Interesting Idea

If the FOP wants to really be a pain in Groot's ass, they ought to seriously look into this:

• A new group appointed to review the Chicago Police Department’s use-of-force policy came under immediate fire Monday after its community co-chair referred to police officers as “psychopaths with guns.”

The FOP should demand that the city take one day notifications from drug testing unit random call-ins and instead, ask the officers to submit to a nationally recognized psychiatric test. Then when the results come back as "not psychotic," sue the shit out of this ignoramus.

This Made Us Chuckle

And lately, it's been pretty hard to find a laugh:

• OT - "Big Ern" Cato put a blanket CR on the mounted unit. During the rioting in 011 he was screaming on the radio that the mounted units were just standing at the intersections and not actively engaging the rioters. When the chief arrived he explained that the blue traffic "horses" are design to block of streets and are not part of the mounted unit and are not to be ridden by police officers.

This pretty much captures the current Area 4 leadership in a nutshell.

Officer Wounded

Third time in tens days or so:

• A Chicago police officer was shot in the knee Monday night on the South Side.
  
  Around 6:30 p.m., officers tried to stop someone in the 5000 block of South King Drive in the Bronzeville neighborhood who was wanted for aggravated assault with a handgun on June 10 in the 5000 block of South Washington Park Court, Chicago police said. As officers approached, the person pulled out a gun and fired shots at the officers, hitting one in the right knee.
  
  The officer was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, police said.
  
  The officers did not fire shots during the incident, police said.

You know what we haven't seen? Any comment from City Hall decrying the violence against the police. We've had near daily attacks on the FOP by Groot, to the point of manufacturing a popcorn scandal, but pretty much not a single sincere comment even hinting that people should step back from the brink and perhaps just obey the law. You can tell that Groot wants a broken and demoralized police force.

Retirements On Tap?

Rumor popping up that Riccio and Waller have both submitted their papers to leave.

Let the jockeying for who gets to give Groot horsey-rides on their backs begin.

Catanzara on Fire

First, he rips on the twelve-hour days that have not only sapped the strength of the Department, it has wreaked havoc on health and cost an officer his life:

• The Fraternal Order of Police plans to go to court to force Chicago to cancel 12-hour shifts, saying they are a hazard to already burned-out Chicago police officers. Union president John Catanzara also tied the longer shifts to the death of an off-duty officer after a carbon monoxide leak in that officer’s Albany Park home, calling it “clearly a tragic accident due to exhaustion.”
  
  The longer shifts were instituted to deal with protests, riots and looting in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. They have now resumed amid concern the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks by a white police officer in Atlanta will trigger another round of mayhem in Chicago.
  
  [...] Catanzara said the police contract is clear: To justify 12-hour days, the mayor and police superintendent first must declare an emergency. That was not done this time. And it wasn’t done before 12-hour shifts were ordered in response to rampant looting and mayhem the last weekend in May that destroyed parts of downtown, then spread into South and West side neighborhoods.
  
  “When you work past 12 [hours] you’re entitled to a second lunch. They didn’t even get a first one. A lot of `em were dumped in the middle of these neighborhoods with no rest room whatsoever,” the union president said.
  
  “Female officers were literally forced to go into alleys behind dumpsters to use the restroom. There was no food. There was no drink. It was disgusting the planning and preparation for the men and women of this police department that was not done by the upper brass and the mayor.”

And then he goes off on Groot's hand-picked Use of Force "reform" co-chair, who appears to be an out-and-out militant psycho with projection issues:

• A new group appointed to review the Chicago Police Department’s use-of-force policy came under immediate fire Monday after its community co-chair referred to police officers as “psychopaths with guns.” Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara demanded the resignation of co-chair Arewa Karen Winters, saying her remarks make it clear the working group will be little more than a kangaroo court.
  
  Winters’ fiery rhetoric dominated a City Hall news conference called to announce the 20-member group Winters will co-chair along with CPD Deputy Chief Ernest Cato, one of three finalists for the superintendent’s job that went to retired Dallas Police Chief David Brown. Winters is a leader of Justice for Families and The 411 Movement for Pierre Loury. She is the great-aunt of Loury, and formed the latter group after Loury, 16, was killed by Chicago police in April 2016.

Cato ought to resign this "group" immediately as it's clear to everyone, including Helen Keller, what the agenda is. And Groot even considering this moron as any sort of fair or balanced or and kind of open mind is a joke - she's as closed minded as any unreconstructed racist, blinded by hate and driven only by her failures.

Faster Please

As we've stated here numerous times, please make our job easier:

• Three aldermen are proposing the termination of a $33 million contract between the Chicago Police Department and Chicago Public Schools after two weeks of widespread protests have rejuvenated efforts to remove officers from schools.
  
  The aldermen plan to introduce an ordinance at Wednesday’s City Council meeting that would permanently end the relationship between the police department and public school system and prevent another contract from being signed.
  
  But the proposal faces a tall task: convincing Mayor Lori Lightfoot, whose support will likely be necessary for the ordinance to pass. The mayor’s background includes a stint as the Police Board president, and earlier this month, in the face of protests, she opposed the removal of cops from schools.
  
  Activists across the country have demanded police-free schools for years, pointing to detrimental impacts on students of color whose behavior in school is criminalized and leads to a “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which in-school incidents lead directly to criminal charges and jail.

The $33 million argument is a sleight-of-hand - it's all Chicago taxpayer money, it's just shifted around under different headings.

And barring a criminal act, Police shouldn't be anywhere near a school.

Booby Sets Up Another?

Someone speculated that Groot is running into the Machine buzz-saw. The old guard is getting sick and tired of her "my way or the highway" attitude and they engineered the leak of her profanity ridden call with the aldercreatures.

This would also explain why it's looking more and more like the ultimate set-up weasel Booby Rush (see Fred Hampton) may have set up Groot with looking like a total idiot with his popcorn stunt:

• The president of the Fraternal Order of Police said Monday he has talked to all of the rank-and-file police officers who, as he put it, “guarded” U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush’s South Side campaign office and is more convinced than ever they did nothing wrong.
  
  FOP President John Catanzara said the officers accused by Mayor Lori Lightfoot of sleeping on a couch, popping popcorn and drinking coffee in Rush’s burglarized office while looters had a field day in the same strip mall were in the parking lot of a Home Depot at 87th Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway earlier on the night of May 31.
  
  Then, “at some point in the night, they were reassigned to 55th and State Street … at the behest of someone in the upper ranks of the police department. ... There was no other purpose to be there other than the fact that Bobby Rush’s office was there and it wasn’t destroyed like everything else,” Catanzara said.
  
  “Who made the call is what I want to know. And did the same person have a conversation with any of Bobby Rush’s people? That’s why we have FOIA requests already tendered to find that information out. She can say it’s not true. But is she gonna issue an apology when it turns out to be otherwise?”

Very very big rumor from our IAD spies that Groot wanted everyone stripped and charged with "burglary." As any cop knows, for a burglary charge to stick, there must be "an unlawful entering or remaining" within a property to commit a theft therein. If they were invited in (and it's looking like they were ordered to be there) then burglary is a legal impossibility. It also seems IAD knows who gave the order and is sitting on the info until the furor dies down before they kill the investigation.

And the Slum Times of all media is giving the police side extensive play in a couple of articles. Everyone remembers who the Slum Times answers to? Are there are larger forces at play here?

T-Shirt

Order here:   UPDATE: this is the link. Right here. Click it:


Fun times from an old blogger with the naughty name.

When Does CPD Start This?

Stop expecting police to fix what it took democrat policies decades to completely screw up. We are not and never should have been tasked with social work:

• San Francisco police will stop responding to neighbor disputes, reports on homeless people, school discipline interventions, and other non-criminal activities as part of a police reform plan the mayor announced Thursday.
  
  Mayor London Breed released her plan Thursday morning.
  
  Under the proposal, sworn officers will no longer respond to non-criminal activities and will be replaced with trained and non-armed professionals.

Fielding such a "force" of unarmed and trained "professionals" will be expensive and the logistics near impossible to figure out, but we look forward to it. And then, when they unionize (as all government workers do eventually) and strike, we can get a bunch of popcorn from Booby Rush and watch the entertainment.

Nice City Groot

Spot the number of times the police did something wrong:

• Police are investigating after a 12-year-old boy was shot early Sunday in Humboldt Park.
  
  Just before 12:45 a.m., CPD was called to the 2800 block of West Division Street on the report of a shooting.
  
  Police said a 12-year-old boy was standing on a sidewalk when he sustained gunshot wounds to both knees. His family was attending a Puerto Rican celebration at the time.
  
  The boy was taken to Stroger Hospital in good condition.

Leaving aside the fact that a 12-year-old was out partying at 1245 AM, can you see what the police did wrong?

The correct answer is "nothing at all."

Quick! Reform the CPD!

Rush to Judgement - Atlanta

So does someone want to tell us exactly at what point it became legal and proper to fight, disarm and shoot things at the police? Because we must have missed that over the last fifty years. And get a load of what Atlanta has decided all on its own:

• A TALE OF TWO INCIDENTS by The Atlanta DA's Office and the Atlanta Mayor.
  
  Incident 1) 5 Atlanta Police Officers fired last week for using a taser to remove two college students from a car. Officers were fired because the Atlanta District Attorney's Office deemed the Officer's use of the taser was DEADLY PHYSICAL FORCE.
  
  Incident 2) A suspect who failed a field sobriety test and deemed Driving While Intoxicated resists arrest, fights with police, steals the officers taser (robbery) and escapes. During the pursuit, the suspect turns and fires the taser at the officer's head and was shot and eventually dies. The Atlanta mayor calls for the Officer to be fired because he used deadly physical force against a taser.
  
  BURNING QUESTION: Why is using a taser considered Deadly Physical Force when it's used by a police officer but not Deadly Physical Force when used against a police officer by a suspect?

The mayor of Atlanta has unilaterally put the taxpayers on the hook for monumental judgements....in favor of police. Hopefully, they win big and retire in style.

Popcorn Fundraiser

No idea if this is legit, but the link leads to an actual GoFundMe page:

• In the early morning of June 1st 2020, Chicago Police Officers were tasked with securing the office of Congressman and Black Panther Bobby Rush, after it had been broken into and looted. After days of Civil Unrest withing the City, these Officers were tasked with securing the office of the Congressman, who has previously filed complaints against Police Officers, only for them to be dismissed when Officers body cameras showed he was blatantly lying.
  
  One would think that Officers would be leery to spend any amount of time in the office of an unethical politician who has a history of lying and been investigated by The Office of Congressional Ethics on more than one occasion, however after being on their second 12 hour shift, with less than 5 hours in between the two, the Officers followed orders and secured the office. After days of being on their feet and left at various looted locations of the City, these Officers had the audacity to not only sit down in the office, but to also eat the Congressman's popcorn. In a press release, the Congressman was appalled that they would dare eat his popcorn during a riot, however given his questionable spending practices in the past, one could deduce that tax payers most likely paid for that popcorn.
  
  Since the Congressman is upset enough to hold a press conference to tell everyone that police officers ate his popcorn, we are raising funds to have a gigantic bag of popcorn sent to his office on behalf of the tax payers who most likely bought the original batch that the Officers ate. A large bag from Walmart, which contains 175 cups of popcorn, is $57.98 with delivery. Everything collected beyond the $57.98 will be donated to the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation, which supports the families of Officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice protecting this City and its citizens, yes even citizens such as Congressman Bobby Rush. So please help replace Bobby's precious popcorn so we don't have to have our daytime television interrupted again, just to listen to a grown man cry about popcorn.

It looks like you can't contribute anything less than $5, but they've already raised over $275.

COPA Shooting

Seriously. These are the morons sitting in judgement of us?

• A man who works for the city agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by Chicago police officers is now under investigation himself after he allegedly fired a handgun at two men while trying to reclaim his stolen car Sunday morning, according to CPD, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), and a source.
  
  Chicago cops heard gunfire near the 1300 block of South Central Park around 5:30 a.m. Sunday and began following a vehicle that was leaving the area of the shots. ShotSpotter gunfire technology reportedly detected three gunshots on that block at the same time.
  
  Police pulled the car over and interviewed the 39-year-old driver. The man, who reportedly works as a COPA investigator and as an auxiliary police officer for a west suburb, is a concealed carry license holder, according to Chicago police.
  
  The COPA employee told police that he saw two people getting into his stolen vehicle on the 1300 block of South Central Park and he fired two shots at the men who then fled in the stolen car, according to a CPD spokesperson. Chicago police detectives are investigating.

When a cop gets arrested or charged or convicted of a crime, every single case he touches is pretty much toast. Look it up. So now, every single investigation by this jackass needs to be tossed out, based solely on the evidence and information at hand.

It's only fair that the same rules apply across the board.

LAPD Refuses Overtime

At least we're not broke.....yet:

• While many who participated in “protests” in Los Angeles over the last few weeks are probably being paid to stay home and not work, thousands of Los Angeles Police Department officers have put in more than a hundred hours of tactical alert overtime each and are now being told they won’t be paid for it.
  
  LAPD Chief Michel Moore sent an email June 12 to “Department Personnel,” a copy of which was obtained by RedState, informing them that “During this extraordinary time…the Department has expended more than $40 million in overtime expenses,” exceeding the budgetary reserve, and that “as of June 7, 2020…compensation for overtime shall be in the form of time at the appropriate rate.”

This runs afoul of a number of Labor laws and Federal statutes. If you ain't paying, rest assured, we ain't showing up. That's not a job action.

Twelves Hour Days Back?

So disarming police officers is now allowed?

And telling everyone at midnight that their plans are out the window is acceptable.

J-Fled Junior?

We will contribute actual money to the Chaplains fund - more than we do already - if someone gets us a copy of this uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo or some sort of uploadable file:

• My friend is Security at Trump Tower. Has video of Supernintendo Brown-stain hiding at the tower while the blue shirts were battling to keep the place from being taken over. He asked my friend to get him out an [alternate] way of getting out of the building so as to not have to be in the mix with the protesters.
  
  My friend put it right on him and said “Shouldn’t you be out there with your troops since you’re their leader”? He said Brown just kinda shook it off and said something to the effect of not wanting to be a distraction.
  
  There is surveillance video of this fact, just too bad that there is no audio of their exchange. I am working on procuring this encounter and Brown subsequently ducking out a back door while coppers are getting bones broken and hit in the head with rocks and sticks. He makes J-Fled look like Patton.

J-Fled ran away from gunfire in Englewood (which turned out to be a murder) that wasn't directed at Officers. He didn't even stay on the scene. This is even worse as Officers were actually being physically attacked and wounded by a mob. You aren't a "distraction" at that point - you're an extra body on the line.

And he ran out the back door.

Contrarian Article

What Chicago needs to hear is encapsulated in the final two paragraphs of this excellent essay:

• While the worst of the 2020 riots may have passed, Chicago is entering a new period in which it must now confront a new plight: A crisis of Mayor Lightfoot’s authority. If Chicago learned any lesson over how Ms. Lightfoot navigated the George Floyd riots, we learned from aldermen reasoned debate with the mayor is non-existent, discussion over crisis management is unwelcome or counterproductive, and her judgment is not subject to logical or dispassionate examination. From Chicago Police, we learned appeals for help will go unanswered and punishment awaits those who express anguish in a fleeting moment. We also learned Ms. Lightfoot is more hostile to law-and-order measures than she is to riots and looting. Most important, we learned Ms. Lightfoot will always seek out a villain (President Trump, City Council members) or a scapegoat (Chicago police officers) to deflect attention away from her missteps.
  
  If Ms. Lightfoot were to be graded for her performance at mitigating the crisis, at best her response demonstrated the mayor has abysmal judgement and lacks the ability to comprehend and cope with emergencies. At worst, Lightfoot waved a white flag to opponents of law and order.

As usual, go read it all to get the full effect.

WBEZ Did What???

A few days ago, we wrote about an anonymous Lieutenant that ripped the bark off of the exempts and political masters for their complete clusterfuck handling the riots.

Now, WBEZ, Chicago's NPR affiliate of all places - and no friend of the police for the most part - sought out actual officers who were on the front lines of the unrest and rioting. And they relate the exact same shortcomings of the "planners" who hung us out to dry:

• WBEZ spoke with eight Chicago officers in the wake of a press conference Thursday in which Lightfoot and Brown lambasted a group of so-far-unnamed officers for lounging in U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush’s South Side campaign office — allegedly as looters destroyed businesses nearby.
  
  All of the officers spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear that they might lose their jobs, and they all criticized department brass. Several officers said they believe that the cops who were captured on video in Rush’s office on Monday, June 1, were “set up” to be scapegoated for a failed police response to the looting and vandalism, which shook swaths of Chicago throughout the May 30-31 weekend.
  
  [...]
  
  Another patrol veteran said he was part of a police contingent pelted with rocks, bottles and bricks thrown by looters along West Madison Street near Pulaski Road on May 30. He said a lack of direction and planning left cops vulnerable there.
  
  “The SWAT guys had large pepper-spray canisters that they ran out of and had no beanbag shotguns or pepper balls,” he said. “If there had been any forethought, we could have focused on protecting grocery stores, at least, but there was no solid direction coming from 35th Street,” the officer said, referring to police headquarters in the Bronzeville neighborhood. “As soon as Minneapolis went up, they should have known it could happen here,” the officer said about Lightfoot and Brown. “The city’s response here was piss-poor.”

It's almost like these writers are actual reporters or something. They give you the who, what, where, when and - rarest of all - the why. Not the "why" of the riot, but the "why" from the police perspective of exactly where the failures were. From street cops, not some Google-me apprentice who hasn't seen the streets in years (if ever) and exists only to recite the politically acceptable version of sanitized events.

It's would be refreshing if this was a new habit from even a single media outlet.....but we've been disappointed before.

Followup on Shooting Stats

Per HeyJackass.com, this is the number of people shot between the last police shooting (08 March 2020) and the two jagoffs who attempted to kill an Officer with a car (12 Jun 2020):

• As requested, the number of shootings and homicides between CPD-involved shootings is as follows:
  
  Shot and Killed: 170
  Shot and Wounded: 802
  Total Shot: 972
  Total Homicides: 185

Just so you know, the time between officer-involved-shootings shootings was 96 days - that's three entire months. Yet somehow, police are still labeled as the problem though. And not one goddamn media outlet will ever tell you these numbers. This is why they have less respect and trust than any other institution in the country aside from the United States Congress.

A tip of the hat to W.H. Thompson, proprietor of HeyJackass.com, the only source for actual, real and accurate Chicago shooting/homicide numbers.

No Police? No Deliveries

These would be valuable allies to have here:

• As cities across the country are discussing defunding or disbanding their police departments, truck drivers are voicing concerns of safety. Seventy-seven percent of truck drivers say they will refuse to deliver freight to cities with defunded police departments.
  
  Truck driving is historically ranked as one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. In 2018, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic reported truck driving as the most deadly job in the country.
  
  Truck drivers have spent the last year on the front line of a global pandemic and protests. Now many are fearful of what might happen if police departments disband or are defunded.

Of course, there are always gypsy truckers and mercenaries willing to do anything for a buck, but if the Teamsters could flex their political muscle.....