Cashless Bail Jumper in PA

Anyone not see this coming?

• If we told you that a man accused of carrying $1.6 million in fentanyl in Pittsburgh didn't show up for his court date after being released on non-cash bail earlier this month, would you be surprised?

  Us neither.

  But that was precisely the case in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where 27 year old Carlos Pichardo Cepeda failed the appear for court. The New Yorker "is accused of carrying hundreds of thousands of fentanyl doses at a Pittsburgh bus station," according to Triblive.com.

  Pichardo Cepeda was previously handed a nonmonetary bond by a district judge and released after his arrest. This past Tuesday was his second court date that he missed, the report says. Republicans are blaming the cashless bail while Democrats are placing blame on the DA's office dragging its feet in prosecuting the case.
  

We're sure the stories are going to be rolling in from across Illinois in short order. CWB Blog already has a subtitle "Cashless Bail" they've used for a couple stories. We figure they'll be the only ones covering it regularly....the same way they were the only outlet covering criminals on electronic monitoring committing more robberies, shootings and homicides.

Punch Line

That aunt-queef-duh "Stop Cop City" graffiti in 020 a few weeks back was a reference to a public safety training complex being built in Atlanta, Georgia. The campus is a combined EMT/Fire/Police training facility meant to bring Atlanta first responders up to high standards expected of public safety officials. 

Brain dead leftists keyed in on the police training part of it and inspired protests, sit-ins and vandalism of the site. For a bunch of softballs who bitch about how badly police react to dynamic evolving scenarios, you'd think a better trained police force would be at the top of their demands. You'd be wrong.

But "Cop City" has it's supporters among the normies in Atlanta, and you'll never guess why they want a training facility built:

• Fulton County resident Mike Russell said the name “Cop City” is not representative of the overall project.

  “Every time you hear somebody call it cop city you know they aren’t telling the truth,” he said. “We don’t want to become the next Chicago or Detroit.”

Chicago has devolved into a punchline that Atlanta citizens want to avoid at all costs.

The authorities in Georgia have arrested a bunch of the domestic terrorists there - actually charging them with domestic terrorism - and amazingly, they're just about all from places other than Georgia. Hopefully, they're guests of Georgia for the next ten or twenty years.

We're All Going to Get Shot

The only politician with a lower approval rating than president potato is going to head up a gun violence Prevention Task Force:

• With the nation grappling with chronic gun violence — and with Congress unlikely to pass any new laws — President Joe Biden on Friday launched a first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, with Mayor Brandon Johnson, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., in the Rose Garden for the kick-off ceremony.

  Vice President Kamala Harris will oversee the new office Biden created by executive order, as the focus of the White House and the groups working to curb gun violence increasingly look to state and local laws to take actions, since Republicans in Congress have no inclination to back more gun-related measures.

If Kamala is as good at gun violence prevention as she is at border control, we're all going to be counting bullet holes in our bodies by Halloween.

Blue-on-Blue

So what happens when a blue shithole city gets sick of handling thousands of illegals coming over the border....and the ski resorts are about to open?

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to bus migrants to Democrat-leaning sanctuary cities is having the ripple effect the three-term Republican governor likely intended.

  While the city of Denver, Colorado, has welcomed more than 18,400 migrants since last Christmas, a report from The Colorado Sun finds that 6,739 of them were bused to other cities — mostly Chicago and New York City. The Sun reports the city has paid for one-way tickets for migrants trying to reach other parts of the country.

Denver is shipping them out, mayor BJ is warning of massive tax hikes on the horizon for Chicago, thousands of Californians with the money to do so are leaving their state, and the mayor of New York is warning his city is doomed. 

It's a great time to be alive.

How "Merit" Begins

SWAT is legit, right? For years we heard about how it was the only legit Unit in the Department with strenuous physical standards and rigorous marksmanship tests. You want the best trained and best shooters in a Unit like SWAT.

Funny thing though....supposedly an FOIA request revealed this:

• From: Loughran, Sean R.

  Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2021 9:17 PM

  To: #Exempt

  Subject: New SWAT Applications Being Accepted

  All

  The SWAT application processes for POs and Sgt's was announced yesterday.

  Please read Department Employee Resource Directives E05-15 and E05-25 for details regarding the SWAT application process.

  In short, I'm asking all Exempts to consider who would be an excellent candidate for the Team. We've made some adjustments that maintain the integrity of the process, but allow us to still identify and draw the strongest candidates without lowering the standard.

  We aren't making it easier, per se, just realizing that we were potentially passing over some that would legitimately make excellent Operators. This should correct that process, capture those qualified individuals and allow us to expand the Team according to the Superintendent's long-term plan.

  Please pass this along to your Lts so the interest can be sparked, as its a short urn around. We are also sending out SWAT members to speak at roll calls this week in case there's any questions.

  Thank you,

  Sean Loughran

  Deputy Chief, Office of the First Deputy Superintendent

The date of this e-mail is almost two years ago, but it takes time to get FOIA requests pushed through the red-tape. We think it's legit....check out the weasel words:

• ...made some adjustments...
• ...identify and draw the strongest candidates without lowering the standard."
• We aren't making it easier, per se....
• ...should correct that process...

Look at the author - ol' Elf "Look at my Christmas package in this red leotard!" on-the-Shelf himself.

This - if legit - is horseshit. If you didn't take the tests and you didn't pass the tests, you shouldn't be there, especially given the types of situations SWAT responds to. But this is how "merit" is born.

===

By the way, the Jennifer Koniarski's Pension Board case? Here's a link!

Travesty

They might let this cop killer out of prison:

• A man imprisoned since 1976 in the shooting death of a Chicago police officer could be freed this year after an appellate court panel set aside his 200-year sentence as excessive and ruled that his chances for parole were unfairly denied.

  This decision comes after decades of failed appeals by Ronnie Carrasquillo, Travesty65, who was 18 in 1976 when he fired into a gang-related melee and killed Officer Terrence Loftus, who was in plainclothes, trying to break up the fight.

  In a 27-page opinion, an appellate court panel ruled that Carrasquillo should be resentenced based on changing legal precedents regarding how youthful offenders are treated and how mitigating factors, such as prison rehabilitation, are considered in sentencing.

The biggest "changing legal precedent" in recent years is the denigration of the Policing profession and political hatred of Police Officers labeling them as sub-human, unworthy of protections.

Crimesha vigorously opposed letting a cop killer go:

• ...State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told the parole board she no longer opposed his release...

Way to go Crimesha. Still the criminal's bestest friend. Busloads of coppers have made the trip downstate to oppose this shithead's release for years now. Last time, he was denied parole by an 8-to-1 vote. Hopefully that continues.

===

If anyone is interested in reading about Jennifer Koniarski's Pension Board case, here's a link.

GunsSaveLife.com Link

So the folks over at GunsSaveLife.com picked up on our "threatener:"

• So yesterday, fellow Illinois blog Second City Cop was threatened by a woman.  She claimed “her case” was “her business” and to remove it from SCC.  Or else.

  What was this case?  It involved Jennifer Koniarski who suffered an ankle injury in her third week at Chicago’s Police Academy in 2003.  She hadn’t even finished three weeks into a 16-week academy, but she filed a disability claim.  Somehow, even though she wasn’t a police officer yet, she managed to get her claim approved and has been drawing disability even though she wasn’t a sworn officer for a single day.

  The state, having investigated her claim, recorded her doing all manner of physical activities she claimed she couldn’t do.  Without so much as a limp.  In so many words, the powers that be discontinued her benefits.  She sued and the Appellate Court reinstated her benefits.

This is getting amusing on many levels now.

Threats Update

So it's been......around fifteen-and-one-half hours since we demanded an apology from an ignorant troll.

We didn't get a phone call at work asking for us by name. We have received nothing in the comments or e-mail, which truth be told, is what we expected. As a commentator said, "Threats based upon disclosure of public records are ridiculous."

So it looks like we're going to have to "take steps" as we said. 

As of this moment, we've done exactly nothing. But we discovered this: 

• We did a Google search of the name "Jennifer Koniarski." Over 927,000 results and guess what the #4 result was?  "Threats Against the Blog"
• Amused, we did a Bing Search of the name "Jennifer Koniarski." There were 3.8 million results, and coming in at #1.... "Threats Against the Blog."
• Rounding it out, we did a DuckDuckGo search of the name "Jennifer Koniarski." No search totals, but coming in at #1...."Threats Against the Blog."
  

All that from a single mention of "Jennifer Koniarski." Those "web crawler" robots have gotten much more efficient over the years. It used to take a week or so for things to even register on Google.

We have now mentioned "Jennifer Koniarski" five times in this post, and failing to get our apology in the next eight-and-one-half hours, we'll be mentioning and linking the PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE Court finding in numerous other posts because the public deserves to be fully informed.

UPDATE: Google #1 search, all without lifting a finger.

COPA Made Shit Up

Friend of the Blog and Contrarian founder Florian Sohnke levels the big guns at COPA:

• For those who are unfamiliar with COPA’s latest fool’s errand, here is what we know. On July 6, COPA received a complaint alleging an officer serving at CPD’s 10^th District had engaged in an improper sexual relationship with an underage migrant sheltering at the Ogden station. A most serious charge, the claim against the officer contended a illegal minor had been impregnated as a result of the improper contact. It was also alleged multiple officers — at least four — had engaged in sexual acts with illegals in Ogden.

  A story which spread at the speed of light, when the allegations of CPD misconduct were aired in public, it inspired predictable results: Chicago media lost its collective mind, the anti-police movement mobilized and deluged CPD with searing rebukes, and community groups staged protests outside the 10^th District building. In this universe of effete liberal opinion, the presumption of innocence is never granted, and officers are always presumed guilty. To the collective of over-caffeinated community organizers, the accused officers were guilty not because the charges were buttressed with evidence whatsoever, but rather because of their physical, familial, and genetic features. All five men were white, male, and served with CPD.

Sohnke also has sources that verify a long suspected truth:

• Sources in CPD’s 10^th District have also confirmed the nature of the complaint is found in an acrimonious divorce proceeding and the officer at the center of the claim has not been summoned to speak with COPA.

COPA's entire mission is based on shaping knee-jerk outrage into anti-police narratives that have no basis in reality. Combined with all of the other anti-police movements, it's amazing a single criminal gets arrested any more.

Go read it all.

Illegals Behaving Illegally

It's devolving....rapidly:

• Two Venezuelan migrants living in a Chicago Police Department station lobby were apparently evicted from the facility after fighting over a mattress.

  Joseph Vega, 28, and Cristian Diaz, 27, lived at the Central (1st) District station in the South Loop when Diaz “incited violence against Vega” regarding the mattress, officers wrote in an arrest report. The report said the men were “brawling” and “exchanging blows” in the middle of State Street.

  The officers referred to the men as fellow “household members” and accused them of putting “approximately 115 migrant shelter seekers/community members … and peace officers in danger and risk of physical harm.”

  Both men were told they were “no longer welcome” at the station due to “reckless and precarious behavior.”

We've also heard the situation outside of 012 is turning into "armed camps" of inside-illegals vs tent-city-illegals with near daily brawls and extortion/protection rackets coming into play.

Threats Against the Blog

So we got a threat yesterday via email. Here's the full text of the email:

• Remove my court case from this blog. It has come to my attention that my court case under Jennifer Koniarski has been posted on your blog twice. My case is my business. It is violation of hipa law. I have a good source and knows who you are. I am giving you 24 hours to remove my court case or I will contact my attorney.

The basis for the complaint is a link posted in the comments section. Two comment sections actually:

• https://ilcourtsaudio.blob.core.windows.net/antilles-resources/resources/453b5da4-64d9-4c79-a248-8837e570586c/1200501_R23.pdf

The link - which is a PDF document - is a Illinois Appellate Court decision handed down two years ago regarding a lawsuit against the Pension Board regarding a termination of benefits.

Let us just highlight a few things:

• it is a lawsuit;
• filed in the courts - which are a branch of government;
• it is resolved by a three judge panel;
  
• as required by law, it is then published BY THE COURT in a public forum, accessible to anyone with a computer in any part of the world.....except Red China we suppose;
• it was posted by a reader without comment - no allegations, no identifying names aside from the open source link we posted above;
  

And now we're being threatened with....something? 

We did a quick search by name and case number, and this case is posted in dozens of places, public court records, legal research websites, you get the idea. It's out there.

So how about this instead: 

• We are giving YOU - Jennifer L McClendon/Koniarski - twenty-four hours to issue an apology to us. There are two ways for you to do this:
• You claim to know who we are, so we assume you know where we work and what shift we work. We'll be waiting at the desk for a phone call. You will ask for us by name, identify yourself, and apologize for this nonsense. Be prompt - half past the hour following Roll Call. We have calls to answer and our supervisor can be a bear;
• If that doesn't float your boat, you will email us an apology. You will state that your case is a matter of public record, filed with the courts and posted on government and legal websites, and acknowledge the blog has no control over this. You will state you really have no reason or means to order us to remove what is already publicly and prominently available to anyone who cares to look. You will properly use the word HIPAA;
• Failing both of these completely reasonable suggestions, we will take steps. Step One is to put that link at the top of EVERY SINGLE POST for a day, just so everyone decides to click on it and read it - it's only fourteen pages. Step Two will be to post it every week until we get bored.
• We won't comment on the merits of the case, the decision itself or any further appeals - we'll just post a publicly available court opinion made available by a branch of government in accordance with the Law in an effort to keep any and all interested parties informed....kind of a public service of sorts.
  

Can you imagine what the internet search algorithms will do? We used to get between thirty-and-fifty-THOUSAND unique visits every day from six continents before The Hiatus. Since we've been back, we're doing around half that traffic, but the numbers are going up every day.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

(comments will be heavily monitored here....HEAVILY monitored....we  might even shut 'em down)

Bidenville Takes Shape

$29.3 million for tent city:

• Chicago has taken the first concrete step to deliver on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s controversial plan to get more than 2,000 migrants off the floors of police stations, O’Hare and Midway airports and into giant tent cities he prefers to call “winterized base camps” before temperatures plummet.

  Piggybacking onto an existing state procurement, the city has signed a $29.3 million contract with GardaWorld Federal Services LLC for “migrant temporary housing.”

  “The purpose of this Purchase Order is to allow the City to purchase from the State Contract temporary housing solutions and related services … to provide critical services to asylum seekers,” according to the contract, signed Sept. 12.

Anyone have a list of corporate officers for GardaWorld? Any nephews or nieces of aldercreatures or Prickwrinkle or connected judges?

The pictures attached to the linked article are something akin to a military base in the Persian Gulf .... except here, there is no military discipline that makes something like this livable in the short term.

WGN does some actual reporting:

• The company must also provide migrants with bedding, laundry, showers, 3-meals a day and security. There is also a line that says the tents can be heated to 70 degrees if the outside temperature is 40 degrees leading to questions about their warmth in colder weather.

  [...]

  The tent city contract also calls for several other benefits including, all-day child care seven days a week and vans to take migrants to schools, doctor appointments and community resources.

We're going to go out on a limb here and say that these tents aren't solar powered. In fact, there probably won't even be a wind-turbine within the camp borders. 

It's going to be 100% fossil fuels running the heat and cooking the food. But you better buy an electric car, ditch your gas stove, figure out a different way to heat your water and by golly, that old AC unit ain't going to cut it in the Summer of '24!

Guard Your Steak

This is a joke, right?

Someone says this is at Wal*Mart? 

Anti-theft steak?

More Money Wasted

This is from earlier this summer:

• Only on CBS 2, we're hearing directly from the violence prevention and crisis response team launched by Gov. JB Pritzker in Chicago.

  What have they accomplished so far? And are they making a difference? CBS 2's [...] has been asking about this team for months.

  The group of 30 has been at work in Chicago since CBS 2 first started asking about their work before Memorial Day. Cedric Hawkins is one of those workers. He said it can be hard to quantify violence prevention, but they are making a difference.

HeyJackass.com has us about 28 homicides short of last year's to-date total and just under 80 from last years grand total. All for the low low cost of $11 million. 

Next year, they're supposed to get $30 million....with a projected budget deficit of over $500 million. And we all know how accurate government bean counters are.

You Want Them to What?

Jobs? We don't need no stinkin' jobs!

• Fewer than 2% of the tens of thousands of migrants overwhelming New York City have applied for work authorizations — while no one even knows how many more are eligible to apply, The Post has learned.

  Roughly about 800 adult migrants in the Big Apple have filed the proper paperwork to start earning a legal paycheck after nearly 18 months of a border crisis that left the city swamped with a wave of asylum seekers, according to data provided by City Hall.

We've seen reports that the minute they get jobs here, the illegals are tossed out of shelters, which is a sure-fire way to motivate whatever the opposite of a work-ethic is.

How many times have we said it? If you incentivize bad behavior, you're going to get more of it. And the behavior democrats want is unemployed, uneducated and completely reliant on government handouts. You see how it worked in the blue shitholes for decades.

Good Question

Is the current illegal alien "crisis" simply a form of germ warfare revenge against the police for resisting the "vaccine" jabs?

• In the early days of the pandemic, the city was woefully unequipped to address even the most basic protections for officers, lacking even hand sanitizers for the districts. The officers had no idea what they were facing as they climbed into squad cars that had just been dropped off by a previous, potentially infected officer from the earlier shift. They entered hospitals and nursing homes to complete reports or initiate an investigation. Many came down with the virus. Several died. Others were permanently affected by the disease.

  Rather than thank the officers for their commitment, the pandemic was seized upon by the one-party system governing Chicago and Illinois as a means to heighten the war on police in Chicago, by whatever means necessary.

  [...]

   The epidemic’s usefulness to manipulate, intimidate, harass, vilify, and trump up disciplinary charges against cops complete, Chicago is now moving in the opposite direction, using the migrant crisis for the same ends even though the city’s actions make a mockery of its COVID vaccine tactics against officers. The decision to place migrants in police stations poses a significant health risk to the members of the public with whom CPD officers interact.

  Reports have surfaced that migrants have been discovered to be infected with tuberculosis. Similar reports have revealed migrant children with worms. Suddenly, the COVID infection that initiated hysteria against officers doesn’t seem to be a top priority from a city government once threatening to fire those who refused to obtain a vaccine. No such vaccine requirement seems to exist for the migrants, nor is there a demand a portal be established for the illegals to report their status on a weekly basis the way officers must.

Go read the whole thing. 

We'd rather believe it was "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" because we all know how stupid Chicago politicians are.

BJ Discusses Failure

We used to know how to run these things:

• Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says that his administration made decisions to protect the safety of city residents during Mexican Independence Day celebrations, while calling those parades “a beautiful display of culture.”

Beautiful Display of Culture - Exhibit A:

This guy is such an asshole. Moving on:

• Both Friday and Saturday nights, the Office of Emergency Management and Communication closed access to downtown from Division to 18^th Street, and from DuSable Lake Shore Drive to Halsted Street due to the caravans.

  Access was limited to critical response workers and to residents during those times, with access available only at specific intersections.

Yeah...."limited access" actually meant "no access" as CFD couldn't get anywhere until after 0200 AM and if you needed medical assistance, you had to meet them at a designated location. Hard to do if you're cut badly, been shot, have a broken leg or might be suffering from cardiac arrest. Maybe your relatives can drag you closer?

The Department used to be able to handle crap like this, and not like 1968 either. We participated in a number of large scale events, starting with the Bulls Championships and continuing to the present day. Very few of these events were the disasters of recent history because we had semi-competent supervision that knew what worked, what was available and how to clear an area quickly and efficiently. We didn't have bikes, salt trucks, Jersey barriers, raised bridges....and we still got it done.

We could still get it done with the right people in place.

Chicago Self Immolation

BJ prepares to fire the biggest kill shot into Chicago's future, sealing the death spiral into Detroit:

• The letters are stamped all over the hallways of Chicago’s giant skyscrapers and grand office buildings. DRW, IMC, CME, Cboe.

  These are some of the derivatives firms that collectively handle trillions of dollars a year in trades, greasing the wheels of global markets with everything from stock options to corn futures. Most of them have called Chicago home for decades — providing thousands of jobs within the city’s $75 billion finance industry.

  Now, the firms’ commitment to the Windy City is being tested by some $800 million in taxes proposed by a new mayor staring down a budget gap that’s swelled to half a billion dollars. One idea is a levy on financial transactions, which has alarmed companies already worried about a jump in crime that shows few signs of abating.

BJ thinks he can tax his way out of a rather large hole:

• One of his campaign proposals would generate $20 million annually by reinstating a $4 per employee tax on big businesses. An additional $100 million could come from raising the levy on high-end property purchases — the kinds of homes bought by wealthy finance workers.

  Most importantly for the derivatives industry, Johnson has floated seeking another $100 million with a levy of $1 to $2 for every securities contract traded. That would boost costs by as much as 800%, according to CME.

With downtown posting vacancy rates over 20%, and numerous high-rent leases coming due on mostly empty skyscrapers, a $4 per employee head tax will simply drive out businesses. Many downtown renters already have suburban campuses, so a shift to all suburban locales is a simple matter.

As for a transaction tax, one of the big companies (we can't remember which) ran a test the other month whereby all trading was routed through a duplicate trading floor set up out of Illinois. These aren't the old days of traders crowding the pits, yelling out orders, filling contracts like Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy in Trading Places. Most of that stuff is already done by computers, trading hundreds-of-thousands of shares on tenths-of-percentage shifts in the market.

We are told it went flawlessly, which means that all it would take for them to abandon Chicago and the transaction tax would be a change in IP addresses, which is what one executive warns in the article. New York and LA already lost big companies controlling more than a trillion dollars....each. 

If these bean counters will move a trillion dollars worth of electrons based solely on New York and California tax policies, it's a safe bet Chicago isn't immune.

Follow Up Stories

Just a couple of updates on things we wrote about.

More cops leaving for Florida:

• More Illinois police officers are making the move to Florida, enticed by the Sunshine State's vigorous recruitment efforts.

  The migration has gained momentum following the announcement by Governor Ron DeSantis of a $5,000 bonus for officers who choose to relocate.

  Governor DeSantis reports that approximately 37 Illinois officers have already taken advantage of the offer.

  There is speculation that the recent ban on cash bail in Illinois may be a contributing factor in officers leaving the state. However, Illinois State Representative Carol Ammons emphasizes the importance of maintaining a focus on justice amid these changes.

Ammons is a social justice moron. If cops aren't allowed to do the job they were trained for, why stick around? All we are is a meal ticket for the next big lawsuit. Even with Florida's downsides, there's still plenty of opportunities to do good and make a living without the uncertainty.

A large media outlet discovers what we discovered last week:

• In normal cities, law enforcement arrests criminals, and grocery stores stay open. In Chicago, criminals are free to do as they wish, grocery stores are run out of business, and the mayor thinks socialism is the only possible solution.

  Mayor Brandon Johnson is now proposing government-owned grocery stores in order to combat food deserts in the city, as four Walmart locations and one Whole Foods have all recently closed. Walmart claims its Chicago locations have not been profitable since they opened them 17 years ago, but the “tens of millions of dollars” in losses have “nearly doubled in just the last five years.”

  [...]

  You can predict the result of this move with little effort. Criminals would still be free to steal whatever they like from “Chicagomart” just as they would from other retailers. The stores would run on heavy losses, but those losses would be shouldered by taxpayers instead of a corporation such as Walmart. Chicago residents would be subsidizing shoplifting, and whatever terrible business decisions that the notably incompetent Chicago government would make with the stores.
  

That last paragraph is exactly what we described. Seems there are a few intelligent people still working at media outlets.

No Duty Judges?

What is this now?

• Chief Judge Evans got rid of the after hours duty judge and never notified [law enforcement]?
  

So the "forty-eight hour" rule has just been trimmed down to what?

You arrest anyone after the AM Court Call. 

The State doesn't approve charges or designates a Continuing Investigation before Court the next morning (twenty-four hours).

If the Detectives aren't be able to jump through all the hoops Crimesha's people put in front of them, now there isn't a duty judge available after business hours?

Have you ever tried to get a prisoner on the AM transport van when there's even a sniff of a forty-eight hour deadline? It doesn't happen unless there's a Duty Judge signature on a time stamped piece of paper and even then, it's a crap shoot with County accepting the prisoner.

And Evans just got rid of the overnight Duty Judges? How about Prickwrinkle lay off a few dozen judges now that they're unavailable?