"Statistical Evidence Not Required"

Once again, Heather MacDonald completely destroys the anti-police narrative within the DOJ report:

• The most important statement in the Justice Department’s damning report on the Chicago Police Department has nothing to do with police behavior. Released on Friday, the report found the Chicago police guilty of a “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional force. But it turns out that the Justice Department has no standard for what constitutes a “pattern or practice” (the phrase comes from a 1994 federal statute) of unconstitutional police conduct. “Statistical evidence is not required” for a “pattern or practice” finding, the DOJ lawyers announce, citing unrelated court precedent. Nor is there “a specific number of incidents” required to constitute a “pattern or practice,” they proclaim.
  
  Having cleared themselves of any obligation to provide “a specific number of [unconstitutional] incidents” or a statistical benchmark for evaluating them, the DOJ attorneys proceed to ignore any further obligation of transparency. The reader never learns how many incidents of allegedly unconstitutional behavior the Justice Department found, nor how those incidents compare with the universe of police-civilian contacts conducted by the Chicago Police Department. No clue is provided regarding why the DOJ lawyers concluded that the alleged abuses reached the mysterious threshold for constituting a pattern or practice. Instead, the report uses waffle words like “several,” “often,” or “many” as a substitute for actual quantification. This vacuum of information hasn’t stopped the mainstream media from trumpeting the report as yet another exposé of abusive, racist policing. EXCESSIVE FORCE IS RIFE IN CHICAGO, U.S. REVIEW FINDS, read the headline on the New York Times’s front-page story, which went on to note that the excessive force was “chiefly aimed at African-Americans and Latinos.”

Then MacDonald goes on to expound on the point we brought up yesterday (and the point that the Sun Times "reporter" referenced in the post directly below completely missed), and she does it so much better than we were able to:

• The report does disclose that the DOJ attorneys reviewed 425 incidents of less-than-lethal force between January 2011 and April 2016. But what proportion of total force incidents those 425 events represent or how many of those 425 incidents the federal lawyers found unconstitutional isn’t revealed. As to how many stops and arrests were made over that same time period that didn’t involve the use of force, the reader can only guess.
  
  We also learn that the federal civil rights team identified 203 officer-involved shootings between January 1, 2011, and March 21, 2016. How many of those were bad shootings? Fifteen? One hundred? The reader is left in the dark. The massive New York Police Department averaged 48 shootings a year from 2005 to 2015. The per-capita rate of officer shootings in the NYPD is therefore much lower than in the Chicago Police Department, which is about a third the size. But Chicago’s crime rate is much higher than New York’s; CPD officers confront many more armed and resisting suspects. It would have been useful to know how the ratio of officer-involved shootings to criminal shootings in Chicago compares to other cities. We don’t even learn how many of those 203 officer-involved shootings in Chicago were lethal.

We've bought a number of MacDonald's books, and it might behoove members of the so-called media to read her work, which is painstakingly footnoted, precise and (dare we say it) unbiased. Numbers are tortured so often to make them say things that don't stand up to rigorous academic scrutiny - it happens on both sides of the political divide. But when you have someone strip them down and explain the meaning and logical conclusions behind the numbers as MacDonald does, you'd have to be a moron (or a member of the press....but we repeat ourselves) to see anything but a half-assed hit job by an Administration on the way out.

Fourth Estate Follies

So someone who can't even be bothered to do their own research into substantive allegations made by this blog and its readers, decides that the police should just lay back and enjoy being lectured by our betters:

• Judging by their responses in social media, many of the city’s police officers were totally unmoved by the findings of the federal government’s investigation into the Chicago Police Department.
  
  In the posts and comment sections of the Second City Cop blog, you won’t find any serious discussion of the many disturbing incidents or the systemic, dysfunctional practices detailed by the feds last week.

Sure you will. We've only just started critiquing the report. It takes time to read through 166 pages if you want to make sense of it, unlike many "journalists" who read the executive summary, skip entire sections, and accept everything the government feeds them like the good little mushrooms they are.

When you have to live under it, you take your time.

• There was nearly unanimous scorn for a report that anonymous commenters dismissed as a “scam,” a “crock of s—” and “garbage” that was produced “for the sole purpose of advancing an agenda.”
  
  One Second City Cop commenter pointed out that the head of the U.S. Department of Justice division that conducted the investigation here had been “legal council” [sic] for the NAACP.
  
  “Bias everywhere!!!” that commenter concluded.

You think this DOJ lawyer was appointed to be fair? That she didn't bring innate biases to her work? Seriously? What makes her so different from us, seeing as how we (the police) bring every bias under the sun to our jobs - it says so in the report. Oh, right, leftists can't be biased, only the conservatives, right leaning, police types. Leftists are as pure as the driven snow. Judging by the report, "bias" is a very real explanation for the sloppy research and questionable conclusions.

• You see, it’s the cops who are the victims here, despite the DOJ’s allegations that the department regularly violates constitutional rights.

No where have we personally posted that cops are the "victims." And this "journalist" even states in that sentence that these are "allegations." LAst time we checked, "allegations" mean there is no definitive proof. So why can't cops feel a little picked on? After all, there weren't dozens of journalists killed in the US last year.

• Others consoled fellow officers by looking ahead to the inauguration of a new sheriff in D.C. on Friday, exactly one week after the report on the CPD was made public.
  
  They ain’t afraid of no feds. And why should they be? President-elect Donald Trump has picked an attorney general who shares their bedrock belief that they’ve been unfairly maligned after all the racially charged disputes across the country during the past couple years.

Have you tried that line of reasoning on Darren Wilson lately? He was cleared by the local, state and Obama's own Department of Justice, yet still can't find work. "Maligned" is by far the least of crimes committed by press. Same thing in Baltimore.

• “Hopefully the DOJ run by adults under Trump will re-examine the report,” one commenter said on Second City Cop.
  
  The officer who authors the blog alleged the Justice Department sought to get information only from “people with ingrained prejudices against the police, people with histories versus the police, people whose livelihood relies on suing the police — people with axes to grind.”

We're pretty sick of this mope about now. But yeah, god forbid we ever demand a fair shake, an unbiased investigation without the stink of a political rush job before Administration changes, a report that properly samples the community, that doesn't properly document or cite where information is coming from.

But then when you work for a paper that endorsed Hillary Clinton, carried water for Shortshanks, then Rahm, failed to cover real verifiable corruption at the City, County, State and Federal levels, that regularly writes love letters to president Sparklefarts, well, why would the cops expect anything resembling legit reporting from them.

This is exactly how they got Trump.

Look Who Grew a Set

Aldercreatures demanding accountability?

• As the U.S. Justice Department asks Chicago to address deep flaws in police officers' use of force, a group of aldermen is accusing Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Law Department of enabling the misconduct and is asking federal authorities to investigate.
  
  The City Council's Progressive Caucus sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch last week, asking her to launch a federal review of the Law Department's federal civil rights litigation division, which has been sanctioned eight times during Emanuel's tenure for withholding possible evidence in police misconduct lawsuits, which it defends.
  
  "It looks as if the cover-up extends not only to leadership of the Police Department but to the corporation counsel and our lawyers as well," Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, said in an interview. "I don't want that to happen."

Of course, there's no danger in asking Lynch to launch an investigation since she's gone this Friday. Having balls would be writing to Jeff Sessions to come into Chicago and investigate Rahm's Law Department, which has a checkered history of concealing evidence, suppressing videos and approving settlements prior to lawsuits even being filed.

Procedural Justice Attendees

The brass is starting to attend this class finally:

• Hey SCC,
  
  
  The Superintendent,  Robin Robinson, and several other high ranking members of the CPD are at the academy today for the 8 hour PJ class. 

They've been preaching it for so long without actually attending the class? You think they would have been the first in line since they're the "leaders."

• The shitter of it is that police hater Jamal Green is also in attendance today. Sad when a man who has battered police officers on more than one occasion is now sitting in a class with officers. 

Word is he complained to Special Ed the whole time about the numerous felonies he's been battling in the courts. If he wouldn't attack the police, there would be less felonies to face.

DOJ Report

So we're about two-thirds of the way through, but far enough along to have drawn certain conclusions and formed opinions. This was put together by a politicized Department and an obviously partisan Administration for the sole purpose of advancing an agenda. That Hillary lost lent an unseemly speed to the conclusion and de-legitimizes many of the supposed "findings."

Evidence of haste can be found almost immediately:

• Page 2, paragraph 3: 60 ride-alongs

Given that there are 279 police beats, three watches, that's 837 potential ride-alongs. Not to mention rapid response, traffic, 06, tact, saturation, gang enforcement, boats, horses, god knows how many administrative and undercover beats, there's probably nearly 1,200 potential ride-alongs in a 24 hour period. The DOJ claims they spent "300 person-days" here, that's 360,000 opportunities to ride-along.

• .016% - sixteen thousandths of one percent

We've taken a few math courses in our time and this isn't even close to what would be considered a valid statistical representation. There's more:

• 340 individual CPD members (out of a supposed 12,000 - 2.8%)
• 1,000 community members (.037% of 2.7 million)
• 90 community organizations (out of ?); are any citizens listed above part of this group?
• "family members of individuals who were killed by CPD officers" (how many were justifiable shootings?); and again, are these persons from either of the previous groups?
• "local researchers, academics, and lawyers who have studied CPD extensively for decades (gee, lets guess - Futterman, Ayers, Loevy, Protess - how close were we?)

In other words, people with ingrained prejudices against the police, people with histories versus the police, people whose livelihood relies on suing the police - people with axes to grind. How many of these "interviewees" fit into one or more of those categories? How many were selected at random, or did they all volunteer to come forward with their stories? We know that certain retirees who left or resigned under investigation were all to eager to sit with the DOJ to air their supposed "grievances."

More importantly, how many of these stories fall outside the supposed window of 2011 to 2016? Some? Many? All? We don't know because in every single example cited throughout the report, no dates are given. Some of these stories could be ten or twenty years old. Maybe more, seeing as how they bring up Burge who has been gone for almost 25 years now.

A slapdash report like this, with minimal footnotes and references, calls into question the validity of the rest of the "conclusions" if they're based on faulty metrics. But don't expect a lazy media in thrall to Rahm and his cronies to take any serious look behind the curtain.

Off Duty Shooting

After being shot at, returns fire and wounds the assailant:

• A person was shot when an off-duty Chicago Police sergeant returned fire during a shooting Sunday evening in the Albany Park neighborhood.
  
  The Town Hall District sergeant was walking with several friends about 7:30 p.m. in the 4500 block of North Kedzie when a group of people in a dark-colored vehicle pulled up and instigated an argument, according to a statement from Chicago Police.
  
  The vehicle then pulled into a nearby business parking lot and turned around toward the sergeant and his friends to continue arguing, police said. Someone inside the vehicle brandished a gun and opened fire at the sergeant and the people he was with. The sergeant returned fire at the vehicle, which drove away.
  
  A short time later, a male showed up at Swedish Covenant Hospital with a gunshot wound to his head, police said. Investigators suspected he was involved in the shooting with the off-duty officer and searched the area around the hospital. A weapon was found in the hospital’s parking lot.

Good shot as he winged the assailant who had been firing at himself and his friends. Watch yourselves out there.

An Interesting Turn

So the ACLU wants all government cameras off for the Inauguration:

• Civil rights groups are concerned that the police will violate their rights during the Inauguration protests so they intend to record their behavior. Meanwhile, the ACLU is demanding that the police turn off their body worn cameras during the events.
  
  D.C. Police say their policy is to only record when there is a police activity and they do not consider monitoring protests an activity.
  
  “We are concerned what they will do with the data,” says Monica Hopkins-Maxwell of the District of Columbia ACLU.
  
  Ironically, at the same time the ACLU demands that the police not record their activities, they have launched a new app called “Mobile Justice” that encourages others to record law enforcement.

In light of the potential for directed disruption (leftists), terrorism (local and international), and 'protests' that morph into something more sinister, we'd think the every camera in the nation ought to be turned on this Friday.

We're In

All in, both feet, no argument:

• Crime has taken over America’s inner-city communities. With sky-high murder rates and racial tensions worse than at any time in recent memory, many are beginning to wonder what can be done to make our communities safe again.
  
  Black Lives matter has an answer. They want to take police out of the communities altogether.
  
  It would certainly put an end to the officer-involved shootings that have enraged the black community. Without police officers, criminals would be free to shoot and kill whoever they want — and Black Lives Matter never seems to mind when a young black man is shot and killed by one of their own

And the Department could redirect those resources. Sounds like a win for everyone - under-served communities get more police, less payouts due to less confrontations so taxpayers win, less wear and tear on equipment since there will be less chases, funeral directors will experience a giant upswing in business....oh wait.

Messy Weekend - Police Shooting, Too

It's a holiday weekend don't you know:

• Twenty-four people have been shot across the city over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend, leaving seven dead, according to Chicago Police.
  
  Shortly after midnight on Sunday on the West Side, Chicago Police officers chased and shot an armed man several times in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, police said. Officers suspect he was involved in another shooting. Police found a 51-year-old woman shot in the chest and another woman who might have been injured in the initial shooting. The Independent Police Review Authority is investigating the incident.

The subject had just shot three other other people before being stopped by responding officers. No cops hurt, weapon recovered, and the Department of "Justice" far far away from there. According to HeyJackass.com, the west side has accounted for 5 of the deaths and 15 of the wounded.

Initial Impressions

We continue to plow through the DOJ "Report" this weekend between jobs and deciding where lunch is going to be. We'll probably be addressing a bunch of items during the week.

However, how is it possible to take any of this seriously when there are so many factual errors and disguised half-truths?

Page 1, paragraph 4:

• "...and the resignation of Chicago's police superintendent."

McCarthy was fired. Google it. He refused to resign and Rahm canned him after pledging to have his back not even 24-hours before.

Page 2, paragraph 3:

• "In addition to speaking with the Superintendent..."

Which one? The guy running the show then? The DOJ says they couldn't find him - perhaps they forgot to ask the media who seems to have his direct number and calendar since he's never lacking for a quote. The current accidental Superintendent? He was one of the guys signing off on the McDonald shooting, was appointed to a job he never sought and is compromised by his bed mate's testing habits. How about the "Acting Supe," De-Escalante, who was "running things" when the DOJ arrived? No where to be heard from.

Page 16, paragraph 5:

• The City is racially diverse: 33% of current residents are black, 32% are white, 29% are Latino, and 8% identify as Asian or multi-racial.

First of all, that's 102%.

Second, whites are the minority.

Oops. That kind of throws a wrench in the assumptions of the entire report. But hey, Lynch and Gupta and Obama wanted a certain result and they got it.

And again, look in our right-hand column of links right below the pictures - the one labeled "Problems Facing the Department." It's like Lynch stole stuff we've been writing about for a decade now, and we're Libertarian-Republicans.

Charity Hockey Game

As die hard hockey fans, we seldom miss these fundraisers:

• The Chicago Police Department and Chicago Fire Department will face off in a charity hockey game Jan. 22. The game will be played from 6:50-8:30 p.m. at the Morgan Park Sports Center, at 11505 S. Western Ave. Tickets cost $10. Children 10 and younger can attend the rivalry game for free, according to Adam Katz, a police detective and hockey player who is among the organizers of the game.
  
  Proceeds from the event will be donated to Salute Inc., a charity that provides financial support to returning military men and women. Katz expects the game to raise about $10,000 for the Arlington Heights-based organization.

Good luck CPD.

And Once Again...

Four years ago we wrote about this:

• A veteran Chicago police detective has been relieved of police powers after she was charged with misdemeanor theft for trying to take about $200 worth of vitamins from a Lake View grocery on Friday afternoon, according to police and law enforcement sources.
  
  Law enforcement sources identified the female detective as [CH], a 12-year-veteran, who was arrested about 2 p.m. Friday after allegedly stealing the vitamins from the Whole Foods at 3300 N. Ashland Ave., the sources said.

At the time, there was no DOJ report outlining disparate disciplinary outcomes for connected people who managed to evade consequences for their illegal actions. Reading over the comments, people were sure she'd be fired.

Today, this arrived in the comment sections:

• [CH], 45, XXXX W. Belmont Avenue, Chicago, IL was arrested on December 24, 2016 at 12:59 pm for theft of goods. A deputy responded to a complaint of shoplifting at a store in Bayou Vista. The deputy spoke with store security and learned that [H] was seen placing reading glasses into a book sack she was carrying. [H] was released on a summons to appear in court on March 8, 2017.

Any bets if she keeps her job this time with that DOJ report floating around? Special Ed and Rahm made all sorts of appropriately conciliatory noises for the media. What kind of noises are they going to make about the two-and-three tiers of discipline the Department operates under?

Hey Toni, You Ready for This?

Philly voters just learned how badly they got screwed by a democrat:

• Soft drink shoppers are experiencing “sticker shock” at steep price hikes on their favorite products after a massive soda tax went into effect in Philadelphia Sunday.
  
  The contentious soda tax secured passage in June but consumers in Philadelphia are still flabbergasted by the price increases the tax is sparking. In some cases, shoppers found that they were paying more for the soda tax than the actual product they were purchasing. The 1.5 cents per ounce tax on sugary drinks is implemented at the distribution level, meaning retailers must choose how much of the cost to pass onto consumers at the shelves. A 12-pack of Lipton Diet Green Tea at a Save-A-Lot in the city is now priced at $8.03, instead the $4.99 it costed in December, reports WPVI.

And how did such a thing happen? Someone failed Economics 101:

• After driving up the cost of soda and other sugary drinks with a new tax, the mayor of Philadelphia is now trying to blame businesses for charging higher prices
  
  [...] "They're gouging their own customers," [Mayor] Kenney said
  
  [...] The distributors sells five-gallon boxes of syrup that can be used in soda fountains, and each box costs a retailer about $60. Thanks to the city's new tax, though, retailers have to pay $57.60 in taxes for each of those boxes of syrup.
  
  "We're not talking about a couple of bucks on a $60 item," Andy Pincus, who owns Carbonator Rental Services, told Newsworks. "We're talking about $57.60 on a $60 item. It's too big not to pass on."

Prickwrinkle raised the County tax a penny per ounce, but it's still going to bite consumers hard. It's going to bite businesses even harder when people start shopping in surrounding counties and even Indiana. And remember, Prickwrinkle herself broke the tie vote, casting the deciding vote at the Board meeting.

Assaults on CPD Way Up

Anyone see this in the DOJ Report?

• Chicago police officers faced multiple attacks in 2016, one of the most violent years in the city’s history.
  
  Thirty-one officers were shot at in 2016, a 82 percent increase over 2015 numbers, the Chicago Police Department told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Only 17 officers were shot at in 2015.
  
  Nine officers reported gun-shot wounds in 2016, the CPD told The DCNF, but zero died as a result.
  
  “These emboldened criminals are responsible for destroying families and communities as well as dozens of attacks on Chicago police officers in 2016,” Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said at a press conference.

Sooooo....Officers being attacked at a higher rate just might translate into and higher number of incidents of Use of Force?

Hey Special Ed? Any way we can get the racial breakdown of the assailants? Or is that a "no-go zone" for you? Rahm told you not to defend the Department?

Narcan Order Coming?

From an e-mail:

• ...heads up, new order is in the works to get us all trained with Narcan and no more OD dupes to the ambos. We will administer and transport ourselves. Order is written and just going through the approval with CFD and CPD.
  
  And CFD is footing the bill for training and equiping us.

Any Waiver of Liability in the works? Supposedly, this is administered as a nasal spray. So what if the addict doesn't react? How many doses are we authorized to give?

What if the addict is so far gone, he ain't never coming back? Are we to pronounce them? Seems you need a paramedic for that.

What if he walks to your squad car for transport and goes down again, maybe this time a heart attack from the years of drug abuse. We're going to wait how longer for ambulance to arrive?

What if you walk him to the squad and he decides not to go? He's not in custody, so what's the liability if he walks off and dies later? He already ingested the drugs, so what's the PC to detain him?

Let's go full-on stupid - what if you don't get there fast enough for Rahm, the junkie dies and someone says you deliberately slow-rolled the response knowing it was "just an OD, just another junkie." Who's going to make that determination - the DOJ? We're risking our careers, livelihood and property for someone who purposefully, willingly puts poison in their bodies?

Even better, will an ISR be completed?

So many questions, so much liability.

The Report

We're going to take a day or so to read it. So far, there's nothing surprising in it. In fact, we based an entire 10.5 years of blogging pointing out just about everything covered in the DOJ report:

• Training is inadequate
• Promotions are crooked
• Discipline is non-existent if you're connected

Somehow we missed the racism of tens-of-thousands of minorities killing tens-of-thousands of other minorities. Don't know how we missed it.

You can use this thread to point out the inanities of the DOJ rush to judgement.

We say "rush" because while it took nearly two years to find that Baltimore (a city with a black mayor, a black chief prosecutor, a black police chief and a department that's majority black) was inescapably racist, it only took 13 months to find CPD (a department almost five times as large), was also inescapably racist.

Buy Your Own?

Body cameras:

• MISHAWAKA, Ind. (AP) — The northern Indiana city of Mishawaka has a new policy that allows police officers to wear body cameras if they purchase the equipment themselves.
  
  The policy went into effect last week after the city and police department discussed the issue for a year to work out guidelines, including how to store and handle the recordings.
  
  Patrolman Brian Long tells the South Bend Tribune he is wearing a body camera to give him peace of mind. He calls it a "good insurance policy." Long says the camera can gather evidence and is a way to establish trust with the community. He says it also is a safety net if officers need to prove they were correct.
  
  Uniform division chief Jason Stefaniak says about 10 officers are wearing their own cameras and about a dozen others are considering buying them.

As an added bonus, you should be able to keep a copy for yourself and circulate around to Hollywood agents to see if you can get "discovered."

Wait.....What?

Sneed comes up with some stuff that just makes us shake our heads sometimes:

• Activist priest Michael Pfleger predicts the Chicago Police Department is going to get a licking when the clock stops ticking Friday.

Really? Awesome - what kind of licking?

• “I was told by Vanita Gupta,head of the department’s civil rights division, that the Chicago Police probe by the Department of Justice is going to send a message to the rest of the country when it comes to the abuse of civil rights,” said Pfleger, a Roman Catholic pastor whose South Side parish has been ravaged by drugs, street gangs and murder.
  
  • To wit: The U.S. Department of Justice is releasing a yearlong report on civil rights and constitutional violations by the Chicago Police Department on Friday, which could place Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s political career on tenterhooks.
  
  “She told me there would be no limits on who they would talk to,” he said. “No place they would not investigate and search. No one would be protected. It was a search to find the truth,” said Pfleger, who tells Sneed he was interviewed by the DOJ six times last year.....

Wait, what? Pfleger was interviewed 6 times by the DOJ? And McCarthy was interviewed how many again? Oh yeah - zero. What could this pfake pfony priest possibly have had insight into that McCarthy didn't?

If that doesn't tell every decent thinking person in the city what this report is all about, then there is no hope for Chicago. The premier paleface apologist for thug culture and disobedience of diocesan rules is somehow an expert on police procedure? If that doesn't take the cake.....

Rahm? You're letting this pissant run around telling everyone he has more information than you do? Letting Sneed imply that your political career is on "tenterhooks"? Phfleger is talking to the DOJ more than you it looks like. Is the tutu a little too-too tight around the nether regions lately?

And Blase? Not one fucking dime.

DOJ Day

And that's all the Sun Times can talk about (seeing as how they're all professionally vested in maintaining the current narrative).

First, Rahm says it's coming no matter what! (...but....)

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday there is no turning back on the road to police reform, but he would not promise to turn the agreement in principle he intends to sign with the U.S. Justice Department into a consent decree.

Really? He's not promising to sign the agreement so we can find out what's in the agreement? He's actually taking the smart road? Or course he is - he knows that there is going to be zero funding coming from DC to run a Consent Decree. And if he's really unlucky, Trump is going to undercut all of the so-called "sanctuary cities," so Rahm's coffers are going to be extremely bare shortly.

McCarthy is still making his case:

• Former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy blasted the Justice Department on Thursday, saying the feds have wrongly focused on whether officers have been stopping African-Americans disproportionately.
  
  McCarthy also blamed City Hall for “flipping over the table” on Chicago cops in 2016.
  
  [...]
  
  “They’ve already adopted the battle cry over and over again that we are disproportionately stopping African-Americans, and their conclusion is that we are biased and racially profiling,” he said of the DOJ. “They’re wrong.”
  
  McCarthy pointed to statistics on officers’ street stops in 2013 and 2014 to highlight his position that policing during his tenure was based on crime data — and didn’t violate citizens’ rights.
  
  The statistics, which he had previously presented during a speech to the City Club of Chicago in September, show the percentage of black and white people stopped over that period were almost identical to the percentage of black and white people suspected of crimes.

As we've been pointing out for years. Anyone remember this map?

Of course you don't, because no one in the media reported it except HeyJackass.com. It shows exactly where all the killings were last year. And wonder of wonders, those kind of look like economically depressed, drug market infested, majority-minority neighborhoods where "Hope and Change" went to die. Thinking people might assume that that's where the most police resources are sent...and they might be correct, except that's where all the accusations of stopping too many minorities will be coming from, so the cops are essentially handcuffed from doing anything that might possibly be construed as a Civil Rights violation.

Insurance Debacle Hits Media

And the City claims they're working on a fix (warning - Tribune link):

• Some city employees who have gone to doctors and pharmacists since the start of the New Year have been told they no longer have health insurance, a mistake in the automatic renewal process that City Hall officials said Wednesday would soon be corrected.
  
  "The city's health care vendors reported a technical error to the city's benefits division last week and are working to correct the error," city spokeswoman Mary Kay Accurso said in a prepared statement, adding that it affected both HMO and PPO members. "These employee insurance plans remain active, and there should be no issues accessing coverage once the issue is resolved."
  
  The problem became public when someone anonymously posted on a Chicago police blog about being turned away from a doctor's office and also being told by a pharmacy worker that his wife's $10 co-pay for generic heart medication would now cost him $590. Others weighed in with similar experiences, identifying Blue Cross-Blue Shield as the insurer.

Because Blue Cross-Blue Shield is so unaware of how to run an insurance business that they'd just assume without any sort of notice that the entire City of Chicago (one of their biggest clients) would stop insuring its employees on the First of January. That's totally believable.

Armed Good Samaritan

Sometimes, backup comes from the least expected places:

• A man traveling to California came to the rescue of a wounded state trooper who was struggling with the gunman who had shot him on an isolated stretch of Interstate 10, authorities said.
  
  The man, who was with his wife, stopped his car when he came upon a rollover accident and saw the struggle, according to Col. Frank Milstead, Arizona Department of Public Safety director.
  
  The trooper told the man he needed help, and the man returned to his car, got his gun and fired at the assailant when he refused to listen to orders to stop and back away, Milstead said.

Good thing an upstanding citizen with a gun was around to help.

DOJ Report Friday!

Let the Countdown begin! (warning - Tribune link)

• The U.S. Department of Justice plans to announce it has found the Chicago Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violated the U.S. Constitution, two sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Tribune.
  
  U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will make the announcement Friday, according to the sources, but the details were still being worked out Wednesday.
  
  It could not be learned how sweeping the conclusions of the 13-month investigation would be, but the two sources said the Justice Department found constitutional abuses of citizens by Chicago police.

Lynch, who ought to have been indicted herself for meeting with the husband of a subject under investigation for numerous breaches of Federal Law, is flying in for the big event.

The Sun Times has a quote from McCompStat about how disappointed he is:

• Word of the Justice Department announcement came as former Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said he is “disappointed” that federal investigators who have been probing the police department’s practices didn’t consult with him.
  
  “I was never interviewed, so I can only speculate what is in that report based on what I’ve seen in other cities,” McCarthy told a reporter in a text message.

Garry, no one has to consult with you because they know exactly what you're going to say - the same thing you said in New York and the same thing you said in Newark, both Departments which ended up under some form of Federal Consent Decree......

Hey, wait a minute.....maybe that's the connection? Anywhere Garry goes, a Federal Consent Decree follows? Stop the Presses!!!

U of C to Offer Reward - to Lie

So much for "Truth" we suppose:

• The University of Chicago’s admissions office is offering a reward to its student tour guides who can dispel the notion among prospective students and their families that the city is "unsafe" and "scary."
  
  In an email obtained by The Chicago Maroon, Colleen Belak, the assistant director of admissions at the university, offered a $500 cash prize to those who find "a creative way to dispel the negative perception" about Chicago's violence epidemic.
  
  “If you’ve paid attention to the national news (or Donald Trump’s tweets) over the last few months, you’ll notice that the city of Chicago is often painted with a broad brush as an ‘unsafe’ or ‘scary’ place to reside,” Belak wrote to the campus tour guide listhost. “Of course, certain realities should not be ignored, but at the end of the day most of us are proud Chicago residents with a deep love of the city.”
  
  “With that spirit in mind, we have an opportunity for you to win some money—$500 to be exact. If you are able to come up with a creative way to approach this negative perception, be it a video series, blog post, photo, or something else (and better) entirely… Keep in mind that the audience is a high school student and his/her family.”

While the U of C is respected around the globe as a particularly excellent university, it should be noted that they are an island, a very tiny island, surrounded by some of the most violent and depraved sections of Chicago.

Perhaps some of our readers would like to assist the University with the "message" to potential incoming students?

Homicide Numbers Even Higher?

So many numbers to choose from:

• The record-setting violence in Chicago is even worse than announced as new evidence shows the city suffered 50 more homicides last year than the numbers publicly reported in the past week.
  
  The city posted a decades-high homicide count of 812 in 2016, per the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. That’s 15% greater than the 762 murders reported by the city's police department.
  
  The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that the county tallies “homicides” while the police number counts “murders.” Murders are defined as violent acts subject to criminal prosecution. Homicides, according to the medical examiner, include instances “when the death of a person comes at the hand of another person. This does not imply that all homicides are murders that would be subject to criminal prosecution.”
  
  The city police count is also lower because it excludes violent, intentional deaths if the act is deemed justified, including police killings of residents.

And HeyJackass.com had 796, which is the closest thing to reality we can locate.

UPDATE: We're told that the six dead actually occurred in 008 in the opening days of February. So how did 009 end up with 6 homicides in 11 days last year? That place was outta control!

SeeBS Strikes Again

The media once again, telling a story that isn't there:

• A CBS Radio News report on the horrific black-on-white torture case in Chicago falsely implied that the victim was black and his attackers were white, Mediaite reported.
  
  On Friday, a listener on Reddit flagged the brief Thursday morning report which refused to clarify the races of the parties involved, deceptively suggesting that the roles were reversed:
  

  The viral video of a beating and knife attack in Chicago suggests the assault had racial overtones. CBS’s Dean Reynolds tells us the victim is described as a mentally-challenged teenager.
  
  In the video he is choked and repeatedly called the n-word. His clothes are slashed and he is terrorized with a knife. His alleged captors repeatedly reference Donald Trump. Police are holding four people in connection with the attack.

Leaving out all descriptors of the offenders and victim - you see exactly what impression the media was attempting to portray. SeeBS removed the offending report as soon as they were caught without correction or attribution.

This ties in with the State's Attorney initial hesitation to charge along with Duffin's comments that this was just high spirited children having fun.

Wait...Crime ISN'T Down?

Golly, who knew this was coming?

• There are stunning new crime numbers from the FBI: in Chicago, it isn't just murders and shootings that are up - it is all violent crime.
  
  Newly-obtained FBI data show that the crime surge in Chicago goes beyond the end of a gun. Overall violent crime - an umbrella figure that includes murder, rape, robbery and assault - jumped significantly here the first half of last year, an increase more than four times higher than the rest of the nation.
  
  According to this FBI report, violent crime in the U.S. increased a little more than five percent the first half of last year. But in Chicago during the same period, overall violent crime heaved 24 percent.
  
  While the numbers were driven by a surge in Chicago murders - 49 percent higher than the previous year - FBI data show the increase in all violent crime categories in Chicago is significantly outpacing the nation, with aggravated assault up 23 percent and robbery 28 percent higher

And those are just the stats for the first half of 2016, meaning every time Special Ed or anyone claimed "crime was down," they were lying. Anyone want to guess what the total increase in crime was once they figure out the second half of the year? It certainly didn't go down, that's for sure.

Don't Fall for Retro

You younger kids don't remember the Newsletters that used to come out around Contract time, where Bill Nolan would close every single article with "...and enjoy your retro pay," as if that was the sole factor in determining how we'd vote on a contract.

In many cases, however, he was correct. Coppers looked at the short term money that the City had held hostage (without interest we might add), and disregarded serious issues that had real long-term consequences on seniority, discipline, or bidding rights. Cops finally started to wake up around 1997 or so and the Contract that Nolan presented to the members went down in a spectacular ball of flaming wreckage that also also led to the entire eviction of the Nolan ticket (including Dean Angelo).

We're coming up to another negotiating year and you young kids are going to hear a lot of things. Here's your chance to prove you're smarter than all of us dinosaurs were back in the day:

• Don't be distracted by the "promise" of a retro check

Don't sweat the money issue. We'd suggest that the FOP ignore it, too. In fact, we'd go so far as to recommend that the FOP demand no more and no less than what Rahm awarded his inner circle in terms of percentage raises, and then walk away from that issue (Reminder - it was double digits).

Instead, concentrate on the following:

• Round up the Baby Furlo Day to a full day
• Round up the vacation time to full days, not hours;
• Lower the time to hit maximum pay via compression - every other city maxes out at 20 years;
• Restore Duty Availability to the kids - you got fucked last Contract;
• If anyone says "More cars," throw them out of the FOP;
• Refuse to negotiate disciplinary changes;
• Reduce "merit" percentages

In fact, demand "transparency" from the City. For too long, everyone has to be "transparent" except the City. Screw that and screw them:

• Post the "merit" picks;
• post their sponsor;
• post the entire promotional list in rank order so that everyone can see exactly how many spots the connected jumped up (justify that one);
• post a real and attainable set of targets that cops can actually strive for in order to be Merit.

We'd also like to see how sergeants who had to be assisted over the finish line ("merit") a few short years ago suddenly manage to score #1, #2 and #3 on the current Lieutenants list, but since that crosses different Union lines, we'll probably never see that unless it reaches a Federal courtroom. Right Special Ed?

Anyway, the big issue is going to be reducing your Rights and protections under the contract. Money should take a back seat to all of this. Numerous bad actors are claiming that the Contract is "racist" somehow and protects bad cops. We aren't exactly sure how. A document that protects the Rights of coppers of all colors, creeds and orientations is nothing that needs alteration.

Race to "Overhaul"

Kind of what we touched on the other day:

• With just days until Donald J. Trump is sworn in as president, the Obama administration is making a last-minute push for police overhauls in two of the nation’s most violent cities, Baltimore and Chicago, where officers have been accused of routinely mistreating African-Americans.
  
  In Chicago, where a city task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel concluded that “the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color,” the Justice Department is rushing to wrap up a sweeping investigation into police patterns and practices, prompted by the release of a chilling video that showed a white officer shooting a black teenager. The findings are expected to be released before Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.
  
  Such an investigation is typically the first step toward a consent decree in which a police department is required to make significant changes under court supervision. But in Chicago, President Obama’s Justice Department is running out of time to pursue such an order, and activists fear that the Trump administration will abandon the effort.
  
  Here in Baltimore, where Justice Department officials have already released a blistering report accusing the police of systematic racial bias, negotiators for the city and the Obama administration are “getting very close” to agreement on a consent decree, Mayor Catherine E. Pugh said. An announcement is likely on Thursday; the United States attorney general, Loretta E. Lynch, is scheduled to deliver a speech on community policing at the University of Baltimore.

As we said the other day, government rushing around, especially a lame duck government, never leads to anything good. If Rahm had half a brain, he'd let the clock run out. But he's beholden to a dying political regime and desperately attempting to re-make his image for another run for office.

Are You Insured?

Anyone know if Rahm has fixed this fuck-up yet?

• Please have all the members call up Blue Cross Blue Shield and make sure they have coverage. I currently have HMO and was at the doctors office today and was refused service, stating that I currently do not have insurance. I checked the BLue Cross website and it states that my insurance was cancelled on 01Jan17.
  
  I made no changes to my insurance plan from 2016. I called Walgreens to pick up my medication for my wife and the total for her heart medication which is normally $10 generic, was $590.00 dollars. Please SCC let the guys and girls know what is going on..........

Supposedly, there's a "fix" in the works, but the last recommendation we heard is "bring your charge card to the doctor." That's just fucking great - is the City reimbursing the double-digit interest charged for something that should have been covered?

Does anyone have any doubt this was a deliberate machination on the part of Rahm to stick it in everyone's ear again? How about a class-action lawsuit to make things right? Every insurance company knows that the City just didn't cancel all employees' insurance on 01 January, yet there are a sizable number of workers facing months of hassles, phone calls and letters to get their money back. Find and assign the blame and make them pay for the errors.

Contract Talks Coming

Is everyone ready for this? FOP, we're looking at you:

• The phrase “police union contracts” likely won’t appear in the U.S. Department of Justice report on the Chicago Police Department, set to be released this week. The DOJ has historically not made labor recommendations after its investigations of police practices.
  
  But the contracts have become a focal point for civil rights groups, activists, and even some politicians since the 2015 release of the Laquan McDonald video that triggered the DOJ’s civil rights investigation. The video of Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting the black 17-year-old paralyzed the city with protests, toppled a police chief and state’s attorney, and renewed citywide calls for policing reform.
  
  In the weeks after the video’s release, aldermen said for the first time that the labor contracts were a significant barrier to police accountability for misconduct. They promised to remove provisions that make it harder for the city to investigate and discipline officers.
  
  Those promises will be put to the test this year as the city renegotiates its contracts with the four unions representing officers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains. Historically, the contracts have been negotiated behind closed doors by the city’s law department and approved unanimously by the City Council.

"unanimously"? Is that true? We recall a number of contracts being negotiated and approved and someone always raised some sort of objections. The aldercreatures have always had input and believe it or not, the final say-so. Just because they were rubber stamps to Shortshanks and Rahm doesn't mean the FOP was some negotiating Superman. We got what the City gave us or what the arbitrator awarded us. The police can't strike, so we've ALWAYS operated from a weaker position. (cue liberal heads exploding)

Fortunately, they've revealed their game plan, so the FOP can be prepared:

• The task force identified about a dozen provisions that it said discouraged citizens from filing complaints, made it easier for officers to lie in official reports, and made it harder for the city to identify and discipline officers who are responsible for misconduct.
  
  For example, the contracts prohibit the filing of anonymous complaints, allow officers 24 hours after a shooting before they can be interviewed by investigators, give officers the right to amend their statements to investigators after reviewing video or audio evidence, and ban rewards for whistleblower officers.

We suppose the FOP could just offer one proposal to counter this. Agree to abide by the same provisions that the FBI operates under. After all, if' it's good enough for the federal government, it has to be good enough for the CPD, right?

In any event, keep a close eye on everything that both sides do. Whomever is negotiating this time had better be open and upfront about what's going on.

Not at All Rosy

You mean Rahm's been lying again?

• Chicago and New York rank at the bottom of a new analysis of fiscal strength based primarily on data from 2015 financial reports issued by the cities themselves. The analysis includes 116 U.S. cities with populations greater than 200,000. See the full rankings here.
  
  Chicago’s position at the bottom of the ranking is no surprise to anyone who follows municipal finance. The Windy City has become a poster child for financial mismanagement, having suffered a series of ratings downgrades in recent years. Aside from having thin reserves and large volumes of outstanding debt, Chicago is notorious for its underfunded pension plans.
  
  For example, the city’s Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund (MEABF) reported $4.7 billion in assets and $14.7 billion of actuarially accrued liabilities at the end of 2015, representing a funded ratio of just 33 percent. The actuarial calculations rely on a controversial practice of discounting future benefits at a rate of 7.5 percent, which is the assumed return on the fund’s portfolio return. If a more conservative assumption was employed, MEABF’s liabilities would be higher and its funded ratio lower.

The article admits that the impacts of Rahm's most recent tax hikes and increased employee contributions aren't fully known yet. A lot of it is going to depend on the Federal Governments attitude toward business and that effect on various markets.

But New York City is in second place, and that's even with a booming real estate market and a supposed "bull" market underway. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that democrats being in charge has something to do with it.

In any event, Rahm's predictions of sunshine, rainbows and a unicorn in every garage deserve a closer look and a wary eye.

So About that Unarmed Police Force

Given the recent shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport, it might be time to refresh everyone's memory about this:

• If armed terrorists rushed the front entrances at Chicago's airports they would find more than half of all uniform police officers at O'Hare and Midway are unarmed.
  
  At O'Hare and Midway not all 500 sworn police officers are created equal. Regular Chicago police carry guns. City Aviation Department police do not, even though they all undergo law enforcement training and certification. The unarmed airport police say that would be a problem in a terrorist attack.
  
  With passengers scattering in Istanbul, authorities say armed police near the front door brought down at least one of the terrorists and stopped him from shooting even more people before blowing himself up.
  
  At Chicago's airports there are about 230 armed Chicago police officers and nearly 300 unarmed aviation police.

Someone said that there is a movement afoot (once again) to arm the D.O.A. Police, so they don't end up DOA in the event of an attack. Remember, these are the officers who were told to "run and hide" in the event of an attack. That isn't going to be helpful.

And yes, we realize the D.O.A. Police have their share of political hacks and misfits - so do we. We would say that could be cured with an influx of training and money, but this is Chicago - who knows what Rahm would do with the money?

HQ Meeting Revisited

Looking at our post and the resultant comments about the HQ Meeting, we have these other points to bring up:

• OK with getting federal $$$, not with national guard. Not good for community relationships;

Yes, they're great to have in the event of a natural disaster, and they have all sort of equipment for moving things around. But their Rules of Engagement are far far different from ours. Their involvement would be for show - they wouldn't be allowed to surround a city block, level a building full of insurgents call in gunship support, snipe dope dealers and gang bangers - things they excel at. Special Ed has this one correct.

• FTO most important spot in department. Partners will be able to be FTO's together. Partners will work with a recruit in their car. FTO get one merit spot for every 30 people in every Sgt class;

Highly doubtful. As someone pointed out, who gets the pay? And the half-hour? And what's the point of having two FTO's ride around with one PPO when you could have twice the number of cars on the street with one-on-one instruction? This sounds like something to tell the FTO's to keep them from jumping ship once they find out they're being lied to....again.

• "Need video evidence to get protestors arrested for agg assaults to p.o."

We're still shaking our heads at this one. We've gotten charges approved for Aggravated Assault dozens, even tens of dozens of times in the era before video. What changed? Are we to assume the cops are always lying absent video proof? If that's the attitude of the Superintendent, then rest assured, everyone will be embracing "fetality" far more enthusiastically than ever before..

• Hired outside firm for performance evaluations. Should be part of promotional process;

Any word on whom this is going to be? Because the performance evaluation system is a joke.

This last item intrigues us as it opens up a whole can that Special Ed obviously didn't even think about:

• More people from patrol promoted over people in units, because in a unit you're already taken care of;

You know what Special Ed? We're going to take you up on this one. Because you know what it entails?

• Show everyone the "merit"

You want us to believe you? Post the "merit" picks. Post them all. Show us that Patrol is where the picks are coming from. Show us to that all the Unit people dumped back to Patrol right before a promotional class are actually being promoted in rank order and not in some sleight of hand effort to conceal this obvious lie. Show everyone the "merit" lists from this point forward and we'll believe everything else you tell us for your term as Superintendent. Otherwise....

Captains Coming

The resumes have been submitted and interviews are on tap. This is all theater of course - the picks are already made:

• Wait 'till you see who they are going to make captain. Most will have been sergeants only two years ago. No one with five or more years in lieutenant grade. Certainly no one in the kma. Club

Anyone with the old "merit" lists should have them ready to compare. We're going to bet 80% of the new captains will have had at least one "merit" promotion in their immediate past.

Peace Circles?

Um, what the fuck is this? Granny's last legacy?

This is from a new Special Order titled "Bridging the Divide." It looks and sounds like some left coast hippie bullshit, which makes us suspect Granny Clampett.

Any bosses want to try to explain this crap before we laugh you out of the Roll Call?

Ernie Brown Passes

Known as one of the Department's more......colorful characters (Downtown, "Don't Touch Me," Unindicted Co-Conspirator) passed suddenly of a a heart ailment.

More Crooked Promotions?

Rumor trickling in that the Lie-tenant Test scandal has reached a critical stage with allegations being served along with Administrative Rights to certain individuals. The Lieutenant PBPA has refused to provide legal representation and the Inspector General has all sorts of e-mail evidence in his hands. Perhaps a deal is on the table for the first taker to avoid prison?

Now this story breaks:

• A top Chicago police official under Supt. Eddie Johnson helped snare a promotion for an officer with dozens of misconduct complaints and close ties to two cops who had recently been jailed on federal corruption charges.
  
  Fred L. Waller - now the patrol bureau chief, the department’s third-ranking member — was commander of the Wentworth police district in 2012 when he nominated Alvin Jones for sergeant.
  
  Jones, an officer in the district, had drawn at least 40 complaints since starting with the department in 1996, according to police records obtained by WBEZ through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
  
  The promotion also took place 10 months after the arrests of Jones’ longtime boss, Sgt. Ronald Watts, and fellow tactical team member, Kallat Mohammed.

Golly, it's like the entire command staff is a bunch of "merit" promoted clouted blunderers who merely nominate an entire new generation of clouted morons with shady pasts and shadier connections. And how do they respond when confronted?

• Waller told WBEZ it would be wrong to assess his nomination of Jones for promotion by looking at Jones’ complaint record or the arrests of Watts and Mohammed.
  
  “Did you look at the other side of the coin?” Waller asked. “You’re taking a one-sided view of that person.”
  
  Asked to elaborate, Waller referred WBEZ to police department spokesmen.

So the guy who nominated the person in question knows him so well, he refers inquired to the Department spokes-weasel, who probably doesn't know the nominee at all.

And the wheel keeps on turning.

Beancounting

So what are the real reasons behind the lack of ISR's? Here's a theory from the comments that rings somewhat true:

• The old Contact Card system was good, originally, but then Jodie Weis, Garry McCarthy, and a long list of "bosses," both at headquarters and in the districts, turned those cards into a numbers game, asking for "more! more!" contact cards.
  
  The result? Officers on foot patrol were even doing unnecessary contact cards on ordinary drivers and passengers involved in minor traffic crashes, all with the knowledge of their sergeants, and the then (now retired) district commander, to keep up with the Superintendent's unreasonable demands for more and more cards. This destroyed the intent and value of the original database of contact cards. No wonder a lawsuit was filed over these, now, ridiculous and useless cards. The gold stars and bosses ruined that card database system with their unreasonable demands, and now they have to live with it.
  
  The new ISR system actually has some value. At least, reasonable suspicion has to be written out in detail, and most bosses know that it would be unwise to ask for "more and more" ISRs.
  
  DO NOT bring back the "easy" contact cards. It will only allow the bosses the opportunity to demand quotas from officers, and destroy the whole system again. Some people never learn.

This is what happens when you bring in "business" type practices to police work...bean counters attempting to quantify the uncountable. How do you measure crimes prevented? You can't, so you come up with some number counting nonsense that allows you to say, "Look at all the work we're doing!"

And it's all bullshit. Look where its gotten us to. And the people most responsible? Nowhere to be found.

Malicious Prosecution

Good news out of Baltimore:

• A federal judge is allowing key parts of a lawsuit against Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, brought by five of the six police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, to move forward.
  
  U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis ruled that claims including malicious prosecution, defamation, and invasion of privacy can move forward against Mosby and Assistant Sheriff Samuel Cogen, who wrote the statement of probable cause.
  
  Mosby's attorneys had said she has absolute prosecutorial immunity from actions taken as a state's attorney. But Garbis noted that her office has said it conducted an independent investigation.
  
  "Plaintiffs' malicious prosecution claims relate to her actions when functioning as an investigator and not as a prosecutor," Garbis wrote.

It would certainly be nice to see her disbarred and the Officers get their jobs back, seniority reinstated, back pay and damages.

Where's Kimesha?

We don't know what deal was made to have Special Ed and Duffin present the defense case to the media, thereby making the Chicago Police Department look like a (bigger) bunch of blithering idiots.

We know the media makes no distinction reporting who investigates a case (the CPD) and who charges the crime (Cook County States Attorney Office), so we've seen countless rip jobs across the blogosphere and media outlets about what morons the CPD are not immediately charging this as a hate crime. Thanks for that Ed, Kev and Rahm.

So where has ol' Kimesha Fuxx been hiding during all of this? She's been in office a whole month. This is a big heater case. Lots of face time available, local, state and national. CNN has set up a mobile office down at HQ for this. Or would this be the "wrong" kind of case for Prickwrinkle's handpicked tool to be handling? We literally haven't seen a single quote or camera appearance near this thing.

And Another Revision

Which is going to do exactly nothing to increase street stops:

• The Chicago Police Department and the ACLU have once again agreed to simplify a burdensome “investigatory stop report,” but the police union says the changes won’t be enough to reverse an 80 percent drop in street stops.
  
  No longer will the two-page form include the names and badge numbers of officers making the stop. That information will only go to a retired federal judge. Personal information about the person stopped will also be eliminated from the form.
  
  “We never really cared about individual officers. What we were looking at was a systemic fix to the abuse of street stops in Chicago,” said ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka.

::cough cough Bullshit! cough cough::

Numerous law firms are and remain highly interested in that information and they will leave no stone un-turned in their efforts to find any number of poor coppers to appear in Federal Court listing their assets for a deposition. If it's in a government database (it's in a few Department databases already), it's discover-able.

Angelo chimes in:

• Instead of tinkering at the margins, Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo said the “monstrosity of a report” should be scrapped altogether in favor of the “contact cards” that preceded the agreement with the ACLU or an expanded form of it, as used by the Illinois State Police.
  
  In addition, Angelo said the city and the ACLU must remove the shackles that limit street stops to instances where officers either observe criminal behavior spot someone who “fits the description” of someone reported to 911 as having committed a crime.
  
  “It limits stop, question and frisk completely because it was designed by the ACLU and accepted as policy by the department, which is the main contributing factor to the drop in our street stops,” Angelo said.
  
  “People think that police officers are standing down. Police officers aren’t standing down. They’re following policy. They’re doing what the order requires. That’s what everybody’s missing.”

ISR's are time off the streets. Or time sitting in one location entering data on a computer screen so unreadable and in such an uncomfortable posture that our chiropractor bought a two new cars last year.

• In August, 2015, the ACLU pressed for expanded reporting on investigatory stops in Chicago after releasing a study showing minorities have been predominately targeted for stops here.

In a completely unrelated study, HeyJackass.com, combined with Department databases and FBI statistics, proved that murders and shootings have been committed and suffered by "predominately minority communities" in the City of Chicago.

The ACLU countered with this laugher:

• Yohnka dismissed as a “fallacy” the notion that the 80 percent drop in street stops is somehow responsible for the 60 percent spike in homicides in Chicago.
  
  He noted that the University of Chicago Crime Lab recently concluded there is “no linkage” between street stops and the crime rate. In fact, when street stops declined in New York City, so did the crime rate, Yohnka said.
  
  “The reason the stops have gone down is because there were too many stops,” Yohnka said.

Really? Too many stops? Everything we see and hear in the street is "Do more stops!" At Roll Call, too. We guess we'll be telling the Commander that the ACLU said there were "too many stops" next time he comes to address the troops.

Mope-rah Rewrites the Law

Even when she tries to make sense, she can't, because she's ignorant (no links for ignoramuses):

• The hate-crime charges in this case come in contrast to what happened just two months ago. The day after Trump won the presidential election, four young black people allegedly punched and kicked a white man on the West Side while yelling, “Don’t vote Trump.” They were charged with the assault but not with a hate crime.

They were charged with assault (and maybe battery), because the crime did not have a provable racial element. "Don't vote Trump" is, believe it or not Mopey, political speech. The assault and battery portion was the law broken, along with the theft of auto committed afterward. And the dragging of the victim. We could stand in your face and shout "Obama sucks!" for hours on end, but until we make physical contact, no law is being broken.

• But given the times we live in, the criteria for charging someone with a hate crime can’t be based on outrage and political correctness.

Um, no shit Mopey. But your paper and your ilk seem to think that "dissent" is patriotism when they do it against Republicans and "hate crimes" when they do it against democrats.

Then Mopey has to go for the big One-Up:

• But let’s be clear. As ugly as the assault upon the special needs young man was, this incident pales in comparison to what happened in Joliet in 2013.
  
  Then, an even more depraved group of young white people lured Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, two African-Americans, into a Joliet house, strangled them and then had sex on top of the corpses.

Those were some sick fucks, too. And three of the four got life sentences. But guess what Mopey? There was no provable racial element to the crime - you even quote the Will County States Attorney, so you're obviously being deliberately ignorant. Those didn't broadcast the crime on Facebook. And they weren't yelling "Fuck you black person!"

Do you get it yet? In your example, their being black wasn't the (provable) impetus behind the crime. In the current outrage, they broadcast their hatred for the victim based on his skin color for everyone to see. Big difference.

Mope-rah closes with this:

• Without a doubt, we should prosecute those who commit hate crimes to the fullest extent of the law.
  
  But we shouldn’t let the politics of race make the call.

Well it's good to see Mopey is turning over a new leaf. Let's see how that works out for a person who has defined her entire professional existence on the politics of race....when it benefits her.

HQ Meeting Highlights

So after a few misfires, there was finally a meeting at HQ. Three cars from every District (one of them from tact), 132 coppers (give or take a few), and starring Special Ed. From an e-mailer:

• DOJ report "will be ugly". Don't take it personally;
• There's a new CR matrix general order, 45 pages; Old CRs will exist forever;
• Complaints down 50% since 2009;
• "Sometimes I have to give you a time out to help you get to your pension. It's not a punishment, it's for your protection."
• Push IPRA to speed up investigations;
• More people from patrol promoted over people in units, because in a unit you're already taken care of;
• FTO most important spot in department. Partners will be able to be FTO's together. Partners will work with a recruit in their car. FTO get one merit spot for every 30 people in every Sgt class;
• 120 to 130 Sgts at end of February;
• Looking for site for new police academy. No further info;
• ISR reports - new agreement that ACLU will not get personal info/star numbers, only federal judge will;
• "Need video evidence to get protestors arrested for agg assaults to p.o."
• "I speak with protestors so you guys don't have to" in regards to taking phone calls from activists
• OK with getting federal $$$, not with national guard. Not good for community relationships;
• 60 Minutes - interview for 2 hours, used about 2 minutes;
• "I talk to the mayor once a week. He doesn't run CPD, doesn't interfere with what we do in CPD."
• Hired outside firm for performance evaluations. Should be part of promotional process;
• VRI will continue but get phased down as new recruits come out every month in 2017;

Addressing these in order:

• as expected
• more hurdles, paperwork, rules to be tagged with
• less police/public interaction, less complaints - SURPRISE!
• yeah yeah yeah
• great - half-assed investigations in half the time. More for the lawyers to get rich off of
• we'll believe this when we see it - unit people got the answers last time, didn't they?
• again, believe it when you see it - FTO has always been treated as the ass end of Patrol
• Rahm already delayed the next 100 detectives - now he's going to make sergeants?
• any clues on where to buy land? 
• and the Federal judge will promptly give it to the ACLU anyway
• seriously? so if it isn't on video it didn't happen? That better work both ways Ed
• why are activists getting our phone numbers?
• money Rahm can misspend; we agree on no National Guard
• duh, it's the media
• you talk with Rahm as often as Rahm wants to talk with you - you are a flunky Ed
• hahahahahaha
• start prepping for less VRI

Discuss.

Rush to a Consent Decree

The clock is winding down, and Obama's Justice Department want to rush things forward:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall is bracing for the Justice Department to release – before President Barack Obama leaves office Jan. 20 — findings from its Chicago Police Department probe triggered by the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.
  
  No announcement is expected before Obama delivers his farewell address in McCormick Place on Tuesday night, a speech looking at his accomplishments, coming as homicides are soaring in the president’s adopted hometown. The report is expected to be released later next week.
  
  It is highly unlikely the probe will conclude with a signed-and-completed consent decree outlining mandated changes in police practices, sources told the Sun-Times. What is on the table, given the time constraints, is a deal for the city and Justice Department to sign an “agreement in principle.” Such a pact, to be made with community input, would create a federal court-enforceable road forward addressing investigatory findings from the probe, launched in December 2015.

In other words, the DOJ wants Rahm to sign the agreement to find out what's in the agreement. Then they can claim some sort of "contract" with Rahm, and after Jeff Sessions decides to stop the wholesale dismantling of police departments across the nation, the ACLU or other such groups will sue Rahm to enforce said "contract."

If they win, Rahm will have to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars that he doesn't have and can't raise without committing political suicide. So will Rahm attempt to delay appearing to accept the "agreement in principle"? He doesn't have as much pull in DC as he might have had with Clinton. He isn't going to want to raise taxes again.

This reeks of desperation on the part of the DOJ, and when the government rushes, nothing good ever results.

Distraction Ploy Fails

This guy just blew a lot of credibility with the rank-and-file:

• Chicago Police Department Commander Kevin Duffin said, “Kids make stupid decisions — I shouldn’t call them kids, they’re legally adults. But they’re young adults and they make stupid decisions.”

We don't know who told Duffin to say this....oh, who are we kidding? Of course, Rahm told people to downplay this. But then the alternative media got a hold of it and the video hit Drudge and YouTube tried to ban it but not before it was saved and uploaded hundreds of thousands of times and a White House Petition was started demanding Federal Civil Rights charges.

And then suddenly, at the 47th-hour, charges were suddenly approved by Foxx's office, negating everything about "stupid decisions."

If you remove a mentally handicapped individual from his suburban environs, restrain him in an unknown location, taunt his parents via cell phone messages, record and post what can only be described as sub-human behavior in a 30-minute video, you aren't making a "stupid decision." You are making a concerned and conscious effort to show your disregard for another human being and recording it because you are that confident of avoiding responsibility.

Now where could they have gotten that idea?

Shields to Run Again

The FOP is in disarray:

• Mike Shields is trying to reclaim his job as president of the Fraternal Order of Police — three years after being suspended for making the explosive charge that two police contracts handed down by an independent arbitrator had been “rigged” in the city’s favor.
  
  With homicides surging, police activity plummeting and morale at rock bottom, Shields said Chicago Police officers need a union that has “their back” at a time when local politicians don’t.
  
  Shields maintained that has not been the case under current FOP President Dean Angelo.
  
  “The FOP has turned into a ghost town. There is no response whatsoever . . . There’s a huge false narrative coming from Black Lives Matter, and we don’t hear a single thing in defense of police officers coming from our union,” Shields said.
  
  “Any police shooting right or wrong, you’re getting stripped [of police powers]. The FOP should be stepping up to the plate and defending an officer instead of just allowing the superintendent to do this.”
  
  Shields charged the FOP’s “silence” has left rank-and-file officers with little choice but to remain in a defensive crouch that has all but eliminated pro-active policing. They’re laying back for fear of being caught on the next YouTube video, he said.

We didn't think Shields was the guy two campaigns ago and we said so. The cuff-link gift to Rahm, the "look at me" grandstanding at the Pension Board, the office shenanigans and lawsuit, the letter. It gave off a "not ready for Prime Time" vibe. His "YouTube video" comment reeks of Special Ed's most recent press conferences, and that's a big red flag to us.

This isn't any sort of endorsement for Dean Angelo, whom we remember as Nolan's gopher back in the day before we voted out that entire slate. Angelo has been MIA most of last year and far too reticent in fighting Don O'Neill's bullshit. The last contract screwed the new kids too many ways to count and Shield's has a point about the $180 million pension "holiday" and fifteen extra years to "ramp up" what should have been done by the previous administration.

We have our doubts that Shield's has learned anything from his exile. We feel Angelo hasn't been effective. Is there a third workable choice?

(These are our opinions. Take em, leave em, whatever. We're entitled to em, same as you. If you have information that the readership should know about, post it. If you have an opinion, voice it - civilly, succinctly, non slanderously. Anything deemed by us as outside the boundaries will be summarily deleted.)

Remember, Tolerance! (UPDATE)

Any bets how Foxx plays this one?

• Chicago Police detectives are questioning four African-Americans suspected of torturing a white mentally disabled man on videotape while someone yelled “F— Trump!” and “F— white people!,” a police spokesman confirmed Wednesday.
  
  “The video is reprehensible,” said [...], the police spokesman.
  
  The white victim lives in northwest suburban Crystal Lake, [...].
  
  Detectives think the young man, who appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s, met some acquaintances in northwest suburban Streamwood and they drove him to Chicago in a stolen vehicle, [...].
  
  The victim is believed to have been held hostage and tortured in an apartment in the 3400 block of West Lexington on the West Side, [...]

Let's see if Lady Justice is truly blind. We can only imagine the riots if the roles were reversed.

UPDATE: A person commits hate crime when, by reason of the actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors, he commits assault, battery, aggravated assault, misdemeanor theft, criminal trespass to residence, misdemeanor criminal damage to property, criminal trespass to vehicle, criminal trespass to real property, mob action, disorderly conduct, harassment by telephone, or harassment through electronic communications as these crimes are defined in Sections 12-1, 12-2, 12-3(a), 16-1, 19-4, 21-1, 21-2, 21-3, 25-1, 26-1, 26.5-2, and paragraphs (a)(2) and (a)(5) of Section 26.5-3 of this Code, respectively.

We'd say that freely recording and broadcasting your intentions via social media is by all measures, an un-coerced confession.

Remember, if you reward bad behavior (and the lack of criminal culpability is definitely rewarding) you are going to get more of it. The entire Cook County justice system pretty much just told anyone paying attention exactly what's what - and it isn't "equal justice under the law."

UPDATE: Lenard Clark - compare and contrast.

Ballsy Move

All's well that ends well though:

• A clerk wrestled a gun away from two men who tried to rob his Austin neighborhood store and then shot them Tuesday afternoon on the West Side, according to Chicago Police.
  
  The botched robbery happened about 4:45 p.m. inside the small business in the 5800 block of West Chicago, police said.
  
  One of the alleged robbers, 34, was shot in the torso and taken to Loyola University Medical Center. The other, 35, was shot in the upper leg and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, police said.
  
  They were listed in critical condition.

So there's still hope that their criminal careers will end permanently.That would make the happy ending truly happier.

Connected Business Downgrades Crime

Rahm even has the citizens downgrading crime:

• Four people smashed the front door of Union Group of Illinois, 6428 N. Milwaukee Ave., in an apparent attempt to break into the city's newest cannabis dispensary Saturday morning, police said.
  
  Surveillance footage showed the group breaking the glass door before running away, a police source told DNAinfo. The dispensary's staff called to report a break-in at 11:19 a.m. Saturday.
  
  But Dmitrey Stebley, the dispensary's chief operator, called the incident "an act of vandalism" by a group of young men who appeared to be intoxicated just after 4 a.m. Saturday.
  
  "This was not an attempt to break in," Stebley said. "Only the outer glass was broken."

Riiiight. Because your security measures worked, it's "vandalism" and not something more sinister. What a load of crap. The local aldercreature got it correct though:

• Still, Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st) saw the damage as a bitter I-told-you-so moment, after trying to prevent the shop from opening in his ward because of security concerns.
  
  Napolitano's office conducted an automated telephone poll of his constituents, finding that 72 percent didn't want the dispensary at Devon Avenue and Milwaukee Avenue, he said.
  
  "This is exactly what residents expected to happen," Napolitano said. "It's exactly what the neighborhood never wanted to deal with in the first place. And it could be just the beginning."

Anyone know why an aldercreature and the citizens he represents can't regulate and/or shut down what they see as a problem business?

Ding Dong Granny's Gone

See ya:

• Anne Kirkpatrick will leave the Chicago Police Department for a new job in California.
  
  Sources confirm that Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf selected Kirkpatrick to lead the city's embattled police department. Some insiders expected Schaaf to choose a woman after saying she was here to run a police department, not a "frat house."
  
  Kirkpatrick will be the first woman to fill that spot in Oakland's history.

Seeing as how she pretty much blackmailed Rahm for a spot with threats of a Federal lawsuit, she was never very popular with the brass or political set. Watching her wear a uniform she did nothing to earn gave lie to the entire "Earned Not Given" push - which was pretty much dead anyway when you saw all the cheaters given promotions and political hacks pushed ever higher.

Oakland is going to eat her alive.

VRI Done?

Once again, the rumor appears:

• Anonymous said...
  
  VRI gone tomorrow along with other changes. Press conference at 35th tomorrow.

A lot of other rumbling in the shadows, too. Rumors of connected people searching for landing spots, so the VRI rumor has a bit of credibility behind it. Might be an interesting day ahead.

Well Done Pfleger!

pfather pfleger led a march the other day. And an impressive march it was:

• More than 770 crosses — one for each person killed in Chicago in 2016 — were carried along the Magnificent Mile late Saturday morning as part of a march organized by Father Michael Pfleger to decry the violence that has claimed the most lives in a year since the mid-1990s.

It was so moving and impressive, that not a single person has been killed on Michigan Avenue for three whole days now. Of course, that could be because the people who populate and shop on Michigan Avenue (without the assistance of stolen motor vehicles crashing through front doors in the dead of night) know that killing people over drugs, girls, boys, money, territory, social media disses, etc is wrong.

Meanwhile, on the west side:

• Two teenage boys were killed and a woman was wounded in a shooting Tuesday afternoon in the East Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side, according to Chicago Police.

Amazing. The populace that might benefit most from pfleger's message is the one most neglected by his presence. 011 has already had 3 murders among nearly 10 shot in just three days. None of the shooters are even rumored to have come from North Michigan Avenue.

But remember, the police are the problem and rich white people are to be reminded at every opportunity that their streets are safer to protest on than the 3400 block of West Fulton.