Um, What Now?

Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is already out:

• Chicago School Board members will decide Wednesday whether to dump their $24,000-a-year receipt-free expense accounts -- tabs once likened to "slush funds" -- in favor of submitting receipts for all work-related expenses.

• The new expense account policy is a dramatic shift from the one board members approved in March, shortly after Scott returned to the board as president. At that time, despite a record deficit, board members agreed to double their expense accounts, to $2,000 a month, and to hike Scott's monthly tab from $1,600 to $3,000.

  At the time, Civic Federation President Laurence Msall said the expense accounts amounted to "slush funds'' because board members got set amounts monthly, whether they submitted expenses or not. He called the accounts "outrageous'' and inconsistent with school board practices elsewhere.

$2,000 a month? Regardless if they turned in receipts? Excuse our language, but what the fuck? How many millions has this cost taxpayers over the years? They don't even justify the expenditures and get paid anyway?

Someone better contact the School Board President and have him justify this horseshit. Oh wait....

Ouch!

Get well wishes are in order:

• Chicago police said an officer accidentally shot himself in the leg tonight inside a West Side police station.

  The officer was holstering his weapon inside the Harrison District station, 3151 W. Harrison St., when it discharged, striking him in the right leg, a police spokesman said.

We suppose the ball busting will come later.

Contract? What Contract?

Who says J-Fed has to follow a contract? Contracts are for sissies:

• The Superintendent issued AMFN 095065 which states that: Members assigned to Police Headquarters who have approved Personal Days submitted prior to 09 Dec 2009 will be allowed to use this time.
  
  Section 11.3 of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement states that: Officers shall not be required to work on a personal day provided that written notice of the personal day is given to the appropriate supervisor no later than ten (10) days prior to the personal day .... Any dispute within a unit as to the selection of a personal day shall be resolved by seniority.....

Just because the contract expired 2.5 years ago doesn't mean the protections aren't in full effect. FOP points this out in the Current Updates section. Can someone get this guy a clue?

Feud?

A bunch of tension between the CPD and and Cook County State's Attorneys Office. From the comments, someone who seems to have either an inside track or first-hand knowledge:

• I heard there is going to be a very high level meeting between the CCSAO and CPD later in the week to make nice nice. I guess there are some very hurt feelings on both sides. Expect even more problems with felony review after this. This could get ugly after when this is over.

More:

• The shit storm continues. Very high level arguments about who is the blame, how the paper should be written and whose head will roll. Seems like Debbie Kirby might have a problem. She did take the side of the CCSAO over the CPD. Right now a lot of bosses are fingers pointing at each other hoping to have a chair when the music stops.

Something to do with the Steger/Chicago spree killer.

Thomson Prison

Job #1?


Dig a moat. Or a combination tank trap/mine field. That's a lot of flat land between the road and perimeter fences.

We're just saying...

Another Missing Returns Home

More evidence that the 95% clearance rate would probably stay around 95%:

• A 56-year-old Bridgeport man who had been last seen over the weekend eventually returned home and is back with his family, police said today.

Can we devote police resources to the rising shooting trends and garage burglary patterns now?

H1N1 Duds

Questions regarding "potency:"

• Health officials are recalling hundreds of thousands of doses of H1N1 (swine) flu vaccine after tests indicated they may not be potent enough to protect against the virus.
  
  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified doctors about the recall Tuesday. The recall involves about 800,000 doses made by Sanofi Pasteur. The doses are pre-filled syringes intended for young children, ages 6 months to almost three years.

FYI.

Can We Move On Yet?

Hopefully, we've all seen the last of the Abbate video. We mean, the media has only been playing it for two years straight whenever they had an opportunity:

• Police don't have a contract - and by the way, here's a drunk idiot trying to beat a bartender;
• Police rescue family from a fire - and in case you forgot, here's an asshole climbing behind a bar and trying to serve himself;
• Police haters and aldercreatures with a political ax to grind want everyone's name dragged through the mud - and here's another glimpse of a video of a single drunk moron who never should have been hired in the first place;
• It's time for a Charlie Brown Christmas - and if the guy in this video had appeared at the Christmas Pageant, he would have ripped down the tree and rat-tailed Linus with his own blanket before throwing Lucy over Schroeder's piano.

But even though it has been overplayed a bit, we never had heard of these two heinous allegations:

• The scenes caught on the recording alternate from a typical gathering at a local tavern with men calling out for the next round as the Empire Today commercial airs in the background and Abbate sings "Desperado" to the jukebox. An agitated Abbate punches one friend and tosses another to the ground in apparent anger over a remark made about his dog.
  
  Later that evening, he attacked Obrycka, who tried to thwart Abbate from coming behind the bar. Earlier in the recording, Abbate sang "Sweet Caroline" to Obrycka and the two appear to have civil exchanges,

If anyone ever came up with video of us singing "Desperado" and "Sweet Caroline," we'd have resigned and left town a long time ago.

Exempt Relief Fund

There have been a few of these floating around various stations:

Got to love the police sense of humor.

KC Dashcam Shooting

A grand jury cleared the Kansas City PD officers a few days ago and released the in-car videos. We got a bunch of these in the mail. Here's the raw video:



Here are a few media links:

• KCTV
• KMBC

A "routine" traffic accident turns into a gun battle. An excellent job by the officers.

Local Boy Makes News

Killed in prison after taking a 62-year-old worker hostage:

• Illinois prison officials say an inmate who took an employee hostage at the Pinckneyville Correctional Center in southern Illinois has been shot and killed.

  According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, the 37-year-old inmate was pronounced dead at the scene about 5 p.m. today, nearly seven hours after the incident began. His name hasn't been released.

• Corrections officials say the offender was serving a sentence for aggravated criminal sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping. The crimes took place in Cook County.

Don't fuck around in Pinckneyville.

Check Our Numbers

Is there an accountant in the house? Has anyone reading ever done a budget? Neither have we, but it is proving interesting. We've had a few e-mails about it and someone may have stumbled upon a way to determine a true reading of the manpower shortage.

When you fill out a budget, you have to account for every position, even if that position isn't filled. Going through the budget, you see all the different pay grades represented. There's three, four or more lines of various lieutenants, sergeants, detectives, patrol officers, civilians etc. That's because there are different people at different Salary Steps. The way you account for an unfilled position is by putting a number in at the lowest end of the Salary Step Schedule. Here's an example:

• page 174 - Line Item #3009 - CAPS Project Office:
• 1 PO @ $80,736
• 4 PO @ $78,006
• 4 PO @ $75816
• 14 PO @ $73,116
• 13 PO @ $70,656
• 3 PO @ $43,104

The key is the last line:

• 3 PO @ $43,104

$43,104 is the lowest paid police officer position. It's what a PPO earns in the Academy.

It's also an impossibility because we have ZERO PPO's at the moment. The last class that went through the Academy has already passed their Step 2 raise (12 months) and may be in Step 3 already (18 months).

And if you go to page 99 of the FOP Contract, there is the Salary Step Schedule posted there. It has a listing for D-2 and D-2A positions at the Step 1 level ($55,728 and $57,642)., but you can't have a Step 1 or Step 2 Detective, Mounted Officer, Canine, Marine, ET or any other position because of the "Time in Grade" restrictions on even taking those exams!

So to determine the shortage of police, all you have to do is go through the budget and locate all of the spots that are listed as having a salary of $43,104, $55,728 or $57,642, because those are phantom spots that aren't being filled at all. Guess who did that for you?

We've had our crack staff working on this for a few days now and we've come up with some interesting numbers. Based purely on our count, and it might be off just a little bit, we've located 675 spots, give or take a few, that are listed as $43,104. That's 675 officer spots that are not filled in the 2010 budget. A bit higher than the City's contention of 591 vacancies. We've also found a shortage of 254 D-2 and D2A spots in the 2010 budget - again, give or take a few.

That's 929 short without even going into the white shirts, but those numbers look to be around 100 sergeants and 40 lieutenants. Captains are rumored to be short 10 citywide. The budget is a bit better at concealing the D-3 and above spots since you have people working out-of-grade as C.O.s instead of gold stars in some spots.

We've seen the comments citing 9,200 uniform checks cut, the FOP letter saying 591 vacant spots, and the Sun Times article that includes light duty and medical roll personnel for a total of almost 2,000 short.

Our number here is based on the actual 2010 Budget and it's around 1,100. We're betting it's pretty close to that. Someone with way more time on their hands than us would have to find the budgets for the past decade or so and figure out if City Hall has cut actual budgeted strength to what it is today.

Felony Review Oops?

Interesting comment in the "Spree Killer?" posting yesterday:

• Wait'll the entire scoop comes out about how CCSAO "nolle prossed" the Chicago case when it was sent to Branch 66. ASA/FRU, effin' useless, they are.
  
  You heard me right. Nolle'd the spree killer's case. Thank God Will County, IL. was able to pick up the pieces.

Well thank goodness we have a Felony Review Unit. You want to know why Cook County courts are the laughing stock of the nation? It's not just the crooked judges. It's the politically connected incompetent lawyers, who at some point hope to become crooked judges. No offense to the crusaders who work tirelessly for legitimate crime victims, but you know you're few and far between, as are legitimate victims in Cook County.

By the way, the media is finally making the connections in the Saturday crime spree that left at least two dead and another in critical condition (Sun Times; BreakingNews). Let's see if they can track down who dropped the ball.

Quinn Suspends Secret Program

As soon as daylight appears, Governor Cockroach scurries for cover. AP breaks the story (via the Sun Times):

• Repeat drunk drivers, drug users and even people convicted of battery and weapons violations are serving less than three weeks' total time behind bars under a secret change in policy by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn's prison system, The Associated Press has learned.
  
  Records obtained and analyzed by the AP show that since September more than 850 inmates have been released weeks earlier than they ordinarily would be. The Corrections Department is saving money by abandoning a policy that requires inmates to serve at least 61 days and awarding them discretionary good-conduct credit immediately upon entering prison.
  

Battery offenders? Weapons violators? Why even have prisons at all governor? Quinn suspended the program as soon as it came to light:

• Quinn said today that his office will review the Illinois Department of Corrections' "meritorious good time" release program, which came under fire after an analysis showed some inmates with past convictions for drunken driving, battery and weapons violations spent mere weeks behind bars before release.

  Under the program, corrections chief Michael P. Randle may grant any inmate 90 days' worth of credit based on their behavior while behind bars.

  The report by the Associated Press found hundreds of inmates were given the good-conduct credit immediately on entering prison, and more than 850 inmates have been released under the program since September.

Of course, since this was a budgetary move, don't count on Parole Agents being sent out to collect these mistakes any time soon.

A definitely don't count on a list of names so we can see what sort of mayhem Quinn and Randle have unleashed on the community. Just like Quinn won't release the names of the 1,000 he still plans on releasing so we can track that plague, too.

Green Bay by 7

ESPN says so.

We aren't nearly as confident in the Bears ability. We were figuring Green Bay by 11.

UPDATE: 21-14

And that's why we aren't making book in Vegas.

As Predicted

The desensitization has begun:

• Update: A 12-year-old West Side boy who has been missing since Friday morning has been located safely and has been reunited with his family, police said this evening.
  
  According to police, Kimani Alexander stayed at a friend's home Friday evening.

This was one of a dozen or more missing reports blasted across the Internet via BreakingNews.com and other news outlets. And where does he end up? At a friend's house having an unauthorized sleepover.

Is it safe to say the parents (or parent) are facing charges? Or being billed for wasting everyone's time? Or making it harder to enlist the assistance of the public the next time some unsupervised child goes missing due to neglect?

In addition to this "missing," we've seen half-a-dozen other kids turn up, including a 14-year-old who was shacking up a 19-year-old.

Countdown to the public not caring about a media generated frenzy beginning in 3...2...1...

Spree Killer?

Suburban murder, investigation by CPD?

• Police are conducting a homicide investigation after an autopsy revealed that a 38-year-old woman was found strangled this morning in south suburban Steger, officials said.

  Tashika Smith of Steger was pronounced dead at 4:19 a.m. after she was found on the 300 block of West 35th Street, according to the Will County coroner's office.

  An autopsy conducted today showed that Smith died due to strangulation. The office stopped short of issuing the final manner of death pending the police investigation and the receipt of toxicology results.
  

  According to the office, Steger police are being assisted in the investigation by Chicago and Maywood police which are investigating possible related incidents. Steger police would not comment on the case.

Rumors of a few more murders in 007 or 009 attributed to this suspect and another shooting in 005. He may have been captured though. Nothing to worry about citizens! Move along.

Federal Misbehavior?

From the Hoffman Estates post:

• Hey guys, I got a little more info to add to this article. They failed to mention that Hoffman Estates employs a few Federal Agents (homeland security) to receive federal funds (higher than usual) with this money and other funds, they are close to completion on a $10 million dollar new facility.
  On top of this Sunday Dec 6th, 1 of these federal agents took a newly seized car for a joy ride and totaled it. The cars estimated value?? $400,000!!!
  That would cover the salary for the 4 officers and this story wasn't reported on anywhere.

A pro golfer or a Chicago Bear wreck a luxury car that they own and it's big news. Feebs wreck a car that they have no claim to aside from an un-adjudicated court case and no one says a word. Can anyone confirm?

Media Plays Catch Up

Again, behind the curve:

• There's another story of a Chicago Public Schools student being viciously attacked. This time, the victim may have lost an eye.
  
  The culprits appear to be a pack of girls.

"Pack of girls" would appear to be an appropriate description. This event was related via an e-mail six days ago.

Marshall High School appears to be the next Fenger. Our e-mails tell us that after four straight days of false fire alarms (all related to this stabbing), school engineers disconnected the fire alarms with CFD approval so classes weren't disrupted any further. But that didn't stop a coordinated pattern of misbehavior that resulted in four different high schools in 011 erupting Friday afternoon, including Marshall. Not a single media report though while more than a dozen students went to jail.

Gitmo Terrorists on the Way?

Via Ace of Spades, we were directed to this story at BigGovernment.com:

• The Land of Lincoln may still be licking its wounds–and certain real estate transactions–over Chicago’s losing the Olympics to Rio, but the Obama Administration has delivered up a small consolation prize: the state’s very own federal prison for terrorists. Big Government has received what is claimed to be a leaked DOJ memo that was allegedly sent yesterday from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

So all those hearings people wanted to hold regarding sending illegal combatants to Illinois? Not going to happen via Executive Order.

Toddler Third in Polls

"Big Hog Balls" Beavers sure seemed to back the wrong horse in this race. Or maybe just the wrong end of the horse? Todd is bringing up the rear:

• Faced with widespread voter dissatisfaction, embattled Cook County Board President Todd Stroger trails Circuit Clerk Dorothy Brown and Chicago Ald. Toni Preckwinkle in the race for the Democratic primary nomination, a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows.
  
  Brown had the support of 29 percent of likely Feb. 2 primary voters, ahead of Preckwinkle's 20 percent, in the poll of 502 likely voters. Stroger received 14 percent and Terrence O'Brien, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, had 11 percent.

Hopefully, the trends hold steady. First Stroger. Then Shartshanks.

New York Shooting

In Times Square:

• A deadly shootout in Times Square on Thursday sent tourists scrambling and police rushing to the scene. It all began when an undercover officer recognized an illegal street peddler.
  
  It appears from what the NYPD said after the incident the gunman came to Times Square with the expectation that he'd be confronted by police, given the weaponry he had and the note in his pocket.
  
  
• ...police found a business card from the Virginia gun shop where they believe the [stolen] gun came from.
  
  "Handwritten on the back of that business card words to the effect of I pity the cop who is going to put me or has the nerve to put me in his paddy wagon," NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Sounds like a set-up that went completely wrong for the criminal. Boo-hoo. Great job by the NYPD.

Happy Ending

All officers involved are fine:

• Englewood District officers were looking for the offender in a robbery that occurred on the 1000 block of West 63rd St. when they spotted a man matching the description at about 12:40 p.m., police said in a news release.

  The suspect fled on foot when officers tried speaking with him. The suspect then pointed a handgun at the pursuing officers, one whom fired, but missed the fleeing man, police said.

  Police said an assisting officer who saw the suspect pointing the handgun opened fire on the suspect, striking him in the 6200 block of South Morgan Street. The unidentified man was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. Police recovered a weapon at the scene.

Including the stories immediately below this one, that's three attempts to kill Chicago Police Officers in under 24 hours. In each case, skill, training and some luck saved all of us an unhappy holiday season.

We don't know if it's just us, but these stories seem to be popping up more and more lately. Be careful. A wise Patrol Specialist once told us that the colder weather just meant that more of the people you run into outside are the hard core assholes who are up to no good - "Decent people stay inside after dark and when the temperature drops below freezing." It sure seems that way sometimes.

Not Very Peaceful Ending

North side:

• A vehicle struck a Chicago Police officer during an incident where an officer shot a person, leaving them in “very critical” condition, late Wednesday on the Northwest Side.

  Grand Central Area Gang Enforcement Team officers were conducting a narcotics surveillance about 11:15 p.m. in the 6200 block of West Wabansia Ave. after obtaining information that narcotics and weapons would be moved at that location, according to a statement from police News Affairs.

  The officers observed the suspect enter a vehicle and drive away and the officers attempted to stop the vehicle near North Moody and West Wabansia avenues, according to the statement.

  The officers exited their vehicle and approached the suspect, who then accelerated his vehicle toward the officers, striking one of them, the statement said.

Officers are reportedly all OK.

Peaceful Ending

003 District:

• A man who allegedly barricaded himself in his estranged girlfriend’s Southeast Side apartment Thursday morning after shots were exchanged with police officers has been taken into custody.

  The man peacefully surrendered to police at 2:40 p.m. and a handgun was recovered from the scene, a police source said.

• The girlfriend called police when the estranged boyfriend showed up at her house, the police source said. The apartment building was evacuated by police and no one was injured. It is unclear how many people were displaced, but the man did not have any hostages.

  Police said they responded to a violation of an order of protections and when they arrived, the suspect fired shots at them. Officers then fired back...

A very good job all around, especially in this weather.

Byrne Lied

Three days since snow and our street is still a sheet of glaze ice. Our Districts are even worse.

We've only seen one snow plow the entire time doing one north/south main street. We assume there must have been another one because the main street running east and west was also clear yesterday.

Other than that? We'll let everyone else judge the efforts of "Snow Command." Even this minimal response is a step up from last year, but then again, there was nowhere to go but up.

Broken water mains spotted? Six. Clogged sewers turning corners into ice jams? Eleven. But it may thaw out over the weekend, so that's OK, right?

Daley's Olympic Rant

At the Chicago 2016 volunteers final luncheon:

• Daley started his remarks by calling on the federal government to financially back all future U.S. Olympic bids. It was too difficult for U.S. cities to raise the necessary funds in such short amounts of time, while their competitors often received financial assistance from their national governments, he said.
  
  "He started by saying we spent $75 million, and the next city was going to have to spend $100 million, and we didn't even have a chance," said one attendee, paraphrasing the mayor, who was the driving force behind the bid. "It was all politics and all money. All politics and all money. (The International Olympic Committee) didn't care about the athletes, and they didn't care about the quality of the bid."
  
  Another attendee said she came away from the 15-minute speech believing the city never understood the depth of its disadvantage. And Daley reportedly told the group that had the city known from the start that the International Olympic Committee was intent on taking the games to new regions of the globe, they never would have spent the time or the money on the effort.

$75 million? And how much of that was "corporate donations" that was actually "quid pro quo" money? Does that include the $38 million spent on Reese Hospital land? The mayor constantly harped on "no public funds" but no one believed it.

We think that Shortshanks is more upset at being beaten at his own game of "all politics and all money" by people he considered beneath him. He thinks he was upstaged by a bunch of rank amateurs and hicks when in reality, he got schooled. And he was naive enough to think that these people would stay bought once he thought they were bought and he can't very well go asking they return the suitcases the same way they were delivered.

Huh?

Someone send Shortshanks in for a dope test:

• Mayor Daley today cracked the door open to providing a government subsidy for cash-strapped McCormick Place, but only if the convention center cleans its own house first and ends price gouging that has triggered a trade show exodus.

  “If it costs you $40 [an-hour] to set this up, why are you putting another $60 on? You’re saying the cost is $100. It’s really not $100. It’s only $40,” Daley said.

  “Before you get all the subsidies throwing money at this, you first have to correct and rebuild the foundation. ... Let’s not talk about subsidies now. Let’s first correct what you have in-house. ... First, re-organize what is happening at McCormick Place.”

Once again, we thought Daley was broke. He's been saying so for a year or two now.

Second, they're charging that amount because (A) they can and (B) they have to pay for all the do-nothing middle managers who ghost payroll. Has anyone noticed the number of six-figure jobs that appear in the McPier budget? It's amazing. It's almost like it's run by the Outfit.

Ruth Gets 14 Days?

From the comments:

• Rumor is that the city's biggest Elton John/ Billy Joel fan was given only 14 day suspension when a 70 day suspension was recommended..Weis thought 14 days was enough. At least she wont miss a tennis lesson with Maggie in this weather

If true, appropriate for a start. But didn't another commander get busted back down to lieutenant for behavior unbecoming? And an ADS ended up as another lieutenant on midnights on the south side for telephone harassment?

Help an Evanston Cop

An off-duty motorcycle crash a few weeks ago, we got this letter from a friend of Joe Bush:

• An elderly motorist turned left in front of Joe and despite my friend's efforts to avoid the crash, he was thrown off the bike and sustained serious injuries. Joe was taken to the Lutheran General Hospital where he flatlined several times during first few hours after the accident. Since then doctors were able to stabilize Joe's condition. However, almost a month after the accident, Joe is still in medically induced coma, battling infections and fever which prevent doctors from performing surgeries to repair Joe's fractured pelvis and hip.
  
  Joe is a father of two awesome kids, the brother of a Skokie cop and the son of a retired Evanston firefighter. Joe served as a patrolman, Tact officer and, just few weeks before the accident, got the transfer order to the detective bureau.
  

There's a blood drive organized:

• The date of the Blood Drive and Fund Raiser is Monday, December 14th, 2009 from 11:00am-6:00pm at the Evanston Fire Department Headquarters located at 909 Lake Street, Evanston IL. Contact Detective Tracy Williams from Evanston Police at 847-833-5217 to schedule an appointment or Sabina Schleiss from LifeSource at 847-682-8394 for appointments or any other questions. Appointment preferred but walk-ins welcome.

And here's a link to follow his fight:

• Get Well Joey Bush
  

Another Budget Item

Things that make you go "Hmmmm:"

Inspection Division:

• 20 Sergeants (up from 12 in 2009)
• 44 POs (up from 22)
• 94 Total Personnel (up from 64)
• $7.1 million budget (up from $4.8 million)

That's quite an increase in the Inspection Division budget and manpower. We're still trying to figure out how much of it is internal shuffling.

As a side note, no one has come up with a plausible explanation for the "Vacation Relief" line item totaling $1,444,000. It isn't buy back or it would have appeared in previous budgets. It isn't "savings" or it would have been in (parentheses). Anyone? Bueller?

At What Cost?

4% a year raises for teachers. Increased spending. Capital improvements. New buildings. And the final result?

• Chicago Public School students barely budged on fourth- and eighth-grade national math tests this year, despite a six-year push to improve mathematics instruction, federal data released today indicates.

  CPS fourth and eighth graders posted the 10th highest scores among students of 18 big-city districts that gave their students the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the “Nation’s Report Card.’’

  Chicago inched up slightly from 2007, the last time the test was given, but not to any statistically significant degree — a pattern common among many big cities tested.

On the other hand, crime is supposedly down. We'll have yet another year of sub-500 homicides if trends continue (even if shootings are way up). Property crime is being reduced (on paper). Police responding to calls hours later due to manpower shortages means frustrated citizens aren't sticking around to report as many assaults, batteries or stick-ups. We're operating at least 600 officers short on paper and probably more in actual street officers. But we can't get a contract. At least we're getting results.

Maybe the teachers should give some money back?

That Time of Year

Holiday Jib-Jab cartoons:

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

In an odd coincidence, the name of the tree is "Morale." Funny how that works out.

UPDATE: No idea why the video is missing. It wasn't created by us so maybe the author took it down?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!! (part II)

It's going to get cold!!!

• If you thought Tuesday's fluffy, wet snow and the whipping winds were bad wait until a sub-freezing wind chill is added to the mix.

  While Chicago's metropolitan area is expected to miss much of the heavy snowfall expected to dump between four and eight inches of snow to the far northwest of the city Wednesday, residents can expect a rapidly-falling mercury by mid morning, according to the National Weather Service.

  Temperatures falling below freezing coupled with the rain and snow forecast for overnight could cause some tricky road conditions by 11 a.m. "You probably aren't going to have a lot of time to dry up before temperatures fall below freezing...so we could have some icy concerns with that," meterologist [sic] Mark Ratzer said.
  

Gee, snow in Chicago one day, the next day cold air. Now we have to admit we agree with the mayor on something:

• Media hysteria about Chicago snowstorms dates back to long before the Blizzard of ’79 that buried then-Mayor Michael Bilandic. But, Mayor Daley believes the internet has taken it to a whole new level.

  [...] “I know we have 24-hour weather stations. But, every year we get snowstorms. It snows in Chicago during the winter. It gets icy and we get cold weather. We’ve all lived here.”

Self perpetuating news cycles - media engages in "panic reporting" over natural everyday occurrences, then reports on politicians commenting on their reporting, and since a politician comments on it, it must be important, so they do it again.

What we don't agree with was what we caught Tommy Byrne saying on WBBM Sunday morning. We can't find the actual audio of the interview, but Bernie Tafoya interviewed Byrne and asked him about the upcoming snow and whether the city would be plowing side streets as opposed to last year's debacle. Byrne replied along the lines of, "I'd have to argue with that. We cleared the side streets last year."

We don't know what parallel universe Tommy was living in, but it must be the one that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. The city did shit for plowing side streets last year. Everyone and their brother reported it. The mayor even talked about privatizing side street snow removal in the off season because he knows his people screwed it up so bad. So spare us the un-truths there Tommy - clear the streets, keep them clear and watch your back. Shortshanks will throw you under the plow in a heartbeat.

Take the Money and Run

We guess Vanecko recouped his money and then some. Might as well leave the union pension funds holding the bag:

• Mayor Daley's nephew Robert Vanecko says he no longer has a financial stake in a real estate investment firm he co-founded that got deals to manage $68 million for five city pension funds.

• Asked by a Chicago Sun-Times reporter last week about DV Urban and the city pension business, Vanecko responded with an e-mail saying he no longer has any financial interest in the company -- and that he won't get any money if the company's troubled real estate investments one day turn a profit.

• Since January 2007, Vanecko and Davis have collected a total of more than $3.7 million in fees from the city pension funds: over $2.1 million in management fees, $1.3 million in development fees and $353,700 in property management fees for overseeing two apartment buildings and an office building bought with pension money.

And since they allegedly only put in $2.6 million of their "own" money, Vanecko and Davis walk away with a cool $1.1 million in "fees" for their investment in just under 3 years. Our funds get stuck with a bunch of property that has declined precipitously in value.

Not bad work if you can get it.

Someone Explain This

Please?

In the newly passed 2010 Budget, there is a section dedicated to the Police Department. Reading it is boring, but some things just jump out at you and require questions to be asked or comments to be made. Here's one:
Line item #0025. Vacation Relief. $1,444,000.

It never appeared in the 2008 budget. It wasn't in the 2009 budget. It didn't even show up in the 2009 revision. But there it is in 2010. What the heck is "Vacation Relief?" Especially in these harsh economic times, $1.4 million?

On a positive note, it's good to see them cut "Outside Graphic Arts Services" (Line #0150 - $1,000) and "Pagers" (Line #0186 - $74,500). We guess the Blackberries finally phased out the pager.

False Personation

The Sun Times taps into parking ticket resentment, and since the police aren't writing nearly as many tickets as usual...:

• The city's hunt to fill its cash-starved coffers has come to this: Some traffic-control aides -- those city employees in the fluorescent coats who help cars and pedestrians move through busy intersections -- are now writing parking tickets full time.

  Given the furor over Mayor Daley's meter-privatization deal, it isn't a job where you make a lot of friends. And, in the case of one traffic-control worker, that has made her the subject of an investigation into whether she has been parking her personal car illegally as she tickets drivers in the South Loop.

Years ago, everyone knew about the M&M wrapper in the window that traffic control aides and others used to signal other revenue generators to leave their car alone. We don't know if they're still using it. But someone in the comments found something else that ought to be looked at:

• In the Sun Times article, 7 Dec, about the TMA parking illegaly then writing tickets, look at the photo, pg3, of her car. She has an FOP member sticker and a Sgt. association sticker.
  Maybe she needs to be locked up.

We know those stickers don't mean much to other TMAs from personal experience. That's why we always park legally lately and walk the four or more blocks to our destination when in our personal cars. It's also why we took all the stickers off. But those stickers are like magnets to the flies that are the media. And whoever owns that car ought to stop giving the media a slamdunk story to slam the police again.

UPDATE: Title corrected - sorry hippy-dippy-1...we were lit last night.

Overreaction Fallout

Here's the overreaction:

• In the last five days, Chicago police have released 11 alerts to the media about residents who have been reported missing.
  
  [...] The seeming flurry of reports comes after questions about why no information was released to news outlets about the disappearance of 12-year-old Jahmeshia Conner, who was found strangled Nov. 30 in a South Side alley two weeks after she was reported missing.
  
  Department officials said Monday that they had slightly altered procedures on media alerts.
  
  Previously, only one shift released the alerts to news outlets, typically by e-mail.
  
  But the news affairs office has started releasing the "Critical Reach" alerts on each of its three shifts, department spokesman [...] said.

And here's the fallout:

• National experts say the media can play a critical role in locating a missing person, but discretion should be used.
  
  "If you put out an alert for every child, the alerts are not going to work anymore," said Cindy Rudometkin of the Polly Klaas Foundation.
  
  "People will become desensitized."

Why would they become desensitized?

• In 2009, there have been 16,000 people reported missing in Chicago.
  
  The clearance rate for those cases is more than 95 percent, police said.
  
  And Jahmeshia was one of 15 children age 12 and under who disappeared in November.
  
  All of the other children have returned home safely.

So our numbers of a few days ago were pretty much right on. We speculated that between 10,000 and 20,000 people went missing and the clearance rate was well over 90%. BreakingNews reports that all the other kids returned safely on their own. We aren't expecting the media to ask the next logical question - why are they returning home safe and unharmed and why aren't parents being charged with a crime?

Has anyone ever read the order on missing persons? It says that anyone can report a "victim" missing, even if they have no direct knowledge that the "victim" is actually missing. That means we could walk into any district station and report J-Fed missing and the desk crew is required by general order to fill out a missing person report. How screwy is that?

Hoffman Estates Cuts Cops

Watch for Shortshanks to look at this as an option:

• Hoffman Estates trustees Monday approved a $126 million budget for 2010 that cuts four police officer positions.

  But the Village Board could amend the budget Dec. 14 if Village President William McLeod gets concessions, much as the firefighters' representatives agreed to Saturday, from the police officers' union to make up the $350,000 in the four officers' salaries.

The $350,000 is only 0.27% of the entire $126 million budget, so this is a political move, and a fairly obvious one. The entire shortfall could be made up if every resident coughed up $7. Even the head of their union calls it a "dog-and-pony show."

We can totally see Daley hiring 86 recruits, then dangling a threatened layoff in front of the rank-and-file to force some bizarre concession out of the FOP. Or are we being too paranoid?

Double the Revenue? (UPDATE)

Shouldn't this be bigger news? And why are we reading it in the New York Times?

• When Mayor Richard M. Daley traveled to Abu Dhabi in February, his office announced that the trip was intended to sell Chicago as a place to do business. Left unsaid was that that Persian Gulf emirate was about to become one of the biggest investors in a deal to lease Chicago’s parking meters for 75 years.

  The city signed the now-controversial, $1.15 billion lease with a new company called Chicago Parking Meters LLC in February, and city officials said two funds of the Morgan Stanley investment fund made up 99 percent of the new company, with “several other entities” sharing the remaining 1 percent.

And how is that investment performing?

• And in the case of the parking contract, the parking meter company projects a net income of about $58 million in 2010 , after this year more than doubling what the meters had brought in for the city.

More than doubling what the city brought in? We smell a scandal here. A scandal of enormous proportions, especially in light of this past week's budget passage:

• A year has passed since aldermen hurriedly approved the privatization deal, but the issue remains a hot topic at City Hall. The mayor won City Council backing last week to balance his 2010 budget with almost $600 million from the upfront parking company payment, meaning almost all of the windfall will be spent within the first two years of the deal.

We didn't major in economics in school, but even we can see that something stinks to high heaven about this deal. Anyone in a position to make a difference smell the same BS we are?

UPDATE: We realize the parking consortium raised rates and that could contribute to the doubling of revenue. That begs the question, why didn't Daley raise the rates and keep the money for the city? Yeah, yeah, "political fallout" you answer. Going from twenty-five cents to fifty cents wouldn't have caused that much outcry seeing as how parking was at a premium anyway.

The contract was a crooked deal from day one, and Daley's spending the entire payout in two years is going to drive the city into receivership in short order.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!

It's going to snow!!!!!!

• With forecasts of snow expected to affect rush hour traffic Monday morning, and a winter storm predicted for this week, some Chicagoans decided it would be a good idea if they spent part of their Sunday shopping for salt and snow blowers.

• According to the National Weather Service, a dusting of snow is expected between 4 a.m. and noon Monday, possibly affecting traffic in the morning, meteorologist Andy Boxell said.

  But another winter storm forecast to start late afternoon or early evening Tuesday--in some places to include snow, rain and sleet--could bring four to five inches of snow across the downtown area by mid-day Wednesday. In some parts of Chicagoland, the accumulation may likely reach up to 6 to 10 inches.

And of course, this means that Snow Tows will be in full force, including the additional 500 miles of No Parking on arterial streets. Word is that Meter Maids and TMA's are being equipped with snow brushes to make sure all street parking in the neighborhoods have their little parking box slips properly displayed.

All Legit!

No wonder Daley wants to get rid of the Federal hiring monitor - she keeps calling him out:

• The court-appointed monitor tapped to clean up hiring practices at City Hall has issued another stinging report detailing "the most significant instance" yet of city foot-dragging when reporting apparent violations of federal rules.

  In her report filed Friday in federal court, Noelle Brennan criticizes Mayor Daley's Office of Compliance for many delays in filing a final report detailing a 2008 investigation into a deputy human resources commissioner's alleged violations of hiring rules. The commissioner was later fired for a different hiring violation, Brennan said.

  "The problem is simple -- the Hiring Plan requires that hiring violations and irregularities get reported -- [the Office of Compliance] failed, repeatedly, to do so,'' Brennan wrote. "This is not the first time our office has received misinformation from the City; however, it is the most significant instance.''

If Daley had any sense of shame, he'd pretend....oh who are we kidding? Shortshanks has as much sense of embarrassment at his actions as a south side hooker has at her method of earning money. We guess he just gets used to it.

Nothing Better To Do?

Seriously?

• off the subject..but does anyone know why J-Fed is auditing exempts' emails? is it just certain exempts? scandal brewing?
  is he tired of leaks to SCC? afraid of politically incorrect ones?lawsuits? exempts have said no emails unless directly job related..very directly...any one know what is going on?

One theory in the replies:

• The email policy is mainly due to upcoming changes in FOIA laws. They don't want slick attorneys getting their hands on private intra-department info.

Plausible. There are new FOIA rules coming up after the first of the year and they seem more sweeping than ever. One might imagine that e-mails back-and-forth over "merit" picks, dinner plans and policy changes fall under the "discoverable" umbrella.

Or he could just be looking for those dozen or so exempts who forward ...well, never mind.

Oh Yeah...

...the Bears play today. From ESPN, we get this intelligence:

• The Bears are not good enough to compete with the best teams in the league, but they have shown an ability to easily beat bad teams. Jay Cutler has a high 67 percent chance of throwing at least 1 INT, but the Bears are still favored to win at 70 percent even if he has 1 or more INT. This is because Kyle Boller has more career INTs than TDs and he also has a 65 percent plus chance of throwing an INT. If Boller somehow throws no INTs and the Rams 28th ranked run defense holds Matt Forte to under 50 rushing yards (he is averaging 80 per sim) then the Rams are actually 59 percent favorites.

Bears favored by 5. We say don't be fooled. We called our friend working a south side wire room and he said take the Rams and the 5 points.

Media Ignores Stories

A couple of stories that aren't covered for some reason. First up, from the comments, you have this one:

• Get this one...Over at Hyde Park HS, the gym teacher of these animals decides that he alone has the brains to stop the gang problem. He calls in all the gangs for a "meeting", without letting the police know about it. How does it end? A gang fight, and our dear little darlings threatening to kill each other

Then from an e-mailer featured on the main page:

• ...at Marshall Career Incarceration Academy today - three straight days of false fire alarms, street fights, and a girl who lost her eye...

Why is it that the media won't cover these stories, but they'll run five missing reports back to back to back to back to back after Bobby Rush and J-Fed start a pissing match?

A Frank Discussion

The Breaking News website has the following stories all in a row today:

• Authorities this evening were seeking the public's help in finding a 16-year-old girl who went missing Thursday from Chicago's Englewood neighborhood on the South Side.
  
  
• Chicago police were still searching for a 15-year-old girl who was reported missing in April, police said this evening.
  
  
• Chicago police this evening were hoping the public could help find a 14-year-old boy who was reported missing in October.
  
  
• A 14-year-old girl has been missing for about a month and Chicago police this evening are seeking the public's help in finding her.
  
  
• A 73-year-old man with dementia went missing this morning and Chicago police this evening are trying to find him.

Of course, this is all because of the 12-year-old girl who went missing for two weeks, then turned up dead in an alley close to home. Bobby Rush has been throwing around the accusations of racism in the investigation while J-Fed is saying computer errors may have led to a breakdown of an alert being issued. Both excuses are merely that - excuses. And both are part fact and part bullshit.

The Department handles an obscene amount of missing persons cases yearly. One figure we saw was something like 20,000 annually. The clearance rate is ridiculous, too - 90% and better. That's because the criteria for taking Missing Report are low (anyone can report anyone else missing for any reason with no time limit) and most missing persons return on their own in a few days. The media can't be forced to cover all these missing people and even when an alert goes out, we don't see them on television with any sort of regularity. The only ones we ever see are the elderly dementia patients.

Someone can cut and paste the next paragraphs and send them to Eric Holder who claims America is a nation of cowards when it comes to discussions about race.

The fact is, the missing white girl is the anomaly. It isn't racist - the facts bear it out. It's what sells papers and drives viewership. Black America doesn't want to face the fact and deal with the fallout that their 16, 15, 14, even 13 and 12-year-old missing persons are shacking up with 19, 25, sometimes even 30-year-old men, getting pregnant and giving rise to yet another generation of people destined to be unemployed, sucking up tax money, populating prisons and continuing the cycle of destructive behavior prevalent in that community.

Point out one thing racist in that paragraph.

Maybe Mary Mitchell could stop writing her bullshit columns about how everyone is to blame for the plight of her people except the face in the mirror and start running a daily feature of runaways and "missing" girls who turn up after a weekend away with some man they met on the party line or the computer who is going to make them a star. Even if there are only 10,000 missing people a year in Chicago, that's 27 profiles Mope-rah could run in her column EVERY SINGLE DAY.

After the Tahoes

As the Tahoes are dying out faster than expected, we'd suggest the Department look into these:

• The compact package combined with the tasty twin turbo 2.0-liter four cylinder diesel putting out 204 hp scores mid-6 second 0-60 times with 40 mpg efficiency.

Diesel. 40 mpg. The ultimate green beemer. The Germans are using these for pursuits on the autobahn, phasing out the Porsche 911s. Oh wait...pursuits. Right. We don't do those any more. Sorry.

How about the humble Dodge Chargers then?

It just looks fast, right?

Gee, Another Coincidence

Never in a million years would we have expected this to happen:

• Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich has always maintained he wants the public to hear all of the undercover government recordings in his federal corruption case, and now maybe he'll get his wish.
  
  Chicago police were looking into an early-morning burglary Friday at the South Side offices of his lawyers. Computers containing copies of the nearly 500 hours of recordings in the Blagojevich case and other sensitive evidence were stolen, sources said.
  
  It was unclear whether the burglary was carried out by thieves knowing what they were after or was a smash-and-grab by criminals looking for cash or easy-to-move merchandise. But the burglars didn't appear to be terribly sophisticated, setting off an alarm about 4 a.m.

In Chicago? Illinois? Connected lawyers' offices? Who knows what else? Yeah, it's all legit.

Virtual Overtime Part 2

Evidently, the letter was meant for 004 District supervisors only:

• It's for the supervisors not po's I have a copy of the original which was [rescinded] and the new one

And as speculated, it was rescinded (or possibly amended) within a few hours of being posted here.

And although supervisors are in a better position than many to afford new computers, requiring them to work outside duty hours would still mean a "first issue" computer and paid overtime for the two hours. And probably a three-day training session on how to use e-mail, the e-mail policy, a full day on appropriate use of Department e-mail accounts, e-mail no-no's and half-a-day worth of "Use of Force" filler material before cutting out early on the third day.

Is he trying to get his supervisors a nice little Christmas bonus? Don't any of these exempts have any idea what a "contract" is?

Canine Promotions?

Rumors abound of a Canine class starting next week?

Anyone have a list of the lucky winners?

UPDATE: The officers are being detailed to Mass Transit next week. Then they will be matched up with Bomb Dogs already undergoing training in Texas in the first quarter next year. There probably won't be a formal "promotion" type list as they do for detective or white shirt promotions, but there will be "telephone" transfers to mass transit sent out.

Blogger Problems Continue

Still losing comments by the dozen and they are posting out of order on occasion. Hopefully, Blogger has this fixed this weekend and not too many comments were flushed into the great Internet void.

Post closed here - we're just keeping you all updated.

UPDATE: We seem to have recovered all except 30 comments that were in the "Bombed by Breakfast" post. If you were one of the witty individuals who can't find their work in the post, we're sorry, but it may be gone forever. Re-post if you're able to so everyone can enjoy the inanity.

Good job, 010

Cop injured, one carjacker dead.

• Chicago police fatally shot a carjacking suspect and wounded another in the Lawndale neighborhood Thursday evening, police said.

  A police officer was struck by the stolen car and suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, police said in a statement.

Good work, everyone. Speedy recovery, Officer.

UPDATE: Coppers from 011 evidently had a hand in this happy outcome, but that isn't surprising as Districts sharing zones often end up backing up and assisting each other. A fine job was done by everyone as related by a number of e-mails and comments.

Virtual Overtime!

Another wonderful story from the south side:

• Commander Carter has placed an order in the CO Book that all officers must check their Department e-mail at least 2 hours before they come to work to keep up with changing conditions in the 004th District.

First up, since this is a "requirement," that means the City has to provide "first issue." We'd like to try an Apple computer this time. Those PC's are kind of clunky at times.

Second, be sure that all you 004 District officers fill out your Time Due slips - requiring you to perform job related functions two hours before your start time is compensated at one-and-one-half times regular pay. Make us proud boys and girls!

Third, we will provide the first officer who gets us a copy of this order via e-mail two free beers at the tavern of their choice.

The over/under for the page containing this order being removed from the 004 District CO Book is 12 minutes following publication of this post. So somewhere around 0812 hours. Sooner if someone pages Carter first - we might have a new Burger Queen on our hands.

RDO Swap

This is a good rumor and we've heard it discussed in a couple of different forums. Does this sound like a good idea? We're curious.

• RDO swapping has been approved between the City and Department to settle all FLSA suits.
  
  
• An officer denied time off (Comp Time only) can swap the day with another officer who is RDO on the day in question. Officers on furlough get to swap days only they are regularly scheduled to be RDO, not any day during their furlough.
  
  
• This is NOT an overtime opportunity. No time-and-one-half. It's a straight up trade so seniority will not come into play at all as it's an arrangement between two officers of the same rank. Swaps can only be done within the unit of assignment and watch.
  
  
• Once the swap is done, the officer that worked their day off has 28 days (we assume this covers the overtime cycle) to take the missed day off. You cannot save it up for extending a weekend or furlough or whatever, but if it happens to land within the 28 day cycle that way, that's your good luck.

We might have a detail or two wrong, but it seems like a decent tool to give people time off who need the day. Opinions?

Bombed by Breakfast

No, we aren't talking about certain lieutenants. Read our e-mail:

• Hey SCC,
  
  Was at Marshall Career Incarceration Academy today - three straight days of false fire alarms, street fights, and a girl who lost her eye...I can't believe the media didn't cover that one! But today took the cake. We got bombarded by oranges that were part of this "universal breakfast" being pioneered in the schools. Have you heard about this thing? Every kid, regardless of want or need, gets a universal breakfast consisting of sugar-packed snacks and fruits even if they already had breakfast at home and they're taking time out of class instruction to hand this out and collect the waste. The "waste" is upwards of 75% of the food handed out: unopened snacks, milk and other drinks and the oranges the students threw at responding police and firefighters.

We guess everyone should be thankful it's only oranges. And it's nice to see the schools are arming the student body with projectiles.

Aldercreatures Talk Shit Again

What a bunch of goofs:

• Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th) agreed that there is “a lot of merit” to complaints about the raid on long-term reserves. But, he said, “Where is there a source of income big enough to fill the [$520 million] hole? There isn’t any. So we are in a hang-on mode. We have to hang on until things get better.”

That hole didn't make itself overnight Ed. It took years of mismanagement. And that "hang-on mode" you keep yapping about? We didn't notice you hanging on when you voted yourself a 6% raise and a 5% raise for your staffers and an increase in the aldermanic "discretionary" fund to $1.3 million that most of you seem to use to pay off family members, buy cars and rent office space in buildings you already own.

• That won’t happen anytime soon, warned Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), the mayor’s floor leader. This spring, taxpayers could face another body blow when an arbitrator rules on the new police contract.

  “Next year, buckle up. I don’t care what happens to the economy between now and then. None of these indicators are gonna get back to a point where we don’t have to make more cuts and have more savings and have more debate on where we’re gonna find the money,” O’Connor said.

The teacher's contract was barely expired when they got 4% raises for four years. If the police and fire contracts had been settled as quickly, we wouldn't have been having any discussion whatsoever on any of this. But Daley insists on treating first responders like shit and then is surprised when they feel the tiniest bit of resentment at being asked to "sacrifice" in the face of spending sprees and aldermanic splurges, not to mention Shortshanks finding all sorts of cash to buy up Bensenville properties, fund construction projects, and increase the size of the handouts to certain leeches.

You aldercreatures want sacrifices?

• With the Chicago Police Department already operating 2,000 officers-a-day short of authorized strength, the budget uses federal stimulus funds to add just 86 officers, 30 of them for the CTA.

  That’s nowhere near enough hiring to solve a manpower shortage that Police Supt, Jody Weis fears will get dramatically worse when as many as 1,000 more officers retire next year.

They better hope that those unpaid salaries are the only sacrifice we end up making.

City Budget Passes 38-12

The most "no" votes in a long time:

• The Chicago City Council voted 38-12 today to approve Mayor Richard Daley's $6.1 billion budget proposal largely intact, but not before aldermen offered a smattering of complaints.

Complaints?

• Ald. Thomas Allen, 38th, announced he would vote against Daley's budget for the first time in his aldermanic career. Allen said the spending plan would fail to uphold the council's pledge to maintain at least $400 million in parking meter lease money in a long-term reserve fund to replace the parking meter proceeds the city lost.

Daley will have spend over $270 million of the $400 million in "long-term reserve" money. Remember, this is a largish portion of the money that is supposed to replace 75 YEARS worth of meter revenue - and two-thirds of it is gone in a single year.

• Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, chairman of the City Council's Budget Committee, applauded the mayor's proposal for maintaining services without raising taxes or fees. The use of city reserves makes sense, Austin said, while referencing Daley's pledge to replenish the funds at a later date.

And how is Daley going to "replenish" the money? His goose laying the golden eggs is getting a wee bit tired. Oh yeah, he'll just raise taxes!

• Ald. Robert Fioretti, 2nd, took issue with Daley's plan to use $35 million to give Chicago homeowners property tax relief, saying it's misplaced given the city's financial distress.

Bob, relax. It's a bribe to the taxpayers. Too bad there's less and less of them lately.

And when Daley finds money, he spends it even faster!

• The Daley administration on Monday attempted to address some concerns about the budget by using $1.5 million in newly anticipated revenue that will result from a court settlement to restore funding in several areas.
  
  Under that plan, which Moore contends does not go far enough, $600,000 would go to neighborhood organizations — mostly chambers of commerce — to promote economic development.
  
  Another $200,000 would go to pay psychiatrists who work at the city’s mental health clinics, in part to restore some services. Another $500,000 would go to substance abuse treatment.
  
  The rest, $200,000, would be used for tourism efforts, an area where the mayor initially proposed cutting $1 million.

Looking real bad Richie. Real bad.

Toddler Raises Specter of Death

Nothing like pandering:

• On Tuesday Cook County Board President Todd Stroger argued he's certain that the board's successful slashing of the county's unpopular sales tax actually could put people's lives on the line with fewer dollars being funneled into the county's health and hospital system serving the poor and uninsured.

  "Some people will die needlessly for lack of access to the health care our system provides today," Stroger said, in the heat of his losing battle.

Why don't you stop treating people from out of the county, out of the state and out of the nation? That will save over $50 million per year - almost a quarter of the $195 million just cut from the budget.

Then knock off a few of the 20 or so cousins making six-figures as middle managers.

Learning Curve

Slowly flattening out, but still generating money for Daley's voracious appetite:

• One might think that after the well-publicized tows of 234 cars from city streets on the first night of the winter overnight parking ban, vehicle owners would make certain their cars were off the designated streets on the second night of enforcement.

  But 164 more woke up Wednesday morning to find their cars had been towed from the 107 miles of streets where the ban is in effect.

And don't doubt for a second that Shortshanks has Streets & Sanitation supervisors out there with tape measures checking to see if tonight's slush amounts to 2" so they can declare an additional 500 miles of streets to be Snow Tow hunting grounds. We might even go so far as to speculate the tape measures used have been altered by half-an-inch or so and they'll only measure in "lake effect" areas. Hopefully, Tommy Skilling can keep them honest.

Get Well Officer

Accidents happen:

• A Chicago police officer executing a search warrant was hurt this afternoon when he was struck in the leg by a bullet from another officer's gun that was intended for two charging dogs, police said.

  The incident happened at about 1:15 p.m. in the 6000 block of South May Street, according to a police statement. Narcotics officers were at a home there as part of a investigation, and as one officer tried to secure a room, the two dogs attacked him.
  

  He fired his gun at them, police said. One of the bullets hit a dog and then kept going in another direction, hitting another officer in the leg. That officer was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was listed in good condition, police said.

Someone owes someone a beer. Maybe two.

Burger Queen Returns?

Rumor has it that retired former Commander is on the verge of filing a federal discrimination lawsuit against the Department and certain exempts.

It is truly amazing that you can be an incompetent hack your entire career, get a gold star, drive an entire district into a crater, then find a bottom-feeding lawyer who would even look at a case like this.

We'll bet she clears a cool million easily.

So Damned Insignificant

You like us! You really really like us!! OK, all joking aside, we were completely flabbergasted when we started receiving e-mails this morning saying we had been mentioned on the John Williams WGN Radio Show today. We thought it was just a passing mention - but the whole show was about Google releasing a list of "top ten" searches in 31 markets across the US. And coming in at #3 for Chicago searches?

• impact cps
• cta bus tracker
• second city cop
• rta trip planner
• southtown star
• metromix chicago
• harold washington college
• paws chicago
• chicago public library
• uic.edu

Then Channel 2 did a feature and linked us in the opening paragraph:

• The Chicago Police officers' blog Second City Cop made the list with an assortment of transit, education and other local Web sites, is one of the most popular Google searches in the Chicago area this year.
  
  [...] Coming in third is "Second City Cop," for the popular blog written by and for Chicago Police officers. The blog is primarily composed of police-related news and commentary.

The Chicagoist and Tribune also mention the list - keep in mind these are searches unique to Chicago. We're sure we aren't anywhere near the top 1,000,000 searches in the United States and we're less than a blip worldwide.

So once again, thanks to everyone who visits. We wouldn't be this "insignificant" without you.

We passed 8 million visitors last Saturday. Our honorary 8 millionth visitor was Lt. Barb West, formerly of IAD.

Visitor #7,999,999 was Mike Masters. Better luck next time Masters, Masters, Masters.

Fioretti Wasting Time

Bob, you're wasting time. An indicted-soon-to-be-convicted felon is running circles around you:

• So much for a rookie alderman’s plan to establish terms limits and pay cuts for Chicago Police Board members, force them to explain their disciplinary actions against police officers and penalize board members for poor attendance.

  The reform plan drafted by Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) with an assist from the Chicago Justice Project was stalled today amid opposition from Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th).

  Carothers specifically objected to the draconian pay cut and to Fioretti’s plan to force Police Board members who miss three meetings in a calendar year or fail to vote 15 percent of the time to forfeit their seats.

Bob tries to stop Felony Franks from advertising, attempts to stop drug sales by outlawing zip-loc baggies, and now is attempting to hold nine people responsible for their "decisions." Nine people who are not elected, but are directly appointed by the mayor. Let's repeat that:

• Nine people appointed by the mayor

We just want to point out that there is no "layer of protection" or "fall guys" between the mayor and these appointees, a rarity in the Shortshanks administration. These appointees are all answerable to one person and owe their existence to one person. If something scandalous was to occur (or had occurred), then the buck has only one place to stop.

Bob is attacking the problem from the wrong end.

234?

Two-hundred-thirty-four snow tows?

• On the first day of the city's overnight parking ban there were more cars towed from the 107 miles of streets where the ban is in effect than were towed on the same day last year or the year before.
  
  From 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. Tuesday, city crews towed 234 cars parked on streets where parking is not allowed in the overnight hours from Dec. 1 through April 1, according to a release from the Department of Streets and Sanitation.
  
  Those streets are considered “critical arterial streets” and, snow or no snow, parking is not allowed overnight.

We're willing to bet many of these cars were avoiding parking boxes or new neighborhood meters and got hammered with $210 worth of pain. We also imagine there are at least 234 more foot soldiers in the fight versus Shortshanks. If only they had read the blog, we posted warnings.

Seattle Police Kill Mad Dog

Good riddance to bad rubbish:

• The man suspected of gunning down four police officers in a suburban coffee shop was shot and killed by Seattle police early Tuesday, a sheriff's spokesman said.

  Maurice Clemmons was shot to death in a working-class south Seattle neighborhood after police tracked him down using possible hiding spots supplied by Pierce County investigators, said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the county sheriff.

We don't expect any rational explanation for what was done to our fellow officers in Washington to ever be found, but perhaps they can rest in peace knowing their killer is rotting in hell about now. Or at least their families might find some comfort.

Bad News on Health Care

Remember that raise? Guess where it's going?

• Individual insurance premiums would increase by an average of 10 percent or more, according to an analysis of the Senate healthcare bill.

  The long-awaited report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) also concluded that subsidies provided by the legislation would make coverage cheaper for those who qualify.

That's from the Congressional Budget Office, the number crunchers who work for Congress. Even they know Obama-care is going to bankrupt the country.

But Obama isn't going to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 a year. He'll just raise everything else.

One Weis Down

Someone in the comments said, "One Weis down, one to go." We couldn't stop laughing.

We don't have any particular fondness for college football. Games are all about the money, not the scholar-athlete. One of the better books on the subject is "The Hundred Yard Lie" by Rick Telendar.

In any case, there's some really bad news attached to this event - the Bears are rumored to be looking at Charlie Weis to take over for Lovie Smith.

Remember, Don't Park There

The over/under is 100 tows:

• Chicago's overnight winter parking ban goes into effect at 3 a.m. Tuesday, meaning you need to be careful where you park tonight.

  Those prime spots on the city's main arterial streets could turn into parking ticket/tow truck hazard zones.

  If you get towed, it'll cost you $50 for the parking ticket, $150 for the towing fee and $10 a day for storage in the impound lot.

Shortshanks needs money, so we're taking the "over" this year.

Can Anyone Verify?

From the comments:

• They City needs the money to pay for the $10,000 damage that Simeon Football team and coaches did to the locker room at Soldier Field after the Prep Bowl. We need to pay their parents to escort them to and from the locker rooms. What a joke.

Maybe someone needs to change on the buses from now on?