OT Cuts Coming

The OT Train is pulling into the station - where it will park for a while:

• Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the city of Chicago “can’t afford” police overtime expenses at the current level and called on Superintendent Eddie Johnson to develop a cost-cutting plan.
  
  Lightfoot said she’s “angry and frustrated” with the department’s overtime expenses, which totaled $67.6 million in the first six months of the year, according to a Sun-Times report.
  
  Asked who’s to blame for the overspending, Lightfoot said, “Every department head has to take responsibility for what goes on.”
  
  “I’ve talked to Superintendent Johnson about it. We’re going to challenge him to come up with a very specific proposal. When you’ve got 13,000 sworn members, there should be no reason why they blow their budget,” Lightfoot said. “We’ve already started a conversation about what we’re going to do next year to make sure that doesn’t happen. We can’t afford it. The truth is, we can’t afford it.”

Time to look at cutting the fat Groot.

• How many Chiefs do we have? Six? You need three, tops, one for Patrol, one for Investigations, one for Admin bullshit.
• How many Deputy Chiefs? Nineteen? You need maybe six like we had 20 years ago. One for each Patrol Area, One for each Detective Area. Maybe one spare for furlough relief.
• How many Captains? Forty? Redundant - eliminate them all and put their cars back in the vehicle pool .
• How many officers are there compiling statistics to make pretty charts for you? It numbers on the hundreds, but it should be zero. And those are the people who shouldn't be getting Duty Availability - they aren't available for diddly shit.

And stop canceling everyone's holidays off. That costs you a couple of million every major holiday. Knock it off.

Look at that - we just saved you about eight million.

Chime in with your suggestions.

Weekend Ends With a Bang Bang Bang

The Sun Times jumped the gun with a count of 1 and 26.

HeyJackass clarified it with 3 and 24 early Sunday.

Everyone got restless with the upcoming warm weather:

• Final Stupidity Tally: 7 killed, 28 wounded

That includes an extra body tossed in on Monday.

Will we finally see some accountability today?

No, of course not.

The Return of Ric Flair

Also from Sneed the other day:

• Sneed has learned former Illinois State Police Chief Leo Schmitz, former commander of the Englewood Police 7th District, has just been hired as the new chief of public safety for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
  
  Word has been circulating in the police chat rooms Schmitz might have been under consideration for Chicago’s top job.

This might prove entertaining.

Soccer Hooligans?

On top of all the other crap we have to deal with, hooliganism is making an appearance at Soldier Field?

• Sure could have used the mounted unit @ the soccer game tonight. Total shit show! Activated city wide tact teams for support. Very unruly drunken crowd! 
• Soldier Field soccer crowds up for grabs tonight! Crowd throwing projectiles and smoke bombs. Climbing the Bears statues.

What the heck happened? And where were the citywide units? Oh wait, they don't exist any more.

Shots Fired at Police

Arrested and charged:

• A 30-year-old man is charged with attempted murder after he allegedly shot a man and then fired shots at police officers Friday in Garfield Park.
  
  Milo Brown faces felony charges of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated discharge of a firearm, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, aggravated fleeing and disregarding two traffic control devices, according to Chicago police.
  
  About 6:38 p.m. on Sept. 6, officers in a marked squad car allegedly saw Brown and another male get out of a gray Dodge Caravan in the 3800 block of West Adams Street and fire at a group of people standing on the street, Chicago police said.
  
  The shooters then turned their gunfire towards the officers before driving off in the Dodge, police said. The officers did not return fire and were not struck in the shooting.

From initial reports, the officers literally happened to drive up on a hit gone wrong and attracted the attention of the shooters, who thankfully missed. Someone was definitely watching out for them. Nice job apprehending the jagoffs.

Be careful out there. There is no fear of consequences if they're shooting at marked squads.

Inflating Numbers

Are tourism officials lying to Chicagoans?

• Like an unusually early spring robin, the headlines have appeared every January for most of the past decade:
  
  “Chicago sets new tourism record with nearly 58 million visitors in 2018.”
  
  “Record-breaking number of tourists visit Chicago in 2017.”
  
  “Chicago welcomed a record number of tourists in 2016.”
  
  According to figures from Choose Chicago, the city’s convention and tourism office, the number of visitors — including business and pleasure travelers — has been rising steadily since the 2010 post-recession low.
  
  “We didn’t just ride the national wave; we’re ahead of it,” outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in January when the latest figures were released. “No city has seen that kind of exponential growth, from 39 million to more than 57 million.”
  
  OK, so tourism in Chicago is on the rise. But is it really increasing faster than everywhere else? Probably not.
  

Our readers pointed out (and we agreed) that Rahm was lying through his teeth about the numbers, probably trying to include day trippers and people staying at BnB's or relatives homes and he was most certainly downplaying the impact shootings and downtown wildings had during his second term.

Waukegan Getting it Done

While Chicago pols have their thumbs up their asses:

• Helipads and posh villas. Italianate fountains and dine-in movie theaters. Saltwater pools and cavernous concert halls.
  
  And lots of slots.
  
  They’re all included in a slate of packages being offered by a handful of developers vying for the opportunity to run a newly authorized casino in Waukegan, according to documents released by the city last week.
  
  The north suburb received six formal proposals, though two of those bids are tied together. That means city officials are mulling five competing development plans for a gambling den, all at the site of the shuttered Fountain Square shopping center at Lakehurst Road and Northpoint Boulevard.

More and more missed opportunities. Turn the McCormick Place venue into something temporary and start working on a lakefront casino and port for boats to sail in to gamble.

Another 30+ Weekend?

The Sun Times tries to get a jump on everyone:

• One person is dead and at least 26 others have been wounded in shootings across the city of Chicago this weekend.

Then we guess they hope you won't go back and check the actual totals at a site like HeyJackass.com, where the running totals are slightly higher:

• 4:00p Stupidity Tally: 3 killed, 24 wounded

And that's with eight hours left in the day and Special Ed still keeping his job along with all of his appointees.

Jamal Again? (UPDATE)

Can anyone confirm?

• Is anyone covering Ja'Mal and his band of SJWs as they close down TWO Vietnamese Nail Shops?
  In the latest case they BROKE OUT ALL THE WINDOWS OF THE BUSINESS.
  No coverage. No outrage about his racist statements and actions.
  You can see it all unfold on his Facebook and Instagram feeds.

Wait - someone is shutting down an actual business in the ghetto via threats, intimidation and property damage...kind of like some other socialists did in Germany during the 1930s...and no one takes any notice?

Are we going to be hearing about a "Nail Shop Deserts" now?

UPDATE: So it wasn't Jamal himself:

• A community activist was arrested after vandalizing a South Side nail salon. The activist claimed the salon’s owner has disrespected black women.
  
  [...]
  
  Tyrone Muhammad, a community activist, responded the next day by throwing bricks at the salon’s windows. He was immediately arrested and charged with misdemeanor criminal damage to property. He posted video of the incident on his Facebook page.
  
  Thursday, Muhammad defended his action and said he’s met with the owner before to address issues at the shop, but nothing has changed. “If you see the tape, you’ll see me going in warning the sisters to clear this area,” he said. “We’re pretty much at this point commandeering this place and any neighborhood store that disrespect our women and children.”

So "Disrespect" now equals "Property Damage."

Makes sense....in a ghetto sort of way.

Jamal immediately disassociated himself from this pair of pants activist:

• "Those aren't my pants!" he declared loudly and repeatedly.
  Activists have been staging a boycott and protests following a series of incidents in recent months at the nail salon. Ja’Mal Green shared videos that showed a worker repeatedly putting his hands on female customers. One video shows the owner grabbing a wallet from a customer. The owner was taken into custody, but he says that case was thrown out.
  Green said he had nothing to do with Muhammad’s response to the situation, but wants to continue to put the focus on how black women are being treated at businesses where they spend their money.

It's a two-way street moron. Pretty soon it'll be necessary to travel a few extra miles, AND pay in advance. Then we'll see the "racist" card played again.

Kass to Pay Chaplains

Kass must be trolling our archives for story ideas and he picked a big one this weekend:

• Why can’t Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle just get along and end their feud?
  
  [...]
  
  The conflict between them is rooted in Preckwinkle’s good intentions paving a road to hell: low bonds for alleged offenders, including some charged with gun crimes, and a broken home electronic monitoring system. The low bonds and EM programs pushed by Preckwinkle and her protege, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and, to some extent, by Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans, have reduced the population of Cook County Jail, saving an estimated $160 million a year.
  
  [...]
  
  [...] it’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe, and some violent offender out on low bond, or placed on the broken electric monitoring system, will light up a neighborhood. And Chicagoans will witness the shrieks of the survivors in endless news video loops. We already see that kind of thing all too often. And only Lightfoot and the police are held to account. That’s unfair.
  
  But eventually, a shooting by someone on home monitoring for another gun charge will involve multiple victims. It will again focus national attention on Chicago’s river of violence.

At last report, Dart can't find nearly 500 inmates currently out on bond. That number may or may not have changed slightly in the intervening months, but the fact is that multiple times a week, a convicted felon is released on either an I-Bond or EM and multiple other times a week, that felon is arrested again, occasionally for another felony.

Any arrest is a violation of Bail Bond and requires an appearance before a judge, but then the judges just tack on another I-Bond.

We've been pointing this out for years, so a quick hundred bucks to the Chaplains from Kass is only fair. MAybe he can get some traction where we couldn't since all the heavy lifting is done.

Judge Jails Witnesses?

More please!

• With a few days to go before the expected start of the trial for two purported gang members accused of killing 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee, a Cook County judge has locked up three witnesses whose testimony is crucial to prosecutors.
  
  And the judge has issued an arrest warrant out for a fourth, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
  
  Judge Thaddeus Wilson ordered all four witnesses into custody in late August, after they failed to respond to subpoenas from prosecutors preparing for the trial of Dwright Boone-Doty and Corey Morgan.
  
  Wilson in recent months has repeatedly bemoaned the slow pace of the case, which landed on his docket more than three years ago. At a hearing Wednesday, one of the witnesses, a 20-year-old woman, sobbed as she was led out of the courtroom after Wilson ordered her held in Cook County Jail without bond.

At least there's plenty of room in the jail since Dart has been letting everyone else go.

Um....Duh?

Sneed is such a tease sometimes, asking the questions that everyone else knows the answers to:

• Is the city’s police blotter in the process of soaking up new ink?
  
  Sneed keeps hearing rumbles Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s minions have been quietly trolling for a new top cop for Chicago.
  
  Well, maybe not officially yet.
  
  Lightfoot may not be aggressively searching for a new police superintendent, but the meeting next month in Chicago of the world’s largest professional association of police leaders is raising eyebrows.
  
  “It’s a perfect place to not only check out the who’s who of law enforcement throughout the country, but conduct interviews,” said a top police source.
  
  Lightfoot, who respects Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson (who is hoping to keep his job), is frustrated with the city’s alarming summer shooting stats and an uptick in violence.
  
  It’s been rumored the mayor may begin to look for a new police chief when fall hits.

Of course she's looking. Every mayor is always looking if they have half a brain. Even Groot, who might only have a quarter of a brain.

But now there's an uptick? We wish Groot would make up her mind about crime being down or up. There are delicate Contract negotiations underway and if crime is down, then police deserve a pretty big raise, especially with the economy booming for the past few years. But if there's an uptick, then Special Ed is on the chopping block (as every supernintendo is), subject to the political winds of the day. And you know Groot wants some progressive moron in charge to put the final nails in the CPD coffin.

Memorial Ride

A little over a week away (click for larger version):

Always a good time.

(comments closed here)

Hey Groot - Want a Few Million?

Our stat guy has put into a simple chart what many readers have proposed over the years:

Chicago is over-governed to say the least. The trick here is getting enough aldercreatures to vote to eliminate over half of their jobs. That's going to mean a referendum of some sort and we've all seen how Burke and his fellow assholes crowd actual issues off the ballot with questions about plastic straws and other such bullshit.

Swiping

FOP has a statement:

• The Lodge has received many calls and questions about the proposed Time and Attendance Swiping Program. We have received a Draft Order which outlines the program.
  
  There are several issues within this policy which the Lodge believes are mandatory subjects of collective bargaining. Our attorneys have put the Department on notice by demanding to meet in order to negotiate those issues.
  
  If need be, we will explore any other legal options that may be available to us.

Which means pretty much dick. They're going to let the City steamroll them again and not even bother to file a suit that every other FOP Lodge has won in terms of being paid for the hours and required duties that make up a complete tour. And we're pretty sure that HQ and assorted special units won't be doing anything that resembles swiping in any way, shape or form.

OT "Surges"

It's almost like we're still short staffed:

• The Chicago Police Department spent $67.6 million on overtime through the first six months of this year despite a ten-year high in manpower and an all-time high in technology.
  
  With 13,350 sworn officers, strategic deployment centers in every district and area and shootings and homicides dropping, there appears to be no reason why police overtime can’t return to the $46 million-a-year that it was in 2011.
  
  That’s when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel eliminated 1,400 police vacancies and started relying on runaway overtime to mask his shrinking police department.
  
  But records released to the Chicago Sun-Times in response to a Freedom of Information request show just the opposite.

The thing about OT is it isn't all Chicago money. There are state grants and federal grants that have to spent a certain way on certain personnel in certain areas. But we also warned the bean counters - beware of what you wish for.

Coppers are a generous lot. They volunteer. They donate time, money, sweat to all sorts of causes. And much of the time they did it for the promise of a late lunch or a courtesy duck here and there.

Was there abuse? Of course there was. There are human beings in the process, there is going to be some waste. But what was gained far outstripped the cost.

Then came swiping. Bean counters. Accountants. And what was once done for free, isn't any more.

New Site

Introducing The Chicago Contrarian:

• Commentary on Chicago politics, law and order, and media.

You may recognize the author via a couple of links we're thrown up on the main page and appearing a number of comments. He's back-filling with previously published articles and is certainly worth a moment of your time.

Wow. Just Wow

Can you believe this shit that Sneed uncovered?

• This is it.
  
  Jussie Smollett is smokin’.

O_o

We'll just leave that one to the Keesing Bandit. Continuing on:

• “My client from the beginning has maintained his innocence and disputed the city’s allegations,” said William J. Quinlan, of The Quinlan Law Firm, who filed the motion. He noted that “it’s going to be very difficult for the city to prevail in making a case my client should pay for overtime for a case ultimately dismissed by the state’s attorney.
  
  “It’s ridiculous and a stretch to require him to do so.”
  
  But the latest court filing contends even if Smollett did make a false report, there is no way the city can assert he would have known the city would investigate — and investigate it to the extent cops did.

They are actually claiming that the CPD shouldn't have investigated so thoroughly. And they're going to go in front of a judge and argue this.

Can you imagine the outrage if the Department did that with - oh let's just go out on a limb here - child abuse? Rapes? Murders (or at least murders where actual innocent bystanders got murdered)? The outrage would be palpable. Charges of racism flying around everywhere. Claims of preferential treatment for certain people (or folks) based on connections.

Oh, who are we kidding? That happens already. Still, to base a legal argument on this is pretty arrogant.

The Rise of the Vigilante?

We joke - with good reason - that all CPD policy originates in New York. And where they can't make it work, CPD really fucks it up beyond any semblance of functioning policy.

AceofSpades blog spots a trend we could get behind:

• I keep saying this, but if the police cannot or will not protect the citizenry, the citizenry will resort to the means of maintaining order that persisted for 10,000 years before the advent of bobbies: self-help and vigilantism.

Here's the story:

• An enraged driver took the law into his own hands in Brooklyn Monday when he fatally mowed down a cyclist after the pedal-pusher tried to break into his car and then slashed the motorist’s girlfriend, police sources said.
  
  Korey Johnson was leaving Woodhull Hospital with his girlfriend at around 6 a.m. Monday morning when he spotted Donald Robert allegedly trying to break into several vehicles parked on Marcus Garvey Boulevard — including Johnson’s Jeep Grand Cherokee, according to a high-ranking law-enforcement source.
  
  Johnson, 41, confronted the would-be burglar and Robert answered by slashing his girlfriend on the arm with a screwdriver, the police source said. Robert, 47, then hopped on a bicycle and sped off — at which point Johnson got into his Jeep and zoomed the wrong way down the boulevard in pursuit of Robert.
  
  The chase spilled onto Broadway, and Johnson caught up to Robert near Ellery Street, where the Jeep hit three parked cars and rammed into the cyclist, the sources said.

The suspect car burglar had quite the record - nearly forty arrests, and the initial victim seems to know that any justice meted out wouldn't be by the system. So he went around the system.

Amusingly, the initial victim, now offender, himself had forty arrests. So it's what we'd call "asshole on asshole crime" and two mopes off the street - one dead, one arrested. But we don't think anyone is going to be very surprised at people taking the law into their own hands if they think (or know) that the police can't/won't/refuse/are reluctant to take action.

Nervous Pols?

We certainly hope so:

• When Jeffrey Sallet took over as boss of the Chicago FBI in late 2017, one of the biggest political corruption investigations in the city’s history was quietly simmering.
  
  A year later, it boiled over with the FBI’s public raid on the City Hall offices of powerful Ald. Edward Burke, touching off a seemingly never-ending series of bombshell developments, from a sweeping indictment against Burke to the revelation that his longtime colleague, Ald. Daniel Solis, had been secretly wearing a wire.
  
  As Sallet prepares to depart later this month for an executive position at FBI headquarters in Washington, he says there is still a lot more still to be revealed about the ongoing corruption probe. And while he won’t be here to see it, Sallet said he’s proud to have helped send a message to politicians "that it is not business as usual.”
  
  “Our corruption program is extremely busy,” Sallet said in an interview Tuesday from the FBI offices on the West Side. “While there have been plenty of overt actions that have occurred, the city of Chicago should expect more to come.”

The feebs should be doing a lot more public corruption cases, and here in the Windy City, it's like fish in a barrel. They ought to be in the Courts as well - Greylord was shut down far too early because the FBI completely underestimated the extent of the corruption in Cook County. They could have tripled their conviction totals without even stretching.

And there is absolutely no reason that 15 aldercreatures shouldn't be in prison right this very moment.