RIP Deputy Coyle

Crittenden County (Kentucky) Deputy Rick Coyle, former CPD, died this morning weeks after being shot:

• Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office officials say one of their deputies has died following an officer involved shooting that happened earlier this month.

  According to a press release, Deputy Rick Coyle passed away Thursday morning after he was shot in the line of duty on April 2.

  As we’ve previously reported, officers from the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office, along with staff from the Kentucky Department of Community Based Services, responded to the 2800 block of KY 365, to serve emergency guardianship paperwork.

We met Rick on a couple of occasions, shooting scenes and such. He was friendly, funny and professional, and he obviously left this impression on his Kentucky department after retiring from CPD. Their loss is fresher than ours. 

Prayers to his family, friends and co-workers both there and here. Godspeed Sir.

Small Progress

At this point, we'll take any good news we can get:

• A gravely wounded Chicago police officer, shot in the face during the same hospital ambush that killed his partner John Bartholomew, is showing signs of improvement, the police union president told the Sun-Times Wednesday.

  Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said earlier this week it was “going to take a miracle” for the surviving officer to recover from his injuries. “It’s very bad. It’s extremely critical. It’s not good,” he said at the time.

  But the outlook has improved since then, to the point where there’s at least a glimmer of hope for the wounded officer.

  “There has been some positive physical reactions from the officer in the hospital. I don’t want to say alertness, but I was informed that he was breathing on his own for a little while yesterday. That’s a positive sign,” Catanzara said. “He did seem to have some reaction to conversation around him yesterday. So those are all [reasons to] keep praying and hope for the best, positive signs that he comes out of this on the other side, positively.”

It's still going to take a series of miracles, but every miraculous journey starts with a single step.

Godspeed Officer. 

Other Fundraisers

The GoFundMe page has been verified as legit by numerous sources.

The 100 Club and Police Memorial Funds are doing their usual good work.

There is an additional fundraiser at Reilly's Daughter - if someone has the date, time and address, let us know and we'll post the info. 

SAFE-T Revision Possibility?

It's becoming apparent to anyone with two brain cells that the SAFE-T Act is a slow motion failure that is rapidly gaining speed. 

It's also obvious that assorted politicians are uncomfortably aware of this fact, but they're too scared of the Black Caucus to make too many waves, but they are making faint gestures and suggestions that there might be room for some alterations:

• Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson commented on the Safe-T Act on Wednesday. This Illinois statute has garnered scrutiny following the shooting death of a Chicago police officer and the critical injury of another. 

  Those critical of the no-cash bail law argue it allows repeat offenders to remain on the streets, prompting a call for legislative amendments. 

  Pritzker has stated that he is open to reviewing new proposals for the Safe-T Act. Still, on Wednesday, at an unrelated event at Olive-Harvey College, he defended the foundation of the no-cash bail law. 

Porkulous also threw the judge under the bus, making us wonder about the 2028 judicial races:

• “You saw that the judge wants to blame everybody else, but it was right before the judge. The judge who could’ve made the decision didn’t make the decision,” Pritzker said.

That isn't what judges have been told, nor what judges have read into the judicial record from the bench on a number of occasions.

Here's what the behind-the-scenes people are talking about though:

• Trump DOUBLED his share of the black vote in 2024, from 8% to 15%. This was predicted and is why democrats imported 20 million illegals - they couldn't count on the monolithic black vote (92-95%) to carry them over the finish line any more, especially if those voters were actually making more money, opening more businesses, improving their economic lives and wanting to keep their newfound wealth. So they imported a Third World voting bloc and now are fighting like Hell to keep them here in the hopes of a future amnesty.

This is why a directed PR campaign by the Bailey people, supported by Law Enforcement, directed at the people who are bearing the brunt of repeat felons being released into their communities poses a real threat to (at the very least) their super-majority. 

There's even an off-chance at the governor's seat, though how effective he'd be with dem majorities in both houses would be minimal. It would certainly wreck Fata$$'s national ambitions though.

Crime is Up

Remember all those times, all those years, we said "Don't read too deeply into daily or weekly trends. Trends develop over months....years even."

Turns out, we were correct and crime is actually up:

• Chicago crime is no longer just rising — it is accelerating.

  What began as an early-year drop has now fully reversed, with violence pushing further above last year’s levels.

  The latest data shows the increase is not slowing down — it’s intensifying across multiple categories.
  This is no longer a rebound — it’s an established upward trend.

SubX News has links and charts up from the CPD data portal - SIXTEEN weeks worth, all posted, all linked and all from CPD's own statistics which not only show 2026 numbers increasing, but accelerating.

This data is available to all "investigative" reporters and the public, but it takes time and actual effort to plow through it all. It even takes basic MATH skills - something the CPS and CTU are incapable of teaching any more because they're too busy indoctrinating students into supporting communism.

All the signs of a bad summer are rapidly coming to the fore.

GoFundMe Link

We were sent this by a number of people.

• GoFundMe Link 

We have no reason to suspect anything untrustworthy about the fundraising effort, but we also have our usual concerns knowing that there are people that use these events to swindle and scam those who just want to help.

DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE BEFORE DONATING.

Perhaps the FOP could verify the legitimacy of the fundraising efforts? 

In fact, knowing that GoFundMe routinely takes a percentage of the money that ought to be going to the fallen Officer's family, maybe there ought to be an Official Committee delegated with directing or utilizing alternatives that make sure 100% of the donations end up where they'll do the most good?

Just a thought. 

Judge Says, "Not My Fault"

Damage control over at the Criminal Courts:

• The Cook County judge who released a repeat violent felon with four pending felony cases on electronic monitoring last December, the same felon prosecutors now say escaped that monitoring and shot two Chicago police officers, killing one over the weekend, acknowledged during the hearing that the defendant likely would have faced “a minimum $1 million bail” under the state’s old cash bail system.

  But Judge John Lyke said that era was over.
  
  “Our esteem[ed] Legislature says, no, we’re not going to do that anymore,” Lyke said in reference to Pretrial Fairness Act provisions of the SAFE-T Act. “We’re going to make judges take a critical look at it.”

  And moments later, after explaining that he believed Alphonso Talley’s life of armed robberies and carjackings might have been the result of an underdeveloped brain that had since matured — even though Talley had allegedly committed an armed carjacking and an armed robbery with the same brain just eight months earlier — Lyke decided to let him go home on an ankle monitor.

  Lyke noted, however, it was “over the state’s rigorous objection.”

So after claiming the Legislature forced him to take a look at the criminal record and then OUT OF THE FUCKING BLUE makes a medical determination that maybe this shitbird's brain is "underdeveloped" due to his extensive armed habitual criminal habits, he lets him go on a electronic monitoring system that has been proven TIME AND TIME AGAIN to fail to keep criminals in check.

You know what we remember worked pretty well at keeping criminals in check?

• concrete walls
• iron bars
• twelve feet of barbwire topped fencing 

But democrats don't want that. 

Series of Failures

This really REALLY needs to become a political issue this fall:

• When accused cop killer Alphonso Talley vanished from Cook County’s electronic monitoring system for more than 17 hours last month, then disappeared entirely after letting his ankle bracelet battery run dead, a series of safeguards were supposed to kick in.

  A judge was supposed to be notified within 24 hours. A warrant, once issued, was supposed to be fast-tracked for service. A seven-time convicted felon already on pretrial release for armed carjacking and armed robbery was on the loose, and authorities were supposed to round him up.
  
  That didn’t happen.

  Those safeguards were the centerpiece of a high-profile push by Chief Judge Charles Beach, who made overhauling the county’s troubled electronic monitoring programs the very first move he announced publicly after taking office on December 1. People had been steaming about electronic monitoring for days since Lawrence Reed allegedly set a woman on fire aboard a Blue Line train in the Loop after repeatedly violating his monitoring terms on a felony battery case.

How's that case going by the way?

If the FOP isn't too busy, they ought to grab a few Board members and have them contact the CWB blog editors and start compiling a list of Electronic Monitoring failures....

• by date
• by charge
• and by judge

....and start hammering the ever loving SHIT out of judges, legislators and Porkulous. In fact, maybe contact the other guy running for governor (Bailey) and his people start drafting campaign commercials or billboards or bus posters. Target minority neighborhoods that are suffering the lion's share of these recidivist criminals. Point out that democrats are not making their neighborhoods safer and are actually endangering their families. A reader suggests getting various Police Chief Associations to endorse a recall/revision/repeal of the entire SAFE-T Act.

Dukakis the crap out of them. 

Investigation Continues

Gun traced to a straw buyer:

• A suburban woman is facing federal charges for allegedly lying on paperwork when she purchased the gun used over the weekend to kill Chicago Police Officer John Bartholomew and critically wound his partner at Swedish Hospital.

  Olivia Burgos bought the Glock 29, a 10-millimeter pistol, at Range USA in Merrillville, Indiana, on May 27, 2024, according to a federal complaint filed in Indiana on Monday. When she completed the standard purchase paperwork, she confirmed she was the “actual transferee/buyer” of the weapon and that she was not unlawfully using any drugs, according to an ATF agent’s affidavit.

  Both of those statements were lies, she allegedly admitted when ATF agents visited her after this weekend’s shooting.

  In fact, Burgos was addicted to fentanyl when she bought the firearm and had used the drug that same day, according to the filing. She also received money to buy the gun from her then-boyfriend, a convicted felon who was legally prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms. For good measure, Burgos listed a La Porte, Indiana, address on the form when she was actually living in Highland, Indiana, with the convicted felon, the ATF agent wrote.

The ATF tracked her down pretty quick, but nothing yet on how the gun transitioned from her to Yolanda Talley's nephew.

And now we're getting word that the Detectives that tracked down Yolanda Talley's other shooter nephew was removed from the Area shooting team and the States Attorney's Office is getting pressure to drop the charges. 

Let's see if the media picks up on that one. 

Twenty Years for Window Tints

Quick!!! Outlaw "pretextual" traffic stops!

• A routine traffic stop for tinted windows turned into much more after Chicago police allegedly found a small arsenal hidden inside a pink chest in the back of a man’s car.

  Cops pulled over 31-year-old Deondre Walker around noon on April 14 in the 5600 block of West Division Street after officers noticed his 2017 Chevy Malibu had heavy window tints. As officers approached the vehicle, they allegedly spotted an open bag of cannabis sitting in the driver’s door panel, which led them to conduct a narcotics search of the vehicle, a CPD report said.

Gasp!  An open bag of weed over a tinted window stop! The horror!

• Inside a pink chest in the cargo area, police say they discovered four loaded firearms: a sawed-off Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, a Taurus .44 Magnum revolver, a Glock 21 pistol fitted with a 31-round extended magazine and a full-auto switch that police say made it capable of firing like a machine gun, and an Anderson AM-15 AR-15 rifle loaded with a 30-round magazine and equipped with a brass catcher designed to collect expended shell casings. Investigators say the rifle’s serial number had been defaced.

Gee:

• sawed off shotgun - Fed charge
• Glock switch - Fed charge?
• defaced serial number - Fed charge

Oh, and his FOID card was revoked....for being a convicted gun felon. 

Because of this "pretextual" stop, a repeat felon is looking at twenty or more years Federal time for having tinted windows is what democrats will tell you.

Or maybe it was just good police work? 

Madigan Appeal Denied

Looks like he's going to serve the majority of his sentence:

• Chicago’s federal appeals court on Monday pointed to a hidden scheme to “exchange enormous political influence within the Illinois General Assembly for over $3 million of benefits” as it upheld the historic conviction of former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.

  A three-judge panel summarily dismissed arguments from the once-powerful Democrat’s lawyers in a 29-page opinion less than three weeks after hearing oral arguments. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling could soon lead to a bid by Madigan to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  “Michael Madigan spent nearly a decade leveraging his power as one of the highest-ranking public officials in Illinois in exchange for over $3 million of financial benefits for his close political allies,” Judge Michael Scudder wrote. “…Madigan insists that this was run-of-the-mill politics. But a jury of twelve Illinois residents saw the evidence differently. So do we.”

The lawyers may ask for a full 7th Circuit hearing before appealing to the US Supreme Court, but the avenues appear to be rapidly closing and Mikey may do quite a bit of the seven-and-one-half years in the meantime.

You can still write to Mike at the prison camp (it has no fencing):

• 446 Greenbag Road, Route 857 Morgantown, WV 26501

Here's a link to the "How To Send Stuff" page for money, packages and commissary donations.

Vallas Puts Two and Two Together

Something that Marty Preib had been writing about for ten or fifteen years ago and what we had amplified for nearly as long:

• Chicago’s media outlets are amplifying a dangerous narrative that paints the Chicago Police Department (CPD) as racist and unreformable, eroding public trust and hamstringing officers who protect our streets. This isn’t journalism—its activism disguised as reporting. Criminals are increasingly treated as victims and cops as villains by so called police reformers and advocates and criminal trial lawyers with media cheerleading the distortion. Facts be damned: the story line is that CPD is biased against Black residents, and allergic to change. It’s time to set the record straight.

It was a racket - it was always a racket:

• In nearly every major settlement for wrongful conviction or police misconduct, failure to implement the Consent Decree is cited as justification for multimillion-dollar payouts. Rarely do reporter’s question whether individuals receiving these settlements were actually innocent or why the settlements are so large. Since 2000, Chicago has paid out over $700 million in police misconduct lawsuits, not because claimants were proven innocent but due to alleged police misconduct.

  The media ignored Kim Foxx’s brokering of deals with a secretive “Lawyers Committee” composed of private attorneys specializing in lawsuits against the police. These lawyers, sometimes hired as “Special Assistant State’s Attorneys,” worked to overturn murder convictions, often not because of new exculpatory evidence but due to allegations of police misconduct. Foxx’s “Conviction Integrity Unit” issued “Certificates of Innocence” even when there was no evidence to support actual innocence, paving the way for successful lawsuits against the city.

  After eight years of Foxx having her thumb on the scales of justice, Chicago has seen half the nation’s overturned convictions and wrongful conviction lawsuits filed. By the time she left office in December 2024, Foxx left as many as 275 wrongful conviction cases for which lawsuits have been or will be filed, seeking millions more in damages. These new suits could cost the city $ 1 billion. No one in the media ever seems to question whether these individuals were innocent of the crimes.

Everything Vallas wrote is 100% true, 100% accurate....and 100% years too late. Like we said, Preib led the way on a lot of this and did far more legwork than any "reporter" even attempted to do because investigative reporting is dead and "journalism" is a corrupt enterprise these days.

You can read it all at the link up top and wonder what might have been before the death-spiral took hold of Chicago and bankrupted it - financially and morally.

Worse and Worse

If a bartender overserves someone who is obviously intoxicated, they're held liable for any criminal acts committed by the drunk. 

So why aren't judges and politicians held liable for repeating criminals they free?

• A man suspected of shooting two Chicago police officers inside a hospital room Saturday morning had been a fugitive for weeks, had two violent felony cases pending against him, had escaped from electronic monitoring, and was listed as an absconder by the Illinois Department of Corrections, according to court records and multiple government sources.

  The officers were standing guard over the man at Swedish Hospital, 5140 North California Avenue, when he gained access to a gun and shot them around 10:50 a.m., CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling said.

  One of the officers died. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified him as John Bartholomew, 38, a 10-year veteran of the department. The other officer, a 57-year-old with 21 years on the force, remained in critical condition at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.

  The suspect has not been charged with the shootings, and CWB Chicago, which has mentioned him in three stories since 2017, is not identifying him by name for that reason. But sources at multiple levels of government confirmed he is the individual in custody.

Fuck it. His name is Alphonso Talley, and he might be yet another criminal relative of alleged PPP fraudster Yoyo Talley. Google his name and the CWB articles with him listed as the offender are front and center. Yoyo is infamous for having her niece use her car to drop off heroin on the west side, and if we recall had another nephew shoot and wound someone in 015?

But isn't this criminal data available to....oh, we don't know....FUCKING JUDGES who continually release him on an "electronic monitoring" system that fails, time-and-TIME AGAIN, and in this instance, costing an Officer his life and his partner any semblance of a normal existence IF he recovers?

Start voting people. And start encouraging others to start voting. And make sure they don't vote for incumbents, don't vote to retain judges and certainly don't vote for criminal loving democrats....like Conehead and Fata$$.

Lost in the Shuffle

This one got overlooked after the Swedish Hospital shooting:

• Two officers were among four people hospitalized after a downtown crash early Saturday morning, Chicago police said.

  Police said the crash happened near South Wabash Avenue and East Ida B. Wells Drive in the Loop just after 4:45 a.m.

  Investigators believe the driver of a black Jeep SUV failed to obey a traffic signal on westbound Ida B. Wells Drive and crashed into the officers' marked squad car, which was heading southbound on Wabash Avenue.

Best wishes to the Officers for a speedy recovery and we are certainly thankful your reported injuries were not more serious.

Can We Get This Here?

Good news at the national level:

• The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.

  The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

Um...who cares if a federally convicted felon experiences a moment or two of pain on their way out the door? Do you have any idea what pain they must have inflicted on members of the public to even merit a Federal Death Penalty?

Besides, who are they going to complain to? Satan? 

Do you know how long THAT line is to see the Dark Prince himself?

Terror Drones?

So were these stolen for domestic terrorism or for some foreign entanglement?

• Someone stole 15 giant agricultural drones in New Jersey — and experts fear a “nightmare scenario” if they end up in the hands of terrorists.

  The fleet of Ceres Air C31 drones, which are about the size of an ATV, were ripped off March 24 by a bogus delivery driver who duped shipping and logistics company CAC International in Harrison, according to The High Side substack.

  A phony bill of lading was presented at the pick-up location for the drones which was bolstered by a fake confirmation email that CAC International took to be legitimate, the report stated.

  The four-armed flyers can carry and spray up to 40 gallons of liquid chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides, and unleash the payload over a 15-acre span in just seven minutes. 

The mind boggles at the possibilities here. And if you spend a serious amount of time at it, you'll drive yourself nuts.

Stock up on shotgun ammo at the very least - you can bet the Department won't even have an e-learning module about this.

RIP Officer Bartholomew

Identify officially released:

• The Chicago police officer fatally shot Saturday at a Lincoln Square hospital was identified as John Bartholomew, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

  Bartholomew, 38, was shot alongside another officer at Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital, 5140 N. California Ave., by a robbery suspect who had been arrested earlier that morning, police have said.

  No update was provided Sunday on the second officer, who has not been named. He was “fighting for his life” in critical condition, police Superintendent Larry Snelling said Saturday at a news conference outside Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where both officers were taken after the shooting.

More details to follow over the next few days.

One Post Only Tonight

We don't know where to begin with all this.

One deceased Officer, one still listed as critically wounded in the press, but our comments and text messages have all sorts of other info, none verified 100%.

Larritorious saying a third gun was recovered from the scene at Swedish, which implies a breakdown of Custodial Searches on more than one occasion. Guns hidden in fat folds should always be remembered as a possibility....remember Sox Park.

Someone says Swedish "wands" prisoners in custody, but that didn't discover the weapon in question. 

A name has appeared in our comment section, and if you google it, there are many other crimes committed by this individual, most involving guns, mostly in lakefront Districts, all or which should have been multi-year sentences. If the name is correct:

• here he is with a gun again, caught after committing another violent robbery Saturday, shooting two Police Officers;
• he may have been out on Electronic Monitoring, still skipped Court, so yet another SAFE-T Act failure;
• he might be related to a certain exempt who was forced out a while back;
• this might be either the same nephew (or an additional nephew) with a habit of shooting people

More info will probably trickle out today, verifying or debunking some of the above info. Like we said, we have no idea where to even begin with this clusterfuck.

Officer(s) Shot at Swedish Hospital

Rapidly evolving situation.

Prisoner detail gone bad. 

017 wagon crew. 

Prisoner got one of their guns, shot both Officers and escaped,

Possibly in custody after a SWAT response in the neighborhood. 

Coverage here and here.

Prayers. 

UPDATE: we're being told one Officer has passed and the news about the second is about as bleak as can be.

Pray harder. 

Shots Fired

No hits, no runs, errors to be determined by COPA:

• Three people are in custody after police said an attempted traffic stop leads to an exchange of gunfire with Chicago police in the Brighton Park neighborhood early Saturday morning. 

  Police said 9th District tactical officers attempted to pull over a car, in the in the 4400 block of South Mozart Avenue, with two men and a woman inside around 1:15 a.m.

  Police said the group drove off and fired shots at officers multiple times. CPD said officers continue to pursue the vehicle until it crashed in an alley in the 2900 block of West 47th Street.

  Police said after the crash, the group ran off and one of the people fired shots at officers and an officer fired shots back. 

  CPD said no one was injured in the exchange of gunfire. 

Summer is around the corner. Stay alert and stay safe.

Lieutenant Promotions - and Larry Leaving

First the list:

 

Second, the math:

• thirty-six promotions;
• thirty percent "meri-clout-orious" would be 10.8;
• the city has ALWAYS rounded down....ALWAYS.

And as our e-mailer with a long memory said, Larritorious has NEVER exceeded the "merit" percentages - except this time and he went over. Does the PBPA have a calculator? Because there might be one or two additional promotions to be wrung out of this misstep.

And thirdly, Larry is obviously leaving:

• two of Larry's office sergeants made lieutenant, including his already twice "merit" promoted sergeant driver.
• two of Larry's close friends were also promoted by their respective exempts

That many moves indicates someone is leaving VERY soon. Our older rumors said May, but it could be as late as October depending on what new job Larry has lined up.

Captain Training (corrected)

A couple of interesting choices among these six:

One of these lieutenants has a thirty-day suspension in his history:

• fighting with the police
• conduct unbecoming
• lying (Rule 14?)

But he can be a captain? 

Must be heavier than whale shit. 

UPDATE: title fixed

UPDATE: as people are pointing out, how can someone with a sustained Rule 14 even be put on the list?

• can't sign off on Arrests which was the purpose of a captain
• can't be part of any CR investigative process

Pretty much useless, which seems to be the defining characteristic of the entire rank nowadays. 

But he gets an unearned pension bump for a political appointment. 

Cool Weekend

It's about time to start predicting the summer weekend mayhem.  A sort-of-warm Friday gives way to some fifty degree days, so this one is going to be more a "stab in the dark."

• we're going to guess at three dead, maybe seven maimed

1700 hours Friday until 0000 Monday for a fifty-five hour window. 

Only HeyJackass.com numbers will be accepted as official.

Place your bets. 

Downgrading Weed

No longer a Schedule I drug like heroin:

• President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general on Thursday signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, a major policy shift long sought by advocates who said cannabis should never have been treated like heroin by the federal government.

  The order signed by Todd Blanche does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under federal law. But it does change the way it’s regulated, shifting licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. It also gives licensed medical marijuana operators a major tax break and eases some barriers to researching cannabis.

Marijuana enforcement was pretty much a non-starter over the last decade of our careers. You can't walk down the street or drive down the highway without smelling that crap everywhere. It goes no where in court and no one seems to care.

Weren't weed tax revenues supposed to cure all of of Illinois' budget woes? Like the lottery, right?

We imagine more weed gets tossed in the sewers or scattered into the wind than gets inventoried nowadays. 

Nice Downtown Conehead

Is this spillover from the Greyhound Station?

• A man was shot during an altercation on a West Loop sidewalk during Thursday morning’s rush hour, Chicago police said.

  The victim, 42, was in the 300 block of South Canal Street when he got into an argument with another man around 8:24 a.m., according to police and CPD dispatch audio. The second man pulled out a gun during the argument and fired one time, striking the victim in the left leg, police said. He then climbed into a black Chevrolet Malibu and fled the scene.

Not downtown proper, but at 8:24 in the morning - it's not like there aren't a few thousand people headed to work around that time.

Cocaine Coho

A side effect of blowing up drug boats?

• Salmon exposed to cocaine in the water swim longer distances than those that go without, according to a study released this week.

  Cocaine use is on the rise worldwide, with the U.N. reporting an estimated 25 million people used the stimulant in 2023 and the drug being increasingly found in waterways.

  Joint research released Monday by scientists at Australia's Griffith University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences studied how the drug affected the movements of wild fish in their natural habitats.

"Joint research." 

We had a salmon filet the other night and didn't sleep for two days and lost five pounds. 

Not much happening in town today. 

UPDATE: commentator remembered that Frank Trigg could have used a fish dinner as an excuse when he pissed hot. 

 

Don't Demonize!

Unless someone is an actual....you know....demon:

• A 16-year-old boy on probation for a gun case, with two more firearm arrests in his background, chased down and killed a Brighton Park man on a neighborhood street last autumn, prosecutors said Tuesday.

  Ayden Reynolds is charged as an adult with first-degree murder in the October 6, 2025, killing of 33-year-old Alan Maldonado. Judge James Costello ordered him detained.

Three gun arrests by the age sixteen, and those are only the times he was actually caught with a gun. How many hundreds of times was he packing and got away with it? CWB has most of his juvie record and it's impressive for all the wrong reasons.

Demonic reasons. 

Fighting Crime Works Wonders

"We can't arrest our way out of this situation" has been proven to be a falsity many times over now.

Now another lib-tareded trope bites the dust: 

• San Francisco drastically reduced issues they were having on public transit by making it almost impossible to enter without paying, according to a report from The Atlantic.

  The outlet noted that last August, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) installed six-foot-tall saloon-style doors made of plexiglass with metal frames that were much harder to get through compared to regular turnstiles that could easily be jumped. This change is expected to increase revenue by $10 million per year as riders are forced to actually pay to ride. 

  But beyond generating more income, it’s also led to a decrease in issues that used to plague the subway. Overall crime on BART plunged 41% in 2025 compared to the previous year, with violent crime down 31% and property crime down 43%.

Instead of CTA workers just ignoring - or worse - waving through the homeless, the mentals or the teen-takeover-participants, denying them entry and making them ::gasp!!:: pay their own way cut crime by 40% in a single year.

Combine that with increased police presence and suddenly, the CTA is a functioning government agency almost overnight. 

Gee, next we'll hear that deporting ILLEGAL ALIENS improves crime numbers, too. Or is that already happening? 

PBA Leads the Way

This should be a national effort:

• New York City’s largest police union is suing the watchdog agency that investigates allegations of officer misconduct, saying the Civilian Complaint Review Board has stigmatized officers by sharing “inflammatory” records related to unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct, bias-based policing and lying.

  The Police Benevolent Association is urging the CCRB to redact officers’ identifying information when it turns over records related to these three categories of misconduct, if the officers were not found guilty of wrongdoing. It’s also asking the agency to implement a process for officers to clear their names before these types of unsubstantiated complaints are disclosed.

Compare that to the policies here where allegations that haven't been proven, haven't been testified to, haven't even gotten a sworn affidavit attached to them are all over the Invisible Institute website, surviving any effort to be removed even decades after the Officer has died.

Remember, this unsustained unproven crap follows you into retirement job applications forever.

No idea if the PBA will win this battle, but it's good to remind everyone that while Police aren't above the Law, they shouldn't be under it either and the onerous burden of unproven allegations shouldn't punish you for a lifetime when you finally get out of this shitshow.

Manufactured Outrage

As reported a few weeks ago, the City Council is attempting to outlaw membership in "extremist groups" by police officers (but not other city departments). They've tried to pass this ordinance a bunch of times but it keeps running into legal objections, not the least of which is no one seems to be able to define what makes a group "extremist." 

So the brainiac aldermorons pretty much relied on organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center to define "extremist," which ended up being anyone leaning just a little bit to the right side of the political spectrum.

Look who just got indicted for funding these "extremist" groups....and then fundraising off of that very "extremism" that they funded:

• The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that a grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for making fraudulent payments of millions of dollars to members of the Ku Klux Klan and other neo-Nazi organizations.

  Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference that the 11-count indictment filed in an Alabama federal court alleged the left-wing nonprofit had in the past decade paid at least $3 million to eight members of the far-right groups.

  One leader of the 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Va., received roughly $270,000 over an eight-year period.

The racism that polluted the country for so many years was literally on the verge of being consigned to the dustbin of history as minorities were making great strides in education, business and economic opportunities. Wonder of wonders, some black guy even ran for president and won.

But it's hard to raise funds from people who are doing well. In fact, people who do well gradually start to want to keep their wealth and pass it on to their children....and to do that, they start voting that way. Leftists couldn't have that, so suddenly everything was racist again. When racism couldn't be found often enough, it was manufactured. And when it couldn't be manufactured, it was purchased by organizations like the SPLC.

And now finally, the truth is coming out. 

CTA Crime is....

So this happened the other day:

• The Chicago Transit Authority has ended a multi-million dollar contract that paid for hundreds of unarmed security guards, saying it is redirecting those funds to officers and other trained professionals “better equipped” to keep riders safe.

  The cuts to private security were made suddenly on Friday evening, according to Monterrey Security, which got word from CTA that roughly 250 full-time guards working on bus and rail systems should stop working that night.

  It was a surprise to the company, which says the CTA had signed a one-year renewal to its contract three weeks earlier.

There's the usual political fallout that happens when someone's graft dried up.

But then we headed over the CWB site and found this:

• A man’s decision to smoke while riding the Red Line was all it took for Cook County Sheriff’s Police to strike up a conversation and discover he was carrying a loaded firearm, officials said Monday. He is at least the third person arrested by the agency for possessing a gun on CTA trains since its officers began patrolling Chicago’s rail lines late last month.
• Less than two weeks after Cook County Sheriff’s Police arrested Vincent Jones for allegedly having a gun on the Red Line, his pretrial release went up in smoke Monday when they arrested him again at the same station — this time for allegedly carrying what amounted to a portable cannabis dispensary in his backpack. And yes, it happened on 4/20.
• Chicago police officers seized two firearms and arrested two men during a single incident at the same CTA station in the Loop on Sunday morning, the latest sign of progress in a reinvigorated push to reclaim the city’s train lines from criminals and ne’er-do-wells. 

Three of the top four stories on CWB are about weapons being seized on the CTA indirect violation of the "No Guns" signs that appear everywhere....no, wait, the stories are about actual police and sheriff officers taking over for unarmed security guards and effectively patrolling the CTA trains and platforms for criminals - something that should have been happening all along.

Granted this is being done to prevent the feds from taking a shitload of misappropriated money from the CTA - we actually saw a brand new Ford F-150 pick-up with a CTA paint job the other day....and it had the leather interior trim, which isn't something you normally see on a CTA pick-up truck unless someone else is paying for it.

Let's see if it continues. 

Shortshanks Ailing

Although nominally better than what followed after, the primary driver of Chicago's decline is getting up there in years:

• Former Mayor Richard M. Daley, the longest-serving mayor in Chicago history, was hospitalized earlier this month after suffering what his brother described Tuesday as a third stroke.

  Bill Daley said his older brother, who turns 84 on Friday, is “fine now.” He returned home after a few days in the hospital and is now undergoing rehab.

  The younger Daley described the former mayor’s episode as a full-blown stroke, but a comparatively minor one compared to the serious stroke that Daley suffered in 2014.

That was the stroke that put an end to a lot of talk of subpoenaing the former mayor as to all sorts of shady City Hall dealings, escaping the discovery (and consequences) of numerous bad decisions forced through the political process....consequences that have been visited on his compatriots as of late.

Structural Problems

Although we think the author gave Larritorious too much credit, this is a decent takedown of the entire "consent decree" process by the Contrarian:

• In the bizarro world that is Chicago, the public debate over “use of force” has been turned completely upside down.

  In any rational society, the focus of government — and the concern of the public — would be on the people actually committing violence. The goal would be simple: Stop the criminals.

  But in Chicago, the obsession is different. Here, the scrutiny falls not on those who pull the trigger, swing the fist, or terrorize neighborhoods — but on the police officers trying to stop them.

  That’s not a coincidence. It’s the result of years of political pressure, ideological activism, and, most importantly, the federal consent decree that now governs how the Chicago Police Department operates.

The article correctly points out:

• The deeper problem is structural.

  The Chicago Police Department operates under a federal consent decree — a sweeping set of mandates that governs everything from training to reporting to officer conduct.

  On paper, it’s about reform.

  In practice, it has become an exercise in bureaucratic second-guessing.

  The monitoring team reports that CPD has achieved preliminary compliance with 97 percent of the decree’s requirements — but full compliance in only 26 percent.

  Translation: The rules keep expanding, the goalposts keep moving, and the scrutiny never ends.

  Meanwhile, officers are forced to make split-second decisions in dangerous situations, knowing that those decisions will later be dissected in slow motion by lawyers, monitors, and bureaucrats who weren’t there.

  That’s not how you encourage proactive policing.

  That’s how you discourage it.

Scarecrow policing. Disengagement. "Stay fetal." We've covered it here for years. We aren't hopeful that the message spreads in a timely manner, but every voice added helps the cause.

Go read it all. 

The CTU Bears?

As the Bears continue playing the Indiana card against Illinois lawmakers:

• Illinois hopes to take the lead over Indiana in the Chicago Bears stadium battle with a new proposal that would give the NFL team property tax certainty while also providing a statewide property tax relief sweetener.

  State Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, plans to brief Illinois House Democrats on the new amendment Tuesday. The PILOT measure, shorthand for payment in lieu of taxes, would allow the Bears to renegotiate their property taxes with Arlington Heights. The property tax relief element, a new addition to stadium-related legislation in Springfield, is essential in getting support from lawmakers outside of Chicago, including Republicans.

Guess who is injecting themselves into the debate?

• Illinois lawmakers face a pivotal week as the Chicago Bears weigh whether to flee to Hammond, Indiana, and now prospects for state legislation might have another hurdle. 

  Multiple legislative sources confirmed to Fox Chicago that the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), led by President Stacy Davis Gates, has lobbied to put language in the bill that would be more favorable to school districts. Gates is also the president of the Chicago Teachers Union.

  Another legislative source said the IFT is "actively lobbying against the bill."

As someone speculated, a largish portion of the Arlington Heights Bears revenue generating would go to the already generously funded Arlington Heights school district, depriving the CTU - which isn't in the business of actually educating children - of their portion of the graft.

But don't worry - the CTU will just maximize the property tax increases again like they've done for the past few decades. 

Body Parts?

What's this rumor that keeps popping up about some body parts being located in the crawlspace of a house up north (Oriole Park?) that has some association with a former high ranking individual?

Someone claimed it was ongoing. 

Someone else said it was an old case unrelated to the retired boss.

It's certainly something that would provide the readership with quite a bit of entertainment and comedy opportunities, which is the main purpose here. 

How Bad is Business in Chicago?

Pretty bad:

• John Deere, one of the Fortune 500 companies that still calls Illinois home, has been making capital expenditure decisions that Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon and Dan Proft described Monday morning as a slow-motion divestiture the state’s political class and business press have either missed or chosen to ignore. A new excavator factory is being built in Kernersville, North Carolina, and a one-point-two-million-square-foot distribution center with one hundred and fifty permanent jobs and four hundred to five hundred union construction positions is going up outside Hebron, Indiana. Proft said he was told by a reliable source in the industrial property sector that John Deere had been ready to green-light a Chicago location for that distribution center before taking a hard look at the lawlessness in and around the city and choosing Indiana instead. Glennon confirmed the pattern, noting that companies that pass up Illinois rarely say so publicly to avoid burning bridges, but the capital investment decisions tell the story clearly enough without any comment.

And not to put too fine a point on it:

• A text from a Chicago crane operator during the segment put a fine point on it: there are currently six standing permitted tower cranes in the city with only three more on the books for all of 2026.

Tower cranes are usually a pretty good indicator of economic growth - if you see a bunch of them operating then the building trades are active along with all the supporting businesses that go along with it. The fact that there are only six cranes active and only three permits pending means that there isn't any major construction going on which indicates a stagnant or shrinking tax base.

John Deere quietly moving operations elsewhere is another red flag.

NYPD Sgt Out on Appeal

The sergeant with the "cooler conviction" was granted what the courts have given to every actual criminal - the ability to be free while appealing:

• NEW YORK CITY - The former New York City police sergeant sentenced to three to nine years in prison for tossing a picnic cooler full of drinks at a fleeing suspect, who then crashed his motorized scooter and died, has been granted bail pending appeal. That's according to attorney Arthur Aidala.

  Judge Saliann Scarpulla, of the mid-level Appellate Division, ordered Erik Duran freed on $300,000 cash or bond and said he must surrender his passport to his lawyers, who will keep it until his appeal is over.

  "This is a major win for Erik and his family and for law enforcement officers around the country," said Vincent Vallelong, the president of Duran’s union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

There was absolutely ZERO intent to cause death or bodily harm - the criminal was driving a motorbike down a crowded sidewalk while attempting to escape, endangering many people. If he was running and got tackled or tripped into a tree, we doubt this would have even been an issue.

Why a bench trial was chosen in lib-tarded New York, where the judge's anti-police bias would play an oversized role is still a head-scratcher.

Dear FOP Board

Can anyone tell us what all of these numbers have in common?

• Case #19961167130
• Case #20001121906
• Case #20023000899
• Case #2006ch20263
• Case #20071125946
• Case #2007ch27863
• Case #2008ch31317
• Case #2009ch32354
• Case #2010ch45843
• Case #20111181449
• Case #20111704988
• Case #20131708608
• Case #20111728862 
• Case #20151702154
• Case #20151724589
• Case #20161714730
• Case #2016ch03734
• Case #20181131186
• Case #2018ch00084
• Case #20181129855
• Case #20211116941
• Case #20101214195 

Correct - they're all court cases in Cook County. Chancery and Civil divisions.

What else do they have in common? 

• they all involve a single individual owing money to assorted entities - banks, credit unions, credit card companies, a university, etc

So, someone with:

• twenty-two separate cases 
• in a single county court system regarding financial issues

....wouldn't really be someone that should be allowed to have unfettered and unsupervised use of a credit card belonging to a labor organization with tens of millions of dollars in membership dues, right? 

Oversight should be a requirement and an obligation to ensure nothing shady is going on, right? This would be the job of the Board of Directors, correct?

Or is there going to be a twenty-third case being filed in Cook County one day soon? 

Meanwhile, in 010

A mountain goat of some sort:

 

 

An emailer says this is a regular problem child:

• This guy is a well known neighborhood trouble maker, Antonio Hammond. Practically every 010th District Officer has either locked him up, had a TRR with him, or dealt with him in some way dating back decades. Hes got a faded CPDK tattoo on his forehead. In the past, he's parked one of his random shitbox cars on the sidewalk blocking the station entrance, has covered himself with feces while in the lockup, and has copa on speed dial.

And CWB knows him, too - all the way back in February of 2024:

• On the list of unexpected crimes, this one certainly ranks highly: Federal prosecutors have charged a man with burglarizing the FBI’s Chicago field office headquarters on the Near West Side.

  Incredibly, officials say Antonio Hammond managed to breach the compound’s security perimeter twice in a matter of hours.

  In a newly filed complaint, a Federal Protective Service inspector said Hammond, 37, first scaled the bureau’s outer fence around 6:50 p.m. on October 22 and then climbed onto the roof of a building within the complex at 2111 West Roosevelt.

  Dispatchers sent the inspector to the scene. He allegedly found Hammond still on the roof, yelling that the FBI owed him money and he was going to get it. The agent said he recognized Hammond and Hammond’s voice because he cited him several months earlier for disturbing the peace at the Kluczynski Federal Building in the Loop.

A few regular taser applications might alleviate this behavior since medical care doesn't seem to be working.

Indoctrination Proceeds

Those who can, do.

Those who can't, teach.

Those who can't teach, indoctrinate children:

• Chicago Public Schools will be in session for a full day on May 1, but it will also be an official civic day of action during which hundreds of students will be able to take a “field trip” to a massive pro-labor, anti-President Donald Trump rally.

  The Chicago Teachers Union wanted the school district to cancel classes so that staff and students could participate in May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day.

  But CPS CEO Macquline King pushed back, saying she wanted to keep schools in session. The disagreement kicked off a firestorm of debate.

  On Thursday, the sides agreed to a compromise.

This is exactly why the teacher unions need to be disbanded and forbidden from using children as hostages to their political machinations. Instead of teaching students how to be good citizens, they teach then that they're "victims" of the system - which they're not. They're kept in ignorance because they're easier to control via lies.

The CTU has forfeited all consideration.

Easy Sunday

We posted a couple throw away articles below.

We've had a few things come up, so we're taking it easy today.

Comments to be moderated at our leisure today.

Open post for now. 

Stay safe. 

Super Trooper Fans?

"Bear F@#$er....do you require assistance?"

If you know, you know:

• Three Southern California residents have been sentenced in a bizarre insurance fraud scheme which prosecutors say involved them staging fake bear attacks on high-end cars.

  It all stems from a claim the suspects filed with their insurance company, saying a bear got into their car, a 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost, at Lake Arrowhead on Jan. 28, 2024, and damaged the inside with scratches. The California Department of Insurance said the suspects provided a video to the company, which showed the "bear" in the car.

  [...]  Investigators uncovered two other fraudulent claims submitted to different insurance companies regarding the same incident.

  On Thursday, Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Valley Village, Ruben Tamrazian, 26, of Glendale, and Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, of Glendale, were sentenced to 180 days in jail and ordered to pay restitution.

Insurance fraud is nothing new, but we gotta say, this is a new twist.

Budget Woes

That unpaid balance owed to the City in fines and fees keeps getting larger:

• Chicago residents, businesses, and city employees altogether owe the city more than $8.1 billion in overdue debt, some of it dating back to the 1990s, according to a report from the city's inspector general.

  Inspector General Deborah Witzburg's report notes the bigger problem is that amount is most likely even larger, but the city can't properly account for all of the money it is owed.

  The report revealed antiquated systems and policies dating back decades that prevent the city's Department of Finance from tracking and collecting all of the money owed.

As we said a short time ago, Officers are regularly the subject of internal investigations when their name appears on any debt record, starting with a SPAR, upgraded to a CR, culminating with wage garnishment and suspension should it not be paid.

Why this isn't a regular thing with other city departments, we don't know. 

Why it isn't rigorously enforced on assorted companies, contractors or other government entities is a mystery as they're ripping off not just Chicago, but all Chicagoans who end up paying higher taxes to cover the constant shortfalls - $8 billion and counting.

Start cutting off services. Then go to Springfield and change the State Law about how much you can garnish. Make it painful to not pay bills. Illinois is a one-party state constantly abusing its power....why not now?

This was a Rough Watch

They released the body cam video of Officer Krystal Rivera's death at the hands of her partner and there's nothing easy about it.

• article and video link here

We will refrain from comment at the moment aside from saying there is pretty much nothing redeeming about it at all - poor tactics, poor reactions, poor everything.

We're leaving comments open for the moment, but we might just shut it down depending on content and context. 

Nice Weekend Conehead

Is crime still down?

• Four people were shot, three fatally, Friday afternoon on the city's West Side, Chicago police said.

  Four people were near the sidewalk in the 4000-block of West Maypole Avenue in West Garfield Park just before 4:45 p.m., when an unknown vehicle approached them, CPD said.

  At least two suspects got out with guns and fired shots at the victims, police said.

Usually on a summer Friday, we'd toss up a "prediction post" speculating on potential weekend shooting/homicide totals. An April post would be a bit earlier than expected PLUS this shooting happened outside of the hours we'd usually set for counting - 1700 hours on Friday until 0001 hours Monday. This triple occurred at 1645 hours and then the weekend temps are scheduled to dip back down into the 50s.

April is shaping up to spike Conehead's stress levels.

Good News

The Lil Homicide civil trial isn't happening for now:

• The family of Adam Toledo, the 13-year-old shot and killed by Chicago police in Little Village in 2021, has moved to voluntarily dismiss their wrongful death lawsuit.

  Attorneys for the family filed the motion in court Friday morning.

  Toledo was killed during a foot chase in 2021.

Obviously, the family is judge-shopping because (we're told) that most of the motions being made before trial are being denied or modified against the family, first and foremost being the claim by the lawyers that the witness list would be eighty or ninety names long.

The trouble was, there weren't eighty or ninety witnesses to the shooting - there were ZERO aside from the cops and the body cam video which showed Lil Homicide running with the gun and then popping out of hiding before being justifiably sent to his eternal damnation. 

You can't have people who weren't there testifying to things they never actually....you know....witnesses. The fact that he and his fresh gang tattoos were out after curfew with another felon shooting at passing vehicles was kind of inconvenient to the case, so the family didn't want any of that mentioned either.

They have a year to refile, but those rulings will follow the case no matter where it ends up. 

More Dem Stupidity

First, democrats want you to tax you to pay for all sorts of nice things so that people can enjoy everything Chicago has (had?) to offer.

Then, they want to make it impossible to actually enjoy what you paid for:

• IL Democrats are intent on destroying any nice place in Illinois. Allowing the homeless to takeover public spaces is not an answer to homelessness and will destroy communities. Who is electing these fools? 
• Here's the list of IL Democrat Representatives who think this is a good idea: Rep. Kevin John Olickal - Emanuel "Chris" Welch - Dagmara Avelar - Lindsey LaPointe - Mary Beth Canty, Lilian Jiménez, Rita Mayfield, Suzanne M. Ness, Bob Morgan, Will Guzzardi, Kelly M. Cassidy, Barbara Hernandez, Michelle Mussman, Abdelnasser Rashid, Hoan Huynh, Anne Stava, Laura Faver Dias, Carol Ammons, Lisa Davis, Nicolle Grasse, Norma Hernandez, Theresa Mah, Edgar González, Jr., Michael Crawford, Nabeela Syed, Diane Blair-Sherlock, La Shawn K. Ford, Camille Y. Lilly, Justin Cochran, Yolonda Morris and Marcus C. Evans, Jr.

Why bother having nice things if you're just going to deny it to the people who actually paid for it? How about locking these criminals up? That's why you passed the laws in the first place, right?

Wait....This is a Thing?

A judge actually held someone without bail?

• A Cook County judge has detained a man after determining that he is “not a good candidate” for electronic monitoring because he “tried to set an entire train car on fire.” Quentin Williams, 38, is accused of setting multiple fires aboard a CTA Blue Line train in the Loop and threatening passengers with a box cutter, according to court records.

  CPD officers responded to the Jackson Blue Line platform at 5:48 a.m. on March 24 after receiving a report that someone was threatening people with a knife. A CTA employee identified Williams as the offender, but no victims or additional witnesses remained on scene when officers arrived. Police detained him on a nearby stairwell. Prosecutors said Williams has a prior felony conviction for stabbing a random person in the leg with a box cutter on a CTA train.

  While officers were still investigating, multiple CTA riders told them that Williams had just set items on fire inside a train car. Prosecutors said Williams had been riding the Blue Line when he entered an occupied railcar and used a lighter to ignite four packages of adult diapers and a cardboard Pampers box. Most of the materials burned out on their own, but prosecutors said he relit the box and diapers before exiting the train.

So if a judge has "a feeling," they can disregard the SAFE-T Act that releases multiple-convicted felons out to terrorize citizens again and again? The State actually asked for this, but time and time again, judges claim to be bound by the law. Now they're ruled by "feelings."

Mayoral Race Money

Well, we know who's going to be running commercials 24/7 shortly and who isn't garnering any support:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson has just $813,125 in campaign cash on hand — compared to $18.3 million for Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias — just a few months before deciding whether or not to seek a second term.

  The latest fundraising reports filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections show the rookie mayor raised $176,036 and spent $192,675 in the first quarter of 2026, with a so-called “burn rate” that will be difficult to sustain.

  During the same three-month period ending March 31, Giannoulias, who is a potential candidate for mayor, has been a fundraising juggernaut.

Alexi is used to dealing in millions of dollars, seeing as when he was working at Broadway Bank as the senior loan officer, he loaned two organized crime figures upwards of $20 million. And then when the bank went under, it cost taxpayers almost $400 million.

Coincidentally, Conehead's $813K is around 4% of Alexi's $18.3 million - almost matching Conehead's approval rating as decision day approaches for candidates to declare.

Conehead continues to burn bridges with the Machine, dissing a predecessor:

• As former Mayor Rahm Emanuel revs up for a 2028 presidential bid, Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday described Emanuel’s eight years as mayor as “disqualifying.” Johnson did not identify Emanuel by name when he talked about the one Democrat in the crowded field of possible presidential contenders whom he would like to, as he put it, “x-out.”

  But there was no doubt about whose potential presidential campaign Johnson was attacking, even before Emanuel has formally announced. “I have very deep concerns about the former mayor of the city of Chicago. What he did in Chicago — from school closures to privatization to austere budgets,” Johnson said during his monthly appearance on WBEZ-FM’s “Ask the Mayor” program before a live audience.

And throwing in with the CTU's efforts to completely burn all credibility (paywalled article):

• Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday that “May 1 is happening,” signaling his support for the nationwide day of protest as the Chicago Teachers Union continues to urge the school district to cancel classes so that students and staff can participate.

  “We have an opportunity in this moment to push the narrative, not just at the federal level, but for Chicago and the state of Illinois to show up on behalf of working people,” said Johnson, a former CTU organizer and close ally of the union.

Commies gotta commie - because they certainly can't teach worth a shit.

Facial Recognition Works Again

Remember, democrats want to forbid police from using this tool:

• The gunman who shot and nearly killed a downtown convenience store clerk last month was identified through facial recognition technology linked to the Illinois Secretary of State database, prosecutors said Thursday. It’s the latest case solved using the technology, even as state lawmakers move to bar Illinois law enforcement from using it.

  The 31-year-old victim had worked at 7-Eleven, 191 West Adams Street, for about six years when Jaquell Hayes, 30, entered the store on March 12 and began stealing over-the-counter medication, prosecutors said. The cashier intervened, and Hayes allegedly threatened him before leaving. Hayes returned the next day and threatened the clerk while reaching toward his waistband, prompting the victim to tell him to leave, prosecutors said. When Hayes refused, the clerk used bear spray in an attempt to defend himself, something he had never done before. Hayes exited the store.

  The clerk moved from behind the register to lock the revolving glass doors to keep Hayes from reentering. As he approached the entrance, he saw Hayes standing directly outside the door, pulling out a handgun and firing multiple shots through the glass door, according to prosecutors.

And without it, another shooting might have gone unsolved.

Gun Safety Day Next Month

Haven't seen any notices about this yet, but here's an e-mail reminder:

• I’m a retired range guy, possibly coming back as the same in a civilian capacity. Mike Mette has my scheduled to work Gun Safety days at the FOP on May 27-28 at the FOP hall. As always, it’s free. Same offerings, most but not all manufacturers are there to inspect. It’s a great free event, though poorly attended the last 2 years. 
   
  Hours usually were 0800-1400’ish. Any mention would be appreciated. I usually message the busy districts in advance.

If we get a reminder, we'll post again closer to the date.

(comments closed here - informational post only)

New FOP Scandal Erupts

Fun times at the General Meeting:

• President John Catanzara informed members that he is finally doing something about the hostile takeover of Forensics by the private company Ron Smith & Associates. The room seemed cautiously optimistic — or at least as optimistic as you can be when you’ve heard a version of that sentence before.

  To his credit, acknowledging the issue out loud is a step in the right direction. Whether that step leads anywhere beyond the microphone is, of course, the part everyone is waiting to see.

  Then things got… interesting.

  After wrapping up what can only be described as a highlight reel of his own accomplishments, EJ stepped up to the mic. She started by thanking him for his “hard work” — which, given what followed, may go down as one of the more polite setups in recent meeting history.

  She then asked a simple question: whether he had charged his trips to Jamaica on the FOP credit card. The reaction said more than the answer.

  John looked like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He immediately denied it — flat out. EJ followed up by suggesting that if that were true, there should be no issue opening the financials back up to the membership.

  That’s when the story started changing.

  John claimed the financials were never open to members — which raised a few eyebrows, considering he himself reviewed them when Kevin was President. When that was pointed out, he pivoted again, saying members can’t see the credit card statements because, before they were locked down, someone saw a $5,000 steak dinner charge and “blew it out of proportion.”

  EJ’s response was simple: “But you still spent $5,000 on a steak dinner.” John tried to reframe it as a dinner for retirees. EJ didn’t budge: “It’s still a $5,000 steak dinner.”

  At that point, the wheels came off.

  Unable to win that argument, John pivoted hard — this time to attacking EJ personally, bringing up CR numbers related to her social media activity. There are growing concerns that complaints have been encouraged in response to her speaking out. He then suggested the Lodge has spent too much money providing her legal defense for IAD statements. EJ fired back with the obvious question: how much has the Lodge spent defending him over his own posts? Posts that forced him tor retire before he was fired. When she asked if it was in the neighborhood of a million dollars, John said he “didn’t know.”

  Which, at this point, seems to be the most consistent answer of the day.

So once again:

• the FOP credit card seems to be being used improperly;
• legal fees in regard to the president might be approaching a million dollars;
• access to union financials are still being denied to members despite the current president using them to beat the past-president 

The usual sycophants are defending these actions, because if they don't, they'll lose their Field Rep spots like the First VP lost his. 

The Friday update should be interesting. 

PPP Fraud Scandal Continues

CWB has the first story we saw:

• Chicago’s inspector general concluded nine investigations in the first quarter, finding that Chicago police officers fraudulently obtained forgivable loans under the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program, investigators announced.

  A tenth city worker, identified as an aldermanic employee, also obtained a fraudulent PPP loan and then filed a false police report claiming someone had stolen their identity and used it to submit the loan application, according to the OIG’s first-quarter report. The report does not identify the targets of OIG’s investigations by name.

Nine cops, one aldercreature employee. Not a single name released though, and no word on the numerous exempt members who have been allowed to run out the clock and retire with their credentials. Or the numerous OEMC people who were racking up a few hundred thousands in fraud.

The Sun Times reports seems to go even further:

• Chicago’s top watchdog is heading for the exit — but not before dropping one last fraud bombshell on the Chicago Police Department. Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said Wednesday her office sustained allegations against 17 Chicago cops in the first four months of the year for allegedly scamming COVID-era relief funds and the police department agreed to move to fire them.

  Investigators dug into their Paycheck Protection Program loan applications — cash meant to keep small businesses afloat during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Another cop quit while under investigation. All told, the alleged ripoffs involving those nine cops totaled $284,000, according to Witzburg’s first quarter 2026 report.

  Fraud allegations also were sustained against eight other officers, but the Chicago Police Department hasn’t decide whether to move to fire them.

Why are so many police officers being targeted?

• “This was a triage effort, and we are not done yet,” Witzburg said. “The reason we prioritized CPD cases is because they occupy positions of tremendous public trust and they land on the witness stand, so their credibility is of paramount importance.”

The political structure has spent the last ten years or more undermining trust in the Department, burying it so deep it will take twenty years or more to resurface.

And with over 1,000 identified fraud cases in the works, seventeen is less than two percent of the total. There is far more fraud in other city departments....but those departments are far more politically protected than the CPD. Easier to pick on the cops and let the connected fade into retirement.