All Subjects in Custody

One dead, one wounded, one surrendered in 011, one captured in 012.

And one dead cop worth more than the sum of all four shitheads.

And this line buried in one of the reports from the scene:

• About 12:30 a.m., a woman screaming "That's my baby, that's my baby" was escorted to a police car. Police said she was the mother of one of the suspects.

Lady, and we use that term loosely, your son was a worthless piece of shit and you are a worthless piece of shit masquerading as a "mother." You spawned a worthless mistake who stole oxygen from the rest of society and contributed nothing but pain and misery over his short god-forsaken existence.

If there was any justice in this world, we'd be able to leave his corpse in the street and let the rats and crows peck at it.

Arkansas Officers Killed

Another dark day in Law Enforcement:

• Two police officers were fatally shot and another two were wounded Thursday in two separate shootings allegedly by the same suspects in West Memphis, Arkansas, police said.

  The two suspects, who were using an assault weapon, were themselves fatally shot, said Inspector Bert Shelton, who is assigned to city hall for the West Memphis Police Department.

Godspeed officers.

Off-Duty CPD Wounded (UPDATE - RIP Officer)

Robbery gone bad:

• An off-duty Chicago Police officer was shot late Wednesday during an apparent armed robbery, police said. Two other people were reportedly wounded.

  The off-duty officer was shot about 10:30 p.m. in the 8400 block of South King Drive, police said. The shooting appears to be an armed robbery.

  Chicago Police requested State Police assistance in locating the maroon Nissan Maxima involved in the shooting. The car was last seen heading northbound on the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-94), Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Anthony Hoop said.

  He said three people were wounded in the shooting.

Prayers and well-wishes only.

UPDATE: Officer Thomas Wortham IV, recently returned from a second tour in Iraq serving his country, assigned to the 007th District (Englewood) and just home from honoring Law Enforcement deceased in Washington DC, was murdered when three offenders attempted to take his motorcycle. Wortham's father, a retired police sergeant, killed one assailant and wounded a second. The third is being sought at this time. RIP Thomas Wortham IV.

Tribune and Sun Times coverage here.

TRU Counting Buildings?

Is this true? We had a comment or three over the past day that said TRU is being pulled out of Districts and sent to check on abandoned buildings across the city? Is this really an efficient use of manpower?

Isn't there a District Abandoned Building officer assigned to do this? Aren't there Area-wide "Troubled Building Teams" out there rousting squatters, dope dealers, prostitutes and generating all sorts of business for connected Board-Up companies?

Or has the foreclosure crisis completely inundated the District/Area teams to the point where the Department can't do the job?

And does this data collection contribute to the "Indoor/Outdoor" number crunching?

Serial Killer Again?

Or is this one of the stranglers that never got caught?

• Chicago police are investigating whether four women found strangled in vacant buildings over the past two years were killed by the same attacker, authorities said Tuesday.
  
  Three of the attacks are linked by evidence, while the most recent slaying last weekend fits the pattern, though forensic testing has not been completed, said [meri-clout-orious] Calumet Area Lt. Anthony Carothers [D-Ike (prison)]
  
  The women have been found strangled in vacant or abandoned buildings in the Roseland and West Pullman neighborhoods, police said.

All of the victims have extensive "high risk" lifestyle choices in their past.

And due to a recent "reclassification" directive, supernintendo J-Fled has declared that these "indoor" homicides were unpreventable and there really isn't much the police could have done anyway.

Gee, Imagine That

Not only did this scumbag get money from the City, the County paid him off for filing claims:

• Authorities recount run-ins with the man charged in the bat attack on two women in Chicago's Bucktown community.

  ABC7 has learned Heriberto Viramontes has received settlements of thousands of dollars from the City of Chicago and Cook County in recent years. Those settlements were reached after Viramontes claimed he was the victim of police abuse.

  Even though officers denied those claims, Viramontes received cash settlements totaling $18,000.

He attacked a female Cook County officer and got $2,000. He got $16,000 from Chicago following another incident where he was listed as the attacker, but the officer failed to show up in court.

The Chicago way - paying your criminals for fighting the police and then when the settlement money runs out, letting them victimize you again.

Shortshanks Readies Roadblocks

Anticipating a Second Amendment victory:

• Within the next five weeks the United States Supreme Court will rule on a challenge to Chicago's 28-year-old ban on handguns. It's believed the court will rule that the law is unconstitutional. [...]

  Conventional wisdom is that the handgun ban will not pass constitutional muster. Mindful of that, the city has been -- for some time now -- formulating plans on what it does next. The mayor says there are plans in place still being refined. But a strong hint of what Chicago will do requires only a look at the nation's capital.

• On that score, the city is considering requiring gun owners to carry a level of liability insurance.

  "You'll have to show that you have insurance before you can purchase and register a gun, somewhat similar to what you do before you buy a car," said Prof. Harold Krent, Kent College of Law dean.

  Much of what the city is working on is still on the drawing board, subject to the specifics of the high court's opinion. Whatever Chicago enacts will be challenged in court by opponents who argue that local government is just trying to subvert the Constitution with ineffective hoops and hurdles.

So plan on the city throwing everything they can in the way of lawful gun ownership, wasting million more in lawsuits - millions they don't have - all so regular citizens can be victims in their own homes.

Oh, and J-Fled says there's nothing the police can do to prevent "indoor" homicides, so if you don't have a panic room set up, you better just die quietly and stop embarrassing the mayor.

Damn, What Bad Timing

We swear, the criminal element must have some kind of "turning their life around" radar, because it always seems to be the case when we find out some "former" criminal dead on the streets - or in car trunks:

• As a volunteer with the anti-violence group Ceasefire, 28-year-old Hector "Smurf" Romero worked to stop gang shootings.

  Now his family fears he was one of three victims of the Southwest Side's second gangland-style triple killing in a month.

• Tio Hardiman, director of Ceasefire Illinois, said Romero volunteered more than a year ago for the anti-violence organization.

  Working as a violence "interrupter," he mediated disputes in East Ukrainian Village, Hardiman said. "You need guys with street credibility and guys who can get in, make sense of madness and bring guys around," Hardiman said.

  "Hector told me personally he was trying to go in another direction," he added. "I just wish he was able to reach out to somebody before this happened."

Every single time, they're on the road to "turning it around" and then BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM - they get shot 3 or 4 times with two of their closest associates and stuffed into trunks. It's almost like their lives were destined to end this way no matter how many times they tried to "turn it around."

Remember when J-Fled told the media (with a straight face) that we used to be able to go to gang leaders and tell them to "knock it off"?

Hey Tio? KNOCK IT OFF!

Comment Difficulties - Stand By

We had a mild error here this AM.

"Mild" meaning about 75 comments disappeared into the Great Internet Void.

We are attempting to re-create the lost material, which includes a boatload of hilarious material in the four posts directly below this one.

If you don't see your comment, give us a bit of time here. In the meantime, feel free to re-post it or try to top the lost entry.

Again, our apologies. Closed post.

UPDATE: We appear to have fixed the problem...or at least Blogger didn't flush everything. Everything that was going to be posted is posted...we think.

Seriously? Indoor Outdoor?

OK, who's been giving J-Fled the dumb ideas again? Did the policy group find the keys to the liquor cabinet?

• Police Supt. Jody Weis knows that he will ultimately find himself on the hotseat for the surge. But, he’s got a new defense.

  He's creating a new category of "indoor" homicides — and downplaying what police can do about them..

  “Those homicides that are outdoors — the ones that I do believe we have a good possibility of preventing — we’re around 98 homicides for Chicago outdoors. That’s as low as it’s ever been, except for 2007, when I believe we had 97 homicides outdoors as of this date,” he said.

We're amazed he's already got the last few years of homicides divided into "indoor" and "outdoor" so he can readily rattle off the statistics for the media. How many man-hours were wasted dividing this info into categories? And how many of these "indoor/outdoor" homicides were actually domestics that spilled out into the streets after starting inside and ending up outside? We couldn't have prevented those either.

This reeks of desperate statistical manipulation and at least one aldercreature calls it as such:

• Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) has her hands full combating a surge of homicides in the South Side’s Gresham District.

  [..] Not surprisingly, Lyle draws no such distinction between indoor and outdoor homicides.

  “I understand the logic — that police would have no way to know about what goes on inside peoples’ homes. But, I don’t necessarily believe that becomes a separate category when you’re talking about the number of people murdered in a city. The average citizen doesn’t make that distinction,” she said.

And J-Fled is losing the reverends, too:

• Rev. Marshall Hatch, chairman of the Leaders Network, said it’s “not helpful” for Weis to “make those kinds of distinctions” between indoor and outdoor homicides.

  “Whether the murders happen inside or outside, we expect the police to take responsibility for solving and preventing crime,” Hatch said, pastor of the New Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church in West Garfield Park.

  “I don’t think that’s a useful distinction for the superintendent to make. I don’t think it sends the right kind of signal about the sense of responsibility we want the police to have.”

How about the sense of responsibility your community ought to have there "reverend"? In any event, this is one for the books.

Tight Fit

A few years back while we were car shopping, we were disappointed with the small trunk offered by the Toyota Avalon. The car critics were unhappy, too:

• The Toyota Avalon is classified as a full-sized sedan, a species currently occupied by such stalwarts as the Ford Crown Victoria and Chevrolet Impala. The Avalon manages to look smaller and sleeker than those slab-sided vehicles, thanks to a crisply creased character line that runs the length of the car and a handsome front fascia that extends to a sculpted hood. Like most big four-doors, the rear overhang seems excessive, especially considering that its trunk volume of 14.4 cu.-ft. is puzzlingly small for this class.

After this story though, we might have to revisit the issue - it must have been visually deceiving:

• Three bound bodies have been found inside the trunk of a car in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, authorities said this morning.
  
  The bodies, all adults, were found by police in a Toyota Avalon slightly before 7 a.m. near 48th and South Whipple streets in an industrial area, police said.
  

  The discovery comes a little less than a month after three other bodies, all men, were found in a Pontiac Grand Prix about two miles away in the McKinley Park neighborhood with their hands bound behind their backs.

Fitting three bodies in a trunk is no mean feat. We suggest the detectives begin looking for neighborhood Tetris experts, maybe start searching any nearby Tetris hangouts and Tetris bars. Tetris is a Russian invention, isn't it? Maybe enlist Patrick Daley's help in going through some of the Russian cab stands or vodka bars.

By the way, the Grand Prix has 16 feet of trunk space and the rear seats fold down for more dead body... whoops, we mean cargo space.

I'll Stay for a Pay Cut

Decisions decisions:

• Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis today said he hopes to stay on as the city's top cop when his contract expires next year, and did not close the door on taking a pay cut to make it happen.
  
  "Those are all things the mayor and I should probably sit down and talk (about)," Weis said when asked if he would agree to a new contract that's less than his current salary of more than $300,000 per year, tops on the city payroll. "Like I said, I love this job, and I'm sure we can work things out if we come to that point."
  
  "I'm open to anything," Weis said when asked again if he would take less to stay. "Like I said, it's a great job."

We're not sure which way the messages are flowing - from Chicago to DC or from DC to Chicago, but we're pretty sure Shortshanks doesn't have to fear a Federal Consent Decree takeover until after 2012. So he's got nothing to lose cutting J-Fled loose. He's got to decide how much more he wants to smack the Department around because at some point, it's a question of diminishing returns. The lack of proactive policing isn't really a matter of choice at this point - it's an impossibility just based on manpower constraints.

Quinn = Moron

This is rich:

• Gov. Pat Quinn criticized the Prisoner Review Board over the weekend for the early release of a man now charged with murder, but he ignored a vital fact: While he says the board should have ordered Edjuan Payne held for six months, his administration recommended two, about the same amount of time Payne was locked up.
  
  Payne was serving time for criminal damage to property when he got out last fall as part of Quinn's secret early prison release program, although he also had an earlier murder conviction. He was sent back in January for violating parole on the property damage charge by drinking alcohol and not properly reporting to his parole agent. He was freed in March. On Friday, he was charged with murder in Peoria.

So Quinn criticizes the Board, even though the offender was part of Quinn's own secret early release program? Wow. Anyone seen McCotter lately? Is that a target on his back?

Remember, this career Machine/Combine politician is campaigning on a platform of higher taxes, a business un-friendly environment and more debt/borrowing for our futures. Are you registered to vote in November?

Wasting Food - Wasting People

Well, in his defense, it was a powdered sugar doughnut - they are kind of irresistible:

• Opening statements have begun in the Iowa attempted murder trial of 23-year-old Derrick Roberts, a Chicago man who prosecutors say shot a woman because one of her relatives hit him with a doughnut.

  The Chicago resident is also charged with intimidation with a dangerous weapon and willful injury for allegedly shooting 50-year-old Delores Smith of Cedar Rapids while she was in a parked van with other family members a year ago.

  Prosecutors say Roberts riddled the van with gunfire because a relative of Smith's had earlier struck him in the leg with a powdered sugar doughnut she was throwing away.

Hey, it's a chance to see Iowa justice in action again! Let's see if they can actually get it right this time without being overturned by a higher court.

Unless of course, the victim has a father who runs a regional trucking firm. Then our money would have to be on the doughnut getting 20 years to life.

Bad Penny Keeps Turning Up

Yet another cover-up continues:

• A Cook County judge has dropped an order of protection against a Chicago police department commander, her attorney said Monday.

  Harrison District Cmdr. Penelope Trahanas was named in the order of protection after her former boyfriend, Matthew Jackson, also a police officer, accused her of telephone harassment.

  The order was dropped in domestic violence court Monday by Judge Laura Bertucci Smith, according to Trahanas' attorney, Thomas Needham.

  Needham said he presented more than 100 text messages as evidence that the break-up between Trahanas and Jackson was mutually hostile.

"Mutually hostile"? We guess that's one way to describe tire slashing and window breaking and lord knows whatever other drama never got put on paper.

Hey J-Fled, here's a hint - if you put people of questionable character in charge of things, bad headlines are going to continue to embarrass your boss. You've got this yahoo in charge of a District, you've got another doing armed field invasions of airports, scamming tickets and dragging your feeb buddies into their Rule 14 violations, and yet another who doesn't know anything about guns and drugs in a condo she owns, but hey, don't worry, we'll clear her in an investigation in under 8 hours while a cop has a 4 year old investigation come down (after being cleared in a court of law) facing 90 days suspension.

J-Fed to J-Fraud to J-Fled to J-Failure.

Olympic Gift Keeps on Giving

First, you have aldercreatures accepting trips to China:

• Six Chicago aldermen who traveled to Beijing last summer on a weeklong Olympics fact-finding trip paid for by a Chinatown business group didn't report it on their annual ethics disclosures.

  They didn't have to, according to the city's Ethics Board.

  And that illustrates the vagueness of standards for elected officials to report such activities with business leaders, one watchdog group says.

But a cop gets a free soft drink or cup of coffee and everyone is screaming for their head.

And then we have this money making machine:

• Chicago's first-round flame-out in the 2016 Olympic sweepstakes was still a boon to 13 six-figure executives -- with one compensation package worth $483,713-a-year plus a housing allowance and monthly cleaning service.

  A federal tax filing released Monday shows that Chicago 2016 spent $5.9 million on salaries and benefits in 2009, including $28-a-month health club subsidies for roughly 100 employees.

  The parade of six-figure executives was led by Chief Operating Officer David Bolger, with a $483,713-a-year package that includes salary, "retention" bonus and benefits and $7,871 in other compensation.

As stated here and elsewhere, someone, or actually 13 "someones," made out like bandits over the No-lympic fiasco.

A bunch of other people got taken for an Olympian ride. Failure pays pretty well in Chicago.

How Bad Will it Get?

From a blogger called "Joe the Cop:"

• Clearly the thugs shown in this video are not deterred or frightened by men armed with military style weapons--what makes you think they'd be any more deterred by soldiers manning checkpoints? Pointing a gun at a thug who knows you have no legal justification to shoot him does nothing. Do you want soldiers going through troubled neighborhoods house-to-house, searching for wanted criminals and illegal guns like portions of the south and west sides were Fallujah? I didn't think so.
  
  Meanwhile the Chicago Police Department, increasingly stressed and stretched, scrambles from one crisis to the next. As resources are pulled from around the city, gang members in previously "quiet" districts become increasingly bold--witness some of the incidents in Uptown, or two recent shootings in the 2300 and 2900 blocks of Armitage Avenue. The suburbs are not immune to the violence, either, as witnessed by last weekend's fatal shooting at a late-night birthday party in Zion.
  
  Chicago is approaching the point at which a disastrous collection of social problems, failed policies, budget shortfalls and manpower issues are about to collide. It remains to be seen whether the citizens of Chicago and their political leadership have the will or wisdom to do anything about it.

"Joe" writes over at ChicagoNow.com and admits to being a suburban cop/detective. His column "Arresting Tales" is an interesting take on things and delves a bit deeper than we usually make time for. Even he sees a disaster looming for the CPD. Go read it all.

Cool Pic

A Volkswagen "silo:"


20 stories of German engineering.

That's all, open post for a bit.

Funny People

You've got to love coppers:

If they can't find the humor, they make the humor.

Reversing Cause and Effect

Northside playgrounds are nicer?

• The playground across from Kendra Snow's Englewood home is littered with broken liquor bottles, potato chip bags and other trash.

  The blue paint on the jungle gym is peeling, and its drawbridge is rusted. On a recent afternoon, a group of men congregated near the fenced-in swing set and drank beer as music blared from their car. On the basketball court, where a torn net dangles from a hoop, teenagers scuffled.

• Experts note that playgrounds are arenas where children learn social skills and coordination, build muscle and stamina and are a place for kids to blow off steam from the pressures of school or home life.

  When playgrounds fall into neglect, they become magnets for loiterers, drug users or gangs, repelling families with kids who might have otherwise played there.

Um, we think the experts are full of shit here. The playgrounds aren't "falling into neglect" and attracting scumbags - the scumbags destroy the park so that decent people can't hang out there. Dope dealers and gang bangers don't want families around, don't want old people out enjoying the warm evenings, don't want well lit, clean, attractive open space.

So they destroy it. And it's all the northsiders' faults.