Twenty Years....Pension Time?

Aside from that eighteen month hiatus - call it a Leave of Absence - it's been twenty years blogging. 

7,305 days with just shy of 25,000 posts (24,876 we think) and over 1.6 MILLION comments posted.

We don't think the internal counter on blogger is completely accurate as it didn't exist when we started, but it currently shows 98.8 MILLION visits. It probably missed the first couple years (as many as eight), so 100 million pretty much a given, and probably closer to 110 million. 

Where do we even begin to thank everyone? It isn't truly possible to do so in any meaningful way. This was a hobby....a distraction....from what we saw as the slow decline of an honorable and enjoyable profession that granted us so much:

• the opportunity to make a decent middle class living;
• the ability to provide for our spouses and kids;
• a world class city with mediocre sports teams, awesome restaurants, incredible museums;
• lifelong friendships, on the job and off, most of which we maintain at some level;
• the chance to Serve and Protect

Corny? Sure. True? Absolutely. 

But even at the beginning in the 90s, we were told by old timers of clouds on the horizon. We saw the seeds planted, the shortcuts and undercutting coming back to haunt the Department, the political winds constantly shifting direction, the endemic rot within the command structure. 

And we decided to "not go quietly into that good night." So we started a blog. And it was amazing and tedious and horrible and worrisome and God knows how many other adjectives we could come up with. We were inspired by the old SecondCityCopNetwork, run by a sergeant out of 025 who got sued when his name become known and we tried like Hell to avoid that. We only bailed out for those eighteen months so that we could top off our pension without spending it stripped at callback, awaiting a political decision that was already pre-determined and would have cost us tens, maybe a hundred thousand dollars in legal battles.

But it was mostly fun, which is what a hobby should be.

In any event, thank you for twenty years. So much has changed. The kids have all moved on. The Department changed, very little of it for the better. Chicago is in a death spiral along with Illinois and we don't see a good way out of it. We're attending retirement parties almost every other week, but not too many funerals which is good.

God Bless and stay safe. We'll be around.

Not Gunsmoke?

Not sure if we believe this:

• While Chicago-area residents woke up to long-awaited warmer temperatures, it also came with hazy skies and poor air quality due to smoke from Canadian wildfires.

  Thick plumes of smoke have led to a state of emergency in the Canadian province of Manitoba, with additional wildfires in North Dakota and Minnesota contributing to the conditions.

  The smoke led to an air quality alert being issued for all of Wisconsin, including Kenosha County, as particulate matter levels reached a threshold that is "unhealthy for sensitive groups."

  That smoke made its way into the Chicago area on Friday, and is poised to remain visible through the weekend, though the poor air quality that enveloped Wisconsin may not take hold in and around Chicago.

This being the first really really warm weekend, we're prepared to believe that the hazy air is the result of numerous gunshots and not some campfires in Canada.

We're also prepared to believe the wilding will be in full swing and the beaches will end being closed for it being "too hot." 

Another Wanna-be CPS Molester

Just the outer layer of a rotten system:

• A teacher at Adlai Stevenson Elementary has been jailed after prosecutors said he engaged in explicit sexual conversations online with a 13-year-old female student from the school.

  Trevon Jackson, a 27-year-old teacher, allegedly used Google Meet and the chat function on Roblox, a gaming platform, to engage in explicit conversations with a 13-year-old girl in February, prosecutors stated during a recent detention hearing. He is also accused of telling her to delete the messages and deny any interactions if questioned.

Is that building still over on Carroll St with all the teachers under investigation who aren't allowed near a classroom, but are still getting full pay and benefits until they can run out the clock and collect a full pension? CWB can't get any answers to their actual investigation:

• What is Jackson’s status with CPS? If he was removed from a teaching position, when and why did this occur?
• When did the girl’s allegations become known to CPS? When did the IG begin its investigation? What is the status of that investigation?
• What are CPS’s procedures when allegations of sexual misconduct involving a faculty member and a student are reported?
• Did CPS contact CPD about the allegations prior to CPD reaching out to CPS? If so, who was contacted at CPD and when? 

This perv will have to sit there for thirty years or more, at taxpayer expense....unless they actually convict and fire him. 

Officer Wounded

Offender is deceased:

• A suspect is dead and a Chicago police officer is recovering in the hospital after a foot chase ended in a shooting on the West Side overnight.

  A preliminary report by Chicago police indicates that the incident began just after 10:30 p.m. when officers attempted to conduct an investigatory stop on the suspect in an alley in the 4300 block of West North Avenue in Humboldt Park.

  According to police, as the officers approached the suspect, he allegedly fled into a nearby backyard on foot, leading officers on a chase. The officers eventually caught up with the suspect, but while working to detain him, a struggle ensued and officers said that is when the suspect’s weapon went off, hitting one of the officers.

  Following the gunshot, one of the officers opened fire on the suspect.

  Police say the officer involved in the altercation suffered a gunshot wound to his leg and was taken to the hospital in serious condition.

Updates on the Officer's condition are appreciated. 

Prayers for a speedy recovery. 

(this was supposed to go up at 0600 hours, but got mislabeled) 

Another Conehead Milestone

Or maybe that should be "millstone." As in a heavy weight tied around the necks of taxpayers:

• A Wall Street rating agency on Tuesday assigned an A- bond rating to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s upcoming plan to borrow more than $600 million for infrastructure, housing and economic development, but revised the outlook to “negative,” signaling a future downgrade.

  Fitch said the negative outlook is “driven by a lack of substantial progress procuring permanent, high-impact solutions” to a structural budget gap of $1.12 billion — 20% of the corporate fund — that could get worse if Chicago loses even a portion of the $3 billion in federal funding on the chopping block.

  At the least, that could result in “additional dependence on non-recurring solutions, including higher than expected draws on reserves,” the rating agency said. “The city continues to pursue new revenue streams that require state or voter support, which do not appear to be forthcoming in the near term.

Leftists are always fond of saying, "You can't arrest your way out of a high crime environment." They say this because they do everything in their power to hamstring the cops, corrupt the court systems, and shutter the prisons, then act surprised when things get bad.

We'd also point out that anyone with a basic understanding of Econ 101 knows that "You can't tax your way out of a failing economic system." Eventually, everyone who can afford to leave packs up and moves away. Those left behind are the ones least able to absorb the constant tax hikes, increasing fines and losing opportunities every time another company shuts down or relocates.

It's a "doom loop" and Conehead is accelerating it. 

Wheels Turning Already

From a reader:

So this is all going to be on Fata$$. 

He might win votes here in Illinois, but he'll torch his national ambitions.

Life is Cheap

Twelve years:

• A 19-time convicted felon was sentenced on Thursday to 12 years in prison for stabbing an acquaintance to death aboard a Blue Line train in the Loop. Travis Cook, 56, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder with provocation in exchange for the sentence from Judge James Novy.

If only there was a three-strikes law, this guy would have been gone years ago.

As it is, the victim wasn't any great loss to society either. Maybe that came into play.

• Cook must serve 50% of his sentence before being eligible for parole. He has already earned 1,502 days of credit while the case was pending, so he should expect to be released in a little under two years.

Amazing.

Not a Good Look, but....

Surprising news out of DC today:

• President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of Larry Hoover, a former Chicago gang leader serving a life sentence at a supermax prison in Colorado.

  The commutation, first reported by the news website NOTUS, was confirmed by a White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity because it had not been formally announced.

  Hoover was imprisoned in connection with a murder in 1973, and he was convicted of running a criminal enterprise in 1998. He later renounced his criminal past and petitioned for a reduced sentence.

Not what anyone with basic knowledge of what Hoover did to the Chicago ghetto back in the day wants to hear. It's also not a good look for law-and-order types to have to deal with. We confess, we'd be happy paying extra taxes just to see this turd taken out of prison in a pine box.

But after the initial flash of anger / disappointment, we got to thinking. This asshole is 75 years old. He might have cancer, diabetes, and all manner of elderly diseases. The administration might have figured he isn't long for this world, so why should the United States taxpayer foot the bill when the President can stick it to Fata$$ and have Illinois voters pay instead? After all, he's still got 200 years to serve on his state sentences for murder. 

Which also means if anyone is going to let him skate on the murder rap and not the "criminal enterprise" federal charges, it falls squarely in governor Porkulous' lap....and right in the midst of his presidential ambitions. 

Anyone remember how well Mike Dukakis did running for president after his prisoner "furlough" program was revealed? Porky would probably even lose Illinois if he let Hoover out. 

Serial Killer Inbound

Although there are many factors involved, the top three signs that a child may grow up to be a serial killer are as follows:

• bed wetting
• fascination with fire
• harming animals

There might be one growing up on the north side:

• A furious Jacob Pabello spent last Thursday afternoon scraping blood and the innards of two of his beloved pets from off his windshield near his Portage Park home.

  The birds — a chicken named Peep and a duck named Henry — were both killed around 3:50 p.m. May 22 in Pabello’s backyard in the 5200 block of West Newport Avenue, Pabello and Chicago police said.

  Pabello was asleep at the time when he was woken up by banging at his side door.

  “I look in the backyard and all I see is my duck and my chicken, just dead and laid out,” Pabello, 22, told the Sun-Times.

  Pabello rushed outside where his neighbors told him that the innards of the pets had been smeared on his windshield.

Curiously, there is actual footage of the killings from neighbors surveillance cameras, but no actual description in the Slum Times coverage. You'd think that the media would want to keep the people informed as to a budding murderer in the public realm....that's kind of their job, right?

Fortunately, someone sent us a still shot from the surveillance video:

 Hmmmmmm.

Nice Job

The City continues to be broke:

• The Chicago Transit Authority paid more than $1 million to employees to stay at home and not work since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a newly released report.

  The workers were paid for a five-day workweek when they were on the job only three days a week, according to the Illinois Office of Executive Inspector General, which investigates misconduct complaints against CTA employees.

  The 10 workers were in the CTA’s vault unit, which packages, ships and processes currency from the agency’s fare boxes. Money handlers could only do their jobs at a secure facility — and not at home, according to the inspector general’s report.

  While at home, the CTA workers logged more than 31,000 hours of work and were paid a total of $1.12 million from March 2020 through February of this year — including about $300,000 paid after the CTA announced employees should return to the workplace full time in May 2022.

Chicago needs even more stay-at-home jobs. Since they don't want the police fighting crime, perhaps they could all do reports from home?

Cone-Hypocrite

Conehead is so far underwater in the polls that he's resorting to attacking the President....who garnered more black support than any Republican President in living memory:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson appears to be helping himself politically — and playing to the local crowd — by standing toe to toe with President Donald Trump. So it’s no surprise that he’s doing more of it, even if it provokes the president and makes Chicago a bigger target.

  That much was clear Tuesday when Johnson opened his weekly City Hall news conference by highlighting the many ways Trump’s budget cuts and legal actions threaten to undermine everyday life in Chicago.

  “You have a president that is cutting off medicine and food, a president that is working to erase culture. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. He’s doing it in plain sight,” Johnson told reporters.

Um. Food prices are down. Inflation has petered out. We just had the lowest Memorial Day gas prices in twenty or thirty years He has proposal to reduce the cost of prescription drugs by 50-to-80%.

As for "eras[ing] culture, we have a question:

• where are the Columbus statues you sanctimonious asshole? Or is that culture erasable?

But Slum Times propagandist Fran Spielman just can't wait to slobber all over Conehead's hypocrisy and demonstrate once again how low the media has fallen.

Speed Cameras Going Active

The trial period is over for the sixteen new ones that went up last month:

• Some drivers in Chicago will be walloped with unexpected tickets when 16 new speed cameras go live June 1.

  The new cameras, mostly placed on the North Side, are about to finish a 30-day warning period and a two-week blackout period so notices could be delivered.

  History shows the new cameras will issue significantly more tickets in their first days as drivers adjust their speeding habits. In the past four years, most new cameras hit motorists the hardest in their first couple of months of issuing tickets, according to a Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ analysis.

Conehead is determined to extract a minimum of $11 million in fines this year alone with a further thirty-four cameras being installed shortly.

There's a list of location at the link up top. 

Seattle PD Fed Up

Seattle has been a disaster since they decided to de-criminalize everything under the sun and allowing panti-fa to run parts of the city as "autonomous" zones. But last weekend really took the cake. 

It seems the city government wouldn't permit some anti-groomer people to protest at a certain park and told them there was only one available venue for said protest - and that location was right in the middle of panti-fa central.

Guess who had to stand between the two groups?

• Violence returned to Seattle this weekend, and that has police fuming about the city's "naïve or deliberate" decision that made it inevitable.

  Seattle police reported at least 23 arrests on Saturday at Cal Anderson Park during MayDayUSA’s "Don’t Mess With Our Kids" rally — and the pro-LGBTQ counter-protest. According to the Seattle Times, "Roughly 500 people attended the prayer rally" and "about as many turned out in protest."

  Police ordered the LGBTQ counter-protesters to "back away from officers and to stop throwing items at officers," but instead, fighting broke out. 

  The Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) said on X Saturday night that they don't have "the proper staffing to handle any more of these demonstrations that turn into mass arrests." They also warned that "this city lacks the political will to allow police to use the necessary tools to hold back criminal mobs to protect life and property."

Remember:

• Seattle has defunded cops to the point that they are TWENTY-FIVE percent understaffed (less than 847 of 1,200 spots);
• they've refused to hold criminals accountable in the courts;
• they denied protestors their first choice of location, steering them to a location that has been Ground Zero for rioters the past five years;
• then they stick the cops in the middle.

And the SPD union released a statement that a further 284 of the 847 remaining officers are eligible to retire tomorrow. Hopefully, they all leave this summer and Seattle burns to the ground. 

Still Lyin' his A$$ Off

Being a liberal gay black homosexual means never having to say you're sorry (click for larger version):

He learned exactly nothing, which is indicative the larger problem among those communities.

Cops Injured

Hopefully, nothing serious:

• Seven people, including two police officers, were taken to the hospital following a crash late Sunday night on Chicago’s West Side.

  According to police, a marked CPD squad car with its lights and sirens on, was traveling southbound in the 400 block of South Cicero Avenue at around 11:15 p.m. when it hit a gray Hyundai sedan that was turning southbound onto Cicero Avenue.

  After the initial crash, the squad car then subsequently hit a black Hyundai SUV traveling northbound on Cicero Avenue. The gray Hyundai subsequently hit a Red GMC SUV traveling northbound on Cicero, according to investigators.

  Police said two officers were taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Five people inside the black Hyundai SUV were taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition.

Of all the injuries we had over the years, the ones that bug us most in retirement are the ones from the car accidents.

Speedy recovery Officers.

The Media is Dead

Kass's latest about the last gasps:

• After it destroyed its own credibility by twisting the truth to protect Joe Biden and hide his senility, can American corporate legacy news media hope for rebirth?

  No.

  It’s dead. Journalism killed itself covering up Joe Biden’s senility so Democrats could maintain power. Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again. The media is a feast for crows.

  CNN’s Fake Jake Tapper and the rest of them can shriek and pull out their hair, protesting wildly that they are true journalists interested in “speaking truth to power.”

  That too, is a lie.

  They are not journalists, they are political propagandists. They’re paid whores.

They've been whores for quite a while, yet there are still tiny-brains who think the media is not in the propaganda business. The other day, someone derided our linking to a site called "HotAir.com" because who would ever believe a site like that? Obviously, they never looked at the site nor its authors who have been among the leading voices exposing years of Biden and DC corruption while CNN and every other lame-stream media source lied about Biden's health, Hunter's laptop, COVID origins, vaccine effectiveness, fbi scandals, congressional corruption, etc.

The media has been corrupt for quite a while now. More and more people are waking up finally.

Downtown Danger

The Mole-People are attacking!!!

• A man who allegedly fired a gun upward from a sidewalk-level sewer grate in the Loop on Monday morning has been arrested, Chicago police said.

  The armed man entered a restricted CTA area near the State and Lake Red Line stop at 8:07 a.m. He then fired shots upward through a metal grate toward State Street, police said. No injuries were reported, and the man was arrested at the scene, police said.

  A weapon was recovered, and charges are pending, police said.

We don't know how many people - police or otherwise - are familiar with the vast network of underground tunnels and such associated with the CTA. A lot of it is for venting air pressure from trains moving in closed tubes. A bunch more is for maintenance. There are all sorts of grates in plain sight downtown (think Marilyn Monore's iconic shot) and underground staircases that emerge from hatchways in the sidewalks.

But these areas aren't patrolled or secured in the manner they ought to be. "Out-of-sight, out-of-mind" isn't really a strategy that keeps the public safe.

Another EM Disaster

Yet another request to keep a violent felon (rapist) behind bars denied and someone else suffers the deadly consequences:

• After a woman accused Kemonte Rice of forcing her to have sex at gunpoint last autumn, prosecutors asked Judge Ankur Srivastava to keep the 25-year-old in jail on sexual assault and firearms charges. Instead, [...] Srivastava placed Rice on an ankle monitor and released him on home confinement.

  He was wearing that ankle monitor when, according to prosecutors, his 13-year-old nephew, Tawon Tribble Jr., accidentally shot and killed himself on March 24 after Rice told the boy to unload the weapon and clean the bullets. Still wearing the ankle monitor, Rice left his home before an ambulance arrived, went to his mother’s house, and hid the firearm under a mattress, officials said.

How could this happen? 

We thought that persons under bond were supposed to turn in all their weapons?

Remembering The Fallen

 

 

In memory of those who sacrificed everything for their fellow citizens.

CPS Groomers?

Won't somebody think of the children?!?

• A months-long investigation by NBC 5 Investigates has uncovered allegations of grooming and teacher misconduct dating back more than a decade at one Chicago Public School.

  As part of our reporting, we interviewed 12 women who graduated from Little Village Lawndale High School between 2009 and 2019.  Most of them asked to have their identities be withheld due to the sexual nature of what they allege transpired. Their allegations involve various teachers or administrators - all of whom have resigned or were fired amid allegations of misconduct.

  Most of the sexual encounters, they say, happened after they turned 18 or weeks or months after graduation. But others told us it happened while they were still high school students.

  NBC 5 Investigates filed multiple Freedom of Information Acts requests - collecting hundreds of pages of teacher personnel and disciplinary files. We also reviewed emails, lawsuits, internal investigative records and conducted interviews with former students, teachers and attempted to talk to the accused or their attorneys.

Keep in mind, this is a single high school. There are something like 160 CPS high schools, including Selective Enrollment, Military Academies, Magnet, Special-Ed, IB, Charter, Technical and neighborhood.

According to one detective we talked to, there are - on average - over 400 complaints annually involving CPS teachers at all levels. Some don't pan out. Many do. 

We've also heard of tens of dozens of teachers being paid who aren't allowed anywhere near a classroom due to allegations. It dwarfs the allegations leveled against the Archdiocese in years past, but for some reason, never attracts the same attention.  So why has NBC gotten the green light to report this?

Where's Porkulous?

Someone sent us a bunch of these:

 We had room for an extra post tonight.

Easy Sunday

We've got stuff going on and headlines are scarce.

Open post for now.

Enjoy the weekend.

015 On View

Saw the shooting and apprehended the gunman:

• A Chicago police officer witnessed a shooting and then successfully chased and apprehended the gunman in West Garfield Park on Saturday morning.

  According to CPD, an 18-year-old man was in the alley behind the 200 block of South Cicero when the gunman pulled a gun and started shooting around 11:01 a.m. The victim, shot multiple times in the face and body, was in critical condition at Mt. Sinai Hospital.

  But CPD did not reveal that an on-duty officer witnessed the shooting and arrested the gunman.

  The officer was so close to the shooting, a gunshot could be heard in the background as he reported the crime in progress on his radio.

CWB has the radio traffic. 

The deck is stacked against you, so just be careful if something jumps off in front of you.

Another SAFE-T Story

It used to be DuPage was a bastion of Law and Order, but that was years and years ago. Now it's just another shithole where everyone gets bail:

• The man charged with trying to kill a Chicago police officer by striking the cop with his car during a traffic stop was on felony pretrial release in DuPage County, according to court records.

  Malcolm Harris, 40, was detained this week by Judge James Murphy III, about two weeks after he allegedly struck the officer with a pickup truck.

  The cop, who has been on the force for almost two years, stopped Harris in an alley behind the 4700 block of West Madison on May 3, officials said. Harris tried to drive away from the stop, but CPD units boxed him in.

Remember when bail meant something?

Captains Made (for training)

The next set of connected (click for larger version):

Thank goodness spelling isn't a requirement!

 

Vaccine Info Gets Worse

Amazing all this previously concealed info is just now coming to light - almost like democrats were hiding the side effects for some sort of political advantage:

• According to a peer-reviewed study published in Vaccines, mRNA COVID vaccines destroy 60% of female ovum supplies, which are non-renewable.

  Granted, the studies were conducted in lab rats given human-equivalent doses of the vaccines, so the effects in human beings may be different, but this sure blows a hole in the claims that the COVID vaccines posed no risks to women's fertility.

  The claims made by all those "experts" were made with absolutely no scientific evidence to back them up, and the evidence to the contrary is now overwhelming.

This is going to take years of studies, but preliminary lab results mean that the Fauci-ouchie pretty much was a de-population bomb. 

The good news is that far more lefties, commies, and democrats sterilized themselves than the other side of the political spectrum, so perhaps humanity was saved after all.

$5 Million for Stupidity?

This is one of the reasons Chicago is bankrupt:

• Chicago taxpayers should pay $5 million to a woman who lost both legs to frostbite after Chicago police officers ignored her pleas for help after getting locked out of her apartment in 2021, city lawyers recommended.

  There was snow on the ground and the temperature hovered around 5 degrees in the early morning hours of Feb. 8, 2021, when Briana Keys, now 39, got locked out of her Back of the Yards apartment, according to her lawsuit.

  Keys, who was not wearing winter clothes, called both 911 and 311 for help, but got no response, according to her lawsuit. A neighbor also called 911 when Keys asked for help, but by then she had started walking to the nearest police station, approximately a mile away.

  As Keys walked, a police vehicle stopped and she asked officers for help, but received no assistance, according to her lawsuit.

First up, why didn't the neighbor offer her a place to sit until she could call and hire a locksmith? Isn't that what responsible people do?

Second, police aren't taxis. Were they on the way to a call? Were they transporting a prisoner? None of this is addressed. 

There are a few dozen reasons for denying rides to people, primarily liability. Oh, and the General Orders specifically saying do not transport people who have no business in the back of a police car. If they aren't in cuffs, the City accepts responsibility for their well being. If they're injured, that's an ambulance job, and CFD is allowed to handle calls with a "Fire Refused" outcome.

She had access to a phone, access to at least one neighbor, and taxpayers are somehow responsible for her bad life decisions? And the DEI lawyers over at Corp Counsel are buying into this shit? 

How about doing your f#$%ing jobs?

Same Scandals as Always

The only amusing part about this story is everyone involved seems to have gotten fired:

• Alexus Byrd-Maxey had just finished her second month at the Chicago police academy, well on her way to fulfilling her childhood dream. The South Side native wanted to become a detective so she could bring closure to families who have lost loved ones to homicides by arresting those responsible.

  Byrd-Maxey, then 26, was proud of herself for making it this far: completing college classes, applying to the academy multiple times, passing a background check and physical tests. She was delighted to be part of the academy despite the sacrifices it required, including leaving her toddler son most mornings at 5 a.m. and having her mom spend thousands to buy her new uniforms and equipment.

  [...] But on March 17, 2023, an encounter with a fellow recruit derailed that dream. She was leaning over a classmate’s computer, helping him log on to do their lesson. As another recruit walked behind her, she said she felt his hands on her waist and his body pressed against her.

She claims she made a complaint to the HRI who didn't do anything, other recruits claimed she was trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, and she was fired a few weeks later for gang associated behavior.

And the accused had his own shady side:

• Eight months after Byrd-Maxey was fired, [Eric] Tabb was arrested for allegedly grabbing a fellow officer’s genitals over her uniform, repeatedly, after roll call in their police precinct.

  That woman, too, had been in the academy with Byrd-Maxey. Two more female recruits also have said Tabb assaulted them, and witnesses allege yet another was assaulted but did not report it, meaning five of 17 women in his academy class have given similar accounts, investigative files show.

  Tabb now faces multiple felony charges, including aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

Five out of seventeen? With matching stories? And an AggCSA charge? Probably should have been something either caught in the screening process or dealt with long before he hit the streets.

But is anyone surprised? There's a Superintendent whose biggest claim to fame is banging every willing recruit at the Academy for years. Another with a string of embarrassing Harassment CRs and flaming underwear. A couple of the outsider Superintendents found willing partners as soon as they landed in town. The list of current married exempts who have side pieces on (and off) the job is extensive and promotions for sexual partners is commonplace across the board. There have even been more than a couple suicides over these relationships.

If our readers put their minds to it, they can name names going back to the 1970s without breaking a sweat. Are the 35th St exempts still using that no-tell hotel over by 26th and State for their lunchtime and late night romps?

With this culture of depravity embedded in the Department, is it any wonder that what happens on Day One at the Academy is ignored? 

(no names - we don't need the threats from lawyers)

PPP Fraud Accountability

For a crack dealer?

• A drug dealer who supplied a gang with cocaine on the South Side also ripped off the government of more than $130,000 in COVID-19 pandemic relief money intended for struggling businesses, federal prosecutors say.

  Marcus Taylor, 40, has pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program in 2020 and the Paycheck Protection Program in 2021. On loan applications, he lied that he owned a construction company, then spent the money on personal expenses.

  Taylor also admitted selling a kilogram of cocaine to an FBI informant in 2022 for $23,000. He collected about $17,500 from the informant, whom he kept badgering for the remaining $5,000.

Still no word on when (if ever) they're going to charge one-third of the OEMC floor and a laundry list of exempts who haven't resigned yet.

Taxpayers Still Screwed

The Juicy saga comes to an end....and taxpayers see exactly zero accountability:

• Details of a settlement reached between the city of Chicago and actor Jussie Smollett have now been released. The city was suing Smollett to recoup what it spent investigating Smollett's false claims that he was attacked.

  In 2019, the city of Chicago's Law Department filed the suit, after Smollett failed to meet a city-demanded deadline to pay more than $130,000 into that allegedly staged attack.

  Smollett paid the city $10,000 in 2019. He will now pay an additional $50,000 to "BBF Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts, a local organization that provides community, health, and education opportunities for Chicago's underprivileged youth," according to a statement from Chicago's Department of Law on Thursday.

So the OT costs will be borne by the taxpayers and the charity "donation" will be:

• tax deductible for Juicy
• a boon to Conehead who will now get to redirect the $50K that would have been spent on this graft somewhere else

When the City is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, all extraneous spending like this should be curtailed immediately and ruthlessly.

NOT a Turkey Leg

Thank goodness that urban legend has been surpassed:

• A shooting that left two men dead at a Roseland restaurant Monday afternoon stemmed from an argument over what kind of cheese was being put on a customer’s sandwich, according to Chicago police.

  A staffer at Momty’s Grill in the first block of East 111th Street began arguing with a customer “who was upset over the type of cheese put on his sandwich,” around 4:10 p.m., according to police reports obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

  The employee then called her son because she was upset that the customer was yelling at her, according to the report. When her son got there, as well as a “group of guys,” at least one person hit her son and chased him out of the restaurant, officials said.

  Moments later, gunfire erupted and responding officers found Dexter Williams and Monte Potts on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds, police said.

Cheese. On a sandwich. Two dead.

During our career, we were on the scenes of a number of homicides with strange motives, but never over cheese.

Hiring Freeze

From our spies at the Academy:

• Hey SCC
  
  
  New recruit class of 60 started last Friday… Academy personnel were informed they will be the last ones hired, until September. All new recruit hiring is suspended.
  
  
  Instructors were told in no uncertain terms that deployments this summer will be plentiful and to plan accordingly.
  
  
  Why the hiring freeze? New exams are being held May 30th and 31st and they scraped the bottom of the [...] barrel hiring criminals, non-English speakers, wide bodies and females… oh, yeah and some budgetary savings.

These kids aren't graduating before November and we expect they're going to be deployed in some capacity on-and-off every weekend this summer, probably in Districts at the Desk.

Anyone from Personnel have the retirement numbers for May/June/July?

Consent Decrees Ending

At least the actual Federal ones, not the one here:

• The Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel settlements with Minneapolis and Louisville that called for an overhaul of their police departments following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that became the catalyst for nationwide racial injustice protests in the summer of 2020.

  The Trump administration also announced it was retracting the findings of Justice Department investigations into six other police departments that the Biden administration had accused of civil rights violations.

  The moves represent a dramatic about-face for a department that under Democratic President Joe Biden had aggressively pushed for federal oversight of local police forces it accused of widespread abuses. The Trump administration accused previous Justice Department leadership of using flawed legal theories to judge police departments and pursuing costly and burdensome court-enforced settlements known as consent decrees to address alleged problems it argues are better dealt with at the local level.

The main purpose of a "consent decree" is a drive toward a national police force similar to what Europe has. It's what Sparklefarts wanted like all demo-commies and socialists do. 

The second purpose is to get a boatload of Federal dollars to set up goofy training via crooked contracts and defray the cost of equipment that state and local taxpayers would have to foot the bill for.

Of course, everyone bitching about the "militarization" of policing would be shocked at what an actual national police force looks like and how it would operate. The only upside for us would have been being able to bid to Hawaii for the last two years of our careers.

For the Minneapolis decree, Floyd died of a proven drug overdose. In Louisville, Taylor's boyfriend shot first and the ensuing chaos still hasn't been sorted out to anyone's satisfaction. Neither case appears to rise to the level of systemic dysfunction that would necessitate a massive spending of Federal dollars.

But don't expect any changes here. The CPD "consent decree" is purely an invention of political convenience.

They Knew - 100% They Knew

The Senate released another report concerning the clot-shot, and guess what? The "conspiracy theorists" were correct again:

• U.S. health officials knew about the risks of myocarditis from COVID-19 vaccines but downplayed the concern and delayed informing the public about the risks of taking the jab — that is according to a new Senate report released by Sen. Ron Johnson Wednesday.
  

So everyone who got bullied into the jab was (and most likely remains) at higher risk of heart damage. 

So where do these people go to get their health back? Whom do they sue, especially if they suffered an adverse effect? No one is ever going to be held responsible?

We need trials and imprisonment for these crimes.

Sparklefart X

Interesting presentation:

• Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial revealed the alleged extent of the rapper’s drug habits on Tuesday, with his former assistant testifying that the ex-mogul preferred his ecstasy pills in the shape of President Barack Obama’s face.

  Combs is on trial for sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution charges, and has been behind bars awaiting his days in court since last September.

What other presidential dope is out there? Or closely associated family members? We remember "Billy Beer" after the elder Carter brother. Was "Hunter Crack" ever a thing? 

Bad Idea Inbound

And the restrictions in place are going to make it next-to-useless:

• A sharply divided City Council committee on Tuesday voted to give the Chicago Police Department a powerful tool to disperse “teen takeovers” just in time for Memorial Day weekend — which typically marks the start of the traditional summer surge of violent crime.

"powerful tool" they say.

• Public Safety Committee Chair Brian Hopkins (2nd) muscled through the ordinance he revised and championed, empowering Chicago’s police superintendent to declare three-hour-long “snap curfews” anywhere in the city to disperse groups of 20 or more after 30 minutes’ warning.

  The final vote was 10-7, even after Mayor Brandon Johnson reiterated his opposition amid fear that the changes negotiated with the police department do not go far enough to prevent a costly court challenge.

Does this "snap curfew" have geographical limitations like the Gang Loitering Ordinance did? Sight and Sound was order back in the day after numerous court battles.

And thirty minutes warnings will just give the violators a chance to go mobile and reassemble somewhere else. CPD is going to be purely reactionary during this and the kids would be able to outmaneuver the current brain trust at 35th Street with ease, especially if you have this moron running things:

• If the full Council approves the ordinance, the police department’s Chief of Patrol Jon Hein has assured the Public Safety Committee that it will be enforced constitutionally, judiciously and only after assembled groups of young people ignore police orders to voluntarily disperse and after “children start attacking one another.”

Hey dumbass - if the "children" start attacking one another, they're battery offenders at the very least and subject to immediate arrest for Mob Action. 

But no one in the political arena is ever going to give that order. Hopefully, the "children" don't run into a Concealed Carrier during one of their wildings....but we can't say we wouldn't be amused if they did.

Meanwhile, the ACLU is salivating along with numerous connected law firms.

Panic Porn

You still don't hate the media enough.

Here's the headline of the Slum Times yesterday:

• New Trump vaccination policy limits access to COVID-19 shots - The Trump administration said Tuesday it will limit approval for seasonal COVID-19 shots to seniors and others at high risk pending more data on everyone else — raising questions about whether some people who want a vaccine this fall will be able to get one.

Oh no! Trump is limiting COVID shots for all the sheeple who want yet another useless clot shot!

Did you hear the actual story?

• FDA Pulls Recommendation for COVID Shots For Most Americans, Pulls Approval for Under 65s 

  Did you know that the FDA approval process for the COVID vaccines does not require that the shots be safe and effective?

  It doesn't, and never has. All that has been required is that the vaccines be proven to increase antibodies, which is a very low and atypical standard. 

  Vaccine approval for people over 65--those who face the greatest risk from COVID and who are most likely to have a favorable risk/reward profile--will remain the same as before, but for anybody under 65, the approval standard will be the more common and more stringent standard of proven clinical benefit.
  

See the difference? The FDA changed the guidelines and finally admits the vaccines were never judged to be "safe and effective" and that the data showed only the elderly and persons with significant comorbidities were ever in danger.

For this, the economy was shut down, businesses destroyed, families denied the opportunity to visit relatives, elderly persons dying alone, Civil Rights and bodily autonomy violated along with a massive spike in unexplained cardiac events among the healthy populations and emergence of so-called "turbo cancers" ravaging the young.

And the media continues to peddle the panic porn to the tiny brains still wearing masks in public.

This Inspires Confidence

We thought there were gates, bollards, barbed wire, tire-shredders and armed guards protecting the airport. Guess not:

• Another security scare hit O'Hare International Airport this weekend — this time involving a delivery driver who drove into unauthorized secured areas before someone caught on. His explanation might be a shock.

  Travelers at O'Hare are likely familiar with the sight of cars coming through to pick up and drop off passengers. Anyone caught stopping for too long is told to keep it moving. The tight ship run at pickup and drop-off makes what happened around noon Saturday highly confusing. A DoorDash driver drove through secured areas before someone realized he wasn't supposed to be there.

  A source told CBS News Chicago the delivery driver drove miles along the interior and restricted roads at O'Hare — potentially crossing runways — before someone spotted him from the air traffic control tower.

Hearing this just makes us wonder that there hasn't been an airport incursion by someone with motives more sinister than delivering a sandwich.

Lazy Media

How far the Slum Times has fallen:

• On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published an advertorial summer reading list containing at least 10 fake books attributed to real authors, according to multiple reports on social media. The newspaper's uncredited "Summer reading list for 2025" supplement recommended titles including "Tidewater Dreams" by Isabel Allende and "The Last Algorithm" by Andy Weir—books that don't exist and were created out of thin air by an AI system.

  The creator of the list, Marco Buscaglia, confirmed to 404 Media that he used AI to generate the content. "I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses," Buscaglia said. "On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed."

So instead of actually doing research, this mope gets A.I. to create a reading list of which ten of the fifteen titles were completely fabricated.

Par for the course actually. The media has been making up stories for decades now. The A.I. just lets them do it faster.

Conehead Deflects

When caught doing something stupid....or racist....accuse that the other guys of doing what you got caught doing:

• A defiant Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday urged the U.S. Justice Department, which is now investigating his administration’s hiring practices, to launch a similar probe of what he said is the predominantly white administration of President Donald Trump.

  With “only one Black person in his administration” and a U.S. Education secretary in Linda McMahon whose “background is wrestling,” Johnson said it’s clear that Trump is “aligned with the ultra-rich,” and has assembled a “country club” administration dominated by white people at the expense of “marginalized” groups.

The current administration has far more diversity than "one black person." 

But a national administration should be reflective of the nation as a whole, and in that case, representation should be in the neighborhood of 13% black, 19% Hispanic, 6% Asian and 58% white. 

Or you could just hire the most qualified people....that might make sense.

Everyone is Still Leaving

Eighty-four percent of Illinois communities shrank since 2020:

• Small towns in Illinois are getting smaller, suffering the bulk of population loss since the last census.

  Of Illinois’ 1,294 communities, 924 of them with fewer than 10,000 residents lost people since the April 2020 U.S. Census. All told, 84% of Illinois communities lost people, according to data released May 15 by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Guess what stopped it from being worse?

• Virtually all the increase in population last year was likely because of the arrival of international migrants. More than 96,000 international migrants arrived in the Chicago metropolitan area last year and nearly 240,000 have come since April 2020.

And of course, these were the best and brightest. All skilled college graduates with jobs lined up, and....

Oh wait....

This is why Illinois lost a Congressional seat and is on track to lose another in 2030.

When Did the Lies Begin?

We are not the president. We never had the ambition or desire. But we've been over 50 for a while now, and although we don't have anything like the Walter Reed Medical Center available to us, we know enough to get screened for assorted ailments in our advancing years.

Assorted doctors (including Rahm's brother Zeke who thinks we ought to be exterminating the elderly) have stated on the record that there is no way a prostate cancer like Vegetable Joe has could advance from July 2024's "healthiest president EVER!" to Stage 4 terminal cancer in just a year. 

Prostate cancer doesn't work like that. It is just about the slowest cancer in existence and has a nearly 100% survival rate if caught with early screening....which should be routine after age 50. 

Which means this corrupt thief probably had cancer back in 2020 when he ran for office, probably was getting some form of treatment which may have aggravated his senility, had all sorts of side effects, etc, etc.

And the dem machine, along with the assistance of the bought-and-paid for media, concealed it all from the nation. 

So who was running the country? Who was making all the big decisions? Who was mandating vaccinations, shutting down the economy, blacklisting certain media outlets, restricting social media, spying on school boards, investigating church-goers, etc.?

If you even think about ever voting for a democrat again, you're truly a moron.

DoJ Investigation

Another great job there by Conehead, triggering a Department of Justice investigation into hiring practices. And Exhibit A, front-and-center, is going to be his own speech the other day:

• The US Department of Justice on Monday announced an investigation into whether Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration made hiring decisions based on race.

  At issue are comments the mayor made Sunday at the Apostolic Church of God in Woodlawn. Addressing the Black church, Johnson listed Black officials serving in is administration.

  [...] The comments set off a social media firestorm, catching the attention of conservative commentators and media, prompting justice officials to open an investigation into whether the Johnson administration may have violated Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Quite frankly, a moron with a 6% approval rating isn't even carrying his own community at this point. They saw how he embraced the illegal alien invaders to the detriment of their neighborhoods, services and opportunities. And they didn't like it.

Some Changes

That list we posted a week or so ago....positions are being filled:

• Lt Tom Hanrahan to Cmdr 016
  
  Captain Beifeldt to Cmdr 018
  
  Lt R Rivera to Cmdr 014

Got to get fully staffed before the summer fun!

What is Conehead Smoking?

There's tone deafness....and then there's Conehead Tone Deafness:

• As Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson marks two years in office this week, he talked about his swings, his misses, and why he thinks his poll numbers will likely rebound.

  Currently, Mayor Johnson has strong crime numbers to boast about — a 24% drop in homicides since taking office. But his poll numbers are currently terrible, and some of his handpicked leaders in the City Council even say he is trending toward becoming a one-term mayor.

  Mayor Johnson is a big basketball fan, and his term is now at the equivalent of halftime of a game. He was asked if he is leading or trailing?

  "I think the people of Chicago are certainly winning," the mayor said. "You cannot argue about safety in this city as we drive violence down. You can't argue that we're not building affordable homes, because we're doing that."

Um....cities aren't supposed to build affordable housing. They can remove regulatory burdens, but government can't and never has built anything truly affordable, because it all ends up being funded by taxpayers AND no one ever gets held accountable for missed deadlines, shoddy construction and cost overruns.

That's why Chicago is broke, along with Cook County, Illinois and pretty much the entire country being $37 trillion in debt. 

And crime numbers fluctuate. Chicago was on the verge of truly lowering crime back in 2019/2020 until the plandemic blew everything up and numbers skyrocketed. We are merely returning to the trend line established in the 20-teens.

The Tribune has an amusing editorial up that a bunch of people are quoting (sorry about the paywall):

• We’re halfway through Mayor Brandon Johnson’s term, and the city the mayor described in a series of recent interviews to mark the milestone hardly resembles what we see.

  We agree with the mayor that Chicago is a great American city, made so by the people who live, work, play and love here.

  But in many other respects — a transit system that continues to perform unacceptably, public schools that cost too much and do a poor job of teaching our children, violent crime levels well above peer American cities and a local economy needlessly deprived of the dynamism that produced our uniquely beautiful skyline — Chicago is ailing.

  For all the unfair shots ideologically motivated critics take at the city, Chicagoans who’ve grown up here and made adult lives here know something has gone wrong these last two years. They’ve seen what this city looks and feels like when things are going well. And, judging from Johnson’s rock-bottom public-approval numbers, many of them have concluded he’s a big part of the current problem.

And once the Bears leave town, that's going to be yet another check mark against any kind of positive legacy this moron is attempting to make.

Psychos Still Exist

Just be aware that these walk among us:

• A 25-year-old self-described “pro-mortalist” has been identified as the attacker who detonated a car bomb outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs Saturday — killing himself and injuring four other people, according to sources.

  [...] Bartkus allegedly described his fanatical pro-death beliefs in written and recorded manifestos as being against bringing people into the world without their consent to spare them from future suffering, KCAL news reported.
  

Basically, he claims that since he didn't "consent to exist" then he was entitled to off himself (no issue here) but also he could blow up a fertility clinic that was also full of embryos that didn't give their consent either. 

His best friend convinced her roommate to kill her a couple weeks ago while she slept because she didn't consent to exist either. The roommate is currently facing charges.

Remember, just because it sounds completely batshit crazy, doesn't mean that someone somewhere doesn't believe it with all their being and won't hesitate to act on those beliefs.

Pope Chalkie?

This one made us laugh:

If there's a dime to be made, someone will find a way, and in this case, it supports the HeyJackass.com website. Hop over and check out the merchandise. 

(SCC is not associated with any sales made over there. This is our ONLY web presence. Nothing else on social media is us and never has been. The only thing we ever wanted credit for was inventing Chalkie.)

Wild Video

North side:

• “I don’t give a f*** who you is,” the masked man says as he records himself, throwing up a questionable hand gesture, and flashing a loaded pistol while riding around Riis Park, 6100 West Fullerton, on Wednesday evening.

  “This 20 got a switch on it,” he boasts, telling whoever might be watching that the Glock 20 he’s showing off is outfitted with an illegal after-market switch that allows it to generate automatic gunfire, like a machine gun.

  Suddenly, the video changes, cutting to a much different scene: Chicago cops piled atop the loud-mouthed gunman on the Riis Park football field. The scooter he had been riding lay on its side.

The gun was equipped with a "switch," and extended magazine was recovered, and the scooter turned out to be stolen. 

And then, a miracle as a Cook County judge actually ordered him to be held without bail....which will almost certainly be revised in a week or two.

CWB has videos and the full story.

Careening Toward the Cliff

The psychos at the CTU won reelection:

• Members of the Chicago Teachers Union reelected Stacy Davis Gates and her team Friday, continuing the 15-year-run of the leadership group credited with installing the city’s current mayor and for support of beyond-the-classroom social justice issues.

Never mind that kids can't read or do math or be equipped with the most basic skills to survive in an increasingly automated and technical society. 

The CTU wants to insert itself "beyond-the classroom" because they've failed at the most basic tenet of their jobs.

And more than any other union, they're the ones driving everyone into the ditch, over the cliff, ramming the iceberg.

Dart Looking for Headlines

And getting some:

• The Cook County Sheriff’s Police are expanding their patrol footprint by establishing a new satellite office in the South Loop. Ald. Bill Conway (34th) announced the development in his constituent newsletter this week.

  “This area has struggled with public safety challenges for decades and has long needed additional law enforcement presence,” Conway said. “My office has been working closely with the Sheriff’s Office and the Chicago Police Department’s 1st District to strengthen their response in the area.”

So....they'll be handling radio calls? No.

Perhaps writing some reports? Nope.

Traffic accidents? Domestics? Dope arrests? Anything to alleviate backlogs? Not likely.

• The sheriff’s spokesperson said officers assigned to the South Loop will “provide increased law enforcement presence in the area, build critical relationships with local residents and the business community, and support our partners in the Chicago Police Department.”

So pretty much just reminding people that they exist and are part of the reason taxes are tops in the nation in northeastern Illinois.

Bears Announcement Imminent?

It's here:

• The Bears on Friday alienated their biggest cheerleader in Springfield — and left their Chicago partner almost resigned to their departure — by signaling that the team may be giving up on Chicago in favor of building a domed stadium in Arlington Heights.

  A statement released by the Bears on Friday simply confirmed the obvious: that the team has made “significant progress” with the new political leadership in Arlington Heights and it looks forward to continuing to “work with state and local leaders on making a transformative economic development project for the region a reality.”

  But the Bears’ failure to even mention the possibility of remaining in Chicago — coupled with what they told Mayor Brandon Johnson — moved the ball closer to the site of the old Arlington International Racecourse that the team spent $197.2 million to purchase.

  “The Mayor spoke with executive leadership from the Chicago Bears, who indicated they intend to prioritize the development site located in the Village of Arlington Heights,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.

  But Johnson’s statement was quick to note that, “The door remains open in the city of Chicago.”

We got a picture of the door Conehead is talking about:

 

And speaking of doors, is anyone familiar with when the NFL usually announces the location of future Superbowl events? It's actually around the third week of May, which is just about here. 

The following locations have already been chosen (we'll spare everyone the Roman numerals):

• 2026 - Superbowl 60 @ Santa Clara, CA
• 2027 - Superbowl 61 @ Inglewood, CA
• 2028 - Superbowl 62 @ Atlanta, GA
  

Speculation for 2029 is Las Vegas and 2030 in Texas, though these are not written in stone.

It usually takes around two years for a stadium to be built and fully equipped. It also costs around $2 billion. The newest NFL stadium in Inglewood, CA opened in 2020 and hosted the Superbowl in 2022 and a second one upcoming. 

That means if the Bears announced a stadium deal this summer and broke ground immediately, there could be games in Arlington Heights by 2028 and a Superbowl shortly thereafter.

CPS Wilding Warning

Sorry, did we say "wilding"? We meant "teen takeover."

There was a letter sent out to all CPS families and a couple people forwarded it here:

• We are reaching out today because we have been notified of several potential teen-related trends that may materialize at our beaches this evening. The Chicago Police Department is continuing to ask for your partnership in encouraging our youth to be safe and responsible throughout the summer. As we have seen from past large gatherings involving teens and young adults, there is a risk of things becoming unruly, and in some instances, violent.
  
  We ask that you and your children please review these important reminders about Chicago’s beaches:

• Chicago’s beaches do not officially open until Friday, May 23
• No lifeguards are currently assigned to our city’s beaches.
• Alcohol is prohibited on all Chicago beaches.
• All beach visitors are subject to search.
• Citywide curfew laws apply on the beach just as they do throughout Chicago.


CPD’s goal is to ensure public safety while maintaining peace. Therefore, in instances of large gatherings, we will use de-escalation and dispersal techniques to encourage our young people to comply with the law. This will be particularly important in situations where young people are walking in roadways and/or obstructing the public way. Individuals who fail to voluntarily comply with lawful police orders may be subject to arrest.

Assuming all the parents got this letter (it came out after 1700 hours on Thursday) and they all read it and then they read it to their kids, we can safely assume that this weekend downtown will be all glitter and rainbows and maybe we'll all see a unicorn.

Drones

This report from the burbs:

• Drones are fast becoming the must-have tool in policing. Now, the next generation is rising up in the Chicago area with drones that answer 911 calls on their own and an experimental drone system designed to stop would-be mass shooters, [...].

  In suburban Oak Brook, the police department currently uses drones that are deployed and directed by humans. Oak Brook Police Chief Brian Strockis said the drones have been very effective especially when they are looking for crime suspects

But now they want to try something different:

• In north suburban Libertyville, several former Navy Seals and a business entrepreneur are working on the next aerial technological evolution. It's an indoor drone designed to detect and potentially stop a mass shooting on its own, before police arrive on the scene.

  [...] Equipping drones with firearms is illegal in the United States, so the system is designed to track the threat and then neutralize the weapon instead of the shooter, making it safer for bystanders.

  [...] The inventors do not want to reveal the trade secrets but explained that the drone can also lock in on a weapon and then strike the side of it, dispensing an adhesive substance that essentially jams the firearm's inner-workings. "It disrupts the bulk carrier group of AR style rifles, semi-automatic pistols, pump action, semi-automatic shotguns and those are 95% of the weapons utilized in an active shooter situation," Ross said.

Anyone know what a "bulk carrier group" is? Anyone want to tell the press that they're idiots again?

And does anyone want to tell them that former supernintendo David Brown did something similar to this in Texas where they rigged a robot to explode, killing a gunman who had murdered five police officers? And that the Ukraine has been using "suicide drones" for a couple years now? 

This isn't exactly a new idea. The only thing new is making it mostly useless.

Nice Ballpark Conehead

At least when people get shot in Wrigleyville, it's outside the stadium instead of inside:

• Chicago police have a suspect detained and a firearm recovered after a bystander was shot, possibly during a shootout between two gunmen, outside Wrigley Field on Thursday evening. A source told CWBChicago that Cubs security cameras, described as “world-class,” recorded the shooting.

  Witnesses told police that two groups of people in their teens or early 20s had a confrontation on the corner of Waveland and Sheffield around 6:56 p.m. According to preliminary information from witnesses, the altercation culminated with two males shooting at each other.

So one of those "wrong place, wrong time" incidents.

Here's some interesting info from the CWB people:

• Wrigley Field has some of the highest-quality security systems in the entire city, according to a Chicago police source familiar with the ballpark’s operations. CPD frequently works with the Cubs to secure video for incidents in the neighborhood that don’t involve the ball club or Wrigley Field because the team’s video network is so extensive and of superior quality to anything the city may have.

So is MLB funding these cameras? And if so, why aren't there any at Sox Park? It would finally put to rest the question about how the gun got in, got fired, wounded two people, and wasn't actually a mile away.

Disengagment Time

The settlement well has run dry:

• The city of Chicago has already gone through the $82 million that Mayor Brandon Johnson set aside for settlements and judgments in 2025. Now the fund could soon be $62.4 million in the hole.

  That’s how much six new settlements on the agenda for Monday’s meeting of the City Council’s Finance Committee would end up costing taxpayers.

  That’s not counting a $15.5 million settlement to private investors who leased Chicago parking meters.

Now, if the City and the Corporation DEI Counsel  had elected to fight some of the previous cases that were obviously money-grabs, there might be tens of millions available. But the lawsuit grift and ensuing donations to politicians was just too good to an opportunity to pass up.

Thanks Groot!!!

It's a toss-up of who was a more useless mayor - Conehead or Groot. 

In Conehead's temporary favor, he's only been there two years. groot had four years to royally f#$% up Chicago....and she's still costing the taxpayers money:

• Taxpayers will spend $15.5 million to compensate the investment team that paid $1.16 billion to lease Chicago parking meters, thanks to a risky pandemic-era scheme authorized by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

  As bitter a pill as that is to swallow for Chicagoans who despise the 75-year parking meter deal, it could have been a whole lot worse.

  Private investors from as far away as Abu Dhabi, who long ago recouped their investment and raked in $150.9 million more in 2023 alone, started out by seeking $322 million. An arbitrator recommended $120.7 million.

  The fact that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration managed to persuade Chicago Parking Meters LLC to accept $15.5 million, or just 12.8% of its original demand was a victory, albeit a pyrrhic one.

That's the trouble with Contracts - they're usually drawn up by highly educated lawyers. And when the money numbers top one billion dollars, the Contracts are drafted by super-highly educated lawyers and then run by a committee of people who actually spend time writing Contract Law and teaching it to other lawyers.

So when you get a mayor who was thinks she's smarter than those lawyers (all while claiming to have a giant penis) and decides to violate the terms of a pretty much air-tight financial Contract, the above result is that taxpayers, once again, get screwed over.

The fact that they settled for $15.5 million instead of the recommended $120.7 million can only be described as a "mercy f#@$"

No, a Hundred Times, No

F#$% this guy:

• Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel openly flirted with a 2028 presidential candidacy Wednesday, telling a nationally televised talk show audience that he is “in training” for a White House bid.

  Emanuel’s remarks on ABC’s “The View” stopped short of an actual announcement that he intends to run for what constitutionally should be an open seat, given that President Donald Trump will have served two terms.

  But Emanuel did appear to move closer to that possibility by teasing at what he may have meant when he told the Economic Club of Chicago in March that he was “not done with public service.”

How about you try your nine-fingers at garbage collection instead? you'd actually provide a service instead of another grift. After what he did during the Clinton, Sparklefart and Drooling vegetable administrations, you'd think someone would learn what a toxic turd he is.

He's a hatchet-man. Always has been, always will be.

Where Were the School Officers?

Oh wait....they voted to get rid of them all:

• Chicago police are stepping up their presence at Mather High School after a student was shot during dismissal on Tuesday. The shooting appears to be linked to ongoing tensions between groups of students on the West Ridge campus.

  Video secured by Chicago Critter shows the altercation unfolding on the basketball courts at Mather Park, directly behind the school, around 3:15 p.m. CWB reported yesterday that 911 callers reported seeing a crowd of young people, some wearing masks, causing a disturbance on the courts.

  In the footage, about a half-dozen young people, some wearing masks, run toward a white car on the edge of the park. Four gunshots are heard once they reach the vehicle, and the group quickly runs back across the courts.

Of course, it's probably better the police weren't around because they might have been tempted to interfere with something and end up shooting one of these altar boys, and then who knows what would have happened.

UPDATE: 020 seems to be one of those Districts that, although CPS got rid of all police in schools and there are no School Resource Officers any more, the District manages to keep a "School Sergeant" on the sheets, Monday thru Friday, without any specific responsibilities.

In these manpower shortage and "Consent Decree" times, can Larritorious actually afford for Districts to be under-supervised while coddling a useless and outdated position? Isn't that what CAPS is for?

Info for Retirees

They're changing some aspects of the LEOSA act:

• The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA), also known as HR 218, has long been a powerful tool for enhancing officer safety across the United States. Now, a new piece of legislation—the LEOSA Reform Act of 2025—aims to dramatically expand and clarify these protections. If you’re an active or retired law enforcement officer, this bill could significantly affect your rights to carry a concealed firearm, no matter where you live or travel.

  Whether you're on-duty, off-duty, or retired, understanding the potential impact of this legislation is crucial—not just for your legal protection, but for your personal safety and the safety of your community.

The changes are extensive and significant. Hop over to the link and read about it.