IAD Heard From

From the comments regarding the case report narrative we "acquired:"

• sure hope you got that from a legit freedom of information act. IAD initiated a blanket cr now because it showed up on this site. I work in IAD, nothing usually happens with this stuff but sometimes it does.. Its not the fact that anyone should be nervous about it but its a pain in the ass for us to have to deal with now.... cmon guys, get your head out of your ass and stop pulling reports and posting them online, it will only get you jammed up. Now we have to pull every pc number that pulled the report and interview or get a statement from all those who did it.. use your heads, everything has an electronic signature on it these days.

Sorry, our sympathy for the guys and gals at IAD is kind of thin ever since the Barb West era when she ran an illegal First Amendment investigation that included home/work surveillance and god knows how many man-hours in a fruitless attempt to nail someone. We assume that you guys still have the file somewhere in the archives? It's interesting reading, isn't it?

As someone else asked, don't you guys have to pull an entirely new Log Number for revealing the contents/progress of an on-going investigation? Besides, once everyone denies having disseminated the report, it's "Not Sustained" anyway.

Ten Years Later

This had to be rough:

• The death this week of a woman beaten up more than a decade ago in the East Garfield Park neighborhood has been ruled a homicide, authorities said.
  
  Shantil Moore, 28, who had been living at a nursing home in the 2400 block of West Touhy Avenue, was pronounced dead at Kindred North Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Following an autopsy today, the medical examiner’s office determined Moore had died from sepsis due to complications of cervico-spinal injuries suffered in an assault, and her death was ruled a homicide.
  
  The victim had suffered head and body injuries following an attack suffered about 11:45 p.m. Aug. 4, 2003, in the 200 block of North Homan Avenue, and had been initially hospitalized at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said Police News Affairs Sgt. Antoinette Ursitti.

We assume there will be a press conference raising the homicide totals from 2003 by one? Or will the bean counters just pretend it never happened? The article also says no one was ever charged for the initial beating, so the clearance rate might not be getting a bump either.

Wait....Rahm Lied Again?

How could this be? We were promised savings. We were promised money. The only thing we weren't promised was, "If you like your power company, you can keep your power company."

• Electric bills could jump about 14 percent for most Chicagoans this May, but city officials say the increase would be even worse if ComEd were still the city’s electric supplier.
  
  Under new electricity rates announced Sunday by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, average utility customers will still save about $34 a year when compared with what they would pay to ComEd, according to city officials.
  
  That’s a far cry from the $135 to $165 savings for the first 15 months that the administration initially touted before the city started doing business with Chicago-based electricity supplier Integrys Energy Services at the beginning of 2013.

Well, we guess Rahm did go to the same schools of political thought and learning as the president.

Bribery Figure Had Wire Experience

He's worn a wire before and still got hired by an aldercreature:

• The undercover informant who secretly recorded meetings with Ald. Howard Brookins as part of an FBI sting testified Monday that he also wore a wire for authorities after his 2008 arrest in a federal mortgage-fraud investigation.
  
  Mhde Askar, who pronounces his name “Moddy,” is at the center of the case against Brookins’ longtime chief of staff, Curtis Thompson Jr., who was charged late last month with accepting a $7,500 bribe from Askar in exchange for the alderman’s blessing on a liquor license in his 21st Ward. Brookins has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing.

Of course he's innocent. Innocent as a new born babe. Pay no attention to where he was sitting when the bribe was offered:

• According to the criminal complaint against Thompson, Askar, who was identified only as Cooperating Witness 1, wore a hidden video recorder to several meetings with Brookins and his staff a few months ago as he pretended to be in search of a liquor license for a new convenience store.
  
  At one meeting in October, Askar presented the alderman with a photograph of a store that had a Post-it note stuck askew on the bottom, spelling out a $12,000 bribe in exchange for the alderman's support. Brookins turned his head “slightly sideways” as he looked at the paper, then passed it to an aide who handed it to Thompson, prosecutors said.

If we were anyone who even talked to Brookins in the last few years, we'd be very very nervous about now.

Aldercreature Nonsense

The kerfuffle between the 011 District Commander and aldercreature Jason "Gotta Have a Black Guy" Ervin seems a bit more involved than the recent newspaper coverage would hint at. Check out this portion of the narrative from the Case Report generated immediately after the altercation:

• ...prior to the incident in the parking lot, the offender Jason Ervin had confronted the victim Commander Evans in the lobby of the 011th District after he was unable to return a previous phone call by the offender, unintentionally bumping into him several times his body....

Boo hoo hoo - the commander (who Ervin didn't want) won't return his phone calls, so he gets Barb West to make a fake appointment and tags along.  He then puts on a typical ghetto show with the chest bumping and the fake outrage and the "What's your problem?" bullshit, while the real problem is he's pissed a commander won't kiss his ample ass.

We don't know why he's bitching - he's got Barb West asking "How high Alderman?" when he calls the tune. Isn't one commander enough?

Crooked City Book Available

Written by one of our own and available now:

• In this second collection of connected essays, Chicago cop Martin Preib takes on seemingly unrelated murder cases, all dating from one year, 1982, including some in which offenders were released as part of the wrongful conviction movement.
  This book shatters reader assumptions—about the workings of justice, the objectivity of the media, and the role of the police in the city of Chicago, even calling into question allegations of police torture in the notorious cases against Jon Burge. Told in the gripping tension of a crime novel, Preib strives for the highest language as he wanders these brutal, controversial killings.

Available as a softcover book and for you new-fangled kids, Kindle. We linked to the preview of his upcoming book a month or two ago which calls into question everything you think you might have known about the Anthony Porter case along with all the dirty laundry from the so-called "Innocence Project."

West Side Brewing Up a Storm?

House party gets goofy:

• A gunman opened fire on a home in the Austin neighborhood Sunday morning after an argument at a party, wounding six people, including a notable high school basketball player, police and hospital officials said.
  
  The shooting happened around 3:30 a.m. in the 4900 block of West Race Avenue on the West Side, said [...] a Chicago Police Department spokesman.
  
  The shooter left the home after a dispute with another person, returned with a gun and shot into the home...

3:30 AM? The adult supervision was......where exactly?

And tomorrow is going to be in the mid-50's? Barb West is going to have a lot of house visits to make. Maybe she can bring her new best buddy Erwin along for the ride?

Info for the Readers of SCC

You think that you have freedom of thought and expression off-duty in the privacy of your own home? According to this e-mail we got, maybe not:

• Some angry bosses were talking about some joint effort to track down ip addresses of anonymous posts and go after those who posted. They are paying someone to do this somehow?
  
  
• Apparently there is some kind of joint service they are looking into but each person that wants info will have to pay individually if they want specifics. Just think of some of the more egocentric and vindictive commanders and above on this job. Some of these thin skins love to claim "I don't read the blog" but are actually obsessed with it. 

So certain members of the Command staff are thinking about paying a service to track down those who bad-mouth them on the blog. Although technically feasible, we're unsure as to the ramifications. We imagine they want to try some sort of defamation suit, but as most of the exempts are semi-public figures, employed and identified by the City online, in press releases and in photo-ops with the Supernintendo and other figures, it'd be a long road.

Cop Wounded

Not much info, but he appears to be stable and talking:

• A Chicago Police officer was shot in the face Sunday night on the South Side, according to a hospital employee where the officer was undergoing treatment.
  
  The 42-year-old officer, identified only as a man, suffered a gunshot wound to the bridge of his nose while in the 2700 block of East 92nd Street about 8:45 p.m., according to Charico Santiago, the nursing supervisor at Advocate Trinity Hospital. Santiago had few details, but said the officer was at the South Side hospital and that he was awake, talking and “stable.”
  
  Chicago Police had no information about the shooting.

Best wishes to the wounded Officer.

UPDATE: Search Warrant. 

Four Shot; Three New Hindu

Slowly working our way up to the summer numbers:

• A 29-year-old man was critically injured in one of three Chicago shootings that have left four people hurt overnight on the West Side, police said.
  
  
• About 1:30 a.m., a 19-year-old man was shot in the leg as he drove in the 4700 block of West Harrison Street in the West Garfield Park neihgborhood, according to police. The man heard gunfire, realized he was shot and drove drove himself to Loretto Hospital, police said.
  
  
• A 17-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man were walking on the sidewalk when they heard gunfire and realized they were shot, according to police. Bullets struck the 17-year-old in the thigh and the 19-year-old in the buttocks, police said.

A whole lot of "heard shot, felt pain, realized shot." As "self realization" is a basic tenet of most Eastern religions, we can only conclude that these folks (or people) are adherents of Hinduism.

Openings

Bid openings came out Friday:

• 003 - 5 openings
• 004 - 5
• 005 - 5
• 008 - 5
• 019 - 12

Someone finally noticed that 019 was down 120 coppers from full strength before the merge. Yes, there was a lot of redundant spots that could (and should) have been eliminated once the Districts combined, and McCarthy shouldn't have made the blind promises he did about "not losing one officer." That was just plain dumb. But nearly one-third leaving/retiring in a year? Something is fishy up north.

Did You Spring Ahead?

If you didn't move the clock forward before you went to bed last night, you are now an hour late for work. Hustle up there Junior.

Nice Going Chuck

Nice fuck-up there Chuck-up:

• One of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s alleged key lieutenants backed out of his plans to plead guilty in federal court Friday after an inaccurate report by ABC7 News reporter Chuck Goudie may have put his family at risk, the defendant’s attorney said.
  
  Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez indicated last week that he would plead guilty to drug trafficking charges under a “blind plea,” an indication that he was not cooperating with prosecutors against Guzman’s powerful Sinaloa cartel.
  
  But Goudie — who was not in court — incorrectly broadcast later that evening that Vasquez-Hernandez had “turned against El Chapo,” the cartel’s billionaire boss who was recently captured in Mexico.
  
  The veteran newsman’s blunder put Vasquez-Hernandez in fear of his family in Mexico’s safety, and he withdrew his offer to plead guilty and will now proceed to trial, his attorney Paul Brayman said Friday.

Chuck can't even be bothered to go to court, but he can put out misinformation with the best of the media and put innocents in the cross hairs of a cartel that thinks nothing of hanging bodies off of overpasses to express their displeasure.

Hire Gangbangers - What Could Go Wrong?

Well, maybe this:

• Both Jermalle Brown and Douglas Bufford were gang members hired to play a small role in helping combat violence on the South Side through a program hatched by Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration.
  
  Paid $8.50 an hour with taxpayer funds to hand out anti-violence pamphlets in their South Shore neighborhood, the two low-income teens were part-time foot soldiers in the governor’s $54.5 million Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, a program he once described as “a comprehensive and concerted effort to keep our young people safe, off the streets and in school.”
  
  Quinn launched that program a month before his 2010 election as an answer to gun carnage in the city — even though murders that year, Chicago Police would later disclose, dipped to a nearly 50-year low.
  
  But instead of embodying a bold new way to fight bloodshed on the South Side, Bufford is now dead, and Brown is charged with his murder, putting a dramatic and deadly new blemish on the one-time Quinn showpiece, which was pilloried last week in a report by Auditor General William Holland.

This was the one where the shooter managed to blast his accomplice in the head with a shotgun while doing a home invasion. We remember this one with particular amusement and it always brings a smile to our faces.

Way to go Governor Potato-head. Millions of dollars with no oversight, paying thugs.

SEE?!? I Told You So - G. McCarthy

Concealed Carry leads to all sorts of deaths!

• Police say a woman's co-worker accidentally shot her Friday morning at a thrift store in Chicago's South Side Washington Heights neighborhood.
  
  Police initially said 54-year-old Maria Carmen Dominguez was fatally shot in the chest when she and the male co-worker were sorting through clothing in a back room, and when he shook a sock from the sorting pile, a gun fell onto the floor and discharged.
  
  But police now say the .22 caliber handgun fell into the man's hand and then fired, however they're still considering it accidental.

If someone hadn't concealed that gun in a donated sock, this never would have happened.

President - Runoff to be Announced

The successful candidates are as follows:

Position Successful Candidate

President Dean Angelo / Bill Dougherty Runoff

1st Vice President Ray Casiano, Jr.

2nd Vice President Frank DiMaria

3rd Vice President Dan Gorman

Recording Secretary Greg Bella

Financial Secretary Kevin Kilmer

Treasurer John Capparelli

Sergeant at Arms Bill Burns

Sergeant at Arms Al Francis, Jr.

Sergeant at Arms James Moriarty, Jr.

Trustee Dean Angelo, Jr.

Trustee Mark P. Donahue

Trustee Pat Duckhorn

Trustee Sergio Escobedo

Trustee Kathleen L. Gahagan

Trustee Michael P. Garza

Trustee Joseph Gentile

Trustee Ken Hauser

Trustee Tom Lonergan

Trustee Kevin J. McNulty

Trustee Tim Moriarty

Trustee Rob Rutherford

Trustee Jay R. Ryan

Trustee Steve Schorsch

Trustee Ron Shogren

Trustee Daniel G. Trevino

Trustee Mike Voight

The President has to be 50%-plus-one-vote.

Everything else is a majority of the ballots cast.

Announcements to follow in short order we imagine.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble!

SCC EXCLUSIVE - MUST CREDIT SCC

From our e-mail:

• Cmdr. Evans just threw [aldercreature Jason] Ervin out of his office. Jason arrived with Barb West and they both left the front office disgruntled within minutes. Jason thought he'd be slick and wait for Evans in the garage blocking in his car. They motherfucked each other and Evans told Ervin he was gonna get arrested for CTTSSL if he didn't leave. Ervin left. Case report generated HX-174640. ET ordered for pix of "Police Parking Only" signage. The shaky-ass sergeant assisting the paper car is trying to have IAD block the narrative of the GOCR so it doesn't go viral.

According to numerous other e-mails, more than a couple officers left To-From reports relating that Aldercreature Jason "Strippers" Ervin was threatening the commander's appointment and was not at all happy that Commander Evans wasn't kissing his ass - an all-day job if you've ever seen Ervin.

Barb West continues to prove what a tool she is, running interference for politicians. Between 015 and 010, it's hard to know which is the least respected exempt on this Department.

As a friendly reminder, running the listed RD number for non-police purposes is a violation of the Rules and Regulations and you will be suspended should the Department make it stick.

The media however, is encouraged to file some FOIA requests to see what a corrupt cesspool Ervin likes to swim in.

Aldercreature Leadfoot Complains

If you're doing something wrong, wouldn't it make more sense to .... just stop doing the wrong thing? Not if you're an aldercreature:

• A South Side alderman who got two warning notices recently after speeding around schools and parks is demanding that City Hall put up more and better signs to alert motorists to slow down.
  
  Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) introduced a resolution at this week’s City Council meeting co-signed by a dozen colleagues.
  Signs alerting motorists to an upcoming speed camera are "similar to existing speed limit signs," the resolution states.
  
  By contrast, signs warning motorists approaching a red-light camera are “uniquely designed with a traffic signal illustration," according to the resolution.
  
  The resolution demands that the Chicago Department of Transportation install “clear distinctive signs and/or striping that indicates that a motorist is approaching a school or park safety zone.”

That would kind of defeat the purpose of the cameras Leslie. They are there to generate money, not promote safety. And see how Leslie explains away her misbehavior:

• “If I’m driving in an unfamiliar neighborhood, then I’m entitled to notice to be able to comply with the law to be a safe driver in a school zone by reducing my speed. It is not fair for a driver not to have a posted sign allowing them to adjust their speed.

She's entitled. And the signs will warn her that she's got to be safe because there are cameras around, meaning that if she doesn't see the signs or cameras, she can drive like an asshole?

The logical disconnect here is pretty typical of Chicago political hacks.

FOP Vote Count Today

You can vote at the Hall in person between 0900 and 1200.

Counting will begin after lunch we are told.

The last election took a couple of hours. They count the ballots, verify bar codes, open the ballots by machine and count via machine. The counting actually runs pretty quick once they get rolling.

We'll update here this evening when an announcement is made.

FOP President Officially Gone

According to the Tribune, the vote was actually quite close:

• The embattled president of the union that represents rank-and-file Chicago police officers has been officially removed from office some three months after stirring controversy when he publicly questioned the fairness of past contract negotiations, the union announced today.
  
  Michael Shields was stripped of his position on Tuesday following a 15-11 vote by the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7’s board of directors.
  
  He had been suspended from the union since December after he sent a letter to the city’s inspector general asserting that three recent police contracts – two for officers and one for sergeants – were rigged by City Hall, union bosses and an independent arbitrator to benefit the city.

And someone posted the way the votes fell:

• Voting NO to sustain the charges filed (keep the President in office):  Dean Angelo JR (also proposed to keep vote secret); Denis Doherty; Fernando Flores; Allen Jaglowski; Rick King; John Lipka; Daniel Shields; Ron Shogren; Daniel Trevino; Mike Underwood; Pat Duckhorn
• Voting YES to sustain the charges filed (remove the President): Rich Aguilar; Michael Burke; William Burns; Terry Collins; Sidney Davis; Frank DiMaria; Mark Donahue; Kevin Graham; Anna Hanley; James Moriarty; Tim Moriarty; Tim Murphy; Danny Stover; John Caparelli; Dan Gorman
• Bill Dougherty Chair does not vote; 

It certainly would have been helpful to have these voting numbers a day or two ago before the ballots were due to be mailed back - all those NO votes on a guy who admitted that he didn't send the retro letter and made the reckless accusations that led to his removal.

Get the Ballots In

Seriously - last chance before counting on Friday.

Way to Go Detroit!

The police chief in Detroit has been on record saying that an armed populace is instrumental in keeping crime at bay. Detroit has taken his words to heart recently:

• Citizens of Detroit are sending a loud and clear message to thugs: they have guns and aren’t afraid to use them.
  
  In the span of one week, three different homeowners in the city used guns to defend themselves against intruders.
  
  The most recent incident happened around 2 am last Saturday. Two men broke into a home and tried to knock out the homeowner with a tire iron. The homeowner shot both of them, killing one. The other escaped.
  
  Around 12:30 am on Saturday, a woman was surprised by an armed man after she parked her car in her garage. She dropped her keys to distract him, reached for her own gun, and fatally shot him.

We heard one report of a third felon killed in the commission of a crime. Imagine that - guns being used properly in the defense of life leading to a timely end for at least two drains on society, maybe three. It's the kind of stuff that gives the gun grabbers nightmares.

Rahm Finds Millions More

It seems Rahm has access to the same fantasy money that Madigan has discovered:

• The Chicago Park District is exploring the possibility of expanding Soldier Field by 5,000 seats to bolster Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s long-shot bid to host the Super Bowl and, more importantly, to increase seating capacity for other revenue-generating events.
  
  “We are fighting below our weight class. That’s the way I would look at it. We capped ourselves” with a capacity of 61,500 for football and 63,500 for other events, Emanuel told the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
  “I know everybody looks at the Super Bowl. But, look at this hockey event [between the Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins], which we started last year with college hockey. You look at two years ago when we had the Mexican soccer team here. We have Liverpool coming. These things not only sell out. They sell out fast. And it’s clear that you could do more, given these super events and they would be self-financing and self-sustaining.”

Gee, if only someone, anyone, had said to the then-mayor, the Park District and the Bears that the $600 million "renovation" of Soldier Field a few years ago might have been better spent on a domed stadium, either attached to McCormick Place (or even on the wide-open, blighted west side), there might have already been a Super Bowl here, any number of additional conventions, and a revival of the hotel/restaurant business in the surrounding area.

Oh wait, everybody did say that. They were just ignored.

Madigan Finds $100 Million

Evidently, the money tree has sprouted again and is flowering a healthy crop of $100 bills:

• House Speaker Michael Madigan called today for the state to put up $100 million to boost efforts to land the presidential library and museum of President Barack Obama.
  
  The speaker joined fellow Democratic Chicago Rep. Monique Davis in introducing legislation to make the construction money available as the sweepstakes to secure the Obama library shifts into a higher gear.
  
  “Chicago is where the president got his start in public service as a community organizer and as a state senator,” Madigan said in a statement. “Housing his library and museum in the city and state where his impressive career took root is the right thing to do.”

First up, "impressive" is a dubious word to be using for this president. "Carter-esque" is more appropriate, and the peanut farmer is glad to see the mantle of "worst president" lifted from his shoulders while he's still alive.

Second, why build an empty building? This administration has made less documentation available for viewing that any in history, sealing everything from school records to executive memorandum to guidelines for everything from IRS harassment to NSA data collection policies.

Third, where the heck has this $100 million materialized from in a state that is rapidly approaching, if not passing $300 billion in total debt.

Credit Rating Spanked Again

Another downgrade:

• Chicago’s financial standing took a hit Tuesday when a major bond rating agency once again downgraded the city’s credit worthiness because of a huge government worker pension shortfall and the overall amount of money it owes.
  
  Moody’s Investor Service rated the city’s upcoming $388 million bond issuance at Baa1, down from A3, a level set last year after an unusual triple downgrade. The new rating is still investment grade, but puts the city on a lower tier. Moody’s also gave the city a “negative outlook.”
  
  The move could end up costing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration more to borrow money. Two other major agencies earlier had maintained their existing Chicago debt ratings for the upcoming city bond issue, but Moody’s move could raise interest rates if it reduces investor confidence in the city’s ability to make the required repayments.

We think we see part of the problems there - that word...."borrowing." That has a lot of negative connotations. The bond rating is working its way downward through the alphabet, approaching the "D" rating - Detroit, and that won't be good at all.

Pension Lawsuits Combined

As far as we can tell, this doesn't deal with the Chicago pensions. However, everything that's being done will establish some sort of precedent, which will, in the end, affect Chicago pensions:

• The Illinois Supreme Court today consolidated the four lawsuits challenging the state’s new pension overhaul and assigned the matter to Sangamon County for hearings.
  
  The lawsuits are brought by groups of employees, laborers and retired teachers who sought to have the pension law found unconstitutional. The lawsuits contend that scaling back cost-of-living increases, increasing the retirement age and other changes violated a constitutional provision that government worker pensions should not be diminished or impaired.

This could be good, as there won't be four separate decisions to reconcile somewhere down the road.

This could also be bad as the "one size fits all" decision limits future options.

Lake Rescue

Even in the dead of winter:

• A 20-year-old man is in critical condition after being pulled from Lake Michigan near the Adler Planetarium early this morning.
  
  Police said the man had apparently been walking on the ice when he slipped and fell through about 2:40 a.m. in the 800 block of East Solidarity Drive.
  
  A friend who was with him called 911 and reached down from an ice-covered ledge to hold his friend in place, according to police.
  
  When two officers from the Chicago Police Department's Marine Unit arrived, they lay down one in front of the other, forming a human chain with the man's friend, police said.

Nicely done Officers. Even a New York paper covered this one.

Sun Times Keeps Pushing

A few new(er) names are popping up now:

• Webb’s report leaves many questions unanswered — and raises some new ones — about the 2004 and 2011 police investigations into Koschman’s death. Among them:
  
  1. When did the police first know it was Vanecko who ran away after throwing the punch that led to Koschman’s death — and who told them?
  
  Testifying under immunity from prosecution last year, police Lt. Richard Rybicki told grand jurors he knew “pretty shortly thereafter” — within “a couple of days” — Vanecko was involved. Rybicki, who supervised the Area 3 detectives handling the case, said he discussed this with his boss, Cmdr. Michael Chasen, and recalled someone saying, “Holy crap, maybe the mayor’s nephew is involved.”
  
  Webb’s report says his 17-month investigation couldn’t determine who told Chasen and Rybicki about Vanecko.
  
  The report doesn’t say whether anyone higher in the police chain of command knew about Vanecko.

We still have a few people pointing out that the feebs aren't going to do much - that the feebs like having something gift wrapped with a bow on top so as to keep their conviction rate on public corruption cases high. To those we simply point out:

• The feds are involved. They aren't denying it and any comments made are along the lines of "It's a continuing investigation." Therefore, it might be safe to assume that something is gift wrapped. Someone is wearing a bow. Somebody is/was/will be talking.

The Sun Times asks 15 questions. Some are nonsense, but more than a few have the potential to produce answers that will make a lot of other people uncomfortable to the point of thinking about saving their own skins. First seat on the bus is always the window seat with the view.

Trib Continues to See No Evil

Anything missing here?

• A trio of thieves snatched several high-end handbags this afternoon before fleeing in an SUV that was waiting outside Bloomingdale's on Michigan Avenue.
  
  About 3:30 p.m., a man and two women entered the store located on the 900 block of North Michigan Avenue and grabbed several handbags, said Police News Affairs [...].
  
  The trio ran out of the store and fled in a white SUV, he said.
  
  The group was described as between the ages of 18 to 25.
  
  As of 5:45 p.m., no one was in custody for the thefts and police were investigating.

Well heck, we've just about got 'em surrounded. Word is that the detectives have about 200 suspects upstairs all waiting for lineups. Now if they could just find an ET to process.

Hmmm.....No Blood

5,000 Concealed Carry permits issued and not a single crime, shooting, busted streetlight or bloody street corner attributed to a lawfully owned/carried weapon. What the heck is everyone waiting for? Don't gun owners know that Rahm, McJersey and the media are waiting for the first instance?

And who knows what the next 24 hours will bring?

Four Dead

Not a good ending to February, not a good start to March:

• Four men were killed and five other people were injured in shootings on the city’s South and West sides since Saturday morning.

Including a pillar of the community:

• The 66-year-old proprietor of a Gold Coast framing company was gunned down Saturday at the Southwest Side factory complex where he had worked for 30 years, police and family members said.
  
  Described by his son as a jack of all trades and animal lover, Herbert Goode was the owner of Silver Cloud Galleries, a custom framing company with a storefront at 20 W. Ohio St.

That is a shame.

Takes a Lickin' Keeps on Tickin'

Someone e-mailed us a link to a pic of the new Commander of 011:

No, not the guy on the right - the one dazed one in the center. A guy who can take a stick to the head - at least you know he wasn't hiding in the office during NATO.

Crime Down, But Homicides Up

Do the media morons even read what they write? Channel 7 posts this yesterday:

• Chicago Police say crime in the city is down again.
  
  The Police Department says murders were down 25 percent last month.
  
  Shooting incidents were down 38 percent.
  
  Crime overall declined 28 percent compared to February 2013.

That's it, they cite nothing, just percentages probably spoon-fed to them by Media Affairs.

The Slum-Times has this:

• Chicago finished February with 20 murders — tied for the fourth lowest total for the month since 1957, police said.
  

Fourth lowest? That's great. Only then they bury this a few paragraphs down:

• Overall, murders were up from February 2013, when the city recorded only 13 killings — the fewest of any month on record, police said.

So....that's an increase, right? Every other time the Department releases stats, they compare "...this time last year..." or "the same month the previous year," but now with something like a 65% jump during the 4th snowiest and 3rd coldest winter on record, they've decided to feed the goofs at Channel 7 some percentages and ABC doesn't even bother to look behind the curtain.

So what happens when it warms up?

The Changes

From what we can determine, three, count 'em, one, two, three, changes late Friday evening:

• James Jones from 020 to 003 (lateral)
• Glenn Evans from 003 to 011 (lateral)
• Lt. Kevin (?) Duffin to Acting Commander of 020

We have no idea why the AdMin Fax labels Duffin as "Acting Commander."

What Did Al Say Now?

From the comments:

• What, no comments about what the idiot first deputy said at compstat? He didn't even realize he was being offensive, that's the beauty of it. Best and brightest, my ass.

Let us know what he said and we'll post it. Al is always entertaining. He's like our very own Joe Biden.