of the Yards neighborhood Monday.

  Some workers said they have been with the company for more than 45 years. The workers said they came to work as normal, and were told the plant was closing and to go home.

  Many workers left with tears in their eyes, trying to figure out how they will provide for their families. "No notice, none of that, blindsided," former PepsiCo truck driver Eric Gadson said.

People who have spent decades working blue collar jobs, dismissed without any warning whatsoever. 

Preliminary reports from the unions claim this is a violation of the WARN Act that requires sixty days notice for any major layoffs. But recourse would appear to be slim.

How's this going to fly with Conehead's property tax hikes?

What Have You Done Citizen?

When we give advice like this:

• Don't get middled - let them torch downtown. Let Conehead have his nervous breakdowns. Let Fata$$ refuse to call out the National Guard. Self-preservation is the only intelligent move.

We know it's going to provoke comments from some tiny-brain like this:

• And you and your fellow travelers wonder why regular, normal, tax paying, working stiffs don't "Back the Blue" anymore? Actually calling for crime and mayhem to be ignored???

We didn't say "ignore." By all means, respond promptly and carefully if assigned the job. But...be that "crime monitor" you see on the commercials. Make sure your in-car camera is running, turn on that body cam, record everything you can....from a safe and secure distance, using time and shielding as dictated by the "Consent Decree." Because any police action you take will be scrutinized by four or more "oversight" agencies looking to suspend, fire and imprison you.

And you, Dear Citizen Reader, what have you done to "Back the Blue" as you so cavalierly put it? Did you buy a t-shirt? A bumper sticker? Have you displayed them proudly on your car or in your windows? Do you sign petitions and organize community groups to speak up for the police? Are you making phone calls to politicians who vote to hamstring the entire Department and allow un-elected bureaucrats to dream up reasons to harass, suspend and fire Officers for what was completely normal (and legal) just five years ago? Are you running for office or just running your mouth?

No doubt you are a "progressive" type that won't stand up to aggression if it's by one of the "protected" classes who are allowed to run roughshod over entire neighborhoods. You have the "Hate has no home here" sign on the lawn and watch XiNN and MSDNC to tell you police are slave catchers, Trump is Hitler, boys can be girls and climate doom is a mere few years away. 

You expect the police to be all knowing, all powerful and all-to-willing to go to prison for what an armchair quarterback decides over the course of days to second guess a situation that an Officer might be lucky to have five seconds to react to. And with the "defunding" and manpower shortages, do it all with increasingly useless, tedious, needless "training" that exists solely so some exempt member's pincushion can avoid the street.

Do us a favor - sign up and show us how it's done. We did, for nearly thirty years.

Show Us the Money

And this money - unlike the usual owed cash - is accruing interest:

• Chicago's budget crisis may be worse than many had thought.

  A still-pending lawsuit over police overtime pay could put the city on the hook for $200 million. It's a liability Chicago City Council members recently learned about as the city heads into budget season.

  [...] In 2015, several police officers filed suit in what is now a class action case against the city, alleging officers were not properly paid for the overtime they worked.

  "It's pretty basic, and it's almost unbelievable that it happened, so the city used two systems to track an officer's time," said Will Aitchison, an attorney for the officers. "One for overtime from extended shifts, and another for when cops worked special details, and the systems were not integrated... In a court filing a year ago, the plaintiffs estimated the overtime backpay due the officers exceeded $200 million, a figure the city disputed in the filing."

  Right now, there are no settlement talks underway and none are planned. The officers' attorney says if that doesn't change, this case could drag on for another three years.

This has mainly to do with FLSA overtime - time in excess of the federally "permitted" total hours that are paid at the regular rate. Anything in excess of the "permitted" hours is paid at the higher FLSA rate, occasionally amounting to something between $4-to-7 dollars-per-hour (depending on grade). 

Very lucrative for those who worked every single day off and every single OT initiative the City offered to hide the manpower shortages that were becoming evident even before 2015. But the Department and City were miscalculating or deliberately misrecording hours into different columns on the time cards depending on which pool of money they were draining at the time.

They're going to fight this tooth-and-nail, because the money isn't there.

Garbage Mayor

Just when you think your opinion of him couldn't get any lower, Conehead finds a shovel and starts digging a basement. Bunch of cops got hurt at a gang funeral:

• Three Chicago police officers were hospitalized after a brawl broke out outside of a funeral on Chicago’s West Side Saturday.

  Officials said police were called to a funeral service that was taking place at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, located near Madison Street and Kildare Avenue in West Garfield Park, at about 12:30 p.m .

  A fight had broken out outside of the church. When officers tried to break up the brawl, though, things escalated — and funeral goers attacked police. Three officers were battered while trying to break up the brawl. According to authorities, they were taken to the hospital for their injuries.

Not a word from Conehead. But you an guess what would be said....and Anita Padilla, formerly of Fox 32, makes a good guess via X/Twitter:

• This is why Chicago’s Puppet @mayor is a complete joke. He’ll say police were attacked by “misguided youths…silly kids…we shouldn’t want to ruin their lives over a mistake…you’re a racist..blah, blah, blah” His entire detail should stand down in protest of their Brother in Blue…but they won’t. And Monday will come along and everyone will just move on like it didn’t happen when another P.Diddy pervert story breaks.

Good point, but trying to get cops who are in cushy spots to stick up for the ones getting their asses beaten in the ghetto would endanger said cushy spot.

Mystery Solved

We were "today years old" when this clicked:

• Groot has huge hands
• Groot acts like a wanna-be-dictator
  
• Groot has the "biggest dick in Chicago"
• Groot's hairline is receding faster than Conehead

Groot has obviously been taking bootleg testosterone treatments in an effort to become a very short reincarnation of Napoleon.

North Side Gun Battle (UPDATES)

Seems this one went on for a little while:

• A man who fired at officers responding to a shooting Saturday morning in West Ridge was shot, Chicago police said.

  A 39-year-old man was walking about 9:30 a.m. in the 2600 block of West Farwell Avenue when a 23-year-old man following him opened fire, striking the victim in the shoulder, police said.

  As paramedics were rendering aid to the victim and officers were investigating the scene, the gunman emerged from an alley and fired shots at the officers, hitting a Chicago Fire Department ambulance, police said.

  The gunman continued to shoot at officers from different locations as officers returned fire. He was shot multiple times, then taken into custody and transported to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, where he was listed in critical condition, police said.

The shooter was popping in and out of different locations, firing and retreating numerous times before Officers successfully ended the threat. 

An excellent job all around in a situation that could have been a lot worse.

UPDATE: Hate crime? The Department and the media won't say, so you know it probably was.

UPDATE: from the comments - "You heard it here first… the shooter is a radical Muslim that shot a Jewish guy walking home from temple. The kicker is that the Muslim guy (shooter) illegally crossed the border into the United States in March 2023."

Firefighter Seriously Injured

Bad fire on the south side:

• A Chicago firefighter was injured while battling a fire on the city's South Side on Friday night, CFD said.

  The fire broke out at around 9 p.m. near 90th and Langley in the city's Burnside neighborhood, the fire department said.

  The injured firefighter was transported to University of Chicago Hospital in serious to critical condition, CFD said.

  CFD did not say how the firefighter was injured.

Prayers for his recovery.

Ringing Endorsements

Right before the weekend, the LA Times announced that it wouldn't be endorsing anyone for president. Kamala's hometown paper that endorsed her for every other office she ran for, wouldn't tell people to vote for her.  Seems the liberal billionaire owner senses something in the near future.

Not even two days later, the Washington Post (owner billionaire Jeff Amazon Bezos), which has spent the past week or so declaring Trump to be worse than Hitler, also refused to endorse the Kackler. Think about that for a moment - wouldn't endorse the woman running against Worse than Hitler. 

The internal polling must be so horrible, that the big money people are trying to play neutral so as not to attract unwanted attention from a new administration. 

Remember what happened in 2016 when the democrats unleashed their pantyfa thugs to riot and burn cities. Expect this and worse. Don't get middled - let them torch downtown. Let Conehead have his nervous breakdowns. Let Fata$$ refuse to call out the National Guard. Self-preservation is the only intelligent move.

More Dork Pictures

Here's accused murder Lil Durk with Crimesha at the game:

And just in case the fix wasn't in, he he is with Conehead AND Chief Judge Tim Evans:

Good thing it looks like he's going to Federal Court, because you couldn't trust a verdict coming out of this hell hole.

Interesting Bedfellows

Mere days after a suburban fan of his was murdered, rapper Lil Durk is arrested in a "murder for hire" plot:

• Chicago rap superstar Lil Durk was arrested in Florida on murder-for-hire charges as he was attempting to take a private jet to Italy.

  U.S. marshals arrested Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Devontay Banks, on Thursday, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. He was held at the main jail and has been charged with murder-for-hire, records show.

  Durk allegedly hired hitmen from Chicago to travel to Los Angeles in 2022 to “track, stalk and attempt to murder” a rival rapper named Quando Rondo with whom Durk was in a public feud at the time, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

  At a gas station in Los Angeles, the hitmen allegedly fired at least 18 rounds and killed a family member of the rival rapper.

For those of you who don't know, Lil Durk is also active in local politics. In fact, after the CTU and the SEIU, Durk was the single biggest contributor to Conehead's campaign.

As an alleged murder-for-hire conspirator, he likes his mayoral contacts:

And just as a hedge against being prosecuted in Cook County, here he is with Crimesha:

 All three of these persons took political donations.

Manpower Crisis?

Who would have though this could happen!?!?!

• [...] About 950 of the more than 5,750 people hired by the Chicago Police Department since 2016 no longer are on the job. Their average time with the department? Not even three years.

  [...] Many have moved on to other police jobs. But nearly 90 have been fired or resigned while under investigation. At least another 21 have died, including seven who were killed in the line of duty and two shot to death while off duty; four who died by suicide; four killed in off-duty accidents; and four as a result of natural causes.

  Of the officers who left the Chicago Police Department since 2016, the Sun-Times found that 320 now work for other police agencies, mostly in the suburbs. Almost 90 moved to the Chicago Fire Department, something that police veterans say rarely happened in past generations.

  City and state employment figures don’t account for possibly hundreds more Chicago cops who’ve moved to out-of-state police agencies in states like Florida, whose governor has been personally involved in recruiting officers from Illinois and New York.

Who could have seen this coming? 

(besides an "insignificant" blog, run by coppers, who were sounding the alarm on this over a decade ago....why would anyone listen to people working within the system for almost three decades?)

Thank goodness Frank Main "uncovered" the crisis!

He actually had two articles running under his byline yesterday. The other was about young cops dying or getting fired at increasingly troublesome rates:

• (long story about a nutjob who shouldn't have been hired in the first place....)

  The findings underscore a staffing crisis that affects nearly every facet of the Chicago Police Department’s operations. With far fewer people applying to become cops, experts say Chicago can’t afford to be as picky as in the past in screening out marginal candidates who might cause problems after they’re hired.

Yeah, we and dozens of our readers warned that lower hiring standards was going to result in untold numbers of scandals across the board, ranging from bribe taking to Summerdale-style burglars to gang infiltration to murders.

Lo and behold, Frank Main "discovers" what we all knew, predicted and warned about. He really ought to signing over part of his check to us.

Nice Board Conehead

So the entire Board of Ed resigned a short while ago, allowing Conehead to appoint an entire "temporary" board that will carry out his (or his CTU masters') wishes, namely firing the CPS CEO and borrowing a few hundred million dollars at prohibitively high interest rates backed by taxpayer dollars.

Austin Berg, political gadfly reporter at Illinois Policy, discovered some interesting background on Conehead's appointee (we aren't sure how to link an X/Twitter feed):

• NEW: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s newly appointed president of the Chicago Board of Education Rev. Mitchell Johnson appears to have been permanently disbarred in the state of Ohio for “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”
  
  
  According to court documents, Rev. Mitchell Johnson told one of his clients he needed $1,000 to hire an economist as an expert witness. The client paid Johnson the money. But then Johnson never hired the witness. So the client asked for his money back. But Johnson wouldn’t return it.
  Mayor Johnson appointed Rev. Johnson as president after ousting the entire Chicago school board, which rejected the mayor’s efforts to issue a $300M high-interest payday loan in order to fund contract demands from the Chicago Teachers Union.
  
  
  Mayor Johnson’s new school board is expected to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who has also criticized the $300M loan.

This on the heels of Mary Ann Ahern's report that:

• As [Conehead] Johnson moves to bring in six new members of the school board, NBC 5 Investigates has discovered one the appointees, Mitchell Johnson, was disbarred in Ohio in 1990.

  In recent years, Mitchell also had a lien placed on his house for non-payment of child support, which was later released. A lien was also issued for non-payment of the water bill at his South Holland home

Gee, another guy named Johnson who doesn't know how to pay his water bill and refuses to pay child support....for a child out of wedlock? Interesting.

Apologies to Blue Island

Looks like he was the actual victim - no charges:

• The investigation of an incident involving an off-duty suburban cop shooting at a car occupied by an off-duty Chicago cop has taken an interesting turn.

  As we reported a few days ago, an off-duty Blue Island police officer was taken into custody after he allegedly shot at an off-duty Chicago police officer’s truck during a road rage incident last Saturday evening, according to internal CPD communications provided to CWBChicago.

  The Blue Island officer, who has over 20 years of experience with the suburban department, was subsequently released without being charged with wrongdoing.

  Initial information indicated the 24-year-old female Chicago officer, who joined CPD last year, was riding in the front seat of a Dodge Sierra that became involved in a minor crash with the 47-year-old Blue Island officer around 5:03 p.m. in the 4700 block of South Union.

So who's gun was boyfriend waving at the suburban cop?

Three guesses....and the first two don't count.

Sounds like someone might not be finishing probation.

Someone Had to Say It

And it wasn't going to be Crimesha:

• A full year into the state’s end of cash bail, a suburban county state’s attorney says the law has been “an abject failure” for his county.

  Illinois ended cash bail statewide in September 2023 after litigation against the law was struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court. The Pretrial Fairness Act is part of the Safety, Accountability, Fairness, and Equity Today, or SAFE-T, Act.

  McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said the data in his county doesn’t show what proponents promised.

  “There was a 30% increase in crime by those on pretrial release compared to those on cash bail,” Kenneally told The Center Square.

  Last month, CWBChicago found that nearly 20% of people arrested and charged with felonies in Chicago were already on pretrial release for another pending criminal case.

Even the jail population went up in McHanry County, something advocates said wouldn't happen.

CWB also did a deep dive into the numbers here and guess what? They're lying!

• However, CWB found that the office of Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans, apparently using the same methodology as the Illinois Network for Pretrial Fairness, has been artificially understating failures to appear under cashless bail.

  Evans’ office publishes a weekly data dashboard that currently shows 87% of defendants have “not been issued a warrant for a failure to appear while on pretrial release.” It states the number means “87% [are] Compliant with Scheduled Court Dates.”

  By comparison, when cash bail ended last year, the felony compliance rate was just under 80%. So, on the surface, it appears that compliance is higher without cash bail.

  However, the numbers are not apples-to-apples.

  Under the current system, judges often must notify defendants who miss court dates by mail before a warrant can be issued.

  As a result, the number of people who fail to appear is substantially higher than the 88% that end up in warrant status. But because—like these people—they got a postcard instead of a warrant, the chief judge considers them “compliant with scheduled court dates,” even though they were not.

Which means Clerk Iris Martinez was probably telling the truth a few weeks ago.

Whoops

It's really hard to deny your former friend wasn't running your bribery operation when he's on thirty or more wiretaps saying so:

• This week began with opening statements in the racketeering conspiracy trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, whose attorneys insisted that no one had the right to speak for the speaker — that Madigan was “ignorant” of what people said behind his back.

  But it ended with prosecutors playing a crush of about 30 recordings that suggest otherwise: That Madigan’s longtime friend Michael McClain went straight from retiring as a lobbyist in late 2016 to doing “assignments” for Madigan — what a prosecutor called his “dirty work.”

  “This is no longer me talking,” McClain told a veteran lawmaker in one such recording from 2018. “I’m an agent.”

The defense of course, attacked the way the tapes were made, not even bothering to deny the message. They're hope is that everyone knows and accepts that Illinois is perhaps the most crooked state in the union, and that's just how business gets done here. 

The fact that Madigan and his cronies got rich is just happenstance. It could have happened to anyone!

COVID Payday

A federal jury of all things, in lib-tarded San Francisco:

• A federal jury has sided with fired BART workers who sued the agency claiming they lost their jobs over a COVID vaccine mandate.

  There are six of them total in the lawsuit and each will receive more than $1 million.

  The employees claimed religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate but say they were not accommodated by the transit agency, and subsequently lost their job.

  BART did initially grant vaccine exemptions, but the plaintiffs argued they weren't accommodated. An accommodation could have meant that they were able to work from home or get COVID tested regularly for COVID. They argued none of that happened and they lost their job.

Groot lucked out here. A sharp-eyed cop noted that the CPD was denying religious exemptions to Officers at something like a 75-to-90% rate while other city departments were granted everything under the sun. He publicized it and made a stink and it all ground to a crawl before dying out.

We know we could have used a million bucks, though waiting for four years would have made it very difficult to maintain our current lifestyle. Perhaps those who resigned or retired under pressure could have some sort of recourse? A few hundred cops being compensated for Groot's dictatorial power grab would be amusing at the very least.

Know Your Enemy

Who would have thought that a commie reporter and commie (former) CTU member would be living in wedded bliss in the same suburb that spawned Shrillary?

• Heather Cherone, the lead news reporter covering Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and its teachers' union for Chicago's PBS affiliate, is married to a former CPS teacher and union activist.

  Her husband, Michael Cherone, taught mathematics at CPS from 2001 through 2014 before leaving to go to business school. 

  While a CPS teacher, Michael Cherone was among the most prolific CTU members, street protesting and posting on social media in support of then-union president Karen Lewis as she led a Sept. 2012 strike -- the union's first since 1987--- publicly sparring with then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Politics certain makes for strange bedfellows.

Shenanigans Incoming

The dems in Arizona are saying we might not know the winner of the upcoming election for eight or ten days. Just for comparison purposes:

• INDIA: Population 1.5 BILLION - ballots counted and reported all votes in one day.
  
  
  FRANCE: Population 66.6 MILLION - ballots counted and reported all votes on election night.
  
  
  ARGENTINA: Population 46 MILLION- ballots counted and reported all votes on election night.

Maricopa Arizona County officials claim to need nearly two weeks to count 4.6 million ballots.

Something smells fishy.

Well Deserved Murder

Not a vigilante killing....but no one is shedding any tears over this piece of garbage:

• Sunday evening, somebody shot and killed Robie in the Morse Red Line station lobby. Given his long history of robbing, battering, and generally causing nothing but trouble in the city’s transit system, it seems like an appropriate exit.

  [...] Early on January 13, 2018, long-time North Side bartender Eric “Julian” Hall fell down the stairs at the Loyola Red Line station. No one saw him fall, police said, and he continued to lie at the bottom of the staircase for quite some time, dead or dying. At some point, Robie and a 60-year-old man approached Hall’s body. They didn’t call for help. They didn’t check to see if he was ok. They stole his wallet, which contained cash and credit cards, and sauntered away. A passerby later discovered Hall’s body. He had suffered head trauma in the fall and was pronounced dead of his injuries.

  Two days after stealing Hall’s wallet, Robie was arrested in Boystown because police recognized him as being wanted for a January 8th armed robbery at the Morse Red Line station. Robie was released on electronic monitoring and he was wearing his monitoring bracelet when officers later arrived at his home to arrest him in the Hall case, police said.

  After serving a little time for stealing Hall’s wallet, Robie got arrested for robbing an off-duty CPD sergeant outside the Town Hall (19th) Police District. Two months after he got out of prison for robbing the cop, he got arrested again for robbing a CTA passenger at the Morse station.

CWB has a few other instances. If he wasn't directly targeted, it wasn't for lack of trying on his part. Someone was bound to shoot him for cause sooner or later. That it might have been accidental is just amusing.

Idiot Mayor

This guy is truly a moron.

He had a press conference the other day and someone asked about Deter Reed and the investigation. Somehow both the moron mayor and the activist questioner missed a key point. See if you can spot it (starting at 11:17):

If you watch the entire exchange, both somehow miss the fact that Reed shot a Police Officer. Not only a Police Officer, but a black Police Officer, which would (in a sane world) negate the point they're trying to smear the entire Department with.

There was another presser yesterday we think, where Conehead was interrupted with a question and he ordered - ORDERED - the reporter never to interrupt him again. The 16/17 Police Scanner X/Twitter account had it, but we don't have a link.

(clarification - it's actually the same presser - starts part the twenty minute mark)

Or what? You'll sic your wife on us? Your mistress? Your CTU minions? Your two-hundred cop detail?

Bring it. We're betting your as big a candy-ass as we think you are.

Impersonator Evidence

That three-time un-convicted police impersonator we wrote about a few days ago? Here's what attracted the Officers' attention:

That would make us look twice.

And the ID:

We'd give that one an extra look, too.

But good enough for a Cook County judge to let him loose on the public. Again.

He's probably out there right now.

Officers Injured

Traffic crash:

• Four people, including two Chicago Police Department officers, were taken to the hospital Monday night after a Rogers Park car crash involving five vehicles, according to police.

  A woman driving an SUV north in the 7600 block of North Sheridan Road around 10:30 p.m. ignored a traffic signal at an intersection and hit a marked Chicago Police Department vehicle that was traveling west, authorities said.

  After striking the police vehicle, the SUV hit a minivan that was stopped at a red light, rolled over and hit two unoccupied vehicles that were parked, according to Chicago police.

  Two officers who were in the police vehicle were treated by the Chicago Fire Department for minor injuries. They were taken to a local hospital and were in good condition.

Drunk? Or undocumented unlicensed illegal?

In any event, a speedy recovery wished to the involved Officers.

Ignorant Dispatcher

Amazing that someone can be so totally ignorant of their job and remain employed:

It's an abandoned, wide open, stolen car, with no one in custody and recoverable evidence in plain sight. There's no search warrant needed. 

Order the ET and let the ET sergeant make any determination based on his observations, his Officers' observations or in consultation with assigned detectives.

We're pretty sure OEMC hiring practices are based on Zip Code alone and not Kim L's non-existent law degree.

Speed Ordinance Delayed?

Some political backlash?

• The Chicago City Council delayed a vote to lower the city's speed limit Tuesday, after a committee approved the measure Monday.

  City Council could lower the citywide speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25.

  The ordinance was introduced by Alderman Daniel La Spata back in July, with the backing of transit and biking advocates. He said this is all about making people safer.

  [...] Mayor Brandon Johnson said he asked La Spata to pull the legislation for now, while still expressing support for making streets safer.

"transit" exists to get people around the city faster.

"biking advocates" are lobbyists for people who don't obey a single traffic law that we've ever seen. Except in cases of "dooring," we estimate that of all the traffic accidents we handled involving a bicycle, the cyclist was 100% at fault.

Something is going on with Conehead asking for a delay though.

Come for the Music!

Stay because you got murdered:

• Jesse Kendall, a high school senior who was fatally shot Sunday while on his way to a Lil Durk concert, had dreams of opening up his own automotive shop after college. The Elgin teen was an entrepreneur who started a landscaping business and detailed cars for his friends and neighbors, his family said.

  [...] Jesse, 18, and four friends were making their way to the United Center Sunday night when they were confronted by four assailants. The attackers robbed them at gunpoint before fatally shooting Jesse, according to Chicago police.

Sounds like bravado may have contributed to the outcome:

• After they gave the robbers their property, Jesse walked a few steps south on Wolcott Avenue and began yelling at them, “They’re not gonna do anything.”

  The four then confronted Jesse, and one asked, “What boy?” before pistol-whipping him in his head, causing him to collapse. When he fought back, they “battered” him before shooting him in his chest, according to the police report.

But Conehead says don't demonize.

Money Grab and More

Here's a bright idea to go along with the ten years of destruction of the city's traffic grid after taking out hundreds of miles of serviceable traffic lanes with little used bike lanes - let's strangle the roadways by making everyone move slower!

• A measure to lower the speed limit on many Chicago streets to 25 mph from 30 mph got the green light Monday from a City Council committee, despite opponents’ fears about an increase in road rage incidents.

  The ordinance to lower speed limits on all city-owned roads was approved 8-5 by the Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety, with its chairman, 1st Ward Ald. Daniel La Spata, saying the measure “sets us on the pathway to save hundreds of lives in the next decade.”

LaSpata is full of crap - this is a money grab for the speed cameras.

There's also a "public snitch" ordinance in the offing:

• One ordinance would introduce a public enforcement pilot program that would ticket drivers based on residents’ photos of scofflaws parked in bike lanes. The yearlong pilot program would give drivers a warning in the mail for a first offense, and fines after that.

Because that won't be abused by Karens with an agenda at all.

This made is laugh out loud:

• La Spata assured the committee the goal is changing driver behavior, not increasing revenue. La Spata said the Chicago Police Department’s head of patrol told him the ordinance would not affect how police enforce speed limits.

Yeah, because CPD doesn't enforce speed limits. Anything over a certain speed is considered a "pursuit" and the Department will hang you out to dry via GPS speed measuring, and we haven't had a working radar gun in Patrol for years.

Feds Selling Gun Parts

Yet another reason to disband entire swaths of federal law enforcement:

• The federal government has a long, proud history of arming people who commit violent crimes. Sometimes it’s intentional as it was during the Obama era Fast and Furious program when the ATF shipped weapons to the Mexican cartels. Sometimes it’s due to basic stupidity and negligence as it was when a BLM ranger left his gun in his car in San Francisco where it was stolen. It was later used to murder Kate Steinle.

  Sure, these are awkward and make for some bad PR cycles, but as far as the Gun Control Industry and anti-gun politicians are concerned, these incidents aren’t without their own silver linings. They use high profile failures of the government and the actions of criminals that result to demagogue against civilian gun ownership in order to further ratchet up gun control restrictions and put more limits on the rights of law-abiding Americans.

  That’s a wn-win!

  The latest example comes to us from our friends at the FBI and DEA. It seems that parts from a number of their retired duty weapons — firearms that were supposed to have been destroyed — have later turned up in “ghost guns.” In other words, someone in the FedGov is making a little fishing boat money by appropriating gun parts and selling them, sometimes to criminals.

Federal guns that were supposed to be destroyed as part of assorted modernization efforts, were disassembled and tossed into barrels at the range, where any fed could go through it and cherry-pick extra barrels, springs, grips, and assorted parts.

Someone saw an opportunity and started dealing un-serialized parts on the street.

Only the best and brightest.

Madigan Trial Begins

For all you political junkies, this trial promises far more entertainment than Burke's:

• Michael J. Madigan has been the man at the center of corruption trials in Chicago for nearly two years, painted by prosecutors as an all-powerful political wizard who sought to line his pockets and augment his political power through a series of bribery schemes.

  But for the first time Monday, the man himself sat in the well of a courtroom at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse when Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker gestured toward the former Illinois House speaker and accused him and a longtime ally of “corruption at the highest levels of state government.”

  “This was the defendants’ racket,” Streicker said as she began her opening statement in Madigan’s racketeering conspiracy trial. “The corruption of public office for private gain. This racket went on for years.”

That's pretty much the M.O. for every Illinois, Cook County and Chicago pol for over a century. They've just gotten better at shielding it from public view, using "referrals" to law firms where they happen to be partners, and then (like Ed Burke) altering their legislative votes after the fact to hide the steering of business.

Madigan's trial is significant in that ex-aldercreature and current fbi mole Danny Solis wore a wire that provided key evidence in convicting Burke, and Madigan's right hand man and co-defenmdant has already been convicted in a previous trial.

Lots of cards stacked against Madigan.

Shelters Closing

They're calling it a "merging" of systems, probably so Conehead can steer more money into fewer connected pockets:

• The city will end designated shelters for newly arrived asylum-seekers by the end of this year, part of the city’s anticipated plan to merge its shelter systems, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Monday at a news conference.

  The transition of the two shelter systems — one for newly arrived immigrants and another for unhoused people in Chicago — will start this week with changes that include offering first-time placement in a migrant shelter only to those who have been in the United States less than 30 days.

  The merger into the One System Initiative comes two years after former Mayor Lori Lightfoot set up temporary shelters to house newly arrived migrants that were sent to Chicago on buses and planes by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican aiming to send immigrants to cities led by Democrats.

As long as it doesn't end up with Police Station lobbies full of illegals, bedbugs and tuberculosis strains.

We're thinking the other reason Conehead feels comfortable doing this now is what the internal polling numbers show at the national level - there probably won't be nearly as many illegals in another couple of months.

Another?

Word of another Officer committing suicide yesterday.

The Chaplains (and even EAP) are ready, willing and able to take your calls if you're having a bad time. It's gotten far better than it used to be when we were new. 

The holidays are fast approaching and that has always been a rough time for everyone, including the police. Keep an eye on your co-workers and friends.

Extremely Slow Justice

Seven years is a long time to wait for charges:

• More than seven years after two Chicago police officers were shot while working in Back of the Yards, a second man was charged with the crime on Saturday.

  Edgar Barron, 25, was 17 years old when he allegedly shot plainclothes officers Leo Augle and Colin Ryan on May 2, 2017. On Saturday afternoon, Judge Deidre Dyer ordered Barron detained pending trial on two counts of attempted murder. Court records show he has never been charged with any other crime in Cook County.

  “Great news!” Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) tweeted Sunday. “I’m glad the judge detained him so he can’t run back to Mexico again.”

The accomplice (driver) got five years and walked out - time served - a few years ago.

This asshole (shooter) has supposedly been back from his "holiday" for a few years.

77 Judges - 77 "No" Votes

Even the Slum Times admits there are some judges who shouldn't be in the running:

• The 77 judges asking Cook County voters to keep them on the bench in November include some with unexplained tax debts, arrest histories, official censures, unflattering reversals by higher courts, and ties to indicted or convicted politicians.

  Those judges — alongside the many with cleaner reputations and records — all want another term to continue deciding who goes to prison, who loses their homes, and who keeps their kids.

  Despite the stakes, the races have made barely a ripple in public with weeks to go, as most of the judges appear to prefer.

  Injustice Watch this month published its judicial retention election guide, which offers professional and personal information on the 75 circuit judges and two appellate judges up for a vote in Cook County on Nov. 5.

  Every two years, a small part of the judiciary stands for retention, and to stay on the bench, judges must clear 60% “yes” votes among people who cast votes in their races. Unlike candidates seeking the bench for the first time, these judges typically seek reelection as a group, trying to persuade voters to hit “yes” for all the little-known names listed in a daunting expanse at the bottom of the ballot.

Sixty-percent isn't that high of a bar to get over....but it also means that every single "No" vote carries a bit more weight than just skipping the judicial voting altogether.

We know the FOP put out a list of endorsed judges, but just to be on the safe side and make sure that a judge elected today doesn't turn out to be a bought-and-paid-for tool of the Machine tomorrow, it's safer just to vote "No" on every single judge...and there are many this cycle, so be prepared. 

Make them sweat a bit.

WTF Blue Island?

A lot of hot tempers out there:

• An off-duty Blue Island police officer is in custody after he allegedly shot at an off-duty Chicago police officer’s car during a road rage incident Saturday evening, according to internal CPD communications provided to CWBChicago.

  CWB is not identifying the Blue Island officer by name because charges have not yet been approved in the case.

  According to a CPD report, a female Chicago officer who’s on maternity leave was riding in the front seat of a car that became involved in a minor crash with the 47-year-old Blue Island officer around 5:03 p.m. in the 4700 block of South Union.

  After the crash, the report stated, the suburban cop “proceeded to pull alongside” the Chicago officer’s car. He “drew his weapon and discharged one round in the direction of [the Chicago officer’s] vehicle, striking the passenger side door barrier and ricocheting off the front windshield.” No injuries were reported.

  The drivers of both cars chased each other and called 911, the report stated.

Ten-to-one no one had any idea who they were in conflict with, but still, blasting away at other vehicles i traffic?

F#$% the Inspector General, Too

Playing politics with political associations:

• For the first time, Chicago's Inspector General is asking state regulators to ban a number of Chicago police officers from serving in law enforcement.

  Since Jan. 6, 2021, more than a dozen CPD officers have been tagged as members of radical, sometimes violent groups, even as they deny it and remain on the job.

  Some of those officers, and others with seriously flawed work histories, may be among the names targeted for state de-certification after a history-making move by the Chicago Inspector General.

  "In order to serve as a police officer in any department in Illinois, a person must be certified as eligible to do so by the state of Illinois," said Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.

Of course, she doesn't name whom she wants de-certified and refuses say who they are.

Here's the thing:

• the ones who needed to be investigated, WERE investigated already;
• they were cleared...or the evidence was insufficient to sustain the charges;
• some resigned or retired.

Most of the rest were involuntarily signed up as part of a recruitment effort or were lured under false pretenses and placed on a mailing list. They attended ZERO meetings, contributed ZERO dollars, and associated with NO ONE. 

This is political BS and is going to end up costing taxpayers many millions of dollars at some point.

Knock it off.

ISP Trooper Killed

We had forgotten that ISP still had a motorcycle unit and this is a horrible way to be reminded of it:

• An Illinois state trooper was killed in a car crash while on duty Friday in central Illinois.

  Corey Thompsen, 28, had finished a traffic stop about 3:40 p.m. when he was driving his police motorcycle east on East Leverett Road in Champaign County. The driver of a truck traveling south on County Road 1300E stopped at the intersection then drove into the roadway and struck Thompsen on his motorcycle, Illinois State Police said.

  A witness stopped to render aid to Thompsen until paramedics arrived. Thompsen was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 4:32 p.m., police said.

Deepest sympathies to the entire ISP community.

Godspeed Trooper Thompsen.

Always Remember This

It was poison, it was always poison, and they wanted to poison you:

• A major study involving 1.7 million children has found that heart damage only appeared in children who had received Covid mRNA vaccines.

  Not a single unvaccinated child in the group suffered from heart-related problems.

  In addition, the researchers note zero children from the entire group, vaccinated or unvaccinated, died from COVID-19.

  Furthermore, the study found that Covid shots offered the children very little protection from the virus, with many becoming infected after just 14 to 15 weeks of receiving an injection.

This is from the UK, so of course, the US media isn't covering it. Also, the vaccines "offered" overseas weren't always the same ones on this side of the pond.

But.....

It was never a danger to children, almost never a danger to adults, and the typical death was a senior citizen, over 65, suffering from at least four additional co-morbidities.

But Groot wanted to strip you and fire you, and she had plenty of help among the brass-holes, including Larry.

F#$% COPA.....Again

To Larritorious' credit, he argued this was a mere two-day suspension for failing to turn on a body camera. 

COPA thinks otherwise:

• Over the objection of Chicago’s top cop, a police officer now faces dismissal for fatally shooting a man who was holding a handgun after a foot pursuit in Garfield Park last year.

  On April 15, 2023, Officer Fernando Ruiz fatally shot Reginald Clay Jr., 24, following a brief foot chase in the 3800 block of West Flournoy Street. Clay ran from officers who approached him and a group of people about 10 a.m. that morning, according to statements released by the police department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

  Body-worn camera footage released by COPA shows Clay walking away as two officers pulled up. Clay flees through a gangway into a backyard and then into another gangway that’s blocked off. Clay is seen turning toward the officers while gripping a gun in his right hand before he shifts the weapon to his left hand and apparently tries to put it down on a back porch. Ruiz opens fire as Clay appears to scream and grab his chest.

  After completing its investigation in May, COPA recommended that Ruiz be dismissed from the department over the encounter. The agency alleged that the officer violated CPD’s foot pursuit policy, failed to notify the Office of Emergency Management and Communications of the pursuit per that policy, failed to activate his body camera in a timely manner, and failed to use de-escalation techniques before using force.

Foot pursuits are dynamic situations that don't lend themselves to regimented protocols. It's not, "If A, then B, followed by C, but if A1, then B1, followed by D."

It's usually, "A-C-WTF-B-D" in the span of seconds, even tenths-of-seconds. Look at "lil homicide" in 010 the other year. That one went down in something like hundredths-of-seconds.

The dead asshole is running with a gun. He's moving the gun from one hand to the other - is he left handed? Is that his shooting hand? Is he ducking for cover to shoot the pursuing Officer? How much of the action recorded by the camera is obscured by the Officer's arm coming up to shoot?

And most of the prevailing law handed down by the US Supreme Court uses the phrase, "...a reasonable police officer..." when making judgements about split second decisions.

Snelling is correct in this case. COPA is wrong. 

And the family can take a flying f#$% at a rolling donut. The only one to blame for Clay's death is Clay and his useless family who "raised" him to be a lottery ticket.

How Bad is Crimesha's Office?

So bad, that a guy, caught impersonating the police on multiple occasions, acted as his own lawyer in court the other day....and beat a (supposedly) college educated litigator....AGAIN!

• Robert Ellis, once again accused of impersonating a police officer, has won another big legal victory over the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

  Acting as his own lawyer, Ellis successfully argued that Cook County Circuit Judge Carol Howard should toss out his arrest and the evidence against him in a 2021 felony police-impersonation case accusing him of posing as a cop outside Guaranteed Rate Field after a White Sox game. Howard argued that the Chicago Police Department didn’t have probable cause to stop him.

  Earlier this year, Ellis, 66, got Howard to throw out the evidence in a separate, 2018 fake-cop case, which prosecutors later dismissed. In that case, he’d been accused of posing as an official with Kankakee County’s Pembroke Township police department, even though there’s no such department, according to prosecutors.

The judge bears a bit of the blame here, too. But we assume she went to college and got some sort of degree, too.

The cops did an excellent job supporting their Reasonable Articulable Suspicion:

• an illegally parked car with municipal plates
• the car is a Mercury sedan, not a Ford
• the ID presented looked like it was run off a copier
• a quick internet search revealed no such police force in existence
• the search also revealed a previous arrest for impersonation

And the judge let him go with an admonishment of "You have to stop doing that." This is his third arrest for pretending to be a cop.

Vote "No" on all judges, every single time.

C'Mon now Jay

Advise in the comment section....and advice given to off-duty cops for the past few decades - leave your shit at home if you're drinking:

• Former Chicago Bears great Jay Cutler was arrested on Thursday and charged with drunk driving and possession of a loaded handgun while under the influence.

  The former NFL star was arrested and booked into the Williamson County Jail in Franklin, Tennessee, after police were called when Cutler ran his car into the back of another vehicle on Thursday afternoon, according to the Daily Mail.

Don't leave it in the car either. Scottie Pippen found out about that mistake, too.

Nice Shot Officer

Cop returns fire after being shot at:

• New details have emerged about a police shooting that left a man injured inside a Brighton Park bar over the weekend. The information comes as prosecutors charge the man, 36-year-old Fernando Guzman, with attempted murder and other felonies, saying he fired a gun at Chicago cops before an officer returned fire, striking him in the head.

  Guzman, 36, remained hospitalized as the allegations were presented to Judge William Fahy at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse.

We're thinking that there's a TV show in the making here, with that County Sheriff nailing his guy five times and the CPD Officer almost - but not quite - finishing off this waste of protoplasm. 

In any event, well done.

CWB Posting

If you aren't subscribing, maybe you ought to. These guys are doing the only real crime reporting in Chicago any more:

• Is that a machine gun in your pants or are you just happy to see me? - It’s not easy to run from the cops while handcuffed. It’s gotta be even harder when you have a machine gun stuffed in your crotch. But prosecutors say that’s exactly what Tyrus Walker did in Chicago Lawn last Thursday. And his sprint for freedom was caught on video.
• More crime committed while on bail - Prosecutors have charged a Chicago man with stealing ATMs from two businesses while on pretrial release for trying to burglarize another business in May. Marquis Alexander, 24, is also on parole for aiding and abetting possession of a stolen motor vehicle and gun charge, records show. Yet, despite picking up three felony charges since May, the Illinois Department of Corrections still hasn’t moved to revoke his parole.
• This useless bitch - The mother of convicted cop killer Emonte Morgan is now the subject of an arrest warrant, court records show, after she stopped appearing in court for a case that started when she allegedly pushed cops who were guarding Morgan days after he killed Officer Ella French and gravely wounded her partner in August 2021.

And now she's skipping court - something she might not be doing if she had been charged appropriately and had a cash bail set against her.

Well, Lookie Here

Seems rumor is becoming reality:

• They’re screaming in delight as they dance in the streets of Bridgeport, Hyde Park and Hegewisch. They’re shouting praises to the heavens in Homewood, South Holland and Calumet City. They’re hooting and hollering and making plans for ceremonial burnings of their “SELL THE TEAM” signs when the baseball gods at last deliver them from the ownership of Jerry Reinsdorf.

  Is Reinsdorf really going to sell the Sox? Can it be?

  The 88-year-old chairman is in discussions with a group led by former major league pitcher Dave Stewart, the Sun-Times confirmed. Word of this spread instantly through Soxdom on Wednesday, the first sign of excitement those parts have seen since the 2021 postseason.

And Dave Stewart's group is in negotiations to bring a MLB franchise to Nashville. Or Oakland.

But as the article also states, this could be a ploy by Reinsdorf to leverage another new stadium out of taxpayers.

Jury Chosen....Finally

Seven days to screen and seat a jury?

• Finding a jury to hear the case against former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan took as long as some trials do from start to finish.

  After seven days and scores of interviews, eight women and four men have been chosen to decide if Madigan is guilty of a racketeering conspiracy. Two of six alternate jurors are still needed, but the judge is aiming for opening statements to begin Monday afternoon.

  So what took so long?

  U.S. District Judge John Blakey seemed to blame the amount of time lawyers spent questioning the many candidates over the last two weeks. In fact, the judge said Thursday he’d no longer take the lawyers at their word when it comes to estimating the trial’s length.

The cynic in us supposes that Madigan's corruption runs so deep that there is an entire subset of people whose lives he's touched in one way or another.

Now they're talking about an eleven week trial, running nearly until Christmas time, and with unforeseen delays likely to pop up, this could run even into the holidays.

We did hear Ed Burke is looking for a roommate though.