Get that P-Day In!

You're going to want to avoid this:

Let's see - no curfews, no spike strips, little-to-no traffic enforcement, a bunch of fireworks going off downtown and sporadic looting. 

Sounds like Conehead's lil darlings will be out in force.

Don't Demonize!

Stolen Gun Lawsuit

The depositions for this one are going to be interesting....if they ever see the light of day that is:

• A woman who was shot with a Glock handgun that had been stolen from a South Side police station and then was used in a series of violent crimes has sued the city of Chicago, saying the gun was taken by police, and the theft was covered up.

  Twanda Willingham was shot in her right thigh early last Aug. 14 as she was parking near her home in Auburn Gresham, according to police records and the lawsuit, which was filed this week in Cook County circuit court.

  The .45-caliber Glock 21 had been turned in at a police gun buyback at St. Sabina Church on Dec. 2, 2023. It was then taken to the tactical team office at the Gresham District station.

  “CPD Officers are also not immune to the allure of Glock pistols,” the lawsuit says. “CPD Officers assigned to work the Turn-In event at St. Sabina remarked on how good the Glock 21 pistol looked. CPD Officers who were not working the buyback event at St. Sabina showed up at the tactical team office to get a look at the Glock 21 pistol.”

The witness list is going to be extensive, and not only because of the paper trail.

Was Yoyo was still in charge of IAD when this was swept under the rug "investigated"?

Dumb Idea Inbound

This is going to trigger yet another business exodus:

• [Mayor] Johnson is in a bind of sorts. His 2023 campaign promise never to raise property taxes or fire city workers looks pretty stupid right now. Johnson still says he won't raise property taxes, but his own comptroller told the media that property taxes are "likely" going up.

  The mayor is falling back on an old idea that was discarded more than a decade ago by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel: a "head tax" on corporations, charging companies $8 per employee.

  "Last year major corporations such as Caterpillar, Citadel, Boeing and Tyson Foods announced relocations out of the Chicago area. Guggenheim Partners more quietly made moves to leave the city and join fellow investment firm Citadel in Miami," reports Hot Air's Beege Welborn.

  Expect the exodus of major corporations to pick up if the "head tax" is passed.

A company could (and has) left a dozen employees in a downtown office for a "boutique address" while centering operations with hundreds of employees outside of city limits, defeating the minimum head count that triggers the tax.

Alternatively, it costs very little to "relocate" a company by simply re-routing IP addresses, redirecting telephone switchboards, and incorporating in a different state. 

This is why downtown is deserted during the day, a virtual ghost town overnight and sporting a vacancy rate higher than it's been in years. And it's indicative of the doom spiral accelerating - higher taxes on a diminishing number of companies. 

Curious....

Is the media reading the blog again? Last week, we wrote about election integrity efforts via a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, including this obvious fraud:

• In sworn testimony before a House committee (linked here), Thirty-four of Illinois' 101 counties didn't even file Federal paperwork stating that they had made even a preliminary effort to verify voters existing - and in nineteen of those counties, not a single voter was removed from the rolls for having died in the past two years. 

Wednesday, the Slum Times "discovered" what was going on and gave it their own left wing spin:

• The Trump administration has asked Illinois election officials for a copy of the state’s voter registration database, including sensitive data about individual voters and detailed information about the state’s efforts to scrub ineligible voters from the rolls.

  In a letter dated Monday, July 28, lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division also asked for a list of all the election officials in Illinois who were responsible for carrying out federally mandated efforts to keep the state’s voter rolls accurate and up to date during a two-year period leading up to the November 2024 elections.

  State officials did not immediately comment on the request Tuesday. But David Becker, a former attorney in the DOJ’s voting section who now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the letter is similar to requests filed in multiple other states and that it goes far beyond the Justice Department’s legal authority.

Election integrity is a national issue, more so in traditionally scandal plagued states that harvest votes from dead people, from people who left the state years ago and ILLEGAL ALIENS who get Driver Licenses and end up with voter registrations.

They "discovered" the crossing guard cuts to private / Catholic schools somewhere after we mentioned it, too.

Yoyo Stripped of Control

About damn time someone took responsibility away from this waddling disaster (Tribune article behind a paywall):

• The second-in-command of the Chicago Police Department appears to have been stripped of virtually all of her duties related to the department’s daily operations, according to a new organizational chart sent Wednesday to CPD personnel.

  Yolanda Talley has overseen much of the department’s day-to-day operations since March 2025, when Supt. Larry Snelling promoted her to the role of first deputy more than a year into his tenure at the helm of CPD.

  Under the new order, released to department members in an administrative message, the first deputy’s office will supervise the department’s records division, which is staffed by civilians, its alternate response section, which handles non-emergency calls, its Office of Community Policing and the department’s detached services division, which liases with other public bodies like the Office of Emergency Management and Communication.

No word if her recent run in trying to park in a secured CFD parking lot was the final straw, but the list of offenses that should have disqualified her from even holding this position is extensive:

• Talley, a 30-year veteran of the department, was previously the head of the bureau of internal affairs. She is the first Black woman to serve as first deputy superintendent, reporting directly to Snelling. Prior to internal affairs, Talley was commander of the Austin District (15th) on the West Side.

  In February 2022, while Talley was still heading the bureau of internal affairs, her personal vehicle was involved in a narcotics arrest in the Harrison District (11th). The first deputy’s niece was driving the car, and a man in the passenger seat was seen by police throwing a package of heroin out the window before officers placed him under arrest. In body-worn camera footage previously obtained by the Tribune, Talley’s niece told responding officers, “Don’t even worry about it cause my auntie’s probably your boss.”

  Talley’s niece was not arrested, but the man later faced narcotics charges and ultimately was sentenced to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Former CPD Superintendent David Brown later said there was “no evidence of any misconduct by Chief Talley.”

That proximity to dope deliveries IN HER PERSONAL CAR alone should have kept her out of the job.

The PPP Loans, too. 

The fact that she got her car back without it being impounded should have brought her up on charges.

And the Tribune helpfully leaves out the fact that the "man in the passenger seat" ended up being the informant on the Anjenette Young search warrant that cost the city taxpayers millions in settlement money.

For all you people with little institutional knowledge of the CPD, here's a short manual:

• In the old days, the First Deputy ran the show. When we arrived, it was Townsend and he was connected enough that they waived the Mandatory Retirement at 63 requirement. That is the definition of power. After Townsend, we think it was John Thomas? We didn't really pay attention that much because we were busy having fun in those days. But we knew where the buck stopped.
• When Cline came in, he reversed the roles entirely. He wanted the headlines....and the power. So the First became a figurehead. Dana Starks was made First, but he had almost none of the power aside from promoting his people. Cline ran the show and sowed a lot of seeds of destruction. 
• When the mayors started appointing outsiders, the First regained a bunch of the previously held power because they were familiar with the players and the power structure.  J-Fledgar tried to upend it by shaking up exempts, but the First just moved all thirty of them around - no one got demoted. McCarthy was too busy screaming "CompStat!" and skirt chasing and drinking, so the First gathered more power. Beck froze everything in place, knowing he wasn't there for long, and the First was getting back Townsend-like powers.
• Then with Eddie "the Underwear Arsonist" Johnson, we were back to moron for a superintendent while the First and subordinate exempts actually "ran" things. Which brings us to today.

Unfortunately, the damage has been done along with the political class having far more influence on the Department that ever before. The second and third tier exempts had no idea how to run a department, chased away experienced people with brains and put the "friends and family promotional plan" on warp speed. There was no Townsend or Maurer waiting in the wings, just a couple pretenders.

Larritorious was a gym teacher who probably hasn't seen or signed an arrest report in fifteen years, let alone approved a TRR, and he was gifted how many promotions inside of 30 months? They wouldn't even allow him to pick a First for over a year, instead hanging onto a retiree with as much baggage as a small aircraft.

So Yoyo's fall from grace is certainly a good start. Demotion would be better.

CTU Political Tentacles

Austin Berg is the Executive Director of the Chicago Policy Center and political gadfly who shines a very bright spotlight on the political underbelly of the Machine and the corruption contained within. This piece he wrote shows how embedded the CTU is in the upcoming elections and how much money they're prepared to spend to keep owning Conehead's ass:

• The Chicago Teachers Union plans to spend more than $4 million on local politics ahead of the next mayoral election, according to a leaked internal budget document shared with The Last Ward. The budget also shows record spending on union overhead and officer salaries.

  But how much influence that political spending will actually create remains unclear, with recent races suggesting CTU money carries more baggage with Chicago voters than ever before.

  Let’s dive in.

And dive in he does, with leaked documents, easy-to-read explanations and the result of the increasingly toxic atmosphere promoted by the CTU....along with the fallout that might be expected.

Go read it all. We aren't sure how SubStack works, but this article seems to be out in the open and free for now. 

Look Who Caught Up

What would the media do without independent voices tipping them off to things they ought to have discovered on their own? You know....like "journalism" is supposed to be:

• Grappling with a massive budget deficit, Chicago Public Schools is ending the practice of providing crossing guards for intersections that exclusively serve private school students.

  Chicago Public Schools said providing crossing guards for private schools is outside its core mission. And facing a $734 million deficit, officials are looking for savings wherever they can find them. The district also said at least two of the crossing guards were students who attend suburban Catholic schools.

  All together, CPS is eliminating 102 crossing guard positions, a third of which only serve private school students. CPS had 732 crossing guard positions last year.

And as we alluded to this past Saturday, it would appear that pretty much all of the cuts are at private / Catholic schools. Other cuts were at those "Safe Passage" locations already manned by parents getting $10-per-hour or more.

Did you know that at many private schools, the teachers have a rotating schedule where they actually act as crossing guards? We say try that at CPS, but you know the CTU would demand even more money than the crossing guards were making.

Bodies Litter the Streets

CFD overtime cuts??

• Hey SCC. Here is a good one for our friends at C F.D. Yesterday morning C F.D. ambulance job at the bus stop at 47th Campbell in 009. They get there and person is D.O.A. They call for us but no cars available at the time. What do they do? Put a white sheet over the body and leave. Some citizen calls 911 a half hour later and asks "Is this how something like this is handled? Beat Sgt asks for a C.F.D.supervisor on scene. Gets in touch with assigned ambulance who relates they left because it was shift change.Can't make this up and all documented in death investigation report.

You think there will be a directive to "allow" overtime so dead bodies aren't sitting in the bus shelters?

Stop Already

Back in the day, you used to be able to access the blog on Department computers. So many people were doing it however, that Phil Cline had the eggheads ban it - it seems that so many people were reading and commenting that it directly affected work, and you can't have government employees being inefficient!

Someone should remind everyone that's doing their shopping online using Department computers, too:

We're assuming this is off-duty after working hours, because there isn't a Watch Operations Lieutenant in the city that would allow this clothing during work hours, right?

Good Idea

Can they correct a wrong done to a fine Officer?

• Former leaders of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) are urging federal prosecutors and Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill-Burke to bring charges against three members of the Spanish Cobras street gang in the 2011 murder of Officer Clifton Lewis.

  Lewis, an off-duty officer working as a security guard at a West Side convenience store, was shot during an attempted robbery.

  Alexander Villa, Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay were indicted in connection with the murder but had their charges dropped by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

  Former Chicago FOP President Mark Donahue and former Second Vice President Martin Preib contacted National FOP President Patrick Yoes to request federal involvement and urged O’Neill-Burke to refile capital murder charges.

We'd certainly like to see Justice done for Officer Lewis and his family (he was a friend). Finding an appropriate Federal charge would certainly be a big step in the right direction, not to mention further reinforcing the correct perception that Crimesha was a useless turd of a states attorney.

Courtesy Abused

Way to go Yoyo!

• A couple of weeks ago, a woman approached a firefighter standing in front of a downtown firehouse and asked if she could park in firefighter parking lot which was locked. Firefighter responded no that's just for members working that day.

  Woman responded well I'm the first deputy superintendent for CPD open the the gate. While it should be noted didn't identify herself from start, civilian clothes, civilian car, didn't show badge, or ID.

  Firefighter responded I'm sorry but I don't know you but you can park on the street right there that's reserved for us. She asked if she would get a ticket which the firefighter shrugged his shoulders and said I don't know.

  She rolled her eyes and walked away to high-end restaurant across street and FaceTimed someone ranting while showing firehouse. Within minutes CFD exempts pulled up to firehouse to scold the members.

  We have no problem giving you guys parking when you properly identify yourself with ID, professional courtesy goes both ways.

Yoyo makes $226,872 per year - not counting what she might charge her niece for loaning her the vehicle used to deliver heroin on the west side. And here she is hassling a firefighter, calling CFD supervisors, and wasting their time coming to scold someone who was just making sure CFD property was occupied by CFD personnel.

Missed Payment? (not likely)

THIS IS AN UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR FROM A COMMENT SECTION in regard to an allegation that the City missed a scheduled payment to Nationwide Retirement Solutions (deferred comp):

• Ask your FOP rep.
  The deduction was taken as usual from your paycheck, However, the payment was not accepted by nationwide.
  
  The story that was given to me by the FOP is that the city submitted Their lump sum to Nationwide with a shorted amount, therefore nationwide did not accept the payment and no purchasing of investments went through. So until the city rectifies this discrepancy, no investments have been planned.
  
  This is not just a problem with police. It is also on the fire end and I’m sure other city services. 

THIS IS AN UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR FROM A COMMENT SECTION.

We don't have a way to verify it and as we said twice already, it's an UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR.

As we understood Deferred Comp during our careers, you decided how much to have set aside, the City makes the adjustments, the deferred money goes to Nationwide Retirement Solutions and is invested at your direction. It was never an issue during our years.

But as the city finances continue to degrade over the years and Conehead attempts to run a budget with a billion dollar shortfall while spending tens of millions on illegal aliens, we could see it becoming an issue.

AGAIN, THIS IS AN UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR FROM A COMMENT SECTION and long time readers know that occasionally, we give airtime to rumors, if only to stomp on them and stop the misinformation that floats around.

But He Promised to be Good

Another SAFE-T Act failure, this time for someone attempting to murder two police officers:

• A man accused of trying to kill two Chicago police officers is back behind bars after allegedly cutting off his ankle monitor and forcing a U.S. Marshals task force to use tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and a police dog to flush him out of hiding.

  Shaquille Parker, 32, was initially held on $10 million bail after prosecutors said he fired a gun at two uniformed officers who tried to stop him for a suspected drug deal in the 7100 block of South Cornell Avenue in August 2023. One officer returned fire, striking Parker in the side. Prosecutors said body camera video, ballistics testing, and Parker’s own admission justify the attempted murder charges.

  Despite the seriousness of the allegations, Judge Laura Ayala-Gonzalez decided to release Parker on an ankle monitor in September 2024 after his attorney argued that he deserved release under the SAFE-T Act’s no-cash-bail provisions.

  The lawyer claimed Parker was experiencing serious, ongoing medical issues related to his gunshot injury. They also claimed that other inmates held Parker hostage in a Cook County jail bathroom where he was beaten, kicked, and stabbed because his wife would not transfer $1,500 to an outside bank account.

  Ayala-Gonzalez’s decision unraveled on June 16 when, according to authorities, Parker cut off his ankle monitor and disappeared.

He shot at two cops, got charged with attempted murder, admitted it during questioning....and he's still eligible for no bail ankle monitoring.

Crap reasoning to crap law - must be another DEI judge, and yet another confirmation that our decision to never vote for a judge in Cook County is the correct one.

Equal Opportunity Misery

So, they're not only screwing Midnight Officers. Now - it's everyone:

• the dept just scheduled a bunch of 2nd watch officers for training at 1900 hours after they've been sticking it to 1st watch officers for a while now by scheduling them for training at 0600 and 0700 hours.

  When downtown is told there aren't 8 hours between the regular tour of duty and training, they just shrug and say "adjust the start time."

  Adjusting hours doesn't help for shit not to mention how it affects families. Police couples have to burn time just so one can attend training. Family first? My ass

  PS And I know a bunch of 3rd Watch just got assigned to training at 0700hrs

Morons, one and all.

OT Cuts Coming?

Rumor from the comments:

• Many don’t know this, but after Bud Billiken the department intends to drastically cut back on all voluntary OT that doesn’t directly affect district operations. Only OT will be offered in order to man downed cars. Overtime related to missions and any extension of tour other than a late arrest will be one. Counter terrorism OT will be cut along with all other bureaus. Only a [???]  number will be allowed since that is outside funded OT. Traffic, robbery and violence missions are gone for watches, districts tac and units. The last “forced” ot will be for Bud Billiken, air and water and Labor Day for 4th watch and then Mexican independence weekend for the whole department. Otherwise, it’s going to be an OT desert.  

Of course, by then festival season will be over, the schools will be open and classes at the Academy (which are suspended until November anyway) will be starting up, so the Department can pretend to "cut" OT.

Until May 2026 that is. Then - unless there's been a massive change involving ten-hour days - OT will start up again because another 400 cops are scheduled to retire before next summer.

Look!

Accountability in some form!

• Nearly 375 workers in government agencies across Illinois engaged in misconduct related to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a long-running investigation by the state executive inspector general’s office has found.

  They either put in for and got PPP loans they didn’t qualify for or didn’t disclose to their government employers the side businesses they claimed to be running to get the money, according to the inspector general’s office.

  Susan Haling, the executive inspector general, began the investigation in 2022. Her office investigates wrongdoing involving state workers and employees of some local government agencies, including the CTA and PACE.

  The agency said Friday that it has found 373 people — out of 501 cases it has investigated involving suspected PPP fraud — engaged in some type of wrongdoing. Investigations involving 54 workers were closed in the year that ended June 30, state records show. Those cases involved about $1.19 million in suspicious PPP loans, according to the state agency. Two of those 54 employees ended up being fired. The rest resigned.

So a batting average of about 100% for all intents and purposes in terms of removing the criminals from the payroll. No word on how many were eligible to retie anyway, how many are currently collecting a pension and how much money was actually recovered.

And of all the government agencies being investigated, there don't seem to be any from OEMC or CPD, which were notoriously involved with a bit of the fraud. A quick search of the PPP database provided a roadmap to numerous offenders.

New Outdoor Bathrooms!

Look what they're installing across the west side:

• Dozens gathered Saturday morning as the since-demolished Illinois Black Panther Party headquarters was honored with a plaque in the sidewalk where it once stood on the Near West Side.

  It was one of 12 plaques to be placed around Chicago — as well as another in Peoria — denoting historic sites of the Black Panther Party in Illinois; the full set will be permanently placed before Oct. 15, said Leila Wills, executive director of the Historical Preservation Society of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. They were first revealed last October after a fight over how the organization’s legacy would be preserved.

  Billy Ché Brooks, former deputy minister of education for the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, said it was important for the party to tell its history through its members instead of letting others do it, and possibly distort it. 

If and when we manage to pass through the areas these plaques are installed, we'll be sure to leave a calling card on each. 

Trouble in Paradise

"Paradise" being 35th and Michigan:

• Apparently snelling and Talley have been locking horns lately and it’s not going so well. Allegedly the 1st deputies office is a mess and is pretty much unorganized chaos on a daily basis. Snelling finally got pissed and they got into it. [Unfortunately], there is nothing he can do about it.  

When you have two untalented hacks with something like six "merit" promotions between both, along with an embarrassing amount of #metoo stories and covered up criminal charges, you're going to have conflicts at the very least.

Why so Much OT?

We aren't sure if Channel 7 understands what this program is actually showing:

• More than $3 million. That's how much police overtime cost taxpayers last month alone.

  You can see how much the city is spending on those extra hours as the Office of Inspector General has created the "Sworn CPD Member Overtime Summary Dashboard."

  It provides information such as the rank and title of the officer, the reason for the overtime and the police district.

  The inspector general says the police department's overtime spending is larger than the entire budgets of many other city departments.

And why would the overtime budget be so large? Well, there are 277 police Beats in Chicago. To adequately man those beats, you need (at a minimum) 

• two officers on First Watch
• one officer on Second Watch
• two officers on Third Watch 

Remember, we're talking minimums here. We'd all like to see two on each watch, but that isn't happening. So that's a total of 1,385 Officers working every day just to man the beat cars. And one third of the Districts are RDO on any given day with the current schedule, so the math kind of works out to 2,078 Officers actively working beat cars and still getting their RDOs. 

Then supervision for twenty-two Districts, three Sectors per District:

• 1 sergeant per sector (+1 for RDO coverage) on three watches
• 2 lieutenants per District on three watches
• 1 captain per District
• 1 commander per District

We're up to 440 white shirts just for the Districts (again, minimum). The real numbers with furlough reliefs and such are significantly higher, but still, we haven't even cracked 4,000 with those basic numbers. Adding in a single wagon per watch makes little difference.

Anyone know the current manpower numbers? It's in the neighborhood of 9,000, nearly double the basic numbers we just came up with....and they still can't man the 277 beat cars on a daily basis. 

You want to track down the OT expenditures, it's far past time to take a long hard look at where the manpower is hidden. We've been pointing it out for years:

• Commander offices with seven-to-ten people for what should be four spots maximum;
• Detective Areas with PO's answering phones instead of ::gasp:: detectives....or civilians;
• FTO's working at HQ where they'll never teach a recruit;
• there are FTO timekeepers - a spot that was civilian at one point; 
• Academy staff with eight Officers teaching an eight-hour course - one for each hour;
• Homan Square with entire units that exist only to push paper and never see the street;
• HQ....have you tried parking there in the past ten years?

Imagine the massive cost savings if police officers did actual police work in police districts. 

What Could it Be???

A nationwide trend?

• A new study shows Chicago’s crime decline is part of a national trend that’s driving murders, carjackings and sexual assaults below pre-pandemic levels.

  The report from the Council on Criminal Justice shows nationally, violent crime rates for the first half of 2025 were lower than in the first half of 2019. In Chicago the drop in homicides from 2019 to 2025 was significantly larger than the national average.

It's almost like someone turned off a....leaky faucet or porous or an open door or something.

And then, took a sponge or a mop and bucket or something similar and started cleaning up and deporting the mess that had been inflicted on the entire country, but especially in the place where the "water" was deeper than the rest of the country. 

But that would make sense. It must be something else. 

Another CTU Embarrassment

It's nice to be rich AND privileged:

• Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates wants the “wealthy” to pay their “fair share,” but despite her $265,150 income she just can’t seem to pay her home utility bills on time.

  Davis Gates has let $1,006.95 in Chicago water, sewer and trash bills pile up, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Illinois Policy Institute on June 30.

  She did the same thing last year.

  Davis Gates’ past-due bills piled up for over three years and hit nearly $5,700 at one point, the institute discovered last year. The city invoked repeated delays in providing her billing information, and Davis Gates paid up just before the information was released to the institute.

Well, when you live in Indiana and get Indiana tax breaks, you tend to let other bills slip your mind.

She's making more in a single year that we ever did in two years and we can proudly say we never missed a water bill. That's probably why we won't run for mayor.

Someone Think of the Children!

Because the Chicago Public Schools aren't:

• Chicago Public Schools has decided to eliminate crossing guard service at 33 intersections in Chicago. Eleven of those are in the South Side 19th Ward, the local alderman said.

  CPS said 15 out of 30 intersections were affected.

  Alderman Matt O'Shea says he was blindsided by cuts he calls drastic and unsafe in his ward's school communities. "That's unconscionable, to go more than three days now without an explanation," O'Shea said.

So they won't teach them, and now they won't protect them crossing the streets. 

Here's a partial list from the annoyed aldercreature (click for larger version):

And we aren't sure if this is true, but someone wrote to us and claimed all of the intersection cuts are at Catholic / private school crossings.

Here's what we're thinking about though - given the recent spate of traffic crashes involving CPD and pedestrian injuries across the city, how long until some asshole driver plows through a now-unmanned school intersection and takes out a bunch of kids?

Their probably hoping parents step up. 

Rumorville

From our comment section:

• Off topic I guess there was a drunk recruit at graduation. Saluting with his left hand and shaking with his left stumbling and smelling like alcohol Wow 

If they let him walk off the stage and exit the building like that, well....

Say hello to your next embarrassing headline. 

At least it wasn't weed, right? 

They Thought He Was Trustable?

He lied to get elected.

He lied since day one in office.

He'll continue to lie:

• The pedestal that once held the Columbus statue in Grant Park was removed Thursday in preparation for a replacement of “rotating art,” infuriating the Italian-American civic group that was still hoping for the statue’s return.

  Newly appointed Chicago Park District Supt. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa issued a statement saying the temporary art would “celebrate Chicago’s diverse communities” in a proposed “Peoples’ Plaza.” The new plaza is expected to open in late summer or early fall after pavement restoration.

  Ron Onesti, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, viewed the move as a betrayal of the innovative agreement he cut with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration nearly three months ago.

Conehead was heard giggling in the background:

• You fucked up....you trusted us

It isn't enough to honor your own heroes - commies have to erase the past ones, too.

Did They Ever Solve This?

This story from last month got some play on the national wires the other day:

• Chicago Police Department brass accused Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration of deliberately slowing down paychecks for dozens of employees this summer in a fiery email that warned the city was jeopardizing its compliance with the federal consent decree.

  Police Department Deputy Director Ryan Fitzsimons emailed multiple officials in Johnson’s budget office June 2 to alert them of the department’s overdue A-forms, paperwork required to process paychecks for new hires and promotions. After following up the next day to confirm that police recruits were not getting their first paychecks, he sent an additional message June 10 saying Johnson’s budget office was purposely sitting on the forms.

What was the final resolution on this? Did the kids get reimbursed for any overdraw fees or bounced checks? Were formal inspection delayed when they couldn't afford a full dress uniform? 

What about the vig on the advances they might have gotten from Vanecko Payday Loans or that nice man Guido down at the Teamsters Hall?

Election Integrity?

If Illinois ain't cheating, then they ain't trying:

• The U.S. Department of Justice added its voice this month to a lawsuit by private entities accusing the state of Illinois of failing to properly maintain a statewide voter registration list, in violation of a 1993 federal law.

  In a filing known as a “statement of interest,” the Justice Department said the government has an interest in the outcome of the lawsuit, although the filing stops short of asking the court for permission to intervene as a party in the case.

  “This case presents important questions regarding enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act,” attorneys in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in the filing. “Congress has vested the Attorney General with authority to enforce the NVRA (National Voter Registration Act) on behalf of the United States. Accordingly, the United States has a substantial interest in ensuring proper interpretation of the NVRA.”

The dead have been "voting" in Illinois for decades, probably more than a century. An organization called Judicial Watch filed suit against numerous states for not cleaning up the rolls. In Illinois alone, there were something like 800,000 people on the voter lists that haven't cast a ballot in years.

In sworn testimony before a House committee (linked here), Thirty-four of Illinois' 101 counties didn't even file Federal paperwork stating that they had made even a preliminary effort to verify voters existing - and in nineteen of those counties, not a single voter was removed from the rolls for having died in the past two years. 

Even with gerrymandering, the dems super-majority would disappear if they stopped counting the "cemetery vote."

Property Tax Hike on Tap

When your Chief Financial Officer says it's coming, it's coming:

• Chicagoans may have to prepare for higher property taxes, with the city facing a $1 billion deficit. The city's chief financial officer told Bloomberg that a property tax increase was likely due to the budget crisis

  The mayor is downplaying the idea of raising property taxes, which is not a surprise because no politician wants to talk about hiking taxes unless and until they have no other choice. And given the pushback from the City Council last year, it's setting the stage for a major budget battle this fall.

  The mayor lost a bitter battle over raising property taxes last year when the projected budget deficit was not as bad as the one he is now facing. And it may not get any better during this upcoming budget season.

That $250 million Conehead spent on illegals would fully cover a quarter of this shortfall.

So would stopping crap like this:

• Two affordable housing buildings are set to rise on the former site of the Robert Taylor Homes in Bronzeville, transforming an area that has long been a symbol of the city’s past policy failures on public housing.

  Mayor Brandon Johnson, speaking Wednesday at a groundbreaking for the $40 million, 52-unit project, said the two-building project — called Legends South A3 — will help the area move beyond the legacy of disinvestment that left spaces vacant.

  [...] The $40.8 million project is funded by $10 million in reallocated tax increment financing funds, $2.9 million in HOME funds, $1.5 million in low-income housing tax credits from the Department of Housing and the Department of Planning and Development, and $7.5 million from the CHA.

$40 million.

52 units in two buildings.

That's over $760,000 per unit. Granted, part of it is for surrounding infrastructure improvements, but no one want to be there when the Taylor Homes were there. No one has been begging to move there since. And next year's budget is already short a Billion dollars.

How about reining in spending first?

Grant Her Wish

It would save taxpayers a ton of cash that's going to be wasted on trail and incarceration:

• A Chicago woman who allegedly drowned her 14-month-old son in Lake Michigan last week told police she “didn’t know how hard it was to drown” and begged cops to shoot her, according to a Chicago police report.

  Prosecutors said Surah Amon, 31, entered the water with her son, Sir Watson, around 9:45 p.m. near the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 South South Shore Drive. Amon “walked her 14-month-old son into Lake Michigan and let him go while in deep water,” a charging document said.

  Officers responding to the scene reported finding Amon in the water, screaming that she had killed her son and wanted to die, the CPD report said. Officers entered the lake and brought her to shore, observing cuts on her wrists. Amon allegedly told first responders that Sir was still in the water.

  [....] Amon allegedly admitted to letting Sir go in the water and told officers she was suicidal after being kicked out of her home by the boy’s father. According to police, she said she “didn’t know how hard it was to drown” and repeatedly asked officers to shoot and kill her. 

Along with the cop-killer convicted earlier this week, there certainly seems to be an uptick in people begging to be killed by CPD.

Indictments on Tap

Anyone know why Chicago media is taking a hard pass on the recent declassification of National Security documents that outline a very strong case for Seditious Conspiracy against Sparklefarts and former heads of the fbi, CIA and Shrillary?

Dig though the links on the right hand side of the blog. This thing is bigger than Watergate and goes right to the top. 

Watch for Comey, Brennan and Clapper to be indicted at some point, maybe even Hillary. They'll never touch Sparklefarts though. But they'll make it hard for him to be a political force any more. 

More Injuries

Yet another traffic crash:

• Four citations were written to a driver who allegedly ran a red light and hit a police squad car, injuring himself and two officers early Wednesday on the Southwest Side.

  Around 4:30 a.m., a 51-year-old man driving north on California Avenue ran a red light and hit a marked squad car, traveling west on 51st Street, Chicago police said.

  Both officers in the squad car were taken to an area hospital where they were in good condition, police said.

Is it just us or does it seem like a lot more crashes lately? Anyone have the yearly breakdown as compared to previous years, especially by watch since it seems midnights are catching a lot more accidents lately.

Speedy recovery wished to all. 

Officer Cheech, Meet Officer Chong

Along with lowered hiring standards, now they're going to allow weed?

• A Chicago police officer who faced dismissal after testing positive for marijuana can remain on the job, the Chicago Police Board ruled in its first weed-related decision since the drug was legalized.

  Police Supt. Larry Snelling had pushed to fire Officer Marshall Andrews Jr. for failing a random drug test in August 2021, but the board instead voted Thursday to suspend the veteran cop for 90 days.

  “While the board has discharged officers from CPD in the past for using cannabis, medical and recreational use of cannabis is now permitted by Illinois state law,” the board wrote in its written ruling, noting that future discipline will be assessed “on a case-by-case basis.”

  Still, the ruling could set a precedent for two other pending disciplinary cases in which officers face firing for allegedly using cannabis.

No doubt someone is going to write something about alcohol use and the CPD's long tradition of drinking to excess and then killing civilians while off duty. Alcohol has been legal for a long time, but so have the consequences for doing something stupid while drunk. We can name more than a few coppers who got fired and/or served hard time after having had way too many. We could name even more who got away with lesser incidents.

But the thing about weed is, it sticks around a long time. You might not be actively high, but if you get into a shooting, on or off duty, or a car accident, or pretty much anything, even a hint of marijuana in your system from a week ago or a month ago is going to open up you and the City taxpayers to mountains of litigation. You're already subject to a breath test following a shooting, maybe even an accident. But under the "consent decree," how soon will a mandatory blood, urine or hair sample be forced on anyone using force of any sort?

Not to mention that marijuana use is still a restriction on the Firearms Transaction Record Form 4473 Section 21(f) meaning you can't buy a gun.

This is a potential disaster of epic proportions. 

FCC Violation

This is the Officers' lifeline to getting assist cars?

• OEMC Recording

And what does she mean her "screen is off."? Is she deliberately shirking her duty to record who is responding where and when? 

Those timestamps are massively important in an investigation....and in Court - criminal and civil. 

Especially at the Federal level. We know that far too well.

Not Millions - BILLIONS

Remember all those tax hikes that took effect on 01 July?

Keep reaching for that wallet!

• The Gov. J.B. Pritzker administration’s spending on migrant ILLEGAL ALIEN care has seen massive cost overruns and a troubling lack of transparency, drawing criticism for prioritizing migrants ILLEGAL ALIENS over the needs of taxpayers.

  Here’s how Pritzker is spending over $2.5 billion in taxes.

  Health care has been the primary cost. Recent audits have found Illinois has spent over $1.6 billion on migrant ILLEGAL ALIEN health care through July 2024 – far more than originally predicted.

  Migrant ILLEGAL ALIEN health benefits are split between two programs. The Health Benefits for Immigrant ILLEGAL ALIEN Seniors was created during the pandemic in 2020 and serves those over the age of 65. The Health Benefits for Immigrant ILLEGAL ALIEN Adults program was created in 2022 and serves ages 42 to 64.

We took the liberty of replacing "migrant" with "ILLEGAL ALIEN" so you get a better feel for how much Fata$$ and democrats hate actual citizens.

And this ties in with yesterday's post about Kwame the Faoul suing the Administration for restricting billions in other spending on ILLEGAL ALIENS, even though it's Kwame's own people (or folks) suffering the most from these money diversions.

You know, if ILLEGAL ALIENS don't get money, then ILLEGAL ALIENS stop coming. 

Nice Mag Mile Conehead

How soon until another tax generating business flees?

But hey, don't demonize! 

This is at least the second time this particular store has been targeted. In 2023, a stolen vehicle was driven through the front doors. In 2021, the store in  Oak Brook was looted by over a dozen non-demonized yutes racking up over $150K in merchandise..

Fuck This Judge (UPDATE)

A couple posts below this one, we linked to the guilty verdict coming out of 26th Street yesterday. Certainly a bit of good news and closure for everyone involved. But it almost didn't happen because of a judge who deserves nothing but contempt from all decent citizens, cops, and society as a whole:

• Before the verdict was read, there was a shocking moment in the courtroom prior to closing statements when Judge John Lyke agreed with the defense that jurors could consider the charge of second-degree murder, instead of murder in the first degree. Ultimately, jurors convicted Montano of the more serious first-degree murder charge and all additional counts.

We've been following this trial pretty regularly. We have had people inside the courtroom e-mailing us. The media coverage has been pretty decent all things considered. The States Attorneys involved have been putting on a clinic with the material provided via a top notch investigation by the detectives. 

And Lyke almost gave this scumbag an out on a lesser charge? Why?

There was absolutely no doubt shithead did it. The body cam video by the Officer recording his own murder - painful as it was for everyone to view -  made it airtight. We were told (unverified) that Officer Vasquez Lasso could be heard announcing his office on the audio, like we were all taught over and over and over at the Academy. The State made no significant errors that might plant the seeds of reasonable doubt in a jury where they'd need a lesser charge to save the case. Even the asshole's own testimony made no holes in the State's case and was pretty much lie after lie.

And Lyke opened the door to a lesser verdict on a Hail Mary motion that the defense always makes when the clock is showing zero AND they don't even have the ball. Thank God the jury saw through it and applied the law as written.

Lyke, in effect, painted a target on all Officers' backs from this point forward. He created a future defense opportunity for other cop killers to claim that there is some sort of "right" to self defense when an Officer pursues an armed suspect in a wildly dynamic situation, something that local, state and national law says is our duty. That, in our opinion, is an unforgivable sin.

This is exactly why we vote "NO" on ALL judges, every single election.

This is why you should, too. It doesn't take much time or effort. It doesn't even get you put on the jury summons list - Cook County hasn't used the voter rolls for jury duty in decades - they use the Drivers License lists. If you get a summons and it ain't Registered Mail....well, we shouldn't have to spell it out for you. 

UPDATE: A bunch of people are opining that the judge did the right thing by permitting consideration of a lesser charge so as to close off an avenue of appeal at a later date. 

Sorry, that doesn't fly. You know how you stave off an appeal like that?

• Jury instructions. Define the charge of First Degree Murder versus Second Degree Murder and make sure the jury knows exactly what the law says and make sure they apply it

We've seen it done, more than once. It's completely legal and has withstood appeals for years. The judge has a ton of leeway and it also shuts down the appeal avenue because all he's doing is quoting the text that the Legislature passed and removing confusion.

But it's all moot, all opinion, all discussion. The jury rendered the correct decision. But you can bet that a whole can of worms has been opened allowing it to even be breached.

Democrats Hate You

Not that you needed a reminder....but here's one anyway:

• Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has once again joined a coalition of other attorneys general in suing the Trump administration over new rules that could bar immigrants without legal status from health and education programs.

  The suit, announced Monday, seeks to stop a series of orders from federal agencies that would block people from the early childhood education program Head Start, Title X family planning, adult education, mental health care and community health centers based on immigration status.

So after passing another massive series of tax hikes and running up the Illinois debt a few extra billion dollars, Kwame the Faoul is using taxpayer funds to pay for lawyers to sue the national administration for daring to tell states to only spend taxpayer money on....actual legal citizens. 

The nerve!

You'll be replaced, you'll like it, you'll shut up about it, and you'll damn well pay for it. 

Another SAFE-T Act Win

When do you think we're going to get a giant tax cut for the money that they aren't spending on housing inmates? Because no one seems to be held in any jail any more:

• A Waukegan man accused of concealing the death of an Antioch woman in April was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers over the weekend in Chicago. Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, 52, was taken into custody by ICE officers Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said.

  At the time of his arrest, Mendoza-Gonzalez, an immigrant from Mexico, was awaiting his next court appearance in connection with the death of 37-year-old Megan Bos. He was charged with concealment of a death, abuse of a corpse and obstructing justice. Mendoza-Gonzalez had made a court appearance in that case April 12, two days after his initial arrest. A judge ordered him released from custody pending trial.

  Megan Bos’ mother, Jennifer Bos, said she was “in absolute shock” when a friend sent her an online news article about the ICE arrest. “I think people expected me to be upset that he was arrested by ICE,” Jennifer Bos said. “My intention the whole time is to bring attention to the fact that he was released after what he did to her.” 

Did you catch that? Mom wasn't upset that ICE arrested him - she was upset he was even out on bail in the first place. But don't count on the Sun Times telling readers why Mom was unhappy. For that you have to go elsewhere:

• Immigration authorities in Chicago arrested a Mexican illegal immigrant accused of decapitating a missing Illinois woman and storing her body in a storage container filled with bleach.

Yeah, after hiding her body....FOR TWO MONTHS....he chopped off her head.

This isn't enough to keep someone in jail pending trial now. Ain't "progress" grand? 

Another Great Weekend

Two of our favorite sites - CWB quoting HeyJackass.com:

• Seven people were murdered and at least 27 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago over the just-ended weekend, according to police. The total of 34 victims marks the lowest tally for the same weekend since 2015, according to HeyJackass, a site that independently tracks Chicago crime data using open source and official databases.

  Only 2024 recorded fewer victims, with 27 reported that year. For statistical purposes, HeyJackass defines the weekend as running from noon Friday through 6 a.m. Monday.

By the way, those thirty-four put Chicago over the One-Thousand Gunshot Victims for the year, so Congratulations are in order. 

While the year is looking pretty good, it's nice to know that traditions carry on.

Guilty Verdict

Two hours of deliberation:

• A Cook County jury on Monday convicted Steven Montano of first-degree murder for killing Chicago Police Officer Andres Vasquez Lasso two years ago on a Gage Park playground.

  After a weeklong trial, jurors arrived at the verdict in less than two hours.

  The swift guilty verdict, which comes over two years after the officer’s death, has brought “some level of justice” to the Vasquez Lasso family, Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling told reporters Monday.

  “We lost an officer; they lost a family member, we lost a family member.” Snelling said, standing in front of the Vasquez Lasso family Monday.

  “When we think about Andres Vasquez Lasso, here was a person who went out to do good, to protect others, to keep the city safe, and lost his life doing this. His life was taken away from it from someone who just did not care that he was taking a family member away. "

We'll have a bit more to say in our midnight posting.

Whitley Wants to Hide

This probably shouldn't be allowed to happen, but it's Cook County so she'll probably be granted it:

• The woman found not guilty by reason of insanity after running over a Chicago police officer with his own squad car is now asking the court to let her start anew—by changing her name.

  Whitley Temple, who was acquitted last year of attempting to murder Officer Ed Poppish during a bizarre 2022 West Side encounter, filed a petition on July 11 to legally change her first name to “Michelle,” according to Cook County court records.

  Temple, 36, was accused of violently carjacking Poppish’s squad car in the 4400 block of West Jackson after he stopped to help her. Poppish said he found Temple partially undressed and lying in the street as he responded to a shots fired call.

She ran over the Officer with the squad car and fled the scene at over 90 MPH before crashing into numerous cars.

Then she went to trial....and was found to be insane while the judge accused CPD Officers of emailing her anonymous threats and doxxing her address. Funnily enough, not a single CR number was generated and ZERO complaints were filed with the Cook County Sheriffs' Office....you know, the people in charge of protecting and investigating threats against judges. Nothing at all.

And during the trial - or "trial" if you prefer - it was discovered Whitley had somehow been hired as "a lead accountant for the City of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services" while on bond for an Attempted Murder charge. Over $85K in salary while high on crack cocaine, stealing city property and attempting to murder a Police Officer.

Turns out she did campaign work for Cook County Board president Prickwrinkle, so there's the political connection. She'll be granted her name change in an attempt to conceal her criminal drug-addicted past. There's not much anyone can do about it besides spreading the work by linking the CWB story and anything you can find in our archives - that way, both her names are always connected somewhere before she disappears into the City or County payrolls again.

Nice Parking Lot Larry

It all just a joke now....trouble is, we don't hear the laughter:

• A crew of car thieves pulled off a doozy on Saturday morning by stealing a Jeep from the parking lot of Chicago Police Headquarters, smashing through the entrance gate, and making a clean getaway. It gets worse: The Jeep belonged to a retired Chicago cop — and his gun was inside the vehicle.

  According to a CPD document reviewed by CWBChicago, the crooks didn’t exactly sneak out. They plowed through the parking lot’s barrier arm to escape, and yet — somehow — no one reported the theft or property damage for over an hour. The lot and headquarters have a security patrol, or at least they’re supposed to, and questions were raised about why it took so long for the crime to be discovered.

  Unaware of the theft, officers on patrol spotted a black Jeep SRT and a Genesis SUV blowing red lights near Pershing and King Drive at 7:32 a.m., about three blocks from headquarters. The Jeep’s windows were shattered, and both vehicles tore off toward southbound Lake Shore Drive, officers said.

  Shortly after, someone at Jackson Park Golf Course called 911 to report five Black males in ski masks standing next to a Genesis SUV trying to steal a Jeep that had its windows busted out. But by the time police arrived, they were all gone. It wasn’t until 8:50 a.m. — well over an hour after the barrier was smashed — that someone realized the Jeep had been stolen from the police department’s own parking lot.

"...plowing through the [...] barrier arm" isn't that big a deal. If it isn't in the raised position, it's either aluminum or a painted one-by-four from Lowes....pretty much the flimsiest piece of lumber in existence. There are no tire spikes or anything stopping a car thief from leaving.

But who was manning the booth? Did they not notice someone "plowing through"? 

And cameras. Where were the cameras watching the lot and cars entering/leaving? CPD has cameras in the lockup and lobbies, in-car and body worn, on lampposts and in most intersections. Not one was reviewed in a timely manner after some people (or folks) hopped a waist high fence, broke a window and stole a car from what should be one of the more secure parking lots in the city?

And leaving a gun in the car? Retirees are allowed to carry. Even if they aren't supposed to carry into HQ, how much would it cost to install a lock box in the lobby? They had/have them at Federal Court.

A bunch of simple fixes along with prompt notifications of a crime taking place at HQ. But what's another hot car and another hot gun on the streets?

But Did They Keep the Car?

Sure, the City got their impound fees....:

• A Missouri man who wore a police costume and allegedly brought a gun and a flamethrower to a Gage Park street takeover last year has been sentenced to probation.

  Judge Carol Howard sentenced Emmanuel Wilson to 24 months of first-time weapon offender probation and 50 hours of community service after he pleaded guilty to aggravated unlawful use of a weapon in a vehicle.. She also barred him from participating in street takeovers and driving recklessly. If Wilson completes probation successfully, he will be eligible to have the conviction expunged from his record.

  Wilson, of Columbia, Missouri, was arrested on November 3, 2024, after Chicago police responded to a donut-spinning street “takeover” in the 5600 block of South Kedzie around 2:44 a.m.

  He was wearing a police costume when officers found him in his 2023 Dodge Charger Hellcat, which was outfitted with flashing police-style lights and a siren, officials said. Inside the car, police found a flamethrower, a loaded 9-millimeter handgun, a second firearm, fake license plates, and other props associated with takeover events, according to his arrest report. 

....but confiscating a vehicle decked out to look like a squad car, along with the guns, weed, fake plates, etc would send a better message than a few hundred bucks in fines. Why don't the aldercreatures ever propose something like that?

Overdose Wave Inbound?

A bunch of crime that happens here has roots or origins elsewhere. A lot of what happens in New York, heads downstream toward Philly and Baltimore before landing in the grittier parts of DC and heading west.

Is this headed west?

• Five people in Baltimore were hospitalized for a reported mass overdose incident, one week after 27 were sickened in the same area of the city because of a "bad batch" of drugs, police said.

  The victims Friday were in serious condition, Baltimore Fire Chief James Wallace said at a news conference, including addition to two who refused treatment after first responders deployed Narcan.

We've always been entertained by that description - "bad batch," implying that there's a "good batch" of heroin floating around somewhere.

Officials also admitted that the "supply across the city is very volatile right now," so in addition to the unlicensed pharmacists adjusting their mixes to give the junkies a little more kick (stoking the rumor mills about who has the best blow), the shortages might be stoking a sudden uptick in violence over spots and boundaries.

Anyone over at Narcotics willing to enlighten the masses? 

 

Halfway Through the Weekend

And already, almost twenty people have extra holes in their bodies:

• At least 16 people have been shot, four fatally, in gun violence across Chicago so far this weekend, police said.

  There were multiple shooting overnight Friday into Saturday across the city. It's the latest outbreak of violence in Chicago.

Channel 7 has it at four dead, twelve wounded.

HeyJackass.com (the only source for real and accurate crime numbers) is currently at four dead, fifteen wounded.

Twenty-four hours to go 

Given, Not Earned

Nice to see the tradition continues:

• Retiring City Council dean Walter Burnett said Thursday his 29-year-old namesake is not only his son but a “son of the 27^th Ward” who has earned the right to replace him.

  Some community leaders have argued that the city’s fastest-growing ward deserves better than a continuation of the old-school, all-in-the-family parade of Chicago politicians who have bequeathed their seats to their children.

  Burnett doesn’t view it as nepotism. He believes Walter R. Burnett — who goes by the nickname “Red” — deserves to inherit his father’s mantle because he has built the “relationships and the resources” to continue the development progress that has transformed a ward that once included “skid row.”

Continuing the "lucky sperm" qualification that has doomed not only the political class, but the Police, Fire, Streets and Sanitation, Transportation, and pretty much every city department in one form or another.

Another Crash

Squad car partially rolled over:

• Three police officers were hurt after a woman allegedly crashed into a CPD squad car on the city's South Side. The crash happened at about 5:15 a.m. in the 1200 block of W. 83rd Street on Saturday, police said.

  A CPD squad car was crossing an intersection eastbound on 83rd Street when a Kia sedan crashed into the squad car, police said. A 23-year-old woman allegedly ignored a traffic light and caused the crash, police said. 

  Video shows the squad car on its side and pinned into a fence.

A speedy recovery wished to all and a reminder - with zero traffic enforcement allowed, people are going to revert to driving like assholes more often than not. Be careful.

Trial Wraps Up

Asshole took the stand to spout his lies:

• Steven Montano told a jury Friday that he shot and killed a Chicago police officer “out of pure fear.”

  Montano, 21, said he instinctively turned and opened fire when he heard a call to stop as he fled officers and ran toward a Gage Park playground on March 1, 2023. Officer Andres Vasquez Lasso was fatally struck in an exchange of gunfire.

"...instinctive...."

So he knew a cop was chasing him because he claims he had other encounters with police and fled those times, too. This time though, he had a gun, and "instinctively" used it because....

Not a very good story and wholly unbelievable.

Jury returns Monday for closing arguments and deliberations. 

Show Us the Money!

How does $14 Million balloon to $195 million (maybe even more)?

Compound Interest AND penalties baby!!!

• Already facing massive yearly budget deficits, the city of Chicago could face a bill in the hundreds of millions of dollars for police overtime in a long-running case on behalf of 8,500 current and former Chicago Police Department employees.

  It’s been nearly 10 years since the case was filed and almost five years since a federal judge ruled in favor of the officers, who argued that the city “willfully violated” labor laws by miscalculating overtime pay they were due over a span of years.

  But the two sides are still fighting over how much the city will have to pay.

  An expert hired by the officers says the city owes the cops somewhere between $310 million and $450 million, court records show. City Hall’s hired expert says it’s much less — no more than about $195 million.

  Even that is far more than the $14 million the city could have settled the case for at the start, Paul Geiger, a former police union attorney who represented the police officers who sued, said after a court hearing Thursday.

Remember, this was filed ten years ago....and the FOP won it five years ago. The City was playing fast and loose with how OT was calculated (as they often do) and went with the paying the lowest possible rate because the City is always crying poor and CPD can't take any labor action to force an honest negotiation.

And this time, it's going to cost them tens of millions of dollars. A sergeant acquaintance tells us the PBPA has a separate lawsuit regarding a VRI payout that - again - they won in court, but the city is - again - refusing to pay. Can anyone confirm?

Conehead isn't solely to blame - this dates back to before Groot and started with the 9.5 Digit Midget. But any one of them could have stepped up and just ended it, but you can't let the cops have a win, even if a Federal judge says they were the wronged party. 

It Was a Long Shot Anyway

Crooked political prosecutions and crooked political prosecutors will probably never be held accountable:

• A federal judge has thrown out claims against former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and two prosecutors named in a lawsuit brought by a Chicago police officer who says he was wrongly charged after a 2022 on-duty shooting that led to his suspension and a criminal trial that ended with his acquittal.

  In a July 11 opinion, U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso granted motions to dismiss all claims against Foxx and assistant state’s attorneys Lynn McCarthy and Alyssa Janicki, citing prosecutorial immunity. The officer, Christopher Liakopoulos, alleged the trio knowingly pursued charges “despite the absence of probable cause,” withheld exculpatory video evidence, and “conspired in the preparation and presentation of testimony that was misleading and inaccurate” to the grand jury.

  [....] Because prosecutors are immune from civil suits for actions tied to their core responsibilities—even if they act “maliciously, unreasonably, without probable cause, or even on the basis of false testimony or evidence,” as the court quoted from a landmark case—Foxx, McCarthy, and Janicki were dismissed entirely from the lawsuit. 

But guess who might be facing civil consequences?

• Although Foxx and her prosecutors are out of the case, Alonso allowed several claims against Chicago Police Officer Emmet Welch to proceed. That includes allegations that Welch gave knowingly false testimony to the grand jury, which led to the criminal indictment.

The IAD "investigator" who committed alleged perjury will be facing a trial and jury for potential damages, but not the political class.

Cops Injured

All should be okay:

• An SUV collided with a Chicago police patrol vehicle, injuring four people early Friday in Washington Park on the South Side.

  Around 12:45 a.m., a black SUV collided with a CPD patrol vehicle at 60th Street and South Michigan Avenue, police said.

  Two officers were taken to an area hospital where they were in good condition, officials said.

  A man and woman in the SUV were taken to Saint Bernard Hospital where they were both in good condition, police said.

Speedy recovery to all.

Trial Wrapping Up

Another brutal day of testimony and video footage in evidence:

• In jarring video footage, jurors Thursday watched the final moments of Chicago Police Officer Andres Vasquez Lasso’s life, from his own perspective.

  The trial of the officer’s alleged killer, Steven Montano, resumed Thursday morning with footage from Vasquez Lasso’s body-worn camera viewed in the courtroom. The case, which began this week, is expected to head to a jury Friday to begin deliberations.
  
  On the afternoon of March 1, 2023, Vasquez Lasso and his partner were responding to a domestic incident when they spotted a possible suspect running toward an elementary school with a gun.

  What followed was captured on Vasquez Lasso’s bodycam. In the video, he jumps out of his car and begins to chase after the man, while screaming out, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Seconds later, the man turns and points a gun at Vasquez Lasso, standing feet away. Shots ring out, and the officer falls backward. His bodycam shows just the sky above.

  Another officer enters the video frame, removes Vasquez Lasso’s vest and appears to begin chest compressions. The officer yells out, “Come on man! Come on, man!” as more screams are heard in the background.

The article further states the trial is expected to wrap up and be handed to the jury today. 

Does this mean the defense isn't calling any witnesses? Or even offering a rebuttal?

You Can't Make This S#$% Up

An accused serial killer, tied to half a dozen murders across the southwest side, has a strange connection to the Officer Vasquez Lasso murder.

His mother (who raised this serial killer) was dating the now-on-trial cop killer and was the one who called 9-1-1 to say she was being chased by her "husband" with a gun.

The entire article is like a badly written soap opera with so many twists and turns we had to read it three or four times. 

"Birds of a feather" and all that, but what a f#$%ed up situation.

A Voice of Reason?

Police family and Gold Star family member:

• As the civilian body overseeing the Chicago Police Department prepares to consider major limits to when and why the city’s cops can stop drivers, one member of the group is speaking out against the effort — and she’s not mincing words.

  “I believe the entire argument for restrictions is built on a faulty premise,” said Sandra Wortham, one of seven members of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA).

  The panel recently concluded a public comment period on traffic stop policy. But the group has already said that a majority of its members favor banning stops for a host of violations, including expired plates, broken lights, and loud sound systems. Wortham is squarely not in the majority.

CWB has what looks like the entirety of her dissent with the other members of the CCPSA and it is an eloquent, well reasoned, and completely logical approach to Police being allowed to use every tool in their arsenal.

Maybe she'll run for office at some point? 

What in the Absolute F#$%??

We're going to guess that someone retired and either stuck this in the back of a closet or tossed it in one of those donation bins and it ended up on the street?

Talk about painting a target on your back.

In the meantime, That's a quick arrest for "False Personation" 720 ILCS 5/17-2. 

Apologies in Advance

The Contrarian tracked down what Crimesha has been up to lately. Have something nearby to sanitize your brain if you can:

• Contrarian Link Here

She dances as well as she prosecuted.

Anyone know how the root beer felony turned out? 

Tough Day at Court

Very tense and difficult testimony:

• After allegedly shooting a Chicago police officer to death on a Gage Park playground, Steven Montano begged for police to kill him too, the officer’s partner testified Wednesday.

  “He begins to walk toward me and says, ‘Kill me,’” Officer Miguel Enciso told jurors. “He begins to beg me to kill him.”

  The trial for Montano, the man accused of killing Officer Andres Vasquez Lasso, resumed Wednesday with a jury viewing body camera footage from the deceased officer’s partner.

  On the afternoon of March 1, 2023, Vasquez Lasso and his partner, Enciso, were responding to a domestic incident when they spotted a possible suspect running toward an elementary school.

  Vasquez Lasso jumped out of their squad car and ran after the man, Enciso testified Wednesday. Moments later, Enciso said he heard gunshots.

  When Encisco arrived at the playground, he saw Vasquez Lasso on the ground, bleeding from his head, and Montano seated about 15 feet away, with a gun nearby.

  Encisco was able to grab the gun and instructed Montano to stay on the ground, he said. But instead, Montano got up and began walking toward Enciso and Vasquez Lasso, Enciso testified.

  Montano continued ignoring commands, according to Enciso, so the officer holstered one weapon, pulled out a taser, and shocked the then-18-year-old, bringing him to the ground.

  “He told me to kill him, I told him to shut the f- - - up,” Encisco told jurors Wednesday.

  “He [Montano] said, ‘You shut the f- - - up b- - - -, that’s why I killed your b- - - - ass boy.”

  Vasquez Lasso’s mother stepped out of the courtroom as body camera footage of the encounter played.

The body camera footage and recorded conversation ought to be enough to secure a conviction alone.

Finding: 100% True

 

Did They Read the Bill?

So Porkulous had his budget passed in Springfield recently, and now people are starting to read it to find out what was in it. This stood out to someone who is wired in far more than we are (click for larger version):

 

That's a cool half-a-million dollars going to Lincoln College for infrastructure improvements. How very generous of Illinois to spend our tax money so wisely.

The trouble is when you find out that Lincoln College closed three years ago.

So where was this $500,000 headed? And how many other instances are there where money is being steered to non-existent entities? 

Aside from the legislators and governor  not doing their due diligence, you'd think that there might be a sort of watchdog third party keeping an eye on things like this.

Quick Hits

 Lots of interesting stories yesterday:

• Conehead's veto survives:  Barring another outbreak of teen trends-turned-violent, the heated debate over “snap curfews” in Chicago is being put to rest.

  The City Council put the nail in the legislative coffin on Wednesday by upholding Mayor Brandon Johnson’s one and only veto.

  Thirty-four votes were needed to override Johnson’s veto. The override fell six votes short.

  The ordinance that would have empowered Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling to declare three-hour curfews anywhere in the city with 30 minutes’ notice was approved last month by a 27-22 vote

Conehead's claim that this was probably unconstitutional was our argument from Day One. Glad to see someone talked some sense into this moron.

Besides, unless the Department was allowed to actually enforce the curfew, with tickets, arrests and fines, it wasn't going to do anything.

• Search Warrant "reforms:"  Mayor Brandon Johnson on Wednesday finally followed through on his promise to propose police raid reforms — without a ban on no-knock warrants — that nevertheless appears to satisfy social worker Anjanette Young. Young was handcuffed and forced to stand naked while a team of police officers mistakenly raided her home in February 2019.

  Twenty-seven months ago, four years to the day after the botched raid that changed her life, Young endorsed Johnson in hopes he would deny then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot a second term.

  Although Young had already received a $2.9 million settlement from the city, Lightfoot and her City Council allies had blocked the so-called Anjanette Young Ordinance, which goes far beyond the police raid reforms imposed by Lightfoot and her embattled Police Supt. David Brown.

  Johnson embraced those same, more sweeping reforms, which notably included bans on no-knock warrants and officers pointing guns at children.

  But the mayor’s ordinance, introduced at Wednesday’s Council meeting, allows officers to carry out a raid without knocking, with a judge’s approval, if there’s a threat of violence or “imminent danger.”

The "no-knock" warrant survives, but only to be executed by SWAT. And all other warrants will have a timed thirty-seconds from knock until the ram hits the door. Plenty of time to surrender....or go all out the other direction along with destroying or disposing of evidence. Great plan!

• Traffic stops are still "racist:"  Chicago police traffic stops plummeted last year, but the drop varied wildly across the city, and sharp racial disparities persisted, a WBEZ analysis of Illinois Department of Transportation data found.

  Compared to the previous year, 2024 vehicle stops by the Chicago Police Department fell 45% citywide, with declines in all 22 police districts, according to the analysis. Yet while seven districts reduced their traffic stops by more than 60%, four others cut them by less than 20%.

  For the first time in nearly a decade, Black drivers accounted for less than half of stops citywide in 2024, amid shock waves and promises of reform after the fatal shooting of Dexter Reed during a traffic stop. But IDOT mileage rate ratios for last year show the police department was still four times more likely to pull over Black and Latino drivers than white ones.

We've said it for years, but why can't certain communities get their vehicles into compliance? We even argued that there might be economic factors that come into play where disadvantaged persons of any race might have to make a difficult choice between a new windshield and a past due electric bill.

It happens and should be taken into consideration. But taking away legal and legitimate enforcement tools from the police leads to the results we're seeing across the city and state today.