Taking it Easy

Slow posting today - family obligations. Regularly scheduled inanity will continue as soon as possible. Open post for now.

Command Changes

As of some time this morning while the world slept:

• Michael Patton from Airport Deputy Chief Area 3

• Lt. Leo P. Schmitz to Commander, 8th District

• James G. Carroll lateral from 008 to Airport

More to come shortly. Believe it.

Scandal Brewing?

Please, not another one.

• For more than a year, the CBS 2 Investigators have been exposing the accident chasers -- towing companies that rip off accident victims.
  
  Pam Zekman reports on a chaser who has taken abusive tactics to new heights -- illegally impersonating cops to shake down accident victims for exorbitant fees.
  
  The company is called Collision Towing, and it does a brisk business on the city's Northwest Side.

Here's the problem:

• It's a crime to impersonate a cop and Chicago Police Internal Affairs is investigating Athans and the police officers who help him.

We were wondering why the Ethics Video (starring Charles Williams!) has been making a reappearance at roll calls the past few days. It shows a couple of scenarios where coppers "recommend" a board up service, a tow service (ding ding!) and some lawyer friend. We guess this scandal is about to break and downtown wants to get ahead of it.

Keep and Bear Arms

A bunch of people have sent us this story:

• WASHINGTON - The District gun ban has been overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals. On Friday, the court stated that prohibiting a person from keeping a firearm is unconstitutional. Judges cited the Second Amendment, which states, "...a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
• In a 2-1 decision, the appellate court reversed the decision on all counts, and held that the activities protected by the Second Amendment "are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia."

Rue St. Michel and others have linked to this article which spotlights the persons behind the lawsuit that led to the gun rights victory:

• George Lyon says he wants a gun in his home because it's his constitutional right. Tom Palmer says he used a gun to ward off a beating. And Gillian St. Lawrence says her shotgun is useless because it has to be unloaded and have its trigger locked.

  They are among the six city residents who successfully challenged the District's long-standing gun law, winning a major ruling Friday in a case that could reach the Supreme Court. The three men and three women share a strong desire to keep guns legally in their homes in what they say is a violent city.

And yet, in Illinois, gun grabbers are attempting to run rampant. Perhaps it's time for the ISRA and other organizations to look into using federal court precedents to stop Blago and Daley from running roughshod over this most basic of rights?

Aldercreatures Question - Then Cave In

And we're on the hook for $500 million, just like that.

• Prior to the voice vote, aldermen acknowledged they were voting "blindly" on a layered guarantee they know nothing about.

  It assumes a Chicago Olympics will turn a $525 million profit and that — even if it loses money — that a $200 million cushion will be enough to shield Chicago taxpayers. Chief Financial Officer Dana Levenson reiterated Monday that the chances of actually tapping Chicago tax dollars are "practically nonexistent."

  "We really are placing a lot of trust in your assessments, your judgements, your recommendations and your predictions. Other than that, we're voting blindly," said Ald. Tom Allen (38th).

Way to stick up for your constituency there aldercratures! Vote blind, trust the mayor and his handpicked bean counters. Do we really have to dredge up the last couple of decades of cost overruns, not the least of which is the ongoing O'Hare debacle that is costing $400 million OVER the original $2.8 billions dollars - and that's just the FIRST phase of a $15 billion project.

We are so doomed.

Bloody Monday

A return to the "If it bleeds, it leads" news reporting - at least according to the Channel 2 News:

• Two people were killed Sunday when a Chicago-bound South Shore commuter train traveling nearly 80 mph struck their car at County Line Road near Gary.
• Two men were killed and another injured Sunday night after the car they were riding in crashed into a building on the West Side.
• Eight people -- some of them children -- were injured in a hit-and-run crash in the South Side Englewood neighborhood early Monday.
• A woman suspected of starting a series of fires near Wrigley Field, including one that killed four people, was charged Monday with murder, authorities said.

And if that wasn't enough, 7 people had a pretty rough Monday across the city:

• Seven people were shot Monday on the West and South Sides in three separate shootings, police said. Two of those shootings occurred on the West Side, while one occurred in the Beverly neighborhood on the South Side

One might begin (or continue) to ask questions in regard to manpower numbers and deployment tactics. Anyone know how many of these shootings took place in actual "DOC" areas?

Don't worry though - the last line of the article says it all:

• Police officials said they were increasing their patrols in the areas

March Madness

Over at the Tribune, they've got an interactive bracket so you can fill it out lickity split and get your ....um ...toothpicks, yeah, your wagering toothpicks in to all the office pools!

Not that we advocate gambling with toothpicks in any way, shape or form. Those pointy sticks could take out an eye! Better to use slips of paper... green paper. With pictures of dead guys on them.

Eternal Goodbyes

From the Sun Times on line:

• 'End of watch,' in the language of law enforcement, means a tour of duty ends. For some, that moment meant an eternal goodbye. End of Watch will be in bookstores by Thursday.
• Edward M. Burke is a former Chicago policeman, a practicing attorney and, for the last 38 years, alderman of the 14th Ward. He is the dean of the Chicago City Council and its longest continuously serving member. He is chairman of its Finance Committee. Co-author of Inside the Wigwam, Chicago Presidential Conventions 1860-1996, he is a well-known Chicago public speaker. He is married to Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne M. Burke.

  Thomas J. O'Gorman is a Chicago writer, historian-in-residence of the Irish Fellowship Club of Chicago, a contributor to Town&Country magazine and a political speechwriter in Chicago's City Hall, as well as the former managing editor of the World of Hibernia magazine. He is the author of Frank Lloyd Wright's Chicago (Thunder Bay Press, 2004). His latest books, Strange, But True: Chicago -- Tales of the Windy City (Globe Pequot Press) and Chicago in Photography (Gramercy Press) were both released in December 2005.

And on line they have a number of excerpts from the book detailing deaths in the line of duty from 1919, 1920, 1921, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1974. Anyone heard anything about this book?

Southside Irish Parade

Bringing back an old favorite:

Any good stories from the parade? Did the "threat" of zero tolerance that was suggested in the comments section actually materialize or was it just the standard silliness as in years past?

Channel 2 has a slide show from the parade.

The Infamous Memo

In all it's glory:

Well, he kind of addresses the fact that too many squad cars don't have new updated PDT's. The rah-rah of "patrolling smarter" is standard boilerplate. What's up with "The Chicago Police Department is mission oriented" drivel? Does that even make sense? It sounds like someone who's been middle management their whole career and needs something catchy to say that doesn't actually mean anything.

We can see where many people took offense at the opening statement of paragraph two:

• The days of handing out cars [sic] keys and sending cars out to just ride around are long gone.

That's a pretty big brush to be painting a lot of people with. Most coppers are pretty self motivated - they didn't take this job just to ride around, but that type of individual does seem to be more prevalent nowadays. Why is that?

Perhaps it's more a failure of leadership than a failing of police officers? Perhaps the mission has become faulty? The vision blurred? The goals compromised? Everything seems driven by numbers. We're too tired to actually parse this thing at the moment, but we thought we'd put it up so everyone else could take a shot at it.

Lawsuit Revelations

From the Tribune:

• Christina Eilman was at Midway Airport dancing in circles, ranting about the price of oil, and screaming at a woman who asked her not to play with a seeing-eye dog when Chicago police officers came across her for a second day in a row last spring, according to court documents filed today.
  
  Eilman was abducted, sexually assaulted and suffered severe brain trauma in a seven-story fall from a Chicago Housing Authority high-rise shortly after she was released from police custody into an unfamiliar and high-crime neighborhood last May.
• Police spokeswoman Monique Bond said today that department officials had not read the new court documents and could not comment.
  
  The police department has protocols that require officers to transport mentally ill people who have not committed serious crimes to nearby hospitals for mental health evaluations, but police never sought any mental health care for Eilman in the more than 27 hours she was in custody.

27 hours in custody? For a misdemeanor? Hell, most misdemeanors that are arrested early beat the officers out of the station and are home hours before they are. This thing just gets uglier and uglier and we know the media doesn't exactly go out of its way to paint the Department in anything like a good light. But we'd like to see a little blame laid at the feet of the family that let this woman fly across the country for a questionable job. No one was watching her then.

Daylight Savings Comes Early

As in it starts in about an hour or two from now - and weeks earlier than usual. Spring ahead - lose an hour of sleep.

Open post while you think about that extra hour of sleep you'll be getting sometime at the end of October.

Gee - Only Half a Billion

As predicted, Daley put the taxpayers on the hook for up to $500 million dollars in an effort to secure the Olympics for Chicago in 2016. (Sun Times; Channel 7)

• The city is putting up $500 million in collateral in case the games are a bust. But as they unveil a new model of the 2016 venues and announce swimming events will be moved from the UIC to a new aquatic center in Douglas Park on the West Side, the committee says $700 million of private dollars are added as a guarantee against loss and that money will be spent before any city dollars minimizing the risk to Chicago taxpayers.

  "We think the chances of that happening are practically nonexistent."

And we think the chances of the City having to delve into that half a billion are almost guaranteed. Perhaps someone remembers every single construction project in the city always comes in OVER budget? And late? And loses money? Hell, the city can't even get a freaking parking lot to make enough money to cover it's own bond issue.

How about the fact that NO Olympics in the last 30 years has made money aside from Los Angeles in 1984? Montreal just paid off its Olympic debt from the 1976 games last year. Britain is suddenly on the hook for FOUR TIMES the original cost estimate for the 2012 Games. And lord forbid there is another terror attack on US soil before the 2016 Games when preparations are in full swing (if a US city wins). Whoever keeps putting in the comment sections that the financial gains for an Olympics are astronomical is smoking crack.

We'll go out on a limb and say that these Games will lose money, cost the taxpayers millions upon millions, and certain connected construction companies will make around a billion dollars. Check back with us in 9 years.

Why is This a Story?

What the hell is the media smoking these days? Because we really really want some of it:

• A raid at a Northern Indiana plastics company Friday ended with 36 people arrested and many enraged.
• But what was most disturbing to immigration reform activists was the way the detained were processed. Jail officials numbered their hands with marker. Officials at McHenry drew odd numbers for men, even numbers for women and X's for those from Mexico, detainees said.
• One detained woman is diabetic and said her legs were shackled as she was jailed with a common criminal. Her hand still bears the mark of those who arrested her.
• "The marking is an insult," said Emma Lozano from Pueblo Sin Fronteras. "They treat these people as if they're numbers and not as human beings. But worse, is that they're being held and given nothing to eat and treated as if they are criminals."

Ummm...ex-squeeze me? These people ARE COMMON CRIMINALS. They are here ILLEGALLY. As in "against the law." And boy oh boy oh boy, we better hope that the NBC News crews never get a hold of our CB# system - the first thing done after initial booking is a number written on the subject in permanent marker? Don't our Mass Arrest kits come with permanent markers for marking arrestees? And don't the Mass Arrest Orders read that not only will a number be written on the subject, the star of the arresting officer will also be written somewhere?

What a bunch of morons.

Handcuff Escape Video

Interesting little tidbit.

It pays to be at least aware of what can be done by skilled persons with the right tools. Cuff behind and double lock and pay attention to what your prisoner is doing in the back seat. It will at least slow them down.

Anyone actually ever seen anyone do this?

Residency?

Yes, we got all the e-mails and comments and phone calls. And you're probably all wondering why this post didn't go up as soon as we got the Sun Times delivered this morning. Well, first up, we sleep most days. Second, we don't get the Sun Times delivered - we prefer it on line. Third, we needed something to post at midnight like we usually do. Anyway...

• The Chicago Teachers Union scored a major victory Wednesday in its two-decade fight to dump a requirement that Chicago teachers live in the city.

  A bill to prohibit the rule passed the Illinois House nearly unanimously, 105 to 4. It now moves to the Senate.

• Mayor Daley has been a big proponent. He has argued that teachers will invest more in the schools if they live in the city.

Um, yeah. Chicago Public Schools are a national example of what public education should be, right? Educators from around the globe are trekking to Chicago to see how we do it, hmm?

Now, 105 to 4 is an impressive showing. One would wonder how they managed that. And one would also wonder whether any other union was asking that question. And whether or not they can carry that majority over to the Senate.

The good news? We finally have precedent for overturning an overly onerous work rule.

Corruption? Where?

And now a buddy of the governor's wife gets dragged in.

• A Chicago woman with business ties to Gov. Blagojevich's wife has been charged with bilking taxpayers out of at least $2.1 million through a state drug-screening contract the woman’s firm held since the early 1990s.

  Prosecutors allege Anita Mahajan defrauded the state and the Department of Children and Family Services through her company K.K. Bio-Science, which had “numerous no-bid contracts” with the state, said Assistant State’s Attorney Patricia Woulfe.

Now who have thought that a close friend of the governor's wife could possibly have been committing fraud on such a grand scale? Channel 2 has more. Channel 5, too.

But that's not all! County Government continues to steal unabated:

• Cook County government is missing more than $500,000 in cash, recent audits found, and a kickback scheme involving surplus autos is suspected.

  A spokesman for County Board President Todd Stroger said he's "deeply disturbed by the findings" and is asking the county's inspector general to investigate.

• $289,000 shortfall in a fund that holds inmate money for use at the jail commissary.

  A $240,000 deficit in a fund that holds money for heirs who can't be located.

  An auction with 65 surplus county cars sold in 35 minutes -- many to the same person, under Blue Book value and so fast that others complained they had no chance to bid.

  Moving companies increased fees for eviction services 30 percent without a contract or board approval -- charging a total of almost $1 million a year.

At least we're showing our best face to the Olympic Committee, eh? Channel 7 also covers.

Six Continents

Just had a visit from Aruba. We are now officially read on 6 continents. If we corner Antarctica, we've covered the globe and we can finally shut down this blog. There will be nothing left to accomplish at that point.

Anyone have friends in Antarctica?

Open post for now.

Gun Grabbers Go Nuts

Rue St. Michel is covering this.

We also got a number of e-mails concerning Illinois Senate Bill 16. The Illinois State Rifle Association is taking the lead

• The Illinois Senate is about to debate a ban on semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.
  
  If passed, you would have 90 days to register your guns with the State Police or face arrest and felony prosecution.
  
  If you were caught with an AR-15 and 4 magazines, you’d get life in prison.
  
  THREE THINGS YOU MUST DO TO SAVE YOUR GUN RIGHTS

  1. Beginning on Tuesday, March 6th, call your State Senator and POLITELY tell him or her that you are opposed to Senate Bill 16 – the Daley Assault Weapons Ban – and that you would like them to vote against Senate Bill 16 when it comes to the floor. If you do not know who your State Senator is, then visit the following web site: www.ilga.gov and then click on the “Legislator Lookup” link in the lower right hand corner of the home page. Follow the instructions at that link.
  
  2. Pass this alert along to all your gun-owing friends; tell them to call their State Senators also.
  
  3. Please post this alert to any and all Internet Bulletin Boards and Internet sites to which you belong.

  IF YOU DO NOT ACT NOW, YOU MAY HAVE NO GUNS LEFT BY THE 4TH OF JULY

Un-freaking believable. Increased taxes and no guns. Keep voting for democrats people.

Back to Work

Well, as we didn't buy lottery tickets in either Georgia or New Jersey, it looks like we'll be headed to work with only visions of eventually winning enough money to one day quit to keep us warm. Oh well.

As a side note, we noticed in some of the comment sections people telling us that we are appearing sporadically on Department computers. Either the filter isn't holding or someone downtown is removing the filter on occasion to check us out and then putting it back in place before someone discovers it.

In the meantime, open post people.