Nice Weekend Rahm

It's October, right? Weather is cooling off, right?

• Seven people have been fatally shot and 14 others wounded in Chicago since 5 p.m. Friday, including three men caught in gunfire in East Garfield Park.
  
  Shots rang out and struck three men about 3:40 p.m. Sunday in the 400 block of North Springfield Avenue, Chicago police said. A 37-year-old man was shot in his head, and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he died. The Cook County medical examiner’s office hasn’t released details about his death.

Seven dead is a "respectable" weekend in the spring and early summer. It's kind of unusual for October.

Well This is Interesting

Keep this in mind:

• A driver who got into a dispute with people in another car Friday night in the East Ukrainian Village neighborhood, then hit and killed a man who had been a passenger in the other car, was released without charges, police said Sunday.
  
  The driver who killed a man identified as William Gonzalez, 38, of the 1000 block of North Avers Avenue, was released without charges after detectives determined the driver acted in self-defense, police said Sunday.
  
  Gonzalez and the driver of the four-door sedan that hit him started arguing around 8:15 p.m. Friday in the 1600 block of West Augusta Boulevard, police said.
  
  Gonzalez got out of the car he was in and walked up to the sedan, holding a knife, police said.

So hitting a knife-wielding maniac with a hunk of metal weighing 2,000 pounds is better than shooting them at a distance. Message received loud and clear!

GoFundMe Reminder

A couple of girls who had absolutely nothing to do with why they're without their primary breadwinner need help. Think about stopping in and dropping off a couple of bucks.

You can contact the FOP and find out how to make a direct contribution through the Credit Union so GoFundMe doesn't skim off the top, too.

(comments closed here.)

Arrest, Release, Repeat

Toni, Tommy, Timmy and Kim strike again:

• A Chicago man was arrested the day after he allegedly carjacked a woman's vehicle from a business parking lot in Oak Lawn. Dwayne Corley, 25, appeared before Cook County Judge Peter Felice wearing blue hospital scrubs on felony charges of unlawful vehicular invasion and robbery. Corley is currently on parole and was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet at the time of his arrest, prosecutors said.

Once again, electronic monitoring is no deterrent to misbehavior.

Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

Watch out Austin:

• The merit sergeant who changed her name to a cop killer was assigned to 015. Watch yourselves - she got a CR on one of the instructors at the academy during training.

We are still amazed the "merit board" thought this was a good idea.

Anyone know what this alleged CR number was for?

Thanks Jeff

It's nice to hear this from someone in government, seeing as how the assholes in charge here won't point it out:

• In a speech Friday to a friendly law enforcement audience in Chicago, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called a proposed consent decree that would reform the Chicago Police Department an “insult,’’ saying, “Chicago police are not the problem.’’
  
  Sessions’ remarks came before a crowd of about 40 business and law enforcement representatives, including U.S. Attorney John Lausch, at an event sponsored by the Chicago Crime Commission.
  
  [...]
  
  Sessions bemoaned the city’s spike in violence in 2016, blaming “the ACLU effect,” a reference to the city’s agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois that required police to more thoroughly document street stops.
  
  “If you let ACLU set police policy, crime will go up,’’ he said.

And Sessions points out what every cop in town already knows:

• Though he didn’t specifically refer to controversial “stop-and-frisk’’ policies backed by his boss, President Donald Trump, Sessions said that if police “don’t stop,’’ they “don’t find’’ illegal guns and fugitives.
  
  He called the ACLU agreement a “colossal’’ mistake that reduced public safety and placed “minorities, particularly at risk.’’

Interesting times ahead, no matter how it plays out.

And the Final Tally is....

Just under a quarter-million dollars:

• A Labor Day protest march may have failed to reach the Kennedy Expressway near O’Hare International Airport, but it did reach into taxpayers’ pockets for tens of thousands of dollars.
  
  Police agencies assigned to the march spent at least $152,871.52 on their efforts, according to information obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
  
  Add to that the cost of an August march that shut down a northern stretch of Lake Shore Drive, and the total tally hits $214,662.82.
  
  Illinois State Police wouldn’t say how many officers it allocated for the Labor Day protest; they did, however, provide the total personnel cost, including benefits: $119,391.90. The Chicago Police Department, sent 48 officers, which cost taxpayers $27,526.33. The site, on the Park Ridge/Rosemont border, also was staffed by 24 Park Ridge opolice officers ($5,528.22) and two officers from Rosemont ($425.07).

Time to file that lien and recover what money is available.

Don't forget this march:

• For a much-larger march that shut down a portion of the northbound Dan Ryan Expressway — during which included Supt. Eddie Johnson walked arm-in-arm with Father Micheal Pfleger — the state police cost was about $198,000. The total estimated cost to taxpayers for that march was over $300,000.

You can bill Special Ed for his portion since he was there breaking the law along with pfather what's-his-name.

Ruiz Park

Friday dedication:

• On Friday morning, a boy bolted up a lime green slide in a small park tucked away on a corner of the Southwest Side. Two others pumped their legs back and forth on swings, flying up into the air and holding on as tight as all the yellow-spotted leaves still clinging to their branches. A young girl smiled and ran past a newly minted sign: Irma C. Ruiz Park.
  
  Thirty years ago, Ruiz, a Chicago police officer who “took care of everyone,” became one of the first female officers to be killed in the line of duty when a gunman entered a Near West Side school and shot at Ruiz, instantly ending the life of the beloved wife, mother of four and police partner.
  
  A Chicago park in the Archer Heights neighborhood was officially renamed in her honor on Friday. More than a hundred friends, family, fellow officers — even the horse named after Ruiz — gathered for the dedication. And before and after the ceremony, Ruiz’s grandchildren played in her park.

RIP

Car as a Weapon Again?

When actual punishment is scarce, what's to stop this from occurring more often?

• Two people were injured Thursday, including an Oak Forest Police officer, following a carjacking in which the injured officer fired his gun at the fleeing vehicle, police said. The carjacker, described as a male in his late teens or early 20s, was at large as of late Thursday, Oak Forest Police said.
  
  Shortly before noon, Oak Forest Police were advised of an aggravated carjacking involving a gun that had taken place in Orland Park. Oak Forest officers saw a vehicle matching the description traveling at a very high rate of speed east on 159th, and the vehicle attempted to turn north onto Cicero Avenue, where it hit a construction worker, police said.
  
  The driver got out of the vehicle and fled on foot east on 159th, with Oak Forest officers in pursuit, police said. The man carjacked a second vehicle, and as officers tried to apprehend him, he ran over one of the officers with the vehicle, who fired his weapon toward the stolen white Mazda, police said.

Great description once again by the Tribune - watch out for the "males." They're dangerous as Hell.

Best wishes to the injured officer for a speedy recovery, not only from his injuries, but of his badge, which (as you may have guessed) he was stripped of by Speci8al Ed for not getting out of the way and firing at a moving vehicle.

Dumb Idea Pays Dividends

For criminals. Not so much for the law abiding:

• It’s hard to gripe with the general idea behind the Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF). The organization raises money to post bond for people who cannot afford to post their own while awaiting trial.
  
  But there seems to be a problem.
  
  One man who was freed by the fund while awaiting trial for attempted murder in North Center went on to be arrested four times in three months for battering and threatening people in Boystown. Despite being arrested repeatedly while on bond and even being ordered to serve two jail sentences for those crimes, his bond was never revoked.
  
  And a transgender woman accused of robbing a man in Boystown in 2017 was freed by the fund in May 2017. Since then, she has repeatedly skipped court dates and she has been arrested three times. The bond fund was twice ordered to forfeit the $50,000 it risked on the woman’s freedom, only to have the money given back after filing motions with the court. Most recently, a litany of social service agencies virtually begged the court to let the woman go free on bond again. The judge agreed. And the woman is now AWOL. Again.

Hop over and read the whole article. The writers over at Crime In Boystown are about the only actual journalists in Chicago any more.

Ghetto Uber Strikes Again

Bad odds, smart move:

• Five teenagers are in custody after the carjacking of an off-duty police officer in the city's Edgewater Beach neighborhood. Police said the officer, a 47-year-old woman, was approached by a group of offenders after parking her Lexus SUV in the 5800 block of North Winthrop around midnight Thursday.
  
  One of the offenders pointed a gun at the officer and demanded her vehicle, then took the keys out of her hand, got into the SUV and drove away.
  
  Police spotted the vehicle on the Southeast Side and pursued it. The offenders were captured after hitting a dead-end at 55th and South Shore. The suspects include a 16-year-old, a 19-year-old and three 18-year-olds. Police recovered a weapon from inside the stolen Lexus.
  
  Charges are pending.

Outnumbered five-to-one and at gunpoint, the smart move is to lose the car, not your life. Good job capturing everyone later.

Don't hold your breath on extensive charges, though. Carjacking is just a "rite of passage" in the "community" and we'll bet no one 'fessed up to the gun, so Foxxx won't be charging anyone with that.

Interesting Concept

Taking house mouses....and putting them on the street:

• A day after 11 people were shot, including three fatally, Baltimore officials condemned the city’s drug trade and announced plans to get more police officers on the streets.
  
  About 230 Baltimore Police Department officers assigned to administrative duties will leave their offices for patrol work as the department seeks to combat a spike in violence across the city.
  
  Interim Commissioner Gary Tuggle temporarily shut down administrative operations at police headquarters and in every district, he said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Those officers have been reassigned to the streets, bringing the number of officers patrolling the city to about 650, he said.

Wow! Eleven people get shot and administrative "operations" get shut down. What's the number of house mouses that get sent back to the street when Chicago has a weekend where 70 people get shot?

A Special Arrogance

The last time we heard a yarn this unbelievable, we were on a whaling ship out of Nantucket:

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she believes a county SUV used “nearly exclusively” by her security chief and found abandoned in the early morning hours after the 2016 election with campaign materials in the back was stolen, even though officials never reported it to police.
  
  Preckwinkle also said she has not investigated the incident and declined to comment on whether she has asked her security chief whether he placed the political materials in the vehicle, saying she won’t discuss “personnel matters.”
  
  Instead reiterated her spokeswoman’s statements from earlier in the week that she does not allow county vehicles to be used for “the dissemination of campaign materials” but doesn’t know who placed the materials in the vehicle.
  
  “My conviction is that it was stolen,” Preckwinkle, a candidate for mayor of Chicago, said of the vehicle. “That’s as far as I intend to comment on it.”

Gee, a stolen county "security" vehicle loaded with campaign literature, in violation of all sorts of Ethics Rules. It's extra funny that she says, "My conviction...." seeing as how anyone charged by her pet Foxxx wouldn't be convicted of anything in Cook County.

Nice Campaign JB

Is this being planned by Rauner? Because it's hard to believe Pritzker could be this dumb:

• Three weeks before Election Day, staffers who have worked for J.B. Pritzker’s campaign have filed a federal lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in their months on the job, accusations the Democratic governor candidate quickly called “just not true.”
  
  The lawsuit comes in the final stretch of an increasingly bitter campaign between Pritzker and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that has seen both sides break spending records and accuse one another of criminal activity.
  
  The lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that African-American and Latino campaign staffers “are herded into race-specific positions where they are expected to interact with the public, offered no meaningful chance for advancement, and receive less favorable treatment than their white counterparts.” Of the 10 campaign staffers named as plaintiffs in the suit, nine are black and one is a Latina.

Next thing you know, there's going to be audio of wiretaps released between Pritzker and Blago discussing the sale of a Senate seat and using some....racially charged language perhaps?

So Pritzker takes union money while undercutting unions, uses racist language, promises to double the state income tax.....and he's actually expected to win?

Sigh

This is probably a sign that you need help:

• An on-duty Chicago police sergeant was charged with drunk driving Wednesday morning after failing a random drug and alcohol test at the police department’s headquarters on the South Side.

.139 .... at 0400 hours. That takes some doing.

Elect JB - Double your Taxes

This one isn't getting any play in the mainstream media, just the policy wonk sites:

• Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker has promised a number of new spending programs as well as closing Illinois’ current structural deficit. To finance these promises, Pritzker has proposed a progressive income tax hike.
  
  But how much would these promises cost? And how high would taxes need to be to finance them?
  
  Reasonable estimates show the cost of Pritzker’s spending promises demand an income tax hike of $13 billion to $18 billion. This would require approximately doubling the state’s personal income tax to 9.95 percent on the high end and 8.51 percent on the low end from the current 4.95 percent income tax rate.
  
  That means within the existing flat income tax structure, which would remain in place until at least 2020, the typical family in Illinois making just over $79,000 would pay an additional $2,500 to $3,500 in income taxes in order to finance Pritzker’s spending promises.

Anyone here expecting the FOP to hit one out of the park and get us a raise big enough so that we can continue to tread water in this sinking ship? We don't.

And the sad part is, people will still vote for this double-talking asshole.

No Shootings!

No, not here. Chicago can't seem to go twelve hours without someone getting ventilated:

• The last time New York City experienced a weekend without a shooting, Ruth Bader Ginsberg had just been named to the Supreme Court, "Jurassic Park" was thrilling audiences and the world wide web made its debut.
  
  And then this weekend happened.
  
  New York City officials announced no one had been shot in all five boroughs Oct. 12-14 — the first weekend free of shootings since at least 1993, the New York Post reported.

It could be that New York just hasn't found a body with holes in it yet, but maybe a city of 8.5 million souls suddenly started getting along, opening doors for each other, saying please, thank you and pardon me.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised - no doubt Tokyo has gone months without shootings, so why not New York?

COPA Headhunting

Looking for anything even remotely questionable to hang some scalps on their wall - something we predicted a long time ago - to promote themselves as "independent" and "tough on cops:"

• Video released Tuesday shows an off-duty Chicago police sergeant opening fire from his vehicle and wounding an apparently unarmed man as he stood on a sidewalk in front of a home in the Morgan Park neighborhood on the Far South Side.
  
  The Civilian Office of Police Accountability released police dashboard camera, home surveillance video and police reports more than a year after Ricardo “Ricky” Hayes, then 18, was shot in the arm and chest in the 11100 block of South Hermosa Avenue.

You'll notice the dates and wonder why videos were held for over 14 months instead of the now-customary 60 days. Don't expect that to be answered any time soon.

Run Away!!!

It seems London is taking lessons from J-Fled:

• The acting head of the Metropolitan Police locked himself in a car as one of his officers was murdered metres away during the Westminster attack, an inquest has heard.
  
  Sir Craig Mackey was commissioner of Britain’s largest force at the time of the atrocity, where Khalid Masood ran down four victims with his car and stabbed PC Keith Palmer to death.
  
  An inquest into Masood’s death heard that Sir Craig was being driven out of the Houses of Parliament when the attack started on 22 March 2017.

The inquest is being used as a cover-up, finding that the Police Constable was already grievously stabbed, so there was nothing that Mackey could have done to prevent the Constable from bleeding out. Why actually make the effort when there might be a cup of warm tea waiting somewhere else?

Purse Arrest

Part of the $67,000 heist was solved the other day:

• Three adults have been arrested and charged in connection with the armed robbery of a Christian Dior boutique near the Magnificent Mile this week after they agreed to meet with an undercover officer to sell a stolen Dior purse for $9,000, according to police and court records. A juvenile girl has also been charged in the case, according to a police department source.

And you'll never guess what else:

• One of the accused persons is currently on probation after he pleaded guilty in a robbery-related incident at the Magnificent Mile Saks Fifth Avenue store this summer.

Of course, they weren't charged with the original robbery since there wasn't any description available. Nice pinch though by the followup units.

Likely Consent Decree Timeline

From an insider at County:

• The EXACT SAME THING happened at County years ago, and this will happen to you. Mostly in this order, with very little variation.
  
  One: you will attract less and less talented applicants. Less and less people want to work for CPD or be the police in general. The Darren Wilson/JasonVan Dyke cases, de-policing in general since 08/09, increased micromanagement and metrics-based supervision for suburban departments and weaker organized labor all contribute. Not only that, but you have an economy that is insanely good: unemployment nationally at 3.7%? Hasn't been this good in decades and more better-paying jobs are to be found elsewhere- with stock options and bonuses.
  
  Two: with low-talent applicants, you will hire low-talent people. Which means over the long-term, low-talent officers will be promoted to low-talent so-called-Sergeants.
  
  Three: increase in cameras. There will be more cameras that you know what to do with. In locker rooms, in break rooms, put up in blind spots in the station, in lockups, everywhere. You'll have body cameras for every officer in the department. You'll have dash-mounted cameras inside the squad car aimed at the officers inside. You'll have cameras mounted in the cage in the vehicle. The camera systems will be Ultra-High Def 4K shit, with great zoom lenses, and audio capability. They will be able to be real-time streamed. These cameras will be able to be accessed by command staff ay any time, any where. Directors in CCSO can access this shit from their houses, from their iPads. And they do. They will watch the cameras from home, call into the jail and ask Chiefs, Superintendents, Lieutenants and whoever they want, why officers are doing certain things. This happens daily to us and it will happen daily to you.
  
  Four: increase in civilian directors and oversight. You'll have civilians who are not the police, being put in charge of units, groups and teams. These people are not your friends.
  
  Five: New units for Use of Force Review, Video Monitoring, Internal Affairs, etc... You'll have re-organized units, re-structured units, new units and the like. Lots of juice babies will be placed in this units. The administration will fight you tooth and nail and a lot of the people in these units will not investigate Use of Force incidents correctly.
  
  Six: A hell of a lot of discipline. They'll rewrite the entire General Orders of CPD. They'll fight the FOP on everything, hire a lot more lawyers and they will push for the maximum amount of discipline possible for a lot more officers. They will make examples. They will suspend without pay. They will push to fire more officers, by a factor of 5 at least from that the current level is. There is no mistaking it, people will absolutely lose their jobs.
  
  Seven: The Department will drown the union with more and more lawyers and opposition and struggle during normal operations. Everything from lunches to reliefs to overtime, to uniform/appearance standards, to medical call-ins, FMLA use and the pettiest stuff imaginable. This will increase the workload on the stewards in the districts and units and also the union office, making the office do more and more work. It will make you choose your battles more and it will make officers have less and less faith in the union.
  
  Eight: A ton of good officers will retire. They will be fired. They will stop caring. They'll become even more cynical and jaded that they are now. They'll impact the younger generation and then, they too, will become lazy and not care. More officers will transfer to suburban departments, federal agencies or choose different paths altogether. The department attrition will increase substantially, which will make officers invest less and less in their careers and themselves.
  
  Nine: After years of mismanagement and sinking morale, after hundreds of officers are fired and hundreds more leave, the department will change direction slightly and try to "improve" it. Special teams, special units, special work hours/shifts/days off, perks, etc., will be offered. Those Use of Force units, Internal Affairs and the administration will realize what has happened and try and fix it. This will happen slowly at first and then pick up speed. This is the phase the county is in now- especially at the jail. But the damage will be done.
  
  If you think this is bogus, ask officers who left the jail to come to CPD. County loses between 4-8 per month going to CPD. Talk to them in the districts. Everything I mentioned will happen, or has already started.

Anyone know an LAPD guy who can compare this to their Consent Decree? Or anywhere else that has been saddled with this disaster?

Nice Double Standard JB

Pritzker says one thing, then does completely the opposite:

• Billionaire Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker has portrayed himself as a champion of working families and received substantial support from organized labor, but he used nonunion workers to remodel his Gold Coast mansion.
  
  Nonunion labor from three trades was hired to work on the yearslong, $25 million renovation of Pritzker’s 20,000-square-foot residence, according to a June 2007 email filed as part of a court dispute that arose between Pritzker and the general contractor.
  
  “A note of caution,” wrote construction consultant Douglas Kaulas to Pritzker’s brother-in-law Thomas Muenster, who oversaw the renovation. “Now that the front yard is screened off and scaffold is going up, the jobsite has a much higher visibility. We’re perfectly legal with our permits, but we do have a non-union mason, demo contractor and roofer working. We are a little concerned that the union (business agents) may come to visit.”
  
  For Democrats, the support of organized labor is key and using union workers can be a litmus test. Pritzker now joins the list of Illinois Democrats who championed labor on the public stage but employed nonunion workers when it came to their personal lives.

Reason #1,254 why you can't trust democrats - taking your money with one hand, mouthing the right platitudes, then stabbing you in the back.

Policing - 2018 Style

Amazing what the job has become in just a few short years:

• Can anyone shed any light on the [r]umor that a handful of our newest finest, had an offender that they were trying to place in custody and the offender fled to the police car and tried to drive off. He didn't have keys to drive the vehicle off so he locked himself in and when he tried to exit the vehicle to either fight with these new police officers they locked the door and wouldn't let him out. They then called a field Sgt. to assist and the Sgt. had to show them [how] to take a shit head in custody. If this story is true and if it in fact happened the way I heard it, the dept. certainly has, Be The Change, well in hand. That policing thing, not so much.

Someone did answer the comment and claimed it happened in that haunted Indian burial ground of 025.

Then on the west side, we have e-mails about two coppers getting into an actual fight on first watch over who would get to drive the car that night. One of them had to leave a south side district a short time ago because of all the drama that he created, filing numerous complaints on other officers.

And just so you don't think it's only the new guys, when is Channel 2 supposed to do their multipart series on the SWAT scandals?

What the actual Hell is going on?

They're Actually Serious?

This is why celebrity opinions should be discounted 90%^ of the time - it's just plain uninformed:

• One of Larry Hoover’s loudest advocates believes the imprisoned Gangster Disciples leader would be a voice for peace in Chicago if he were freed by President Donald Trump.
  
  Hoover would urge gang members to “stop the killing,” according to Wallace “Gator” Bradley, a former GD.
  
  “Maybe what they need is the fear of God,” Bradley said Thursday. “I am not saying Larry Hoover is God, but when they took the leaders off the street, they took the street disciplinarian away.”

Wasn't Gator shot a few years back for running his mouth? And it isn't "fear of God" that would bring some semblance of order to the streets - it'd be "fear of Hoover" until such time as Hoover got lit up by one of the leaf-smoking, un-parented, no-future assholes that roam his former territory.

Gator wants a return to the old days when he used to wield some sort of power among gangs. In today's fractured landscape, the only way that is happening is via murder and intimidation. The fact that the media (via Frank Main) is giving this moron a voice and letting him agitate for Hoover's release speaks poorly as to their grasp of what the reality of those days was like.

"Re-Education Camp"

That "implicit bias" crap the department is forcing on everyone? It's bullshit:

• I had the pleasure, a few weeks ago, of attending a seminar at Ryerson University as a specially invited guest to hear University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson address a colleague’s students on freedom of speech and gender issues that have made him a household name in Canada.
  
  I was of course already familiar with much of Peterson’s material from his videos, which didn’t diminish by an iota my sense of privilege in experiencing the force of live presentation. But my ears perked up at something new in his remarks: an allusion to the “Implicit Association Test” (IAT). According to Peterson, the IAT, a pseudo-scientific diagnostic test to measure an individual’s personal biases, has been introduced into the CBC as a tool for identifying and measuring unconscious biases among its senior executives, in all likelihood with the objective of weeding them out through training.
  
  By coincidence, I had just read a lengthy, detailed and quite damning indictment of the IAT by scrupulously thorough investigative reporter Jesse Singal of New York Magazine’s Science of Us. I hope the honchos at the CBC will read it as well.

And here's the take down of the “Implicit Association Test” the author references in her article:

• Given all this excitement, it might feel safe to assume that the IAT really does measure people’s propensity to commit real-world acts of implicit bias against marginalized groups, and that it does so in a dependable, clearly understood way. After all, the test is hosted by Harvard, endorsed and frequently written about by some of the top social psychologists and science journalists in the country, and is currently seen by many as the most sophisticated way to talk about the complicated, fraught subject of race in America.
  
  Unfortunately, none of that is true. A pile of scholarly work, some of it published in top psychology journals and most of it ignored by the media, suggests that the IAT falls far short of the quality-control standards normally expected of psychological instruments. The IAT, this research suggests, is a noisy, unreliable measure that correlates far too weakly with any real-world outcomes to be used to predict individuals’ behavior — even the test’s creators have now admitted as such.

So here comes the politicians and CPD brass, allowing this pseudo-training to take place, based on the dubious claims that cops are all so racist and unaware of "implicit" racism that we have to be "re-educated" via this and the Consent Decree and who knows what other bullshit they'll come up with.

You can bet this will be coming up in future lawsuits, all to beat up the police and fleece taxpayers.

Deadline Extended Again

Once again, there will be an entry exam to join the Chicago Police Department.

And once again, the application deadline has been extended because not nearly enough people are signing up to make it economically feasible to have a test. It's almost as if there is some reluctance to the idea of becoming the police.

We wonder what it could be.

GoFundMe Link

There have been a few links popping up in the comment sections about creating a GoFundMe effort for the VanDayke family. This is the most cited one.

CBS has linked to it, so it is most likely legit - but CBS is linking to it so others like Jamal what's-his-ass can protest it and attempt to shut it down, thereby punishing a family that is already being punished enough and who had exactly zero to do with any department or court proceedings.

FOP is probably the best place to get information on fundraising, either electronically or via the Credit Union.

You're Doing it Wrong

When you're turning your life around, it's not supposed to go like this:

• A man shot four-years ago by Chicago police has been injured again in another police shooting.
  
  Alonzo Smith, 31, was critically wounded Wednesday in a shootout with Milwaukee police. Authorities say officers were responding to reports of shots fired, when they say Smith shot at them. Officers fired back, critically wounding him.
  
  Several guns and a knife were reportedly found after the shooting.
  
  Smith has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
  
  He reached a $180,000 settlement with Chicago after the shooting in 2014.

Any chance we can get that $180,000 back?

Bias Survey Canceled

Remember that survey we asked about a couple of days ago? FOP stopped it:

• Apparently, the Chicago Police Department has partnered with the Anti-Defamation League for a training class that will be presented to all Chicago Police Officers. This training class will address implicit bias. Initially, in order to participate in this class, Police Officers were required to complete a survey prior to attending the class.
  
  Several members contacted the Lodge inquiring whether they had an obligation to complete the survey. Initially, the Lodge did not have a response as the Department failed to advise us of the existence of both the survey and the training itself.
  
  The Lodge made inquiries to the Department asking what agency compiled the surveys, what agency was going to use the data from the surveys, would the data be saved or destroyed, and who or what agency would have access to the survey data.
  
  While the Lodge is certainly in favor of any training that will enhance our members' policing skills, we are more interested in ensuring that our members rights are protected. We advised the Department of our objections to this survey: There was not any guarantee that your answers would be kept private, there was not any guarantee that your answers would not have a negative personal impact, and there was not any guarantee that your answers would not have a negative impact on either the Department or Lodge as a whole.
  
  The Department took note of our inquiries and objections and has removed the survey.

We can hardly wait to see what liberal bullshit the Department has decided to foist on everyone, and what lib-tard is getting piles of money for this crap.

Fifteen ET's Made

So the Department made fifteen Evidence Techs this week.

Word is that nine of them have already landed inside spots where they'll never have to process a crime scene.

Congratulations to those that will help alleviate the two and three hour waits at shooting scenes.

The New Normal

And it involves carjacking:

• Three people were carjacked over 40 minutes in Lakeview and Lincoln Park late Wednesday and early Thursday -- and two of the stolen cars were later found in the same South Side police district, one parked and the other crashed, according to Chicago police.
  
  Those carjacked included a food delivery driver robbed at gunpoint and two women, police said.

But don't worry - help is on the way!

• Chicago police issued a community alert Wednesday saying there have been six carjackings or robberies on the North Side. This comes on a day that the police superintendent and mayor announced that there will be more technology on the streets to track stolen vehicles.
  
  License plate readers on squad cars can scan up to 1,000 plates per minute, picking up whether a car is stolen. Two hundred more patrol cars will be outfitted with them, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Wednesday.

This explains why they called for a bunch of plate readers to be pulled off the streets for a photo-op yesterday.

We can't quite figure out how this matters though - we aren't allowed to chase for property crimes, and that is all that carjacking is under the current regime, even when it's done with a gun.

Don't get trick-bagged.

Silly Rapper

We've never been a fan of Kanye West's music, nor his family, nor his juvenile take on complicated issues. He seems to be a canny businessman who understands his audience though.

We have been amused to see the left's need to destroy him now that he has escaped the thought-police and seems to be thinking for himself for once, no matter how disordered those thought may be. It's difficult to break those habits of allowing others to think for you.

But his rambling defense of Larry Hoover is a nonstarter here. Hoover was nothing but a merchant of drugs, destruction and death during his reign of terror. The only reason we'd want to see Hoover walking around outside of prison walls would be to see how long it would take for his past to catch up to him and get killed, except some innocent person might end up getting shot along with Hoover.

He wouldn't last two weeks on the outside.

Non-Library Advances

Tax dollars being stolen right before your eyes:

• The City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate Thursday unanimously approved an ordinance for the Obama Foundation to pay $10 for a 99-year agreement for the Obama Presidential Center, moving the foundation one step closer to being able to break ground on the project.
  
  Before the vote, Ald. Raymond Lopez, (15th) and Ald. Deborah Mell, (33rd) pressed Obama Foundation members on the ongoing concerns that the center would displace longtime residents and that it would not be a presidential library.

But they still voted for it anyway. Real spines of steel among these alderassholes.

Hoax?

Got this via e-mail this past afternoon:

Anyone know if the FOP knows about a job survey? And does anyone have any actual proof of this "implicit bias"?

Or is this just another of those "It's true because we say it is" moments?

Strange Bedfellows

So this was early last week:

Any questions?

Sounds Familiar....

Our old friend Jack Dunphy in Los Angeles:

• At the risk of being repetitive, we return once again to the Los Angeles Times, whose writers and editors seem to leap at any opportunity to present police officers in an unfavorable light. They are so eager to do so, in fact, that they are willing to omit relevant facts from their stories to achieve the purpose.
  
  The latest example came on Oct. 4, when Times writers Joel Rubin and Ben Poston (with help from staff writers Ryan Menezes and Ruben Vives) wrote more than 3,500 words on what they and their editors believe is a serious problem within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, to wit, too many Latinos being stopped and searched for drugs on a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 5, known in Southern California as the Grapevine.
  
  “The team of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies cruises the 5 Freeway,” the story begins, “stopping motorists on the Grapevine in search of cars carrying drugs. They’ve worked the mountain pass in Southern California since 2012 and boast a large haul: more than a ton of methamphetamine, 2 tons of marijuana, 600 pounds of cocaine, millions of dollars in suspected drug money and more than 1,000 arrests.”
  
  Up to this point the reader might be saying: “That’s a lot of arrests and a lot of drugs. Sounds like good police work.”
  
  But this is the Los Angeles Times, remember, where any law enforcement accomplishment must be viewed with the suspicion that the police did something improper to achieve it. And so comes the ominous kicker: “But behind those impressive numbers are some troubling ones.”

Gee, like accusing Chicago officers of being "racist" because they patrol areas that are 90-to-95% black? That cops are stopping too many black and brown people because only 95% of the shootings and murders are committed by black and brown suspects?

Officers go to where the crime is, oftentimes to the detriment of "quiet" neighborhoods who then suffer when criminals go to where the police aren't.

Go read it all.

So, Englewood

Yesterday's injuring of a police officer is a lot more involved than previously thought:

• Three Chicago police officers were attacked and locked inside an Englewood home as they chased a woman who had spit in the face of one of the cops, authorities said. The officers were able to get out of the house in the 7000 block of South Throop Street and arrested a woman and two men around 2:30 p.m. Monday, police said.
  
  Senneca Traylor, 19, was charged with aggravated battery of an officer and resisting an officer. Janice Lewis, 20, was charged with aggravated battery of an officer. Robert Williams, 28, was charged with unlawful restraint and resisting an officer.
  
  The officers had been chasing Lewis when another person threw a piece of wood at the back of an officer’s head, police said. The officers chased that person into a nearby home and other residents of the house locked the officers inside, police said. All three officers were treated at hospitals and released.

It appears that the charging is initially proper, but everyone knows you can't trust Kimesha any farther than you can throw her. She'll live down to her reputation shortly, the politicians will pander and the assholes in the media won't say a word about it.

Locking officers in a building where assist units cannot get to them in a timely manner is about as dangerous as it gets. In fact, Deadly Force would have to be at the top of our list of considered actions = if you are alone, away from assist units, outnumbered and in danger of being disarmed, injured or killed.

But who do you think Kimesha would charge in that case? The officers for getting out of the car? That's on record as a viable criticism in court just last week. After all, the initial foot pursuit was just for spitting - and you all signed up for being spit on, right? It was in the paperwork somewhere. And the gang bangers locking the door, well, that was just because they were afraid of a rat getting in or a dog getting out. How were they to know there was a hot pursuit of a fleeing felon?

This isn't some game anymore. Or if it is, it isn't the game you played just a few years ago. You are a target, period. You are a target for money and you are a target for prison, and all the old rules don't apply any more.

Trump Trolls Rahm

Poking his least favorite mayor:

• The Justice Department will later this week oppose a pending consent decree the city of Chicago agreed to in the wake of police misconduct allegations tied to the Laquan McDonald case, the Sun-Times has learned.
  
  This comes a day after President Donald Trump told a gathering of police chiefs in Orlando that an agreement between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on stop and frisk policies was “terrible.”
  
  Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement, “Chicago’s agreement with the ACLU in late 2015 dramatically undercut proactive policing in the city and kicked off perhaps the greatest surge in murder ever suffered by a major American city, with homicides increasing more than 57 percent the very next year.
  
  “Now the city’s leaders are seeking to enter into another agreement. It is imperative that the city not repeat the mistakes of the past — the safety of Chicago depends on it. Accordingly, at the end of this week, the Justice Department will file a statement of interest opposing the proposed consent decree. It is critical that Chicago get this right.”

We aren't sure of the niceties involved, but it may be possible for Sessions to order the Federal Courts to stay out of the fight, putting the entire onus (and extensive multi-million dollar costs) solely on the local authorities and courts, which in our opinion, is Constitutionally proper.

Nice Michigan Avenue Rahm

Again, the targeting of high-end stores:

• Thieves made off with thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise from a Dior store in the Gold Coast on Monday.
  
  Four women entered the store in the 900 block of north Rush Street at about 1:30 p.m. Monday and took 10 purses off the shelves before fleeing the store without paying, police said. The women threatened to spray a store employee with mace if she interfered with the theft.
  
  The women took off southbound on Rush street in a dark-colored sedan that had two men in it, police said.
  
  Authorities are investigating.

Authorities are going to have a difficult time investigating when the description of the car is better than a description of the offenders.

And this was only the beginning of the holiday mayhem on Michigan Avenue. Numerous e-mails describe at least 3 cars being heavily damaged, numerous assaults, "Apple picking" and other robberies - and the only coverage is the theft of purses worth $67,000 or so. Not a word of the wilding and continuous irreparable damage to Chicago's reputation.

Hey Look! A Bail Reduction

Kimesha's Krew at it again, showing that cops' lives don't matter at all:

• Bail was reduced on Tuesday for a 25-year-old man charged with trying to kill a suburban police office with his car during a traffic stop last week on the Far South Side.
  
  Jamal Campbell faces a charge of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer after he allegedly tried to run over the Alsip officer early Wednesday and was shot by the officer in the parking lot of an apartment building in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

And guess who the scumbag attorney is blaming?

• At a hearing to review his bail on Tuesday, Campbell’s attorney Michael Oppenheimer said the police-involved shooting might have been racially motivated and questioned whether Chicago police were covering up for the suburban officer.
  
  “Although this was an Alsip officer [who shot Campbell], this happened in Chicago and there is a history of cover-ups, as we saw last week,” Oppenheimer said in reference to the conviction of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke on Friday.

Once again, we are reminded of Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Officer Injured

Serious condition at the moment:

• Chicago police said an officer responding to a residence was injured and is now in the hospital.
  
  The incident happened in the 7000 block of South Throop.
  
  A person threw an object at the officer who was outside, striking him in the head.
  
  He was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he is listed in serious condition.

No info on arrests or charges, but does anyone actually trust a Cook County States Attorney nowadays?

Little Late

A great idea....two years ago:

• Once again focusing on Chicago crime, President Donald Trump on Monday said the city should implement a “stop and frisk” policy and get out of what he called a “terrible” agreement between the ACLU and the police department made after a study showed the stops targeted minorities.
  
  Trump, speaking to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Orlando, also said he was instructing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “immediately” go to Chicago.
  
  The Chicago Sun-Times has learned the Justice Department will have announcements on Chicago later this week.

Unless the announcements involve have Rahm, Toni, Kimmy, Timmy or Tommy being tried in the public square and hanged for our watching pleasure, we aren't seeing much change. Almost no one is being stopped. Morale is lower than low. Shootings are down but clearance rates hover in the single digits and property crime is rising.

The prosecuting attorney asked JVD at trial something along the lines of, "Sothis all could have been avoided if you stayed in the car? Dow do you think that is going to play in the Districts?

Nice Marathon Planning Ed

Just when you think the Department could get any less competent:

• Working the marathon detail today. About an hour into the race, majority of officers related that their radios were chirping and needed new batteries. Several of the salt trucks used to block intersections broke down and had to be towed out. Some boss screaming about that he is not afraid to spar an officer. What a circus!

And we got e-mails outlining how the Chief of Patrol released some order at midnight Friday violating the Contracts by sending bid officers and sergeants out of District instead of volunteers.

In any event, who is the "boss" who was screaming about how he wasn't afraid to SPAR an officer? No boss should be afraid of issuing discipline if an order or policy has been violated.

FYI: If you feel the need to tell everyone how unafraid you are, you're probably afraid....and most likely incompetent.

Quick - Switch to Plan B!

All Units - Mission compromised - switch to "Plan B" IMMEDIATELY:

• A kayaker fishing for salmon off Waukegan Harbor on Monday morning found an unexpected animal in the water — a 4-foot-long American alligator.
  
  Chicago resident David Castaneda had been paddling for about four hours when around 9:30 a.m. he saw something floating in the water, he said. Thinking it was a dead salmon, he went closer to check.
  
  Instead, he saw an alligator head, Castaneda said.
  
  “I went closer to see if it was real,” he said. “I was just in shock. I wasn’t sure if it was a real alligator or a toy.”
  
  Castaneda called 911 to report the alligator, and Waukegan’s Animal Control responded.
  
  The animal, which had its mouth taped shut, “was definitely on borrowed time,” said Rob Carmichael, curator for the Wildlife Discovery Center in Lake Forest, where the alligator is being taken.

Secret Agent "Bitey Half Finger Midget" should be assumed to have been tortured and may have revealed further information. All agents are to destroy existing records and assume primary safehouses are compromised. We'll be in touch.

Lack of Outrage

Once again....:

• A toddler fatally shot Saturday night in the Hermosa neighborhood on the Northwest Side has the grim distinction of being the youngest person to be killed by gun violence in the city this year.
  
  At 10:17 p.m., 2-year-old Julien Gonzalez and an 18-year-old man were standing near an alley in the 2200 block of North Kilbourn Avenue when shots were fired from the street’s end, according to Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
  
  Just before the shooting, two females were fighting in the alley between Kilbourn and Kenneth avenues when the shots were fired in their direction, police said.

Remember, police are the problem.

UPDATE: A protest.

And once again, gang-vs-gang violence claims an innocent, with no one coming forward (yet).

Pardon Our Laughter, But....

Hahahahahahahaha:

• A person was killed with his own gun Sunday morning when he tried to break into a home in the Hollywood Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side, police said.
  
  The male suspect was trying to break into the home in the 5700 block of North Spaulding when he was met inside by two other males, according to preliminary information from Chicago police. During an ensuing struggle, the two males wrestled the home invader’s gun away and shot him.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Easing Back into Routine

So the Department flipped the switch back to regular shifts.

We're going to take a day to make sure all of our contributors and contacts are rested up and adjusting back to the normality of day-to-day operations....well, as normal as it will get until after the Marathon.

Stay safe.

Social Security Fairness

From the National Lodge:

Worth following...and it would certainly get us out of here quicker.

The More You Know

Completely legal - everyone records everyone:

• “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over.” With that one phrase, drivers can get an added sense of security the next time they’re pulled over. With a new app called Shortcuts, iPhone users can create their own verbal commands to trigger their phones to perform a wide variety of actions – all without needing to press a button or touch the screen.
  
  Now, Redditor Robert Petersen of Arizona has created and publicly released the add-on “Police.”
  
  One quick phrase will discreetly direct your phone to turn down distractions, send an alert to an emergency contact and start recording whenever you’re pulled over by police.

How about, "Hey Siri, I got caught driving like an asshole."

Open Post

The usual (and expected) reactions from all segments of Chicago are easily located in the news links over on the right.

The verdict was a disappointment on many levels, not the least of which is every officer from this point forward will be judged (and convicted) on a shot-by-shot basis.

Have at it in the comments. We're done for the night and maybe the rest of the weekend.

Anyone Paying Attention?

Pretty sure FOP should get more than this:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel has agreed to a deal that would give thousands of unionized city workers raises totaling 10.5 percent over the next few years, his administration announced Thursday.
  
  The tentative deal with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 would cover about 3,500 workers throughout city government. It still requires City Council approval, though that’s largely a formality.
  
  The five-year contract proposal is retroactive to July 2017. It features 2.1 percent annual pay raises but also increases health care premiums and prescription deductibles, according to the Emanuel administration.

Cut it down to four years, eliminate the health care increases (Obama promised everyone free health care a few years back if we recall correctly - it should be here any day now), fix pension funding and this should breeze through a membership vote.

Bait Prostitutes?

Welcome to Prickwrinkle's Cook County:

• Slightly off topic but a good FYI.
  
  Recently at impound court the administrative judge found a couple of Soliciting Prostitution offenders not liable because the female officers they solicited “were not real prostitutes.” The female officers were from VICE and were on duty under cover working an “Operation Angel” (for those of you who remember that) type of mission.
  
  Sounds like the “bait truck defense” is being used as an argument for not being the offenders fault when it comes to buying sex on the street.
  
  Defendant: “Judge, i never would have offered ten dollars for sex if I knew she wasn’t a real prostitute. I’m a victim of prostitution fraud!!”
  
  Judge: “You certainly were defrauded sir. Here is your impound fee back along with the keys to your vehicle. Buyer beware. Have a good day.”

So, just to review:

• Having a nice car? Enticement to carjacking
• Women dress nicely? Invitation to rape
• UPS packages on the front porch? Temptation to theft

Perhaps the Gang Team under indictment can plead that the FBI baiting a stash house with cash was some sort of seduction to the dark side.

Deliberations Continue

Closing arguments and jury instructions progressed faster than a lot of people had predicted. The possibility of a Friday verdict and a full weekend of protests across Chicago is a distinct possibility.

Links to some articles can be found all over the right hand side of the blog. As we stated earlier, we're deployed, same as you, so don't expect timely updates for a bit.

Stay safe.

UPDATE: Gaughan was kind of a dick today. Instead of holding a closed hearing regarding threats made against the defendant's daughter, he lambasted him in public and on camera. You'd think that a judge who has been living with part of McCarthy's command staff for at least the past decade would have attempted to appear impartial.

Bad Week Gets Worse

After numerous officers were shot across the country, seven cops were shot in South Carolina:

• The man who allegedly opened fire on law enforcement officers in a residential neighborhood in South Carolina on Wednesday, killing one and injuring several others, is a disbarred lawyer, records from the Supreme Court of South Carolina show.
  
  A source with the Florence County Sheriff's Office told ABC News on Thursday that the detained suspect is Fred Hopkins, who was at the home where the shooting happened in Vintage Place, an upscale suburban neighborhood in the city of Florence, about 80 miles east of Columbia.
  
  Hopkins allegedly began shooting at Florence County deputies when they showed up to serve a search warrant for another individual at the residence Wednesday. There were four foster children inside the home at the time of the incident, the source told ABC News.

Prayers for the fallen and injured.

Shots Fired

Aggravated Assault with a vehicle:

• The Chicago Fire Department says a Chicago police officer's vehicle was struck by a private vehicle in the city's Albany Park neighborhood Thursday afternoon.
  
  The incident happened about 4 p.m. when the officer tried to pull over a silver Jeep headed west on Argyle Street near Whipple Street, police said.
  
  As the officer was getting out of his squad car, the Jeep struck the police vehicle and the officer fired shots at the Jeep, police said. The Jeep drove off after ramming the squad car and was later located on the opposite side of River Park in the 4900 block of North Francisco.

Officer is said to be okay.

Nice Safe Passage Rahm

So today's rollout of the Crowd Control effort was a poor effort. Entire Districts didn't get anywhere near a "Safe Passage" route and guess what happened?

• A Safe Passage worker suffered non life-threatening injuries, officials said, after he was shot in the back during rush hour Thursday on the West Side.
  
  The brazen 8:15 a.m. shooting along a Safe Passage route in South Austin was captured on multiple surveillance cameras. Footage released by police shows a gunman stepping from a light-colored sedan on the 5600 block of West Corcoran Place and firing across or down the street. Witnesses report hearing multiple gunshots.
  
  The Safe Passage worker, believed to be in his 20s, was shot in the back and transported to Loyola University Medical Center in serious condition. Police do not believe he was the intended target.

Great planning there.

Don't Get Jammed Up

Forewarned is forearmed:

• Please inform your readers that there WILL be IAD and COPA investigators assigned to all prisoner vans and wagons during the potential protests. There will also be the same agencies at all Area protest prisoner processing sites.

We would advise using your body cams to record prisoner conditions before entering a transport wagon and upon unloading.

We would also expect there to be a bunch of lawyers in the green hats standing around the desks looking to drum up business. We're pretty sure they don't belong inside and if they don't have a client name, they don't get to visit prisoners. Let's see which boss screws this one up.

Seeking Volunteers!

HQ is alive with the buzz of people eager to hit the streets!

• “Sworn, full-duty Department members who are assigned to units within Public Safety Headquarters that are non-essential/non-operational on Monday, 08 October 2018, may volunteer to work for the Bureau of Patrol. These sworn members will be assigned to field duties within districts, at the discretion of the Chief of the Bureau of Patrol. Members electing to work will contact Sgt. VG in the Bureau of Patrol no later than 1400 hours on Thursday, 04 October 2018.”

Believe it when you see it.

It Begins

Why 12-hour days begins before the jury even has directions, we don't know. But it did, here it is, we'll all have to deal with it.

Blogging, of course, will be slow. Schedules have suddenly been shifted, arrangements have to be made. Things won't be posted in a timely manner and might even be delayed if we need the sleep. We might even post some stale stuff just to have filler material.

We expect most of you will be busy, too, so much so you might not read or comment as you usually do. Keep your wits about you, stay safe, watch your backs and your partners backs regardless. We'll catch up with everyone at the bar afterwards.

A Plethora of Bad Ideas

Lightfoot outlines exactly how she'll fix Chicago if she wins:

• Mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot has argued that Chicago’s never-ending cycle of gang violence has triggered a “public health crisis” that requires rebuilding impoverished neighborhoods and restoring shattered trust between citizens and police.
  
  Now, the former Police Board president who co-chaired Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Task Force on Police Accountability is unveiling that “Marshall Plan” to give Chicago neighborhoods the level of safety they desperately need and deserve.
  
  [...] The new office will ensure that public-safety resources are “equitably distributed throughout the city.” It also will oversee a public-safety board with authority over the Police Department, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Police Board.

Really? So we'll get the manpower needed to actually patrol our neighborhood? Because we haven't seen the beat car around these parts in months. When we drive by the District, we see ten and fifteen unmanned squad cars parked in the lot with no police to drive them. When we get to work, we run a Unit Summary of home and are constantly amazed at how many cars are listed as "DOWN" but there never seem to be any bid openings for us to get closer to home.

• With illegal guns pouring into Chicago from Indiana and Wisconsin — and even from as far away as Texas and Mississippi — Lightfoot’s plan also includes creating a department within CPD to target gun traffickers and pressure the U.S. Attorney’s office to increase the “relatively small” number of prosecutions for “serious gun-related crimes like trafficking and selling guns.”

You mean like the 400 stolen guns - stolen by a career Chicago criminal on home monitoring - that just missed making it here by a whisper? Or the gun-runners that Kimmie seems to plea out for months on crimes that should be punished for years (and that punish victims for a lifetime)?

• After hearing from a “startling cross-section” of Chicagoans who view police officers as racist, Lightfoot also made the case for “some kind of racial reconciliation” that would allow Chicagoans who have felt harassed or disrespected by police to publicly air their grievances across the table from police brass. 

You mean like when officers pull up on a scene and are immediately assailed with accusations of racism, not caring, being blamed for the acts of people/folks that want nothing to do with anyone in a blue and white?

• To bridge the divide between citizens and police, she’s proposing a citywide peace and reconciliation process, community-level summits and even allowing community leaders to teach scenario-based classes to police recruits.
  
  Following New York City’s lead, rookies would be required to spend two weeks meeting with community leaders before starting work in their assigned districts.
  
  The Police Department would also: hire a chief diversity officer; eliminate clout promotions and redesign “sergeant selection criteria”; overhaul its gang database; make mental health professionals “co-responders” on calls requiring crisis intervention; and implement an early-intervention system to identify problem officers.
  
  And Chicago Public Schools would be charged with developing a K-through-12 curriculum that teaches students how to resolve conflicts.

Community leaders who hold onto every racial grievance (real and imagined) they can for years? Decades even? Two weeks with such stellar examples of "community leadership" like who? Jesse? Louis? Phleger? Maybe Jamal or Lemon?

You had our interest for a second with eliminating clout promotions, but we suspect an ulterior motive there. That "co-responders" sounds like a way of getting civilians killed by mentals and there's already a curriculum that teaches conflict resolution - it's called a family and usually consists of parents and a supportive family structure.

Once Prickwrinkle starts pulling away in the polls, this one is toast.

Spree Killer Update

First, did everyone notice how ridiculous the media was being?

• “Given the frequency of these homicides and what we know about the investigations, detectives have been working aggressively to cultivate leads," police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.
  
  Asked whether police were investigating the shootings as a possible hate crime because Watts was gay and Moscowitz an observant Jew, Johnson said it was too early to rule anything out.

So the reporter is assuming that gay people give off some visible "gay-vibe" that makes them stand out as the target of a madman? Is that what we're reading? Okay, okay....the Keessing Bandit. We'll concede that one. The other victim was wearing the distinctive clothing. Must be anti-Semitic!

How about this:

• Two guys, walking alone, who were white?

Special Ed says the detectives are working, attempting to develop leads. Perfect answer. But some reporter, eager to put their mark on a crime where the bodies aren't even cold yet by casting them as a "hate crime," disregards the three most obvious facts in order to come up with.....what exactly?

In the meantime, back on Earth, meetings are being held, resources and teams are being deployed. Everything that can be done is being done. And as hot as it was Wednesday, this guy isn't going to pop out again until Thursday or Friday when it cools off and his clothing doesn't stand out as much.

Mt. Greenwood Shooting

Even the suburban cops come to Chicago to do their shootings - and get the same treatment from the media:

• A police officer from Alsip shot a motorist who hit two squad cars after being followed from the south suburb to the Far South Side of Chicago early Wednesday, officials said.
  
  Both Alsip and Chicago police were releasing few details of the shooting, which happened around 2:10 a.m. in the 4000 block of West 115th Street in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood.
  
  The 25-year-old motorist was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in serious condition with gunshot wounds to his shoulder, Chicago police said.

He wasn't a "motorist" when he started bashing squad cars with a 3,000 pound guided missile. He was an assailant, and assailants, using deadly weapons, get shot. At least they usually do. Nice job by the suburban police.

Special Ed immediately stripped the Alsip police officer and demanded his vehicle be impounded.

Spree Killer on the Loose

Same gun, two days, two bodies:

• Chicago police this afternoon revealed that two men killed in Rogers Park since Sunday morning were slain with point-blank shots from the same gun. They believe the same person is also responsible.
  
  Officials also released a surveillance image of a man wanted in connection with the slaying of 73-year-old Willard Douglass Watts as he walked his dogs in the 1400 block of West Sherwin at 10 a.m. on Sunday.
  
  The same man is likely responsible for killing 24-year-old Eliyahu Moscowitz as he walked on the Lakefront Trail around 10:20 p.m. Monday evening, police said at an afternoon news conference.
  
  Watts and Moscowitz were each shot one time in their heads at point-blank range as they went about ordinary activities in Rogers Park. Neither appeared to be robbed, according to police sources.

The lady near the Montrose beach is said to be a suicide, but we haven't seen the case report, nor are we looking for it.

Head on a swivel boys and girls. Spree killers don't usually get taken alive and this one doesn't seem to have any sort of "cooling off" period between the two killings.

Uneven Testimony

Much has been debated here in the comment sections about whether or not Van Dyke should take the stand. From what we could tell (comments being anonymous) older cops argued against it, younger leaning toward it.

In a perfect world, we would have chosen for him not to testify. Juries are instructed that they cannot use a defendant's choice not to take the stand against them, but everyone who has spent any time in court knows that juries have a mind of their own and seldom act as perfectly as they're instructed.

But that decision wasn't ours. And it wasn't anyone else's who comments here.

We don't think it was enough to swing a jury one way or the other actually. There were what some in the media are calling "inconsistencies." There are things that needed and were clarified to some extent. Combined with the 3-D defense presentation, one might see where a dynamic, evolving situation could be seen differently from other vantage points. That's a plus for the defense.

But...Cook County. Who knows?

Jury instructions by Friday? Looks like Gaughn managed to put off deliberations until after the Marathon.

370 Stolen Guns and.....

....guess where they were headed?

• One man is in custody and a second is being sought after police recovered hundreds of stolen guns in suburban Midlothian, authorities said Tuesday.
  
  The guns — nearly 370 .22- and .380-caliber firearms — had been stolen Sunday from a United Parcel Service distribution center in Memphis and were part of a shipment that was headed to Dallas, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
  
  One man, Taveyan Turnbo, 18, is in custody and a second man, Roland Jackson, 24, of Chicago, is being sought in connection with the theft, according to ATF.

And at least one of the subjects was on.....HOME MONITORING! That's a great system that Prickwrinkle, Foxxx, Evans and Dart have there isn't it? Did he hot-wire the box to a car charger so he could check in? Oh, you didn't know that's the new thing?

• You wire the box to your in-car phone charger
• hop in a U-Haul
• drive down to Memphis
• burglarize a UPS shipping facility
• swipe three pallets of guns 
• and head back to Chicago

Is anyone in the media ever going to pick up on the fact that the Cook County justice system is an on-going failure that is endangering every citizen here and elsewhere?

They'll probably demand all sort of new gun banning laws.

Special Ed Fucks the Police Again

Even if you follow policy and self-terminate a pursuit you deem too dangerous, you're still going to be blamed (and sued) for doing anything:

• Cowan and Turner were killed and Cabari was thrown from the back seat, authorities said. The boy died at Comer Children's Hospital. Turner's daughter, who was in a child seat behind Cowan, was not injured but was taken to a hospital for observation, according to her grandmother.
  
  “It’s a bitter pill to swallow right now," said James White, Cowan's uncle.
  
  Chicago police officers in a marked vehicle had spotted a 2013 Ford Fusion speeding erratically east on 69th Street around 7 p.m., police said. The officers turned on their lights and sirens and followed, but turned off the emergency lights and stopped following the car before the crash, police said in a statement.

Speeding and driving erratically are traffic violations and CPD pretty much can't chase anything that's only traffic. The officers correctly extinguished the emergency equipment, but guess who didn't stop and killed three people including a three year old kid? Guess who's to blame?

• A day after the collision, relatives tried to make sense of the tragedy and some questioned the police pursuit that led to the crash.

The police stopped. The pursuit ended. Blame lies with one person only. But Special Ed has other ideas:

• A spokesman for police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that while his department’s Major Accident Investigation Unit continues its probe, police have also asked that the Civilian Office of Police Accountability conduct an “independent external investigation” into the events that led up to the crash.

Mr. Fenner, once again, demonstrating a complete unwillingness to back the officers who by all reports, did everything by the book, orders and law. Great job there.

A gun was found, but that had no bearing on the chase or aftermath.

Tax Cheat

A "scheme" is oftentimes something against the law. If you cheat the government of many hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's definitely against the law. Paying it back is pretty much an admission of wrongdoing. Shouldn't this make him ineligible to be governor?

• Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker will repay the Cook County treasurer’s office more than $330,000 worth of property tax breaks and tax refunds that the county’s inspector general contended he obtained as a result of a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers, his campaign said Tuesday.
  
  The move came a day after a confidential report from Inspector General Patrick Blanchard became public, casting new light on an old line of attack by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who criticized Pritzker as a “tax cheat” over the removal of toilets to help obtain a property tax reduction from an adjoining Gold Coast mansion he purchased.
  
  Blanchard found that Pritzker’s wife, M.K. Pritzker, asked a contractor in 2015 to remove the mansion’s five toilets to make the home uninhabitable so it could be reassessed at a lower value. M.K. Pritzker’s brother and her personal assistant later made “false representations” in sworn affidavits to the assessor about the mansion’s condition and when the toilets were removed, Blanchard found.

We've been in plenty of homes with broken or non-existent plumbing and there were plenty of people (or folks) living there, but we don't think they were getting tax breaks amounting to hundreds of thousands.

Pfleger Pflaps Pfishlips

We were wondering when this boil would pop up again. Must have figured the worldwide outrage about his church buggering little boys finally died out enough for him to be the center of attention again:

• The Rev. Michael Pfleger is calling for the city to shut down if Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke is acquitted in the slaying of Laquan McDonald.
  
  In a Facebook post on Monday, the activist priest wrote: “Several of us are in agreement that when the Van Dyke verdict comes down that if it is Anything Less than a CONVICTION, the next day Chicago should SHUT DOWN… NO ONE SHOULD GO TO WORK, SCHOOL, ANY STORES….A COMPLETE SHUT DOWN…to send an Economic message of Outrage. EVERY person of Conscience should commit to this….To show that this outrage is bigger than the Black Community.”

Well, we're people of conscience, so we guess we should stay home, too. In fact, all police should stay home that day....that's what these guys want:

• A group of black pastors and activists want protest, policy action, and a day-long strike of all city workers — but no violence — if a jury fails to convict Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke for the murder of Laquan McDonald.
  
  William Calloway, an activist from South Shore, and a large group of African-American pastors from across the city gathered Monday at Quinn Chapel AME church in to outline their plans, which include a “rapid response” team of volunteers to deploy in the wake of a verdict.
  
  Quinn Chapel Pastor James Moody laid out the group’s goals: “One: a just and godly verdict. Two: peace in the streets. Three: the protection of lives and property, whatever that verdict may be.

So they're going to do the police jobs, too? This is great! A free day off!

Why Have Cameras at All?

Building on the post the other day about the Kim Krew disregarding any sort of input from police victims prior to making downgraded and/or probation offers to criminals.....

• Word from the west side that Kim's office isn't charging dope and battery cases, even when there is readily available camera footage from the pods. Not only that, there are over a dozen homicides where Kim has the names and evidence linking the offenders to killings, but won't charge because there isn't a confession on tape.

So pretty much, if you keep your mouth shut, you'll get away with murder in Chicago. That's so very inspiring.

Fish in a Barrel

The last time the Congress Hotel had this much bad publicity, the hippies were getting arrested on the front sidewalk:

• Gunfire erupted inside a car on Michigan Avenue near Grant Park late Sunday night, killing two people and wounding two others, according to Chicago police.
  
  The driver, shot in the shoulder, lost control and crashed into a pole, flipping the car on its roof in the 500 block of South Michigan Avenue shortly before midnight, police said. Two people with gunshot wounds got out of the car and ran into a nearby hotel, where security called police.
  
  Two people shot inside the car were pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital: A 31-year-old man in the face and another man shot in the head.
  
  A 29-year-old man was shot in the shoulder and was stable at Northwestern, police said. Another 29-year-old man was also hit in the shoulder and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was stabilized.

Two guns recovered, two dead, two wounded. Sounds like the OK Corral on wheels, only in a smaller space. As our friends over at HeyJackass.com said:

• SCC - It's pretty much a guarantee that whenever the media runs a "hasn't been a shooting for " story, the next 24-48 hours will see a spike in order to make up for the void left by the 'quiet' period.
  
  - Friday, 2 shot
  - Saturday, 2 shot
  - Run story
  - Sunday, 17 shot, 6 fatally (not including the Montrose Beach incident, yet).

And speaking of people (or folks) getting lit up, this is what an alderasshole sponsors for the neighborhood?

• 2 guys shot dropping off drugs at an Arena sponsored recording studio at 4255 N. Knox last night.

Pretty sad that an alderasshole has to use taxpayer money to import crime into a neighborhood.

Rogers Park Execution

No other words for it:

• The gunman was dressed in black and wearing a ski mask as he walked through Rogers Park on a sunny fall Sunday morning.
  
  He passed a car, glanced inside and kept walking in the 1400 block of West Sherwin Avenue around 10 a.m., a witness told police. Minutes later, a single shot rang out down the street.
  
  The witness got out of his car and saw Willard D. Watts, 73, lying on the sidewalk with a wound to his head, according to police.

73-year-old man shot over what? He still had his phone. He was walking his dog. Is this the same District that had the graduate student in town for less than a day getting killed recently?

Anyone here old enough to remember when Rogers Park was a nice quiet neighborhood?

Alderasshole

Alderasshole pulls the trigger on government suppression of Free Speech:

• A Chicago police officer reportedly has been served with a complaint in connection with an investigation into allegations by Alderman John Arena (45th) that 31 officers made "racially charged" comments on social media against a planned mixed-income housing development at 5150 N. Northwest Hwy.
  
  According to a source, the officer was recently served with a "Complaint Register Number" and notice of a hearing on the allegation. It is not known if additional officers have been served.
  
  The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which looks into complaints against officers, did not immediately comment on the report. COPA has had Arena’s complaints for at least eight months, and this could be the first officer to be served with a CR number in connection with Facebook comments made against the housing proposal.

Go read it all.

That Pesky Weather Thing Again

Golly, weather gets cold, targets disappear, shootings go down:

• Only two people were shot in Chicago over a 24-hour period Saturday, marking a second day of a significant drop in daily gun violence as cooler temperatures moved through the area.
  
  The day before, on Friday, there was a 22-hour span when no one was wounded or killed by gunfire. That day was bookended by shootings in the Austin and Lawndale neighborhoods on the West Side.

Seems simple. We've known about it for decades. So have the people who taught us. Sp will the people who we've taught. But some New York carpetbagger came in. Since he was from New York, when he told politicians and media types that weather had no effect on crime, they ran with it for years....until he backtracked last week.

Perhaps if people left police work to the police? And listen to the people who have actually done police work? But that might make sense. Quick! Promote another girlfriend, family member, dope user!

Curious Info

From someone who might (or might not) have inside info:

• Karen Conway (R and D) has been called/notified to appear as a rebuttal witness for Tuesday...

Rebutting what? We haven't seen much that would require an extensive rebuttal. In fact, the judge has purposefully discounted/disallowed any exempts from testifying about the shooting, so why call the Director of R and D?