Shotspotter Says "Pound Sand"

Contract is expired and Conehead says he'll extend it six months past the DNC.

Shotspotter says, "Nah bro."

• MaryAnnAhern twitter: multiple sources tell @nbcchicago⁩ Shot Spotter rejects the city’s offer for 6 month extension. Will the technology turn off Friday? Waiting for @ChicagosMayor⁩ response

Conehead's next hospital visit countdown begins in 3...2...

Rumor Time!

Completely unsubstantiated rumors popping up here and there:

• Fifty sergeants upcoming, and that's it until a test in the fall.

We figure this one is about 50/50. There are about to be a lot of sergeant vacancies mixed into the projected 1,000 retirements this year. HQ also asked for approximately 130 names for the "merit" list, all of whom scored higher than Larritorious ever did. Also, given the Consent Decree guidelines, promotional exams will be given more regularly than old timers and retirees remember - something like every two-or-three years instead of once every eight-to-ten. (also, see calendar below)

• COPA about to unleash a wave of strippings

Unless this is the PPP fraud "investigations" wrapping up, we can't see shorting the Districts alongside a massive retirement wave, all before the DNC. What we can see is a whole bunch of cases being finalized with short suspensions, a warning not to grieve anything and a "let's never mention this again" in order to return as many officers as possible to the streets. We'll see.

• Exempt Changes!

This one is greatly amusing. Remember this calendar?

We didn't see any exempt moves on 12 Feb, but HQ will always fall back on the "dates subject to change" disclaimer they put on everything.

However, a little birdie e-mailed us that the exempt changes/promotions/demotions were delayed because downtown and City Hall didn't want the blog to look like they had an inside scoop. If you go back through our archives, we had written that we were told changes were scheduled for 10 February, which would have had them take effect on the 12th as posted in the calendar.

Sorry to burst their bubble, but we were just going by this calendar. So Larry, Conehead, Fred....you can pull the trigger on the moves.

Catanzara Replies

He has the FOP website. He has a YouTube channel.

He uses our comment section?

• When you perpetuate people's personal vendetta hallucinations you should also be flogged when you have only the words of a handful of disgruntled members who have a history of spreading false rumors.
  
  4500 at Lawrys was in Las Vegas at the national conference. It was a dinner for retired members who attended the conference from the west coast and didn't require a hotel reimbursement. It was a simple thank you. The same people complaining about this money also went to vegas and had their airfare and hotel covered like all delegates. Feeling played yet by this nonsense? The board approved the expenditures.
  
  The KISS concert had NOTHING to do with FOP and not a penny was spent of lodge money. Yet another false allegation that this blog perpetuates needlessly to try and have juicy topics that attract views.
  
  How about attempting to get clarification before carrying the water of a few. They would burn it all down to the ground just to be king of the ashes.
  
  Lots of other false accusations as usual by cowards who never attach their name!
  
  John Catanzara

Firstly, we didn't write, nor were we contacted by The Contrarian prior to this article appearing. But as we try to keep readers informed of things, we didn't feel we could just ignore it.

John includes his explanation of the Lawry's trip. The KISS concert was listed as "allegedly" if you read yesterday's post. John again explains. Good start.

Getting clarification? Golly, our inbox and comment sections are loaded of disgruntled members who can't get a phone call answered politely nor an e-mail responded to for weeks and counting. What makes him think we weren't one of those emails? We have multiple email accounts across a couple of platforms, some even running through multiple proxy servers. And none of this addresses the strange policy and by-law changes that only seem to make transparency more difficult. 

You can page through our archives and see that when John has done good, we back him 100%. When he skirts the edges, we give him the benefit of the doubt. And when there are legit questions being asked about decisions and policies and changes, we let people ask them. 

That's the end goal - keeping the membership properly informed. And sometimes, that means addressing the rumors, anonymous or not.

Is HeyJackass.com Hiring?

Supposedly, from Friday through Monday there were forty-five shootings and ten stabbings, and we were just wondering if HeyJackass.com was keeping up with the mayhem. 

If we were running their site, this is the time we would have let people take vacations. Not summertime - that's the busy season!

Advance Guard?

Same as in years past, the antifa pussies are allegedly using churches to avoid surveillance:

• SCC, there is a church at 31st and Union. This is where the terrorist group ANTIFA has there headquarters. Please get the word out and start sending people to collect license plates from cars so we can identify where they come from and who they are. This is from a bonified source.

If true, we imagine there are already all sorts of cameras and wiretaps on the building along with infiltrators from some three-letter agencies. After all, how will the feebs direct the controlled opposition?

UPDATE: 31/Lowe?

Shotspotter to End

Derided by some (including us) as a very very expensive "spent casing finder," Conehead has decided that cops responding rapidly to the area of shots fired and having a better-than-average chance of apprehending offenders is just a waste of resources:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Tuesday that he won’t renew the city’s controversial contract with ShotSpotter, making good on a key campaign promise to do away with the gunshot detection system that has come under heavy fire for allegedly being overly costly and ineffective.

  After the Sun-Times reported on the decision earlier in the day, Johnson’s office issued a statement saying the city “will decommission the use of ShotSpotter technology on September 22,” meaning cops will have access to the system throughout the historically violent summer months and the Democratic National Convention.

So it's good enough to use during the "historically violent summer months".....but not afterwards?

Well, at least we're sure this was a well thought out decision:

• Sources said Johnson outlined the plan during a closed-door meeting Monday night with city officials and advocates, though Chicago police officials weren't invited.

Oh. 

But there's something on the horizon?

• While Johnson had publicly remained tight-lipped about his plans for ShotSpotter since taking office, he vowed to nix the deal as a candidate and “invest in new resources that go after illegal guns without physically stopping and frisking Chicagoans on the street.”

So we're hiring....Superman? With his x-ray vision?

And then we get to the actual reasons for ending Shotspotter:

• He insisted the technology is “unreliable and overly susceptible to human error,” adding that it “played a pivotal role” in the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in March 2021.

  Many of those concerns were reiterated by critics of ShotSpotter, who frame it as a costly surveillance tool that has led to overpolicing in minority communities.

That wasn't human error. The system worked EXACTLY as designed and got cops to the area where two assholes (including one named Lil Homicide) were shooting at innocent people driving down 26th Street, attempting to maim and/or kill them because they were headed into someone other gang's territory. 

And the "overpolicing" argument doesn't fly either - cops go to where the crime is. And if improperly raised shitbird yutes are violating laws and morals by shooting at innocent passersby, then cops ought to be around to enforce the laws. Quickly. So they are apprehended and don't do it again.

In any event, if they don't want the police in the area where shots are being regularly fired, you're just making our job easier. We'll show up after the fact. Maybe we'll find a crime scene, maybe not. Maybe there will be evidence to convict someone that we won't be apprehending because we arrive five minutes later rather than one minute after. Body Removal will cart away the remains, and the gangs will be plotting their revenge to continue the circle of violence, innocents will get caught in the crossfire, parents will bury more children, and cops will be five more minutes away.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Maybe we can half-staff the SDSC rooms now....get an extra twenty-two cops on the street every shift.

FOP Infighting

While we'd prefer to keep dirty laundry in-house, sometimes sunlight is the best disinfectant:

• As maintained by several rank-and file members of the FOP, requests to review documents such as board minutes, financials, treasurer reports, and audit committee reviews have been denied or permitted under very narrow time constraints. FOP members say prior to FOP President John Catanzara assuming leadership over the union, bids to examine documents were fulfilled without caveat or delay.

  In addition to refusing members unfettered access to union documents, FOP members say changes to union rules have become arbitrary, often occurring after requests to review official documents are lodged. FOP members state the union’s board has developed the practice of introducing bylaws without assenting to FOP procedure established in the union constitution. An unconstitutional exercise, rank-and-file who seek answers to rule changes or dispute limitations on the review of documents are brushed off and told to respect new regulations.

  Though these revelations are concerning, more troubling is questions over financial activities under current leadership. FOP members state union documents reveal board members profligate life at the expense of member dues. A recent discovery in meeting records unveiled a lavish feast at which board members dined one evening at Lawry’s The Prime Rib. While the topics discussed at the dinner table are unknown, the board’s visit to Lawry’s cost the rank-and-file an epic $4,500. In another instance, members tell of thousands of dollars in member dues spent for the purposes of entertainment wholly unrelated to FOP affairs.

When you're passing by-laws to restrict info that belongs to the members, you deserve (A) the stink-eye and (B) a thorough audit.

When a cursory glance at records reveals a $4,500 bill at Lawry's with ZERO notes as to what union business was conducted at such a cost, you've lost your way.

When a deeper dive allegedly finds a skybox at the All State Arena (not even in Chicago and certainly not police related) you probably deserve a flogging.

Ambulance Downgrades

One way to make sure crime goes down? 

Make sure the people getting shot don't get prompt medical care. That way they can't come back for revenge:

This was early February:

It continues:

Ten or so days ago, we posted about the public/private effort to light $400 million on fire to reduce shootings by 50% over five years. We said unless the effort involved bus tickets out of town for the 20,000 "high risk individuals most likely to get shot," the effort was going to fail.

Reducing and/or downgrading ambulance coverage would be another way we suppose.

No Punishment Deters What?

Nothing at all evidently:

• Chicago cops caught a 19-year-old man carrying three guns on a Blue Line train less than a month after he was placed on “first-time weapon offender probation” for another felony gun case, prosecutors say. Cops say he told them he found the guns and was simply carrying them home.

Wow. 

Three guns "found." 

We haven't seen that much luck in "finding guns" since what's his name got caught with a bunch of guns stashed in his locker on the west side. They made him commander of 025 and let him use CAPS personnel for babysitting duties.

It's Likely the CTU

We'll almost guarantee it:

• A newspaper ad praising and thanking Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for things he has done since taking office raised a few eyebrows on Monday.

  The ad has been causing a bit of a stir, because the group that paid for it has a vague name and is not registered with the state as a political organization. So, who is behind it is a mystery.

  Johnson talked to seniors at a bingo on Monday, sounding very much like he is in campaign mode, even though his next election is still three years away.

  "We've eliminated sub-minimum wage. We have the largest paid time off," Johnson said.

CTU has money to burn. They own Conehead. They know his numbers are nearly as bad as president potatohead, so they have to start an astroturf campaign supporting his endeavors.

Their contract is coming up shortly, he's about to eliminate cops in schools (who they hate), eliminate selective enrollment schools (which they also hate) and he just announced the demise of shotspotter (which they also hate....school-to-prison-pipeline ya know!)

Ask and We Receive

The Chicago is Toast twitter account added the "bounce" we requested:

Nice to see humor still exists in certain quarters.

Touchdown Crimesha

So Crimesha was at the Superbowl this past weekend. We've seen the picture.

And we find ourselves not caring. She's on the way out. The media spent years covering for her incompetence, sucking up her lies, allowing her to usurp legislative authority making law and judicial authority interpreting law, ignoring her physical abuse of her spouse, excusing her corrupt behavior during the entire Juicy Smollet debacle at the behest of Mrs. Obama's fixer. 

She even managed to keep her law license.

Why would anyone be surprised she parlayed a mere government employee salary into multiple $9,000 tickets along with airfare to the largest single day sporting event in the country? We haven't watched an NFL game in five or more years now and gave away any gear we had around the same time. If you see a Venezuelan wearing Bears stuff, it might be ours.

Crimesha won. The only bright spot is the nickname we popularized here, and that's amusing to perhaps ten or twenty thousand people.

Trial Date

The trial for that crazy woman who stole a CPD squad and ran over a copper from 011 before crashing is scheduled for 01 April at 26/Cal. We don't have a room number yet, but it's supposed to be a bench trial, which means the fix is likely in and she's going to walk because Crimesha.

Keep your ears open for a room assignment.

Pardon our Laughter

Stories like these just make us laugh:

• A suspected mail thief is recovering after he jumped from a third-floor apartment window as Chicago cops were closing in. Cops recovered a U.S. Postal Service master key, stolen mail, and other evidence as paramedics scooped Jamal Campbell, 30, from a yard in the 1200 block of West 54th Street last Sunday afternoon, officials said.

  Officers responded to the neighborhood around 12:30 p.m. after 911 callers reported that a man was walking in and out of residential buildings. At least one caller saw the man use a master key to open a bank of mailboxes.

  A woman flagged down a couple of the cops and directed them to the thief. The officers quickly located Campbell in the vestibule of a building. He was sorting through mail from an open mailbox, according to their report. Campbell bolted to the third floor and the officers followed him up the stairs, the report said. As the cops neared the third floor, they heard a loud banging noise and the sound of glass breaking as Campbell kicked in a vacant apartment’s door and jumped from a bedroom window, the police said.

We know a couple of stories where suspects either didn't remember what floor they were on (or were just so desperate to escape arrest) that they went out seventh, eighth, and eleventh story windows in assorted project buildings. It turns out that none of them could fly.

We laughed then, too.

This picture from the attached CWB post is also greatly amusing:

Maybe next time, make the red arrow "bounce" where he hit the ground?

Bloody Weekend

It's still February, right?  Winter, correct?

• At least 18 people have been shot, one fatally, in weekend gun violence across Chicago, police said.

It certainly looks like an interesting Spring on tap.

Gotta improve the aim though.

Make Up Your F#$%ing Minds

Tio Hardiman of all people, thinks maybe pulling cops out of schools is a bad idea:

• Violence Interrupters Executive Director Tio Hardiman is speaking out about rising violence after three Chicago Public Schools students were slain just steps from their schools’ front doors over the past month.

  “It’s time for a cultural shift right now,” Hardiman told The Center Square. “Violence is a normal way of thinking. There needs to be a cultural shift where all the academic people organize together to design a curriculum we can push to change the way we think about one another.”

  Three Chicago Public School students have been killed and two others injured in recent shootings as they left class.

  [...]
  

  He said he wishes Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson would have consulted with more people in the community before publicly throwing his support behind a plan to remove uniformed police officers from the city’s high schools. 

  “We’re dealing with a gun violence epidemic,” Hardiman said. “When you have kids being shot right outside in front of the school and murdered like that it puts me in the mindset of how the mafia used to hit people in the old-school mafia days back in the 1930s when they ride up and kill people. I believe that decision to take the police out of the schools was not a real good decision.”

We may have proposed that police be assigned to Hardiman kitchen after he slapped his wife around, but that went nowhere either.

In any event, the CTU has decided that all police are bad, and getting them away from schools is worth the lives of a few minority children who just would have been shot anyway somewhere, someday. 

We just wanted some warm bodies on the streets so we could use some of our time due.

Parole Violated....Again

Won't someone with half a brain re-visit parole conditions?

• A Chicago man on parole for two separate murder cases forced his way into his ex-girlfriend’s North Side apartment and attacked her new boyfriend with a machete, prosecutors said as they charged him with a fresh attempted murder case.

  Marcos Gray, 47, has been detained to await trial by Judge William Fahy, who deemed him a public safety threat, according to court records. State officials are also reviewing Gray’s parole status in light of allegations that he nearly committed his third murder.

  Court records show that Gray was sentenced to life in prison for one of his previous murder cases, but that was reduced on appeal after other courts determined that it is unconstitutional to sentence people to life in prison for crimes committed as juveniles.

  In Gray’s case, he was convicted of two murders as a juvenile.

Not one, but two murders, and now, almost a third.

But hey, we can't keep people in prison for their entire lives. That's cruel and mean spirited. Better a guilty asshole should go free to murder again.

Why is This a Thing?

How many taxpayer funded stadiums is one team expected to get?

• Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Friday that his administration plans to meet with developers proposing a new White Sox stadium along the Chicago River in the South Loop.

  “I know my staff is going to be meeting with them to hear the pitch, so to speak,” Pritzker said at an unrelated event in Villa Park.

  The outreach by developers to the governor’s office marks a potential step forward in what could be an uphill push to bring a new ballpark to the vacant site known as The 78. On Friday, Pritzker continued to project caution on the idea of spending public funds on a stadium for the privately-owned team, beyond typical infrastructure costs, just as he repeatedly has in discussions of a new Bears stadium.

  “I set out what I think are the parameters that the taxpayers expect, which is why we need to be careful about how we use public dollars,” Pritzker said. “And a private business like a professional team, even if they’re beloved by so many people, are nevertheless similar to lots of other businesses in the state.”

Fatass is actually talking sense....however, until a deal is inked and we see how many taxpayer dollars are being stolen and steered to a private enterprise....

Quite frankly, we think the Sox would be happier in Tennessee. Then they'd be closer to one of our retirement destinations. Shhhhhhh.

Landmark Burns

If you spent any time on the west side, went to events at the old Chicago Stadium or the newer United Center, or visited OEMC, you probably ate here:

• In its more than eight decades on the Near West Side, the Palace Grill has seen its share of history — from hosting then-Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in 1997 to surviving the riots after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

  On Friday, owner George Lemperis said the popular restaurant near the United Center would survive the fire that caused extensive damage the night before.

  “They rebuilt the World Trade Center. I can certainly rebuild this,” Lemperis told reporters Friday outside the restaurant at 1408 W. Madison St. “But it’s not good. Eighty-six years, we were here.”

The CFD spokesman made a bad joke....the media missed:

• Some have speculated that it could have been caused by a lightning strike, Langford said.

You're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud Larry. That's a joke told behind closed doors while the embers are still smouldering.

Hopefully, the restaurant comes back, but that is some expensive real estate nowadays and we heard that George had turned down a number of offers over the years. We shall see.

Is Dart in Trouble?

Is Dart being set up for removal from office?

• Recorded conversations show dozens of Cook County Jail inmates schemed to loot the federal Paycheck Protection Program and other government COVID-19 relief programs at the start of the pandemic, according to documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

  Cook County sheriff’s officials opened an investigation in 2020 into inmates using jail phones to discuss various kinds of financial fraud and found they were targeting state coronavirus unemployment insurance programs, federal business relief programs and personal bank accounts.

  Many of the inmates talked about raking in tens of thousands of dollars.

  Despite months of plotting, though, none of the inmates was arrested or charged with fraud in connection with the schemes, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office, which, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Sun-Times, released hundreds of pages of investigators’ notes about recorded calls in which inmates were suspected of plotting to commit financial crimes.

The Slum times had to actually sue Dart's office to get these records, all of which show a concerted effort by inmates to defraud the PPP program of millions of dollars, all of which was caught on tape recorded telephone lines.

Dart's people claim the feebs wanted the denial of records, but the feebs won't comment on any ongoing investigations....unless it's about conservative church goers, pro-lifers, kidnappers of Michigan governors or Trump. Then they'll leak anything and everything possible. This makes us wonder where portions of the money ended up.

But in the face of feeb denials, is Dart left holding the bag?