Happy New Year!

Hope everyone is staying safe and warm.

As with most major holidays, posting may be sporadic depending on what time we end up in bed overnight. Anyone have a decent hangover cure? 

New Year, New Rumor

This one appeared in the comments a day or so ago. Remember, for a rumor to sound believable, it needs to have some elements of truth in it - and this one seems to:

• I’m hearing it is Dana “Big mama” O’Malley who will be the civilian Commissioner and the 1st Dept.  The plan is to streamline upper management and eliminate most exempt positions. Commissioner will be a Sworn member (Ursitti). One Chief to oversee the Dept under 1st and remainder chief positions will be eliminated. Most Deputy Chiefs eliminated with exception one for operations and one for administration and one for each Area (combining Patrol and Detectives for intelligence sharing reasons) and 3 street deputies with 10 hour shifts - 4 hour gap will be handled by day deputies. 
• One Commander per district and one commander per Area D unit. BCT will be cut down dramatically with Narcotics, Asset Forfeiture and Gangs merging. Vice gone and Intelligence scaled down focusing only on anti-terrorism efforts. All other units canine, airports, and swat etc will have one Commander, One Lt. and everything else run by Sgts.
• Lt.’s will have large screens in their offices which will show the district in real time with red dots corresponding to each gps’d squad car. If you leave your beat it will beep and immediately alert the Lt and your supervisor. This is being done for beat integrity and accountability.
• With murders at a ten year low and violent crime down with 2000+ police vacancies it showed them it can be done. Paying OT is still way cheaper than paying insurance and benefits for 2200 new hires. All the OT nonsense in the media is just smoke and mirrors. Eliminating all of those exempt spots will save millions over a several year plan, reduce larger pension payouts and will fulfill the Mayor’s original plan to “defund the police” by not hiring for attrition and in essence doing a reverse layoff and ultimately wiping/eliminating another 2K sworn positions as Rahm did. Based on the city’s population compared to others our size we still have too many officers even with eliminating the 2K.  

We did hear that Heineken sent out a letter gutting OT initiatives, and we wrote hear last month about there being only 350 hiring slots during all of 2026, with almost one-thousand potential retirees, so manpower is on a downward slope regardless. 

Curfew Are Racist!

Until there's a national event in town, then they're necessary and good as CWB reports:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson has spent much of his term in office arguing that curfews for teenagers are ineffective, outdated, and rooted in what he has called “the sins and the values of the past,” even as large youth gatherings downtown have repeatedly devolved into violence, including murders.

  Now, with a nationally televised New Year’s Eve celebration set to unfold along the Chicago River, Johnson is striking a sharply different tone, warning teenagers that the city will strictly enforce its long-established 10 p.m. curfew downtown tonight.

  The pivot, and that is the most charitable word available, is difficult to miss. Johnson has consistently opposed expanding or strengthening curfews when teenagers have shot each other, violently robbed out-of-towners, and even shot tourists in the Loop and Streeterville. But with ABC broadcasting a midnight countdown in the heart of downtown tonight, the mayor is suddenly emphasizing the importance of the city’s 10 p.m. curfew, which has been in place since 1992.

Conehead is a typical commie hypocrite embracing disorder and law breaking as long as it advances the leftist agenda. But when it might embarrass him on the national stage, then it's days off cancelled, twelve hour days and curfew citations for everyone!

New Years Curfew?

Is this going to be a failure - how big?

• Resolving to avoid another violent holiday-season “teen takeover,” Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday stressed the city’s 10 p.m. curfew for young people who head downtown without adult supervision for the city’s nationally televised New Year’s Eve festivities.

  The mayor and police Supt. Larry Snelling implored parents to “know where your children are” to help the city avoid a repeat of the chaos that followed hundreds of teenagers who flocked to the Loop after last month’s Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. Nine teens were shot, one fatally, when large gatherings devolved into violence Nov. 21.

  Johnson and Snelling promised a heightened police presence for the “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” spectacle that’ll take over the Riverwalk Wednesday night.

  But keeping the peace will largely come down to family communication, Johnson said during a press conference at the West Loop headquarters of the Office of Emergency Management & Communications.

With all the cancelled days off, does anyone think Larritorious and Heineken are going to have Officers checking IDs for curfew violators? Or being off the streets for citations? Of course not.

Questions though:

• will the "stop stick unit" be deployed for the inevitable car caravans? 
• how about a response team when the usual suspects start shooting off fireworks downtown?
• and will ABC be broadcasting on a ten-second-delay to attempt to filter out the sound of gunfire?

We put the odds of gunfire being heard on live TV at about 50-50. 

Robbery inside Casino

Anyone think this ever happened in Outfit-run Vegas?

• A man who identified himself as a casino employee was attacked and robbed inside a bathroom at the temporary Bally’s Chicago early Monday morning, according to a Chicago police report. It’s at least the third robbery reported this month on the block where Bally’s is located.

  A CPD spokesperson said a 25-year-old man was inside a business in the 600 block of North Wabash Avenue around 2 a.m. when two men confronted him. The men physically attacked the victim and took his belongings before fleeing northbound on Wabash Avenue, police said.

Two guesses as to what would have happened back in the day.

Hopefully, the Last Legs

The Slum Times has turned into a joke, more so than it ever was back in the day. The past few months, it's simply been an anti-ICE anti-law-and-order rag that we wouldn't even let a parakeet crap on.

This article is just ridiculous:

• Four men — one from Venezuela and three from Mexico — are all likely heading to prison after they were arrested early this year before the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation operation swung into full force in Chicago.

  They were arrested about the time President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, visited Chicago in late January after saying the city would be “ground zero” for mass deportations due to its sanctuary status.

  What makes their cases unusual, according to federal court records, is that one of them admitted to a serious gun charge and the others, while pleading guilty to entering the country illegally, previously served prison time for gun and drug offenses.

The article highlights the "plight" of a number of felons:

• gun trafficker selling a "ghost gun" to police;
• five time ILLEGAL with a conviction for fifty pounds of cocaine;
• another UUW offender;
• another multiple charged ILLEGAL ALIEN;
• a suspect in a triple homicide

Why would the Slum Times waste ink and paper on these persons who contribute exactly zero to society? Who gives a rats ass if these types get sentenced to months or years in prison prior to being ejected from the country? 

Their website is a constant stream of pop-up ads begging for money, so we would hope they're going to finally go under one of these days. 

Officers Injured

Bad wreck involving a stolen car:

• Two Chicago police officers were seriously injured when a stolen car crashed into their police SUV early Monday in Lake View near Wrigley Field.

  The officers were southbound in the 3600 block of North Racine Avenue around 3 a.m. when a Hyundai Elantra ran a stop sign and struck their marked police SUV, Chicago police said.

  After the collision, the Elantra hit three parked vehicles and the police SUV was pushed onto the sidewalk and into a tree, police said.

  The officers were taken to a hospital and treated for “serious” injuries, police said. The Elantra’s driver, an 18-year-old man, was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center in critical condition.

There was an active search going on for the vehicle when this occurred.

Get well soon Officers. 

CPS Raises Taxes Again

And they raised them the maximum allowable:

• Chicago's part-elected, part-appointed school Board voted to raise property taxes. While it's a small amount, some Board members say any amount is too much during a time when some residents' property tax assessments have gone way up.

  While Chicago Public Schools doors are locked for winter break, the Chicago Board of Education is working. On Monday, Board members convened a special meeting to vote on raising the property tax levy.

  [...] CPS is allowed to raise the rate, but it is capped at the lower of either 5%, or the rate of inflation. When the district closed a $729 million budget deficit in August, it raised the levy slightly below the legal limit. Monday's vote was to raise it to the legal limit. All of Mayor Brandon Johnson's Board allies voted for the increase.

Remember, these are the jackasses keeping schools open AND FULLY STAFFED - schools built for 1,000 or more students, but attended by maybe 60 students in some cases, mostly on the west and south sides. And who are graduating kids completely unprepared for a modern workforce, unable to read at a sixth grade level.

PPP Fraud Movement?

Are we going to see some accountability, years later? (paywalled Tribune article):

• About 400 government employees investigated by the state of Illinois improperly tapped a federal pandemic relief fund program meant to keep small businesses afloat — part of a nationwide wave of Paycheck Protection Program fraud that siphoned tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  While more than 200 have lost their jobs or voluntarily resigned, some have been referred for criminal prosecution for fraudulently obtaining the taxpayer-funded forgivable business loans, according to an Illinois Office of the Executive Inspector General report.

  As of June 30, the end of fiscal year 2025, the OEIG found “reasonable cause” in 378 investigations, concluding that many state employees acquired PPP loans “based on falsified information,” the watchdog’s annual report released earlier this month said.

  Without naming individuals, the report listed more than 100 employees from Illinois state government departments, including Human Services, Juvenile Justice, Corrections and Children and Family Services, who received more than $2.8 million in PPP loans. Many loans were in the $20,000 range, while a few exceeded $41,000. The investigations date back to 2022.

Again, this is a state investigation. There were quite a few CPD exempts who were found to have submitted applications for these loans, many for single-employee "security firms" pretty much meaning themselves, not to mention dozens of OEMC employees and we're told, quite a few CTU members.

And accountability was minimal:

• Illinois - 501 cases that they bothered to track
• Cook County - claimed a mere 65 cases out of 22,000 employees
• Cook County Sheriff - 163 cases investigated
• Cook County Courts - 78 cases
• the City of Chicago identified over 1,000 cases, but only investigated 60 cases, closing NINE

And guess what took up the bulk of the "investigative process"?

• CPD

But that was to control the investigation of the connected - not to affix accountability. 

Consequences?

Who would have ever thought that something like this could happen at such a beacon of tolerance, understanding and anti-violence? (paywalled Tribune article)

• The Rev. Michael Pfleger is demanding offenders face consequences for Sunday’s shooting outside St. Sabina, the second shooting to occur on his turf this year.

  After an argument inside the St. Sabina gym during a basketball tournament led to a triple shooting Sunday afternoon, Pfleger said he was suspending their men’s basketball league on Sundays and is working with police in an effort to find the shooter.

  “That league for grown men on Sunday nights is suspended as of now,” Pfleger, a longtime activist against gun violence, said Monday. “There’s got to be consequences for actions.”

That's a first - consequences for actions? Never thought we'd hear that coming out of this asshole's mouth, especially after years of advocating for exactly the opposite and then refusing the consequences for his unlawful actions.

Must be a Christmas miracle or something. 

Someone Had to Say It

Might as well be this guy:

• Calling the attorneys representing the family of slain Chicago Police Officer Krystal Rivera “lower than whale sh**,” the head of the city’s largest police union has unleashed a blistering attack on the relatives’ wrongful death lawsuit that suggests another cop may have intentionally killed the officer on duty and left her to die.

  “This is as low as it gets,” Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said in a YouTube video, directing his anger at the law firm Romanucci & Blandin after it sued Rivera’s partner, Officer Carlos Baker, and the city over Rivera’s death on June 5.

Unless the City settles, this one is going to be an on-going embarrassment for years, painting the Department, hiring practices, personnel decisions and inconsistent disciplinary processes in the worst possible light.

Retirement on Tap? (UPDATE)

Ah, alcohol. It's how rumors get started.

Loosening inhibitions and loosening tongues for thousands of years now.

It seems that there was a retirement party recently for DeVries and the drinks were flowing. During the speeches, the guest of honor spoke about how he wished he could have stuck around and "retired with Larry in May."

Larritorious said nothing. 

Let's see how this plays out on a Monday morning.

UPDATE: Some of Larritorious' Academy drama from the past coming up?

• SCC, Heard from someone who works in his circle at the 5th floor that he isn’t retiring by choice. Something happened about two weeks ago and the mayor is pushing him out/forcing him to leave. I’m actually surprised it took this long to reach the blog. Apparently something a confidential incident got back to the mayor and he is not happy with it. The person did not elaborate on what occurred, but something definitely happened.

Surely the top notch Chicago investigative media will uncover the info.

Ghoul Pool Time

It's that time again: 

Step 1 - sell the squares. If you want to be generous, blank out three squares since there are only twenty-two Districts. If you want to be devious, sell all twenty-five squares. Three people will be out before the first shot is fired (thank you for your donation!)

Step 2 - get out your cell phone and go to one of those "random number generator" sites and get a number between 1 and 25 - that's your starting box. Example - #17 is generated:

Step 3 - using that same site, use the "comprehensive version," set the lower (1) and upper (25) limit, integers only, no duplication. There are your twenty-five Districts in random order, starting at the random box from Step 2. Example, order generated begins 005, 019, 025, 001, etc:

 

Step 4 - shade out the non-existent Districts (those are immediate losses) and wait for the mayhem to ensue! If you don't feel like listening to whiners, shade out three random squares, don't sell them, then ignore the 013, 021, 023 results in the random string.

NOTE: Have a witness or two while you do this so everyone knows it's on the up-and-up.

NOTE: Set rules beforehand - is it the first 0110 by RD# or by hospital Time of Death - they differ and will lead to arguments. What if you pull an Agg Battery in 007 at 0001 hours and he dies three days later, while two other victims bite the dust in 011 the first night? Does "Manner of Demise" count? Gunshot, stabbing, bludgeoning, vehicular? It makes a difference.

NOTE: All gambling involving money MUST go through the State of Illinois so Fata$$ gets his cut. This in-house type of gambling involves NO cash, only toothpicks.

NOTE: For Pete's sake, DO NOT allow the following people to play:

• anyone from IAD
• anyone above a testable rank
• anyone who was in the Patty Casey study group
• anyone who was in the Fenner wedding party
• Conehead 

Keep it simple. 

You can even do this District-wide by Beat, but you might be stuck waiting for a few weeks for a result in some places. If you want a HUGE pool, an Area can do it by Beats, but it'll be harder to locate that many toothpicks on short notice. 

Forty....Now Fifty

Someone is definitely getting a discount on bulk ammo purchases:

• Gunmen fired at least 50 shots on a River North street corner overnight, killing one man and critically wounding three others in the third mass shooting on the Near North Side since July. All three of those major shootings have been linked to the area’s nightlife districts.

  In a statement, Chicago Police Department said officers responding to a report of multiple people shot found four victims who had been struck by gunfire in the 400 block of North LaSalle Street around 2:35 a.m. Sunday. The victims were entering a vehicle in a nearby parking lot when four male gunmen approached on foot and opened fire, CPD said. The gunmen then got into a vehicle and fled the area.

  The car the victims were entering, a Lamborghini SUV, rolled to a stop on LaSalle Street just outside the parking lot ramp. Officers located one victim inside the vehicle, two others lying in the street, and a fourth nearby.

And before you ask, yes, the Lamborghini is going to be fine....

....after a crap load of body work and two or three deep cleanings to get rid of the blood and weed smell. 

(or does the weed smell come standard in Lambos now? The last few we went through all smelled like weed) 

Racial Profiling is Back?

Not for the police. No, no. That would make too much sense.

This is for the banks:

• Your banker is racially profiling you when you apply for a mortgage loan. If he doesn’t, the lending institution you’re applying to is subject to harsh federal penalties for not engaging in racial profiling. The most amazing part of the applicable federal regulation is that if you refuse to disclose your ethnicity and race, the banker is required to visually appraise you, make a guess as to your race/ethnicity based on your appearance, and then report those racial observations to the government. Bull Connor smiles.
  
  

  The left has racialized pretty much everything it touches, and during the Obama administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created by the Dodd-Frank legislation. The CFPB was the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Among the tasks taken on by the CFPB is the gathering of information regarding an applicant’s ethnicity, race, and sex under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

  The good news is that Donald Trump has been trying to kill off the CFPB. The bad news is that it’s not dead yet, so mortgage lenders across the country are still being drilled on the importance of viewing customers through the prism of race, and learning how to provide reporting based on observed skin color, accent, surname, hairstyle, and other ethnic characteristics of those applying for mortgage loans.

The government fined Bank of America $12 million for NOT collecting this data. 

Gotta protect that money, ya know.

People (or folks)....not that much. 

Reply All - Part 2

It happened again?

• SCC, something with the CIT training, some brainiac at HQ left the CC open and the "Reply All" people started up again, slowing the Department Intranet to a crawl. Added bonus - it's the holiday long weekend. I don't know if it's on purpose or the hiring standards have fallen so far, this is going to be a regular thing now.

We could understand if it was some boomer.

The Gen X people grew up learning as they went along.

You'd think this "internet generation" would know better than all of us.

Holiday Violence

Who would have thought the Christmas season could be so bloody?

• At least 13 people have been shot, four fatally, across Chicago since the start of the long holiday weekend Wednesday, police said.

  On Wednesday, police said, four men were shot about 12:04 a.m. in the 7000 block of South Halsted Street in Englewood. Police say two men approached the group and opened fire.

  One man was shot in the head and pronounced dead at the scene, police said. A 27-year-old male was shot in the right leg and taken to University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition. A 38-year-old man sustained a graze wound to his right arm. A 33-year-old male sustained a gunshot graze wound to his right forearm, police said.

  On Thursday, a man was discovered unresponsive about 10 p.m. near the 7400 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue in Greater Grand Crossing. He was shot in the back and right armpit, according to police. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.

There's more at the link.

We're not sure what parameters HeyJackass.com is using, but the Slum Times appears to be pulling the plug early and missing all of Sunday. This is why you can't trust the media numbers.

Forty Shots?

Are they getting ammo discounts?

• A gunman fired more than 40 shots, killing a man outside an Uptown McDonald’s early Saturday morning, according to police and witnesses.

  Police responded to multiple calls of shots fired around 4 a.m. Saturday outside a McDonald’s and found a 23-year-old man lying in the street with a gunshot wound to the back of the head, authorities said. The victim was pronounced at the scene.

This was 020? Getting violent up north, eh?

Ten Year Fight Ends

A funeral service for suburban Detective Tim Jones:

• Park Forest Police Detective Tim Jones died nearly a decade after a shooting left him paralyzed. The community honored his life on Saturday.

  There were heavy hearts at a very emotional celebration of life at Tinley Park High School, the alma mater of Officer Jones, who battled for about a decade after being injured in the line of duty. All of his family and friends spoke to the kind of resilience Jones offered throughout his life

  Detective Jones was 24 years old when he was shot in the head in March of 2016 while responding to a burglary. Jones died earlier this month, nearly 10 years after the shooting. A public walk-through was held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. A first responder walk-through was held from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. The celebration of life service began at 2 p.m.

A hell of a fight you put up for those ten years. 

God Bless and RIP Detective. 

Idiot Judge, Broken System

Aren't judges supposed to be educated persons?

Well, except in Cook County:

• A Cook County judge remarked that a man with a history of randomly and violently attacking strangers “seems to be expending a lot of energy getting into violent incidents allegedly” and that it “seems like we have a little anger management issue”....

Seems like the perfect opportunity to keep him in jail, right?

• ....before deciding to release the man on electronic monitoring rather than keep him in jail. Three days later, prosecutors say, that same man went on a violent spree in the Loop, punching three women in the face while he was supposed to be home on an ankle monitor.

  The man, Marlon Miller, is now detained on felony aggravated battery charges after Judge Peter Gonzalez acknowledged that the electronic monitoring program overseen by the office of the county’s chief judge was “completely unreliable as [Miller] was out and about committing crimes.” 

So the judge KNOWS and ACKNOWLEDGES that this is a REPEAT and VIOLENT offender, and still releases him on a program that he even says is "COMPLETELY UNRELIABLE."

CWB has an awesome graphic that ought to be printed up and distributed at polling places next time this idiot is up for retention:

The other judges who released this criminal deserve their own graphics, too.

Judge Luciano Panici Jr. and Judge Susana Ortiz deserve their own "walk of shame," too.

Election Season Approaching

Remember, don't elect this moron:

• Politics is filled with shallow and intellectually obtuse people, and Chicago pols are no exception. All things being equal, Chicago politicians are probably worse than average.

  One of them, Illinois’ Secretary of State Alex Giannoulias, regularly posts images and videos of himself on social media lifting weights, presumably to distract voters from his cerebral shortcomings and his checkered history as a public official.

Aside from the Broadway Bank fiasco that saddled taxpayers with many hundreds of millions in bailout money (while leaving the Giannoulias bank accounts looking awfully healthy) and his awkward associations to Sparklefart fixer Tony Rezko, there was the Illinois Bright Start college fund that lost over $150 million while under Giannoulias' rein as State Treasurer.

Any single one of these things should have disqualified him from political office and kept him ten-to-twenty years away from public funds, but he's still around, playing coy about running for Conehead's job.

Go over to the Contrarian link and read it all. 

Bodies, Corpses and Crime

CWB has been killing it all year long, embarrassing the lame-stream media, time-and-time again with their crime reporting. This week was no exception.

First, another Brandon Body and a Conehead Corpse:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson’s decision to shut down Chicago’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection network appears to have delayed emergency responses to two more shootings since Christmas night, leaving one man dead and another critically wounded after neither incident triggered immediate 911 calls reporting gunfire.

  Both shootings occurred in areas that were previously covered by ShotSpotter sensors, which had routinely alerted police to gunfire even when no witnesses called for help. 

And then, this historic release:

• A Cook County judge approved a plea deal that allowed a man accused of robbing another driver during a road-rage confrontation to avoid serving any prison time, even though prosecutors said the robbery occurred while he was wearing an ankle monitor for a gun case.

  Robert Bray, 35, of Evergreen Park, was charged in September 2023 with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. Court records show he was released on electronic monitoring after posting a $500 deposit on September 17, 2023, the final day Illinois courts set cash bail.

One of the last cash bail arrestees - but he wasn't done yet!

• Prosecutors said Bray was still wearing the ankle monitor when he became involved in a minor traffic crash around 4 p.m. on January 2, 2024, in the 100 block of East 47th Street. According to prosecutors, Bray exited his vehicle and aggressively confronted the other driver, a 29-year-old man, threatening him and demanding money. Prosecutors said Bray grabbed the victim’s phone and then instructed his passenger to steal the victim’s Jeep Grand Cherokee.

  Bray’s passenger followed those instructions and drove away in the SUV, prosecutors said. Meanwhile, Bray allegedly shoved the victim against a wall and choked him, according to the state’s allegations. Chicago Police Department surveillance cameras recorded the confrontation and captured Bray’s license plate, prosecutors said. Investigators also relied on ankle monitor location data and the victim’s identification of Bray in a photo lineup to make the arrest.

This a$$hole should be Exhibit #1 about how pre-trial detention is probably the most effective deterrent to reducing crime since he wouldn't be on the street to commit more crime. Instead, he's yet another example of what a short-sighted and stupid idea the SAFE-T Act was and remains.

And CTA Yet Again

Cut the Federal money already:

• Chicago police are asking for help identifying three suspects who appeared to be in exceptionally good spirits after allegedly robbing a woman at knifepoint aboard a Red Line train downtown.

  CPD released surveillance images on Tuesday showing the three women smiling broadly as they waltzed along the State-Chicago Red Line platform shortly after the robbery on Monday afternoon.

  Police said the 26-year-old victim was riding the train when the three women confronted her and took her valuables while displaying a knife around 3:27 p.m.

  CPD described the suspects as three Black women. One was wearing a black jacket, pink pants, and white gym shoes. Another was wearing a pink jacket, black pants, and white and gray gym shoes. The third had a nose ring and was wearing a black jacket and light blue jeans.

Can you guess why they were all smiling and laughing?

• Because they know there are ZERO consequences for robbing and threatening victims with a knife, even on the off chance they're caught and arrested

You know what will stop it....and wipe the smiles off their faces?

• A CCL carrier ignoring the "no gun" signs the way criminals do, or an off duty cop, or even a retired cop (though we have no idea why a retiree would be riding the CTA) shooting and killing one of more

This was at 3:27 in the afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed. 

CTA Again?

These "isolated incidents" never seem to end:

• Prosecutors have charged an 18-year-old man and two juveniles in connection with a violent beating that left a 62-year-old man badly injured aboard a CTA bus last week.

  Larry Gilkey was riding a northbound bus in the 700 block of South Cicero Avenue when he was attacked around 5:30 p.m. on December 16, according to Chicago police and his relatives. A family member said Gilkey had gone out to buy cigarettes and one of the future attackers asked him for money so they could ride the bus. When Gilkey took out cash, another offender struck him, according to the relative.

  The confrontation quickly escalated into a group assault that left Gilkey critically injured. He was placed in a medically induced coma and has since been brought out of it, but CPD said he faces a long recovery.

Just another check mark in the denial of Federal money list.

Another S#@$hole Politician

Take a look at this guy:

 

Fire chief in another shithole south suburb, hotbed of corruption and graft, candidate for mayor of Markham. This is some official photo, for the their website or campaign literature, we aren't sure.

Can you see what a sharp eyed reader noticed? 

Deliberate? Knowing what we know about Country Club Hills and Markham, we wouldn't be surprised.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all.

As usual, blogging will be light today and comments might be delayed depending on what and where we end up celebrating.

If you're home, enjoy the day. If you're working, stay safe and stay alert. 

"Serious Harm"

A little noticed and serious implication to the Chicago budget:

• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s decision Tuesday to allow the 2026 budget created by the city council to take effect Jan. 1 — he will neither veto the ordinance nor sign it, which has the same effect as signing it — leaves Bally’s with some decisions to make regarding its $2 billion casino currently under construction in River West.

  The $16.6 billion “alternative” budget includes the potential to legalize video gaming terminals (VGTs), which are the biggest source of gaming tax revenue in Illinois by a wide margin. They are currently banned in Chicago via city ordinance, though an ordinance to legalize them passed out of the city council’s Committee on License and Consumer Protection in September.

Conehead whines and cries about the aldermanic budget "overestimating" revenues, but Bally's has NEVER hit its targeted revenues for Chicago - most of which were to be directed to Police nad Fire pensions. But that didn't stop the City from spending the "projected revenues" and driving massive deficits.

Now, Bally's is warning about Virtual Gaming Terminals cutting into their projected revenue streams, the promised 3,000 jobs being cut by a third, and throwing the entire future of the physical casino into serious doubt.

Chicago and Conehead are going to go down in history as the only entities that could LOSE money on a casino. 

Inconsistency

This happened in July:

• 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.

  Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling had pushed to fire Chicago Police 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 ruling, noting that future discipline will be assessed “on a case-by-case basis.”

The claim is he ate a brownie, though that story wasn't told during the initial investigation. 

This happened Monday:

• The Chicago Police Board voted unanimously on Thursday to fire a Chicago police officer who tested positive for marijuana, records show.

  Officer Elmer Carrillo Jr. is the first CPD officer to be terminated for failing a test for marijuana since Illinois legalized the recreational use of the drug. Carrillo is also the first to be fired by the Police Board in nearly a year and a half amid a protracted legal battle that has frozen the city’s police disciplinary system.

  A police officer since 2018, Carrillo tested positive for the drug in November 2023, records show. Injured while he was off-duty, Carrillo was on medical leave after undergoing surgery in July 2023. After suffering a “medical incident,” Carrillo reported to CPD headquarters for a fitness-for-duty examination and underwent a drug test.

This claim is he ate a marijuana gummie.

So....:

• the first guy ate a laced brownie, 
• the second guy, a legally manufactured product.
• the first guy keeps his job,
• the second guy gets fired. 

Both claim "unknowingly."

Consistency in discipline has never been CPD's strong suit, but Larritorious recommended firing both (and a third officer), so good for him we suppose. 

But after these cases, we can't wait for the first Officer Involved Shooting to go down where the subsequent "wiz quiz" shows THC in the Officer's system - the payout is going to be MASSIVE. 

$8 Billion (with a B)

So the budget will pass without Conehead's signature, preventing a shutdown and proving Conehead to be a ball-less CTU tool:

• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says he will not veto a 2026 budget that he has called “morally bankrupt,” instead allowing it to go into effect and staving off political gridlock and the risk of an unprecedented government shutdown.

But then he starts up with so-called "executive orders" that don't seem to have been passed by any legislative body and we can't recall being codified into law:

• Those executive orders prohibit the city from selling medical debt to third parties and create more oversight on police overtime spending.

  “I don’t want to give a signal to the people of Chicago that I support what I believe is one of the most detrimental and immoral aspects of this budget,” Johnson said, explaining why he will allow the budget to take effect without proactively signing it. He was referring to a part of the budget that will rake in about $90 million in increased debt collection.

$90 million sounds like a bunch, but Conehead's own economic team claims the budget shortfalls will be in the neighborhood of $160 million (slightly less than what Conehead spent on ILLEGAL ALIENS by the way). 

The amount of outstanding debt due to the city (meaning taxpayers) is over $8 billion, meaning the $90 million to be collected (maybe) is just over 1% of the $8 billion owed. If Chicago collected even 10% of the debt owed, it would cover shortfalls for years, negating tax hikes and fee increases. (the Tribune has a paywalled editorial at this link)

This is what Conehead calls "immoral," that everyone else has to cover the cost of these freeloaders. 

Another "Isolated" Incident?

Thank goodness there's a "crime plan" in place to sort this out!

• Chicago police are investigating a fatal shooting aboard a Pink Line train in the Loop early Tuesday that left one man dead and another wounded after a confrontation that escalated inside a rail car.

  The shooting occurred around 1:22 a.m. near 100 North Wells Street. According to preliminary information, a 23-year-old man and a 44-year-old man were riding a Pink Line train when they became involved in a verbal altercation with an unknown male who was armed with a knife. The dispute turned physical, at which point one of the victims produced a firearm, police said.

But....but....there were SIGNS forbidding guns. What happened? 

That person who brought the gun should have just accepted the stabbing peacefully and bled out quietly ....instead of getting shot with his own gun.

That Federal money can't be cut soon enough. 

Another "Brandon Body"

Or Conehead Corpse:

• A man was found shot to death early Tuesday in a South Side area that was previously monitored by ShotSpotter, even though no gunfire alerts were recorded near the scene around the time investigators believe the killing occurred.

  The homicide happened in the 1600 block of East 95th Street. A private security guard discovered the man unresponsive at about 6:21 a.m. on December 23, 2025, and called 911, according to preliminary police information.

Wait....is ShotSpotter still active in the background? Why would there be an "alert" that wasn't a 9-1-1 call?

Fired Suburban Officer to Sue

She's got a hell of a lawsuit against Markham:

• A Markham police officer who found a loaded firearm in a vehicle owned and operated by a convicted murderer, only to be fired when CWBChicago asked the city’s police chief why he ordered the cop to let the convicted felon go, filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the chief and the city on Monday morning.

  CWBChicago first reported on the traffic stop and the officer’s firing last week.

  Former Markham probationary police officer Kayla Heller alleges she was terminated after reporting to prosecutors and the Illinois State Police that Police Chief Jack Genius ordered the release of Tyrone Muhammad after she discovered a loaded Smith and Wesson inside his Chrysler 300’s center console, according to a complaint filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County.

  Heller initially stopped Muhammad on October 8 because his vehicle’s plates were suspended for lack of insurance, according to a report she filed.

Legit stop, and then it all went to shit:

• Chief Genius Moron orders the release of said car and the unattended weapon;
• command staff interrogates her in violation of the Illinois Uniform Peace Officers’ Disciplinary Act;
• command staff interrogated her over any calls she might have made regarding the stop to ISP and the States Attorneys Office;
• demotes the sergeant she might have talked to....which is what you want the new officers to do (the sergeant probably has a good lawsuit, too);
• and then, "she was allegedly asked to return to the police station to sign a backdated resignation memo."

And, insult to injury, they cheated her out of accrued vacation and sick time to the tune of $10K, adding to the list of State Law violations.

Hopefully, she gets a few million and never has to be the police. 

Being Crooked Pays Off

Of course there are loopholes - these a$$holes likely wrote the legislation:

• Disgraced ex-Ald. Edward M. Burke has been out of elected office since May 2023 and out of prison since summer after a conviction on corruption charges and hasn’t been actively raising campaign money.

  But his campaign coffers stand to grow nonetheless, and one of Burke’s campaign accounts could still someday provide him with a huge personal windfall.

  Convicted in 2023 in a racketeering and bribery case, Burke is allowed to pocket roughly $2.4 million from one of his campaign funds, Friends of Edward M. Burke, and spend that money on virtually anything he’d like — political or not.

  Burke, who long represented the Southwest Side’s 14th Ward, is one of about 100 current and former political figures, or their heirs, who are allowed to still convert campaign money — whatever they had in their accounts on June 30, 1998, when a law changed — to personal use.

The "Friends of Burke" account has gained over $800,000 in interest and capital gains alone over the past few decades. 

Even long dead politicians have much of their old campaign funds interest bearing accounts that benefit their estates (i.e. heirs), providing income streams that will long outlive the people who raised the campaign cash.

Too bad taxpayers can't get it diverted to some of the burgeoning debt these same pols voted us all into while they pocketed "contributions" to be doled out long after their convictions....and lives, ended.

Creative Illinoisans

We used to see license plates that were obviously double entendres or foreign swear words or cleverly designed insults. The DMV has gotten better at catching them though, probably via humorless snitches:

• No Illinois drivers will be “BRICKED” on the roads next year.

  Nor will they bear state registration plates with “TYPESHT,” “IBPOOPN” or “ICUP,” despite praise from Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias for vanity plate applicants’ creativity.

  All four were among the list of more than 550 “inflammatory, profane, offensive or too difficult to read” vanity license plate requests rejected by Giannoulias’ office. They were a small portion of the nearly 56,000 applications it received this year, according to his office.

  “Illinoisans consistently show off their creativity on customized license plates, but anything that hits the road has to meet the standards of good taste and decency,” Giannoulias said in a statement Monday. “Our team is fluent in lewd lingo and sneaky swearing — and they catch it all.”

No, no they don't. Not all of them, that's for sure, but they are getting pretty good at it. We can only name one plate that doesn't pass the "good taste and decency" test over the past couple years.

Speaking of plates, have they cleaned up the State Plate database though? We remember there used to be a plate that came back to Wrigley Field, a la the Blues Brothers movie. And another one that came back to "Jack Mehoff" that we'd trick dispatchers into reading over the air. Someone told us there was another plate that had almost 200 responses that would make your PDT chime for the better part of thirty minutes if you happened to run it.

Fun times. 

NOT a Zero Homicide Weekend

HeyJackass has the total at two:

• Final Demonized Tally: 2 killed, 11 wounded*

  Friday 12/19
  7:20p 2600 W 23rd, Little Village, F/23
  7:20p 200 W 108th, Roseland, M/46
  Saturday 12/20
  12:25a 8100 S Stewart, Chatham, F/21
  12:25a 8100 S Stewart, Chatham, M/25
  12:25a 8100 S Stewart, Chatham, F/26
  12:55a 3300 W 63rd, Chicago Lawn, M/35
  2:00a 5500 S Kostner, West Elsdon, M/31
  8:20a 2200 E 103rd, South Deering, F/22
  5:40p 2800 W Van Buren, Garfield Park, M/31
  10:55p 2900 W Roosevelt, North Lawndale, M/55
  Sunday 12/21
  4:10a 1600 S Pulaski, North Lawndale, M/40
  7:40p 3800 W West End, Garfield Park, M/18
  8:30p Walk-in @ 5th District, M/?

Unmentioned....and uncounted?

• Chicago police are investigating a hit-and-run crash that left two men dead in the street early Sunday in the Morgan Park neighborhood.

  Officers responded to an EMS call around 1:15 a.m. Sunday in the 11700 block of South Marshfield Avenue, where they found two adult men unresponsive and lying in the roadway. One victim was identified as a 30-year-old man. The second victim had not yet been identified as of Monday morning.

Never understood why Vehicular Homicides weren't counted in the totals. Well, we "understood," we just never agreed with it.