O'Hare Shooting Update

We'd swear that this was all made up, but the truth is sometimes even stranger than fiction:

• A wild shoot-out exposed the lack of license plate readers at O’Hare Airport, where gunmen fled in cars after wounding a self-proclaimed rapper, police sources say.

  “How is it that we don’t have those readers at the airport when we have them all over the city?” a police supervisor said, adding that such readers could have helped in the investigation.

Hope you didn't say that on camera, boss. 

It's a good question though - what with all the federal money available and airports being a favorite target of terrorists, you'd think that cameras would cover all possible angles and approaches to the terminals, access points, and the airfield itself.

Nope, and it took this early morning stupidity to reveal it:

• Nearly 60 shell casings were retrieved outside Terminal 2 after two rappers from Austin and their West Side companions deboarded a Spirit Airlines flight and got into a violent argument in baggage claim, leading to the shooting at 12:10 a.m. Wednesday.

  Chicago police officials haven’t announced a motive for the attack in the arrivals area on the lower level. But they know two separate groups stepped off a flight from Houston and made their way to baggage claim, where the quarrel between the rappers erupted, according to a police report and sources. Screaming expletives and throwing punches, the brawl escalated and moved into a vestibule before spilling into the street outside.

  After someone in the melee called a “gun car,” its occupants jumped out and began firing an AK-47-type rifle and a 9mm gun at people on the sidewalk, a police source said.

A "gun car." Who knew that the rap industry had their own SORT cars patrolling the airports? And who'd have guessed that someone who flew in on Spirit Airlines would ever engage in anti-social type behavior?

Real nice airport there Conehead.

The Fleecing of Chicago

The Contrarian's Paul Vallas goes over some well trodden ground:

• Suing the City of Chicago for alleged police misconduct has become both a lucrative racket and drain on city finances. On Monday, a Chicago jury awarded $120 million in a wrongful conviction lawsuit to two plaintiffs, both of whom spent 16 years in prison. This amounts to paying each man approximately $4 million for each year behind bars. Just last August, another Chicago jury awarded $50 million to a man who had spent 10 years in prison before then State’s Attorney Kim Foxx agreed to the dismissal of charges against him. That settlement was equivalent to a whopping $5 million per year of custody.

  All three of those men were represented by a Chicago law firm that, in 2022, secured $42 million in settlements out of a total of $117 million Chicago paid out to litigants. Since 2000, Chicago has paid out $700 million in lawsuits to criminals, most of whom are guilty, for alleged police misconduct and lawyers representing the city got $138 million.

We say "well trodden ground" because Marty Preib was writing about this for years, in books and also on the Contrarian site, naming names, law firms and media whores who advocated for the release of guilty persons after witnesses died, moved out of state, or officers retired, etc. And with a willing accomplice in Crimesha, these scumbags were able to free assorted murderers via lies, omissions and perjured testimony. Someone in Crimesha's office even directed them to friendly law firms, who after securing their cut, undoubtedly made campaign contributions to assorted aldercreatures who had voted to approve "settlements."

"Fleecing" is the mildest description for the extortion and fraud that is still going on to this day.

And Another Dead One

Former ShotSpotter neighborhood, a sergeant hears the gunfire, other officers see vehicles fleeing the area, someone actually calls 911, and eight minutes later....:

• A man was found murdered in a West Side alley on Wednesday night, eight minutes after police officers in the area first heard the gunfire that killed him. Had Mayor Brandon Johnson not disconnected the neighborhood’s ShotSpotter network last September, the 31-year-old would likely have been found much sooner, thanks to the gunfire detection system’s pinpoint accuracy.

  A Chicago police sergeant on patrol reported hearing gunfire around 8:39 p.m. and guessed that it came from somewhere within Laramie, Cicero, Ferdinand, and Lake. Another officer saw a couple of vehicles speeding out of that box. A 911 caller reported gunfire near the 4900 block of West Kinzie. Another caller reported a chase between two cars and gunfire near Lavergne and Hubbard.

CWB blog says this is Number 36 Wounded and/or Dead in a ShotSpotter hood. That doesn't even count the ones that were just property damage or nothing got hit. 

Here a Tax, There a Tax

Once again, ZERO proposals to actually cut government spending and instead, create a new tax!

• As engines become more fuel efficient, and electric vehicles make greater inroads , Illinois faces an unexpected consequence — less funding for roads.

  The motor fuel tax helps pay for road, bridge and public transit improvements throughout Illinois. Now, though, vehicles require less gas — or no gas at all — so funding for infrastructure has taken a hit.

Golly, saving the environment sure gets expensive!

• On Illinois toll roads , drivers pay approximately seven cents per mile, according to Poulos. With a mileage-based system, drivers could expect to pay three to four cents per mile. That would come on top of any tolls already being paid, similar to the gas tax.

  [...]

  In Illinois, the charge likely wouldn’t raise enough revenue to allow eliminating the motor fuel tax.

Of course not. Illinois pols have never ever eliminated a tax. And with Fata$$ welcoming all sorts of illegals and tranny refugees, he's going to need every dime he can pry out of Illinois' shrinking tax base.

This is just "a study" at this point, but rest assured, with other blue state shitholes already doing it, you can expect it here shortly. 

You didn't expect them to tax bicyclists, did you?

Buy This Kid A Lottery Ticket

Unbelievable:

• A 4-year-old girl survived a fall from the 10th floor of a South Side building earlier this week, Chicago police said Thursday.

  The girl fell from a building in the 4500-block of South Drexel Boulevard in Bronzeville about 10:50 a.m. Tuesday, police said.

  She suffered a head injury, and was taken to Comer Children's Hospital in fair condition, CPD said.

Must have been the softest ground ever for this kid to have survived.

No word on charging the parent(s) yet. We've seen tons of others charged for less than this.

Interestingly Awful

On one hand, our readers have been predicting this for quite a while, based partly on our reporting that the Department is in the midst of the largest wave of retirements in three decades, but among all the bad choices, this is pretty bad:

• The Department is floating switching the entire department to 12 hour days by first period 2026 due to the outlook of decreased manpower in the future and the bad shape of current district manpower. MLAS has a draft which is going to be presented to the FOP. The 12hr schedule they are proposing is brutal. 3 weeks back to back it’s 4 12s in a row.. then the next three weeks it’s 3 12s in a row. Start times are 5a-5p and 6a-6p with the other watch being “5p-5a and 6a-6p”. Imagine getting 5p-5a??!?? You go to work about 430.. work all night. Get home about 530a.. fall asleep by 630a. Maybe wake up at 1 or 2 just to go back to work 3 hours later 4 days in a row just to be a zombie for your days off. This is not a good idea at all…

You think things are bad and getting worse? Imagine trying to figure out side job hours.  Imagine OT not beginning until twelve hours into a working day. Imagine cancelled days off. Imagine trying to maintain a relationship with these hours.

Imagine trying to raise a child, attending Parent/Teacher conferences, going to Little League games or dances or other school events.

Imagine you're a two-cop family.

Rahm Running?

This explains a lot of his media appearances: (link fixed)

• Since coming home in January from his stint in Tokyo — a job he repurposed to be American envoy to all of Asia — Emanuel has been as visible as any other Democrat. Never mind that he currently holds no office and hasn’t been on a ballot for a decade.

  Name the political podcast and Emanuel has likely been on it or will be shortly. He immediately snagged a CNN contract and regular Washington Post column, no small accomplishment for a former official at a moment of retrenchment for news organizations.

  He’s also hitting the lecture circuit, appearing for paid and gratis gigs before audiences such as the Realtors and the Chicago Economic Club. Emanuel is pointedly avoiding Ivy League campuses and later this month will make his first stop on a service academy tour when he speaks at West Point.

  Just as striking is to talk to anybody in high-level Democratic politics who knows Emanuel — which is to say most everyone — and hear how matter of fact they are about the inevitability of his candidacy.
  

He's doing the Newscum thing, "pivoting" to the center to claim to be a "moderate" before veering left when actually in office. Newscum mentioned tranny sports, Rahm is bitching about education. Neither did or will directly condemn it - Newscum won't propose or support any Laws to protect girls from getting beaten by boys and Rahm's record with the CTU resulted directly in the Rise of Conehead.

Remember, Rahm was one of Clinton's hatchet men,  (in)famous for allegedly coining the phrase "you never want to let a serious crisis go to waste" and (allegedly) wasn't above manufacturing a crisis to do so. He sent a dead fish to a pollster he didn't like (the humor of which we appreciated) and stabbed a table, naming opponents, while screaming "Dead! Dead! Dead!" over what he saw as political betrayals (which cemented him as deranged).

His record of scandal when running Freddie Mac was never fully investigated, nor his subsequent stock trades that netted him hundreds of thousands of dollars. He worked closely with Sparklefarts and saddled Illinois with Tammy Fuckworthless while supporting assorted anti-gun platforms.

He manufactured a residency based solely on a discarded wedding dress, was a big part of Chicago's descent into irrelevancy, hid the McDonald video then blamed CompStat McCarthy for it, punished the detail cops who let his hired gardener leave tomatoes on his front porch and we remember something about a weed deal on his front porch that made a certain blog.

Hopefully, all of these scandals and more are properly exposed should he actually run for something.

Fire Rescue

Some say that just showing up to work these days counts as heroic, and cops still go above and beyond:

• A Chicago police officer suffered smoke inhalation while helping a man to safety early Wednesday in a Humboldt Park house fire.

  Officers were on patrol about 2:50 a.m. when they noticed a residential fire in the 700 block of North Spaulding Avenue, Chicago police said.

  One officer helped a man to safety while two other occupants escaped the building unharmed, police said. The officer was taken to an area hospital in good condition as a precaution for possible smoke inhalation.

Well done and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Don't Demonize

Conehead thinks there's no such thing as a bad boy, just lack of pocket money:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday left no doubt he remains opposed to a downtown curfew of 8 p.m. for unaccompanied minors — even after a tourist was shot while walking with her son outside a Streeterville movie theater.

  Instead of using the stick to prevent young people summoned by social media from congregating and sometimes creating havoc downtown, Johnson favors offering them the carrot of paid employment.

  That’s what the mayor was attempting to do during Tuesday’s news conference at Uplift Community High School, 900 W. Wilson Ave. That’s where he formally launched the online application process for 29,000 youth employment opportunities in this year’s version of “One Summer Chicago.”

  That’s 1,000 more jobs than the city offered last summer. Johnson had hoped to spend $50 million to create 2,000 more summer youth jobs, but was forced to cut that in half during the marathon budget stalemate during which a recalcitrant City Council refused to approve a property tax increase.

Has any enterprising investigative reporter (hahahahahaha) ever attempted to find out:

• how much money is allocated to there summer jobs, 
• how many of these yutes apply, 
• how many actually show up, on time, do a full shift, and get a paycheck

And how much is laundered back into assorted aldermanic or mayoral coffers disguised as lord-knows-what. Because after what we're seeing in Washington DC and the misappropriated billions currently being exposed makes us wonder about decades of waste here in town.

Learn to Code Bitches

The New York Times fired half of its editorial staff:

• The New York Times is reshuffling its operations at the opinion section — reducing the frequency of its editorials while shrinking its roster of editorial board writers, according to a report.

  The Gray Lady has reportedly offered several of its editorial board members new jobs within the opinion section or buyout packages if they choose to leave the company.

We don't know if anyone noticed, but among the media personalities who have resigned, been fired or downsized since the election include former Chicago news readers Lester Holt and Jim Acosta, both mostly useless when here, but elevated to top propagandists around the time Sparklefarts was gathering power here.

With trust in the media lower than Congress and profits tanking as America turns off the lying media, we are reminded of the contempt that these assholes had for normal everyday people and their struggles while they aided and abetted the left in destroying the country. The karma train is running them all over....and it makes us smile.

O'Hare Shooting

You don't even have to go to Streeterville to get shot now:

• As if having a tourist get shot while walking with her young son downtown wasn’t bad enough, police this morning are investigating a shooting that occurred outside a terminal at O’Hare International Airport overnight. Unlike Sunday’s shooting in Streterville, a suspect is in custody for the latest incident.

  In a media statement, CPD said a suspect was in custody after the shooting occurred when “an altercation occurred between multiple individuals outside of Terminal 2” around 12:54 a.m. A 25-year-old man suffered two gunshot wounds to his lower body. Police said his condition had been stabilized at Lutheran General Hospital.

  Here’s what else we’ve learned: Shortly before the shooting, police at O’Hare received a call about a fight in progress near the baggage claim carousels at door 2A. The fight continued outside the terminal doors. Moments later, one of the men involved in the fight produced a long gun, possibly a mini-AK47-style weapon, and began shooting outside door 2C.

  Police initially believed a second person had also been shot at the airport, but it turned out that his injuries were the result of being beaten, according to a first responder who was at the scene. He was also taken to Lutheran General. Both the man who was shot and the man who was beaten have local addresses.

Oh, just local rapscallions getting their shooting on? No problem. It's like "street theater" for the tourists!

Can't wait for all the video on this one.

Well, Well....Look Who Caught Up

He finally discovered reality:

• He expected to find a “dirty police department.” Instead, he discovered a “dirty city.”

  Anthony Driver Jr., president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, came to that jarring conclusion while conducting a fact-finding mission into Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of the Civilian Office for Police Accountability.

  That preliminary inquiry — launched in response to an “avalanche” of complaints by COPA employees — could have triggered a no-confidence vote that set the stage for the City Council to fire Kersten. Instead, Kersten jumped to avoid being pushed.

  What surprised and angered Driver, he said, were roadblocks put up by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Law Department. City attorneys literally spent “three or four months defending Andrea Kersten,” who faces lawsuits from two former COPA employees and the police union.

We were saying exactly this years ago. Decades even. 

We even pointed out Kersten's habit of writing letters to Larritorious about investigations, then tipping off the media to file FOIA requests with actual keywords in the title and body of the email to narrow down search parameters. She learned that from the Sparklefart people who were using it back during that Reign of Error.

Now let's see if Driver "discovers" that COPA investigators were ORDERED to sustain upwards a majority of "investigations" in order to drive up the Sustained Allegations totals to meet the national average of 15% against Police.

You see, after years of Sustaining maybe 3-to-5% of CR/CL and SPAR investigations, they needed to massively over-correct the numbers to drag the totals up to where they match the national average. That's why everything that went downtown got Sustained. Every tiny violation was cited. An entire Unit was created to go over body camera footage and write up people for everything from uniform violations to naughty language to "failure to report" charges against other Officers.

It was designed to demoralize and designed so the Department self-defunded via resignations and early retirements. And it worked.

Knock it Off

There better be a good reason for this:

• There is a large police presence outside a South Side building after a police pursuit of a vehicle ended there on Tuesday evening.

  Chopper 7 followed a white Jeep Grand Cherokee as it raced through several neighborhoods, driving on sidewalks at some points. A police helicopter was following the Jeep, as well.

  The Jeep was traveling on Interstate 57 to the Bishop Ford Freeway and exited at 103rd Street. One person jumped out of the vehicle near South Clyde Avenue and East 98th Street in the Jeffrey Manor neighborhood.

Driving on sidewalks? Who knows how many stop lights and stop signs were disobeyed? Remember, the first time you see a pursued vehicle violate a stop sign or stop light, you are REQUIRED to terminate the chase. Period. There isn't anything close to wiggle room in the Order if shit goes sideways.

The safest bet?

You CANNOT be disciplined for not pursuing.

Fraud, Waste, Corruption

And the new Administration is taking a wrecking ball to it:

• The Department of Education initiated mass layoffs on Tuesday night, reducing its workforce by nearly 50%, sources told ABC News.

  The "reduction in force" notices began to go out at about 6 p.m.

  Some 1,315 employees were affected by the RIFs, leaving 2,183 employed by the department, according to senior officials at the DOE.

There is nothing in the Constitution about education, and all things not mentioned in the constitution are reserved to the States. Trump aims to disband this monstrosity of a Cabinet position that was willed into its current existence by the peanut farmer in 1980 and return it to the states where parents can hold state and local officials to account.

Every year since then, by every measurable metric, test American students test scores have declined in all categories, resulting in a massive bureaucracy that doesn't do the only thing listed in its title - educate.

Thousands of useless bureaucrats (not teachers) will be laid off and up to a quarter-of-a-trillion dollars will be redirected to state education programs where actual accountability will finally be established. Those national "teacher" organizations won't have any Washington politicians to wheedle and will fade into oblivion along with their national lobbyists and countless lawyers.

Dismantle it all.

Appropriate Charges Filed

Amazing what having a reasonably competent States Attorney does to the system:

• An Arlington Heights man has been charged with attempted murder of a Chicago police officer after he allegedly hit the officer with his car while driving under the influence in Austin early Sunday morning, Chicago police said.

  Jose Ruiz-Crespin, 22, faces two felony charges: attempted second-degree murder and aggravated DUI, police said. He also faces five related DUI misdemeanor charges, as well as another for driving without insurance.

  Shortly after midnight in the 100 block of North Lamon Avenue, Chicago police were patrolling on foot when they encountered a small crowd, and Ruiz-Crespin attempted to leave, police said. As he did so, he hit an officer with his sedan, causing the officer to fall and sustain an ankle injury; the officer was taken to a hospital in good condition.

We all know exactly what Crimesha would have done. Let's see how it plays out in Court.

Come to Chicago to Get Shot

This lady is going to have a great story to tell everyone back home:

• She came to Chicago last week to attend a school choir conference and enjoy some pizza with her 11-year-old son, but as the Connecticut woman headed to the airport Monday she was bringing home some harrowing memories.

  The night before, the 46-year-old woman was shot while walking with her son across the street from AMC River East 21 in Streeterville, a movie theater with a history of violence and loitering that has prompted calls for better public safety.

  “It’s been shocking,” the woman told the Sun-Times in a brief interview as she headed to the airport Monday morning.  "I’m nervous. I’ve been telling myself the same story over and over,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.

  Second Ward Ald. Brian Hopkins said the shooting was “further proof” of the need for an 8 p.m. curfew for minors downtown.

A curfew ain't going to cut it Hopkins. We need serious charges and serious prison time. In the cases of minors with guns, we need parents charged, convicted and imprisoned. We need a "broken windows" type year or three of enforcement where every loitering asshole gets ticketed and fined once, then jailed from the second offense onward.

How many other tourists are going to avoid Chicago like the plague once this victim tells everyone about minding her own business and catching a bullet for her troubles? With businesses fleeing, conventions exiting and homeowners rapidly becoming unable to afford the property taxes and crime, tourism is now a fourth pillar of tax revenue that is crumbling before our eyes.

Gift Closet Restocked

It seems that most of the gifts that the mayor and his staff had stolen removed borrowed were returned over the past few weeks so that Conehead could throw open the doors and tell everyone that, "It was here the whole time!! Just because you didn't follow the unknown unwritten procedures for viewing the gifts doesn't mean they were ever missing!!"

• As Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration finally unlocked to the press the controversial City Hall “gift room” Monday, tours revealed what lies inside: Quirky, but generally low-value souvenirs filling metal shelves in a cramped closet space.

  The cache of gifts offered to Johnson and accepted on behalf of the city consisted mostly of T-shirts, hats, drawings and plaques. By opening the door to the room, Johnson is hoping to shut the door on reproving speculation swirling for a month and a half about his gift-accepting policies and the high-end swag reportedly to be found inside.

  It remains to be seen whether letting people see the contents of the room quiets criticism that the mayor has not properly accounted for the gifts his administration has received.

A rumor that a number of high-end purses weren't returned until similar high-end handbags of similar design and value were purchased for various wives, girlfriends, pincushions, etc is still under investigation, but not by the media who is all too eager to not investigate anything.

On a non-coincidental note, we heard ERPS personnel have noticed a bunch of fake merchandise was signed out for reasons unrelated to court appearances.

Exempt Changes on Tap?

About time for a shake-up and the rumors are popping up in assorted comment sections. 

Rather than weed through them all, might as well post anything you've heard in one location....like this one. Have at it.

Six and Eleven

In the last ten years, only one comparable weekend has had as many killed as 2025. 

Granted, it's only six this weekend, but it makes you wonder which orifice Conehead is pulling his crime stats out of. Homicides are only the most visible of stats, and yes, those are down a bit. But it's barely March and warm weather is on tap for the most of the week and upcoming weekend.

Beware the karma-train doesn't come to calling to someone relying on the first quarter stats.

"Merit"

The "Can't Make a Decision" post this weekend provoked a lot of back-and-forth discussion regarding the current Sergeant Promotional List and possible the "merit" nominations.

We know our readership ebbs and flows among the ranks and generational shifts within the Department, and newer readers might not know we covered these discussions in depth years ago. We don't have a functional / searchable database to link everything, and for that we apologize. We're limited by the program we're using. 

The most recent give-and-take covered a few points, especially the "merit" processes themselves. We asked, years ago, for a list of qualifications for achieving a "meri-clout-orious" promotion so that all members could strive and aspire to reach these goals and better serve the citizens of Chicago.

None ever came. 

In fact, the only qualifications we ever heard about involved cheating study groups we never could get into, sexual gymnastics we were incapable of performing / had too much respect for ourselves to perform, or membership in certain demographics / fraternities that we were excluded from based solely on our parentage. It was actually a relief that we were going to have to earn it rather than steal it from a deserving Officer.

Someone else asked if there was a single exempt these days who hadn't received a "merit" promotion, and while we used to know of three that existed back in the day, we can't think of a single one now. In fact, the entire "Merit Board" is made up of persons with two and three "merit" promotions themselves, meaning the connected assholes are making the next generation of connected assholes in every single promotional class. 

The guy in charge right now never passed a single promotional exam high enough to say he earned it. Think about that for a moment. This alone explains the rapid downfall of capable supervision across the entire Police Department. A department run by morons who owe a different moron all manner of favors.

Stay Classy Southwest Side

After a nice spring weekend, brutally cut short by Daylight Savings, word about a particularly heinous murder:

• Firefighters responding to a residential fire Friday evening in North Lawndale discovered the dismembered body of a 68-year-old man, according to Chicago police, who said the fire had been intentionally set. Fire crews answering a call around 5:15 p.m. Friday of a residential fire in the 2300 block of South Kirkland Avenue put out the fire and found the body of the man in the basement.

  His arms and right leg had been severed, according to a police report that said he also had a neck injury and deep cuts to his left leg. Inside the residence, investigators also found contractor bags, a reciprocating saw, shrink wrap and a cellphone.

No word yet if these were illegals doing crimes that Chicagoans won't do anymore because Conehead insists crime is down. That may be true across certain categories (we spent years pointing out the statistical manipulation), but overall, the true count isn't nearly as clear as the political class would have you believe.

Fire Fighter Catch-22

Our old friend, former NRA lobbyist and frequent e-mailer Todd Vandermyde, has a new video up about the recent Chicago Fire Department's illegal searches of CFD member's cars. He points out that many times, firefighters are assigned to and working in pretty shitty neighborhoods and perhaps they have a completely legal CCL license in order to carry a protective handgun in order to simply arrive safely at work. He also touches on the unverified rumor that someone told us that CFD had accessed the CCL database somehow and were comparing it against current CFD rosters.

As far as we know, CFD doesn't provide lock boxes in any firehouses, and we already know that Department lockers in the firehouse are subject to warrantless searches. We also know it's questionable at best to "secure" a gun in an unoccupied vehicle - even more so for a firefighter who will be responding to calls all day and night, leaving not only the firehouse unattended (or minimally so) but leaving the parking area with their personal cars even more unattended, multiple times during the shift.

We were also told via a comment or an email, that CFD applicants are asked if they have a CCL and if so, they must provide a list of all weapons owned. Not only that, but the last part of the application tells them if they lie/omit information, that is grounds for termination. We're going to need confirmation from a CFD member on this, and what happens if you get a CCL after being hired? Are you seriously being penalized for exercising a Constitutional Right that is legal even in Illinois? And what if you aren't hired - is this admission of owning guns kept on file somewhere, becoming a de facto tracking opportunity for any future city employment?

CFD opened an ugly can of worms with this one and we hope it costs them dearly. At the very least, they better start installing and maintaining lock boxes in the crew quarters of every single firehouse.

Beware the Lawyer

One of the liars lawyers screeching loudest about the Dexter Reed shooting (but not actually representing the estate of the illegal-gun-carrying attempted-cop-murdering asshole) is this piece of work, actually licensed to practice law in Illinois:

We're told she's just served a couple days for Contempt of Court in DuPage County which you'd think would be of interest to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Committee. Her social media feeds (which we won't bother linking to) have all sorts of pictures of her posing with (alleged) thugs, (alleged) thug money, (alleged) thug rides, bragging about getting (alleged) thugs off on assorted charges along with a bunch of humble-brags about car accident wins.

Just thought readers ought to know what's floating around in the toilet bowl of Chicago in case you're assigned to a protest or attending court one day.

Another Dead Body

But this time, someone called it in:

• The ShotSpotter gunfire detection system that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson decided to scrap last year would have come in handy Friday morning when 911 callers reported gunfire near the 4700 block of West West End.

  The people who heard the shots didn’t see anything; they just heard it. After about ten minutes of searching, around 9:23 a.m., the cops found shell casings at the mouth of an alley. They then found 17-year-old Drevon Watson lying in that alley. He had been shot in the chest. At Stroger Hospital, a doctor pronounced him dead.

It took ten minutes to locate the shell casings, and an unknown number of additional minutes to locate the victim. 

Ten minutes is more than enough time to make a significant difference in living or dying.

By the way, if you haven't been following the CWB blog this weekend, you're missing out on a significant number of crimes, shootings and murders. This weekend has already surpassed the past few years and may herald the spring killing season is underway. 

Sixty-plus degree days on tap for next week!

 

Fundraiser

A recently retired Cook County Bomb Tech:

• Bomb Tech/Law Enforcement community, please consider donating to our dear friend and mentor Johnny Merola as he fights for his life with a sudden debilitating brain tumor. John has faithfully served both the Cook County Sheriffs Police and FBI Chicago as a Task Force Officer for over 30 years. Following his retirement in August of 2024, John continued his commitment to the community by moving to Huntsville and working at HDS. John made the hard choice to leave HDS behind and come back home to the Chicagoland area to care sick family members. Shortly after, John began experiencing health issues of his own and was urgently rushed and transfered to Loyola Hospital. Presently John has undergone a spinal tap and is scheduled for a brain biopsy in coming days to determine the status of tumors and lesions on his brain. Due to recent retirement/new employment, it is believed a lapse in insurance coverage will lead to significant financial strain on an already very taxed family. John’s service to the bomb tech community is unparalleled, he’s played instrumental roles in the creations/evolutions of the TBT, Stabilization, and HME programs. Please help rally as a community and consider donating, any amount, to help John’s family navigate this difficult time.

Donate at this link here.

Comments closed for this informational post.

Spring Ahead

If you're reading this at work and wondering where everyone else is, they remembered to set their clocks ahead and finished roll call an hour ago.

There was a fable floating around years ago that when a gentleman attempted to explain Daylight Savings Time to a Native American, the Indian said something along the lines of, "Only the government could take a blanket, cut a foot off the top, sew it back on the bottom, and claim the blanket was a foot longer."

Is this the year they finally stop this crap? 

Can't Make a Decision

By the way, this is a decision to screw Officers out of a deserved or earned promotion, bettering their position in the Department, improving their family life, enhancing retirement options....and they're screwing everyone who has a modicum of ambition:

• Whispers from 35th:
  
  
  Exempts went to merit board “training,” but Snelling can’t make up his mind on percentages for the upcoming sergeant classes off this new list- no guidelines have been released and no packets have been requested or submitted.
  
  
  Varies constituencies want 30%, but others want it less with other “reforms.” Once again, the supposed leader of this department can’t make a decision.
  

Not the best, not the brightest, but who can suck the most political dick.

And the emailer reminds us:

• Also… 546 days with no 1st Deputy…

That's supposed to be the smartest guy or gal doing the actual running of the Department while the Superintendent bangs recruits handles the publicity stuff and appearances that the mayor demands. We used to have some pretty smart First Deputies, but those days are long gone.

Fun Survey

The CCPSA has a survey up:

• Traffic Stops Policy Feedback

   
  Under city ordinance, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) collaborates with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to create and review departmental policies. CPD policies take effect after receiving approval from CCPSA's Commission.
  
  CPD and CCPSA are currently revising policy on how and when officers conduct traffic stops, including how officers engage with the public during these interactions. When developing traffic stop policy, CCPSA is considering communities’ experience and perceptions, public safety, enforcing the law, preventing crime, and fairness when developing policy with CPD. To do this, it is critical to gather input from community members like yourself and police officers.

And whoa baby....what a survey it is.

We aren't sure if there are any limits - you don't have to register anything, and if there's an IP address restriction, we haven't found it yet. There are a bunch of questions and a free-form section to enter in anything that strikes your fancy. So far we've answered posing as a liberal north shore voter, a west side dope dealer, a south side shooter, an illegal Venezuelan and an alien from Mars. We suppose you could use all sorts of objectionable language and characterizations as you wish.

And the best part is, someone from the government has to read and log all the responses - it's in the law after all. If they're going to waste our tax money with this crap, the least we can do is get a laugh out of it. Head to that link up top and have some fun - about ten questions and three minutes to finish it all.

Death Spiral Arrives

We were predicting this a decade (or more) ago....and here it is:

• Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit five years ago, property values have fallen downtown, and that’s shifted a greater portion of Chicago’s tax burden away from the heart of the Loop and onto homeowners and business owners elsewhere in the city, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found.

  The property taxes paid by the once-bustling but now-struggling Water Tower Place, for instance, have plunged from $16 million annually to $6.8 million last year. With Water Tower Place paying less, that means other homeowners and businesses have needed to make up the shortfall to cover the taxes that pay for police, firefighters, schools and other services.

  On LaSalle Street, kitty-corner from City Hall, the property taxes from a Loop skyscraper whose tenants include a law firm founded by former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan fell from $8.5 million to $5.1 million as city agencies and other renters moved out, leaving the building half-empty.

There are plenty more examples in the article. And if you pay attention to the headlines, corporations are fleeing Chicago on a monthly, if not weekly basis, reducing not only the property tax revenues, but the numbers of employees buying lunches downtown, maybe some afternoon shopping, corporate dinners and bars and entertaining clients after hours, parking garage fees, metered spaces, along with all associated shopping taxes, not to mention the now-unemployed workers paying less income tax.

And when all those workers disappear, then all the ancillary businesses close, and THOSE workers are now contributing less. And so on. And so on. And so on.

Conehead isn't shrinking government. Neither is Prickwrinkle. Nor Fata$$. So who makes up the difference? 

• Neighborhoods

And when the neighborhoods can't afford the house they're living in?

Death spiral.

Plan Your Days Off

The Slum Times has posted the Summer Festival calendar!

Here's the article.

In the meantime, better start planning strategic use of your days off, Personal Days, Baby Furlough Days, etc. There will be restrictions on Time Due of course, and there are those three days that the City can declare "off limits" for any elective time off. 

But Personal Days - when submitted in a timely manner - are pretty much immune from cancellation. Planning a wedding or family reunion far enough in advance (with approval from the chain of command) can maximize the effectiveness of BFDs. The truly wise veterans have already bid their furloughs in the most optimal way possible, fully utilizing the Contractual guaranteed extensions.

And not that we'd ever suggest such a thing, but that shoulder or elbow or knee that's been giving you problems these past few years? ::cough cough elective surgery cough cough::

Keep in mind, the biggest wave of retirements in three decades is here, right now. If you were missing the overtime, don't worry. You're going to be swimming in it shortly. But DO NOT forget to take care of yourself, because Conehead, Larritorious, his command staff tools and the City certainly aren't going to.

State Flag Results

Looks like common sense won - the current design won by a large margin:

• Illinoisans have spoken: Don’t go changing our flag.

  The public had a chance to vote for a new flag from one of 12 designs or keep the current one. And after five weeks of voting, the current flag won — and by a lot.

  Of the nearly 385,000 votes cast, more than 165,000 went to the current flag — receiving more votes than the next five top designs combined. Second place earned 32,898 votes, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced Thursday.

Mayoral / US Senate hopeful Alexi "the bankruptor" Giannouolias has some big words to use:

• “Some may call it an SOB — a seal on a bedsheet — and the vexillological community may hate it, but people overwhelmingly prefer our current state flag,” Giannoulias said in a statement.

Or, more likely, Illinoisans are noticing that state government is a decidedly un-serious bunch of assholes, spending money that doesn't exist on something that doesn't need to be fixed and made their voices heard. Remember, you could vote once a day, every day, from every single computer device you owned or had access to. One day, we voted seven different times, just to see if we could do it.

And the "North American Vexillological Association"? It's about 1,000 people in 32 countries, many not even in North America itself. Who gives a rat's ass what they think?

But, even with voters overwhelmingly telling the people running this state into the ground to knock it off and do something responsible, guess what?

• The Illinois Flag Commission will now prepare a report based on results of the poll for the General Assembly by April 1. Lawmakers will then vote on whether to keep the current flag, return to a previous version or adopt a new one.

That's right. There's a "commission" (paid with tax money?) that has to prepare a report (paid with tax money?) that has to present the finding to Springfield. And even with the vote totals in hand, lawmakers could still do something completely stupid and change it anyway, meaning all that money was pissed away with a result they could ignore, and then proceed to spend millions more retrofitting buildings, uniforms, stationery, road signs, websites, etc with money that Illinois can't afford.

Keep an eye on this April Fools Day.

Bad News for Fata$$

Newscum is running - and he's already staking out the middle ground that Fata$$ abandoned:

• Hard-left California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom, who wants to run for president in 2028, is suddenly breaking with the Democrat establishment over transgender athletes and now says forcing females to play against males is “deeply unfair.”

  Newsom delivered his surprising proclamation during a conversation with conservative activist Charlie Kirk, chief of the popular organization Turning Point USA.

  When Kirk asked Newsom about his thoughts on trans athletes during the recent podcast, the gov. went in a surprising direction.

  “I think it’s an issue of fairness; I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness — it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom exclaimed.

  “I am not wrestling with the fairness issue,” Newsom added. “I totally agree with you. I revere sports. So, the issue of fairness is completely legit.”

This is typical leftist behavior - move toward the center to capture any semi-sane democrats and a bunch of independents, then leap to the left in the general election and govern from there if you win.

Every survey - and we mean every survey in existence - shows that voters don't want second-rate quasi-men athletes competing against women and girls. Something like 72% of American voters don't want it and another 15% think it's probably a bad idea. 

But dems have chosen this battle to fight, and Governor Porkenstein is determined to grab the remaining 13% of brain damaged voters (and spend a billion of two of his own money) to lose the primary to a governor who let his own state burn to the ground, all while welcoming a few million illegals and watching many billions dollars in corporate money flee for red states.

2028  Vance/Rubio for the win.

Coming Soon!

To all blue state lib-tarded $hitholes:

• A California Democrat has introduced a law that would criminalize self-defense during a home invasion by armed criminals. California has more than enough antigun laws that make it almost impossible for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves while doing nothing to stop criminals who do not respect a piece of paper.

  California Assemblyman Rich Chavez Zbur introduced Assembly Bill 1333 to limit a homeowner’s ability to use force during a home invasion, putting them at a disadvantage in the hands of criminals.

The only trouble with laws like these is it encourages anyone who can afford it to leave - and then like locusts, they ruin the place they head to, because they're lib-tarded.

But given that these scumbags of a feather just introduced legislation to make mental illness an affirmative defense to beat Officers, you can bet that Fata$$ and other morons are watching to see how this plays out and how soon they can introduce it elsewhere.

Oh No

With no influence to sell and no corruption to grift off of, things are looking bleak for this about-to-be-starving artist:

• Well, what do you know? Just weeks after Donald Trump took back the White House from Joe Biden, his formerly crack-smoking son Hunter is broke. Now, he is seeking to drop his own federal laptop hacking lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler, who exposed the contents of Hunter's infamous laptop through his Marco Polo non-profit website. 

  It’s been six weeks since the Biden Crime Family gravy train left the station, and Hunter is already strapped for cash. You really can't make this stuff up, folks.

  According to court filings in California, Hunter's attorneys claim he "has suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range." Imagine that; when daddy's no longer pulling the strings from the Oval Office, the money well runs dry faster than Hunter can say "Where's my crack pipe?"

Pretty soon he'll probably be on welfare, providing DOGE with another program to cut.

Conehead Survives DC

And we survived the alcohol intake - it wasn't nearly as bad as we expected, though Conehead was the least prepared and most idiotic of all the speakers. Some highlights of him getting roasted:

• That’s not the position of South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who tried to get a yes or no answer from Johnson on whether it’s “acceptable for illegals who commit heinous crimes to be released back into the public.”

  Mace cut off Johnson as he tried to launch into a nuanced answer.

  “This is why you have a 6% approval rating: Because you suck at answering questions,” she said, joining a line of Republicans who took hard shots at the freshman mayor.

Welcome to our world Congresswoman.

Or this:

• Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., pressed Johnson on how much money Chicago has spent on the migrant crisis. Johnson said it accounted for about 1% of the city’s overall budget over four years but couldn’t offer a specific number.

  “If you don’t have a hard number, you’re not running your city well,” Donalds told Johnson.

  Chicago’s 2025 budget is $17.1 billion. One percent of that would be a staggering $171 million.

$171 million would have covered around 45% of Conehead's $380 million bond issue, saving taxpayers nearly a billion in interest payments.

And this ridiculous self-own:

• "...everything that is dope about America comes from Chicago.”

"....dope...." How very....raggedy. 

The one that really amused us (and we can't find the direct quote at the moment) was Conehead bragging about the money was well spent educating illegals.

Hate to break it to you Conehead, but kids in CPS ain't learning. Not only is the student population shrinking, it's scoring lower than ever on standardized tests, all while spending more per pupil that just about anywhere else on earth. Think how much better all those actual American citizen students would be doing if the teachers weren't spending thousands of hours on illegals who shouldn't even be here.

Ah, who are we kidding? They'd still be testing at record lows because the CTU is more worried about more dollars than actually educating children. Stupid kids become stupid adults become stupid democrat voters.

The only thing Conehead got correct - and it was probably one of his handlers who fed him this line - was that this was all grandstanding, which it most certainly was. Nothing is going to change at the local level.

SWATting

We were wondering when this trend would catch on here. Maybe now?

• False threats of violence Wednesday afternoon at two Chicago high schools prompted SWAT responses and lockdowns, but both cases were determined by police to be unfounded.

  About 2 p.m., officers responded to calls of a bomb threat and someone with a gun at Jones College Prep, 700 S. State St., in Printer’s Row. Forty minutes later, a similar threat was made against John Hancock College Prep at 5437 W. 64th St. in Clearing, Chicago police said.

  Both campuses were placed on lockdown as officers swept the schools. The threats were deemed not credible, police said.

Schools are just the start of it. No doubt there will be calls made about "incidents" at the homes of prominent citizens in short order, and even non-prominent persons.

Be aware of this trend and remember that something like 98% of these are not credible. The first clue is a single anonymous call. Real incidents have ten or twenty calls in the first seconds.

More Scumbags

That crap bill in Springfield that will let anyone claiming "mental illness" to freely attack and beat Police Officers with no fear of actually being charged with a crime picked up a couple co-sponsors:

Both Chicago reps, both anti-police, anti-law-and-order types....you know - democrats.

So Much for THAT Promise

Wasn't Fata$$ just bragging about holding the line on raising taxes a couple weeks ago?

• Lawmakers' projections for revenues in the coming year aren't as high as Gov. JB Pritzker's, raising questions about how much money will be available during this year's budget negotiations. The General Assembly's bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability released a new fiscal year 2026 revenue projection Tuesday that is $737 million short of the proposal Pritzker introduced last month.

Oops.

As we've said here for years, "estimated" government tax revenues are always based on bullshit. Something always pops up - a cost overrun or a supply shortage. This time around it's probably a combination of businesses leaving Illinois and the administration change in Washington DC. 

But don't worry, there are still a couple middle class taxpayers left in the state that Fata$$ can squeeze.

Conehead in Washington

He's been there since Sunday, being prepped and coached by a variety of lawyers and politicians including (supposedly) two ex mayors of Chicago.

Assorted drinking games will begin upon commencement - 0900 start time. We haven't had a really good opportunity to do some day drinking of late, so we're looking forward to it. Any mentions of:

• racism
• teachers/CTU
• black wife and 3 black children
• DEI (or individually diversity, equity, inclusion)
• community (fill in the blank) 
• west side
• Sparklefarts / Obama
• progressive
• immigrants or undocumented
• raggedy
• collaboration
• systemic anything

....will result in us taking a shot of whatever happens to be handy.

We expect to be tipsy by 0920, legally drunk by 0940, and headed to the hospital for alcohol poisoning no later than 1000. See you on the other side.

Nice Traffic Unit Larritorious

Wasn't there supposed to be a Unit dedicated to solely stopping this crap?

• Widespread street takeovers plagued the city’s Far South Side over the weekend, clogging up traffic as crowds gathered to watch drivers spin donuts in major intersections.

  One scene turned violent when a takeover participant threw a large firework that exploded inside a man’s SUV and set the vehicle ablaze. In another incident, two bystanders were struck by a sports car as it spun donuts.

Stop sticks. Tow trucks. Traffic barricades. Impounds galore.

We're just going to make up a rumor that this new unit is staffed solely by aldercreature nieces, nephews and exempt member pincushions who work Monday thru Thursday, ten-hour days, 0700-to-1700 with a two hour duck to beat rush hour home. No weekends for these go-getters!

And they probably all have 6th and 7th period furloughs.

"Just Following Orders"

 

Some accountability to the wanna be Stasi:

• The head of the FBI's New York field office was forced out Monday, a month after he urged his employees to "dig in" after the Trump administration removed senior FBI leaders and requested the names of all agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases, five sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

  In an email to FBI staff members in New York on Monday, James Dennehy confirmed that he had been ordered to leave.

  "Late Friday, I was informed that I needed to put my retirement papers in today, which I just did," Dennehy wrote. "I was not given a reason for this decision."
  

Um, you told agents to "dig in" and resist following the chain of command. You withheld thousands of Epstein documents that your office was ordered to produce. Agents in New York and elsewhere routinely lied to FISA court judges, manufacturing evidence and probable cause.

For those who don't know, the New York Orifice of the fbi routinely operated (and continues to operate) as a stand alone agency, regularly disregarding policy, procedure and precedent because they're "elite" or something because they ran investigations of the mafia and assorted spy rings operating out of the UN. Their arrogance is well known and it may be coming to an end.

As Predicted....

That sale of Bally's stock hit a legal wall:

• All bets are off on Bally’s plan to sell $250 million worth of shares in their permanent Chicago casino to investors from minority backgrounds.

  Bally’s began refunding would-be investors last week because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hasn’t approved the initial public offering rolled out by the Rhode Island-based corporation in December to help bankroll their $1.7 billion River West entertainment complex.

  Bally’s says it’ll take another spin at obtaining federal approval of the investment program, which is limited to women and people of color under terms of a host community agreement the company signed with former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration to land the coveted casino license.

Wasn't there a whole Civil Rights movement against restricting sales of homes and property based on skin color? Red lining or something....we seem to have vague recollections of it. Yet democrats are insisting that skin color should be the determining factor for purchasing a publicly traded company. How very....regressive.

The only legal restriction on sales ought to be whether or not you can afford it.

Federal Buildings for Sale

Even the feds don't want to be in Chicago:

• In its drive to sharply cut spending and shrink government, the Trump administration put for-sale signs effectively on some of the federal government’s most iconic and biggest buildings in downtown Chicago on Tuesday.

  The General Services Administration, which manages real estate for the federal government, released an online list of 443 “non-core” properties across the country. Included on it are two Loop high-rises: the Kluczynski and Metcalfe federal buildings.

  Also on the list of Chicago properties that the administration is ready to unload are the U.S. Post Office’s Loop Station in Federal Plaza and the regional office for the Social Security Administration, according to the GSA website.

Well, since certain reporting is claiming something like half or more of federal employees aren't even showing up to work, it makes sense to unload empty space to save money. Plus, Conehead's driving everything else away - why not the feds, too? 

Downtown real estate is going to crash hard with costs-per-square-foot falling to the lowest in history.

Dumbest Proposed Law Ever?

If this passes, mental illness will be an excuse to attack and beat police officers. In fact, who wants to bet there will be thousands of people who suddenly have doctor notes that permit them to attack cops? (click for larger version):

Notice that the carve-out / exemption for charges specifies attacking police officers only - not paramedics, medical personnel, mental health responders, etc.

You can also tell it's an anti-police piece of legislation by the sponsor of the bill (click for larger version):

Another anti-police scumbag.

Contact your legislators and let them know this bill better be voted down. Otherwise, we're going to encourage Officers to decline to respond to these types of calls and propose the FOP and PBPA take a similar stand.

Tip?

A.I. is getting scary good nowadays and we confess to not being able to tell all the time what's real and what's not.

This looks (looks) like an electronic traffic stop survey, and appears to be some run-of-the-mill program bought off the shelf, which is why we wonder if it's real or fake (click for larger version):

If it's fake, well done.

If it's real, well then, perhaps the tip will actually go to the Pension Fund?

Firefighters Have Lawyers

And they've preparing for a lawsuit that could prove lucrative to firefighters and costly to taxpayers:

Punitive damages against these idiots would be good news, too.

Friday Firing Squad

Anyone planning a trip to South Carolina this week?

• When you think of the term "human garbage," someone like Brad Sigmon might come to mind. 

  [...] One evening, after spending the night drinking and smoking crack with his pal, Eugene Strube, he made plans to kidnap Becky the next morning. He would go next door to her parents' house and tie them up while she took her children to school so they couldn't call the police. When Becky returned, he'd force her into his car and go. Strube promised to help, but he backed out at the last minute. So, Sigmon took matters into his own hands.   

  Rather than tie the Larkes up, he went to their home with a baseball bat. David asked his wife to get his gun, but before she could, Sigmon began beating him in the head. He then went into the other room and hit Gladys with the bat. He then went back and forth, beating each person until they were dead. When Becky arrived home, he forced her into her car, planning to take her to her North Carolina. She managed to escape, but he shot her several times with her father's gun before running out of bullets.  

  Police eventually located him in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and he confessed to all of his crimes, even admitting that he'd planned to kill Becky and then himself. In 2009, he was convicted of two counts of murder and burglary in the first degree and sentenced to death in South Carolina. Barring any last-minute reprieve, he'll die via firing squad in the Palmetto State on March 7. 
  

He turned down electrocution and lethal injection, so we say, "good riddance." We really need to bring back the older, more traditional execution methods, if for nothing else than the ability of the punishments to shock and appall the criminal element. Those who argue the death penalty isn't effective have yet to present anyone with a concrete example of an executed inmate ever committing another crime.

Libs Luv Criminals

Especially after they get shot:

• An off-duty Boston cop fatally shot a lunatic who was trying to stab people at a Chick-fil-A over the weekend, prompting city officials to fall over themselves to offer heartfelt condolences — to the perp’s family.

  The officer was in the right place at the right time in Boston’s wealthy Back Bay neighborhood Saturday evening when two people being chased by the knife-wielding man fled into the restaurant fearing for their lives.

  The cop identified himself and ordered the suspect to drop his knife. When the armed maniac didn’t comply, the officer shot him. The suspect was rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, [...] There were no additional reported injuries.

  At a press conference after the incident, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu — who has been repeatedly mocked for a cavalcade of harebrained “woke” schemes during her brief time in office — somberly expressed sorrow over the demise of the would-be stabber.

Wu comes by her lib-tarded stupidity via Chicago - she was born here before moving to Barrington and attending Haaaavard. Even more amusing, her ancestors fled Red China for Taiwan after Chiang Kai-shek lost to Mao, so you think she'd harbor some anger toward commies, but nope, she embraces it.

First Issue?

From the comments:

• In other news you see Larry’s new tact uniforms he wants every plain clothes officer to buy. Basically just a darker version of the shit we already own, STUPID!!! Here’s the price break down for ya plain clothes cowboys. Keep reinventing the wheel Larry, you out of touch moron!
  
  1. Blauer 8666 Hidden Cargo Poly Rip-Stop Pants: $89.99
  2. Blauer 9818 Waterproof Jacket: $279.99 - Under Decision Process
  Uniform Committee
  3. Blauer 4660 Jacket Liner: $ 149.99 - Under Decision Process Uniform
  Committee
  4. Blauer 4665 Lightweight Jack Liner: $99.99 - Under Decision Process
  Uniform Committee
  5. Proper 100% Polvester Polo Short sleeve: $42.95/ Longsleeve: $47.95

While we're sure the pricing is fictional (nice touch though), the question of a "tactical uniform" brings up an interesting point - does the "First Issue" clause of the contract come into play? And if so, does Larritorious or Conehead know if the money actual exists?

Where Did He Go??

Another one of Dart's / Prickwrinkle's / Evan's success stories:

• A convenience store clerk convicted in January of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old runaway boy in the Loop has disappeared after the judge refused a prosecution request to keep him in jail to await sentencing.

  A jury needed less than 90 minutes to find Bharath Simha, 22, guilty of criminal sexual assault during the commission of a felony and two counts of kidnapping in connection with the December 2023 attack at 7-Eleven, 4 East Jackson.

  But Judge Peggy Chiampas denied the state’s request to revoke Simha’s electronic monitoring status and have him jailed so he didn’t flee to escape prison time, according to court records.

Great job there Chiampas.

And here's a similar story that anyone who has arrested a parolee ought to be familiar with:

• Meticulous work by Chicago police detectives resulted in the arrest last week of a 12-time convicted burglar suspected of breaking into over two dozen businesses across the city’s North and Northwest Sides.

  But, even though 31-year-old Devon Lawery is currently on parole for four of his 12 previous convictions, the Illinois Department of Corrections decided not to revoke his parole after cops arrested him on the new burglary charges last week, a CPD report said.

  As if that weren’t enough, Lawery failed to show up for his first court date on Friday, prompting a judge to sign off on a failure to appear arrest warrant.

We've asked this before, but what exactly is the point of IDOC people except to release criminals back into society and then fail to hold them to the conditions they were released under?

Saving Taxpayers Money

If only all illegal shooters would make this effort:

• The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has concluded its investigation of the death of Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, the man who allegedly shot a Jewish man in Rogers Park and then got into a lengthy shootout with Chicago cops last October.

  On November 30, authorities found Abdallahi, 22, dead, hanging in his Cook County jail cell. Now, the medical examiner has concluded that, as initially suspected, he died by suicide.

Maybe Dart could hold a workshop to teach inmates the best location and method to remove themselves from the judicial process? He could call it "Epstein 101" and have whats-her-name teach it.

You can thank the drooling vegetable for this catch-and-release asshole.

Great Job Evans

CWB goes to town on Judge Evans reign of error:

• When Chicago police leaders and Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke announced charges against a suspected serial killer on Wednesday, they did not speak about the accused man’s background.

  Asked about the criminal background of 21-year-old Antonio Reyes, CPD Chief of Detectives Antoinette Ursitti said she was “limited” in what she could say because state law prohibits officials from revealing juvenile criminal records.

It seems that since no one could talk about his background, he was free to kill, again and again and again?

• Reyes was given three years of probation in juvenile court for aggravated robbery and aggravated battery in December 2019. Between March 2020 and November 2020, while he was allegedly killing six people and trying to kill four others, he picked up four more juvenile cases: armed robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful use of a weapon, and a narcotics charge.

  Prosecutors revealed that information when they charged Reyes with his first murder and attempted murder cases in December 2020. Our reporter was taking notes.

  Those first two cases earned Reyes a place in our “Not Horrible” reporting series, a collection of reports about people accused of committing murder and attempted murder while on pretrial release for felonies.

  We called it “Not Horrible” because Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans stated in November 2019 that there had not been “any horrible incidents” under his affordable bail system.

The "not horrible" series by CWB (beginning in late 2019) details over FOUR HUNDRED additional victims of people (and folks) out on bail for felonies - released by Judge Evans.

Special Kind of Stupid

So this happened:

• A North Side alderman’s decision to not talk about crime because she believes doing so is racist and contributes to a negative “perception” failed to reduce crime in 2024. In fact, crime in Edgewater, the neighborhood that constitutes much of Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth’s 48th Ward, soared to the highest level seen since at least 2014, according to city data.

  Violent crime in the neighborhood jumped nearly 50% in Edgewater while overall crime increased by 9%.

Her thinking was this:

• By way of explanation, the alderman claimed that “over-reporting of crime leads to an inaccurate public perception about crime rates.” She even cited a research paper from (checks notes) the University of Tehran.

Tehran....where they chop off hands for theft, toss gays off of buildiongs, execute murderers more than the United States, and regularly stone rape victims to death for the crime of being raped.

But hey, they know tons about "over-reporting" crime. Moron.

Is 9.5 Running?

He's making appearances and talking about Chicago and crime of all things:

• During the online “Overtime” segment of Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel discussed the poor approval ratings of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and stated that other Democratic mayors aren’t doing well and the focus needs to be on safety, education, and good finance, but “We’ve gone through five years where people became way too permissive as a culture…which is why everything’s locked up at Walgreens and CVS. And that is a disaster.”

The ex-mayor also said that if he could have gotten away with using "they/them" pronouns years ago, he would have used it to get into girls locker rooms, hinting for the first time that he might have been heterosexual at some point.

So is he/she running?

Way Way South Side

Almost in Indiana:

• A person armed with a knife was injured during a police shooting Friday on the Far South Side.

  A Chicago police officer along with Forest Preserves of Cook County Police responded to a report of a person being chased by someone armed with a knife in the 11400 block of South Avenue G about 1:30 p.m., Chicago police said.

  When they arrived at the scene, the officer was approached by a male holding a knife. While attempting to create distance and deescalate, the male charged at the officer, police said.

  The officer then pulled out his gun, striking the armed offender in the body, police said. Officers applied a tourniquet, and the male, whose age wasn’t known, was taken in critical condition to the University of Chicago Medical Center, police said.

  A knife was recovered at the scene and the officer was taken to a hospital for observation, police said.

Great reporting - if he was shot "in the body," we wonder where they applied the tourniquet. We had no idea they made torso-sized ones.

Of course, if it was a chest seal, why bother reporting the truth?

Expect CuckFOPA to find that the Officer "didn't retreat fast enough to create enough distance and deescalation opportunities" and recommend public floggings for all involved.

Good job Officer.

More Illegal CFD Searches

Yesterday morning, someone posted in our comments that CFD Internal Affairs was back at a firehouse, illegally searching cars:

• IAD is back at 3918 N Harlem making threats and demanding firefighters open their cars to be searched based on CCL issues. This is happening as this is being typed or shortly before.
• The IAD personnel on scene are identifying themselves as police officers
• They know a lot of fire department members, probably over 80%, voted for Trump. Especially if you are pro gun. Is this retaliation?

Also yesterday, their union released a statement:

• On February 27th, the Chicago Fire Department IAD and exempt rank personnel reported to Engine 86 to conduct a search of members’ personal vehicles. Currently, Local 2 is actively investigating the reasons why. The government or the Chicago Fire Department cannot conduct a search of members’ property unless probable cause or exigent circumstances exist. 
  
  
  Based on the facts available to the Local, these searches lacked probable cause and exigent circumstances were not present. Members should be aware that the right to be free from unreasonable searches only applies if an expectation of privacy. Prior court cases have held that such an expectation of privacy does not exist in fire house lockers or fire houses in general. However, members do have a privacy interest in their personal vehicles. 
  
  
  If the CFD makes a request to search a members vehicle parked on City property the Local is recommending the following: It is recommended that Members request a Union representative and inquire if any response or statement by them will result in discipline. Members should not voluntarily consent to a search of their vehicle.  
  
  
  Members should ask if they are being ordered to allow the search of their vehicle If an order is given and/or a request for a Union representative is made, ensure that the order and request for a representative is documented in the company journal. Typically, members must comply with an order and contest the employers conduct afterwards. 
  However, if an illegal order is given, compliance is not required. As of now, all the facts are not available to the Local to definitively state if the search conducted at E86 was illegal because we do not know all the facts which caused the CFD to conduct the search. Members should contact the Local to report all relevant information related to the search. 
  
  
  The Local has been in contact with civil rights attorneys and criminal attorneys to take appropriate legal action to defend and represent our members and hold those engaging in potentially illegal activities accountable. The Local will follow the recommendation of these attorneys after all the pertinent information is obtained. 
  
  
   Fraternally, Local 2 Executive Board
  

So it certainly looks like a number of firefighters just got a new car, a nice boat, or an expensive vacation paid for, all courtesy of CFD exempt staff and Chicago taxpayers.

Also, is anyone at CPD looking into the claims that personnel on scene identified themselves as Police Officers? There's a whole new set of charges for that.

ET Results Out

Check your emails.

Supposedly, it's been how many hundreds of days? 

200+? 

For a scantron test. 

The City that works....and fixes test results.