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.