A Voice of Reason

We would like to tell those reading today that Commander Bauer held a rare position in regard to this website:

• He rarely, if ever, appeared here in print, whether it was a post or in the comment sections.

Think about that for a second. We've been around in one form or another under assorted management for almost twelve years now. And coppers like to complain - it's a national pastime. The number of high ranking bosses who haven't felt the lash of the blog are few and far between. And we can't think of a single significant instance where he was the target of someone's ire. That, ladies and gents, is a rarity and it speaks to the type of decent, hard working, appreciative boss he must have been to those he worked with.

Part of the reason - he thought like a lot of us do. Here's an article from the CWB blog from a few months ago. We aren't going to borrow the whole article, but some highlights to show what we mean:

• Arrests are up from last year but what happens after an arrest is what frustrates the commander of downtown Chicago’s 18th police district.
  
  Commander Paul Bauer says there is a “high bar to prosecution” in Cook County, requiring Chicago police to get approval from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office before a suspect can be charged.
  
  “Sometimes they want to come out and...talk to the victim,” said Bauer at the annual meeting of River North Residents Association. “If you think about it, we’re sometimes victimizing this person twice. You just got your phone snatched from you. You got knocked down. Now you’re going to be in the station. You got to stay here for another couple hours until the State’s Attorney gets out here.”
  
  [...] According to Bauer, 75 percent of the crime in the 18th district is theft-related, whether it’s theft from a building or theft from a person, including a suspect who, while riding a bicycle, recently swiped mobile phones from people in River North.
  
  “We caught that guy,” recalled Bauer. “and we figured he did about 30 [robberies] over the course of a couple months. We were only able to charge him with one felony theft [because] victim identification was a little hazy.”
  
  [...] “Even when we catch somebody,” says Bauer, “there’s still a long way to go to get them off the street.”
  
  In August, Chief Judge Timothy Evans replaced all the judges who presided over bond hearings in Cook County and directed new judges to set bail in amounts more affordable to defendants. This is at odds with Chicago police, who would prefer to see higher bail amounts for career criminals.
  
  “That guy, Willie, he’s a case in point. He needs a high bond. We got him for a number of burglaries. He’s on parole for burglary. He needs to sit. We got to get him off the street. It’s just like if you have kids, if there’s no consequences to your action, those actions are going to repeat.”
  
  And when they do go to jail, they need to stay there longer.
  
  “The Sheriff of Cook County, for whatever reason, is very proud of the fact he has reduced the population of the county jail. Maybe I’m jaded, I don’t think that’s anything to be proud of.”
  
  Bauer would like to see more career criminals in jail. “You can say, we don’t know if that’s going to reduce recidivism. This is how I look at it, I want them off the street. We’re not talking about the guy that stole a loaf of bread from the store to feed his family. We’re talking about career robbers, burglars, drug dealers. These are all crimes against the community. They need to be off the street.”
  
  It is frustration police deal with every day as they try to make communities safe, says Bauer.
  
  “This has been going on for quite some time but it’s getting worse.”

We've been saying exactly this for years, and Bauer obviously saw the same things and wasn't afraid to call it like he saw it. It's certainly a refreshing honesty not often seen on this Department nowadays. And now it's silenced.

He will be missed.

Guilty

Again, Illinois really needs a death penalty:

• A Cook County jury Friday found four-time felon Shomari Legghette guilty of the 2018 murder of Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer.
  
  Seated in the front-row courtroom seat she had occupied for most of the trial, Bauer’s widow, Erin Bauer, showed little reaction as a clerk read off guilty verdicts on each of the six counts against 46-year-old Legghette.
  
  Legghette, standing several feet from from Bauer’s family and rows of CPD officers, showed no emotion when the verdicts were read. He faces 45 years to life in prison.
  
  Bauer’s family issued a statement, thanking the prosecution team, witnesses to the crime and the jury.
  
  “Today is a bittersweet day for everyone who loved Paul,” the statement from the family read. “We are so happy and relieved with the verdict, but we are overwhelmed with sadness that he is no longer with us.”

It only took the jury three hours to convict.

RIP Commander

Bauer Trial

Anyone know how defense attorneys sleep at night?

• One of the most high-profile police murder trials in recent Chicago history opened Tuesday with lawyers giving jurors two starkly different views of the two figures at the center of the case: slain police Cmdr. Paul Bauer and Shomari Legghette, his alleged killer.
  
  Prosecutors portrayed Bauer as the pride of his department, a devoted officer needlessly gunned down while trying to tackle Legghette, a cowardly criminal who opened fire out of fear cops would discover his bulletproof vest, his cocaine and his 9 mm Glock.
  
  But a defense lawyer painted Bauer’s death as just the opposite: Bauer was the one who was aggressive and out of control, and Legghette was just a low-level “street hustler” who acted in self-defense when a man he did not know was a police officer attacked him out of nowhere.

Because a police commander, in full uniform, with cuffs out and radio blaring isn't readily identifiable as the police. To even present this defense in a courtroom is a slap at all law enforcement.

The trial continues all week. We're told by a few attendees that the judge has barred all weapons from the courtroom, so you have to check it in downstairs with the sheriff's before proceeding upstairs.

Motion Denied

Judge making the correct call:

• The foot pursuit that culminated in the daylight slaying of Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer began with a relatively minor infraction: Bauer’s accused killer was approached moments before the shooting for urinating in public, court hearings this week revealed.
  
  That was enough, though, to justify officers giving chase, a Cook County judge ruled Friday, setting the stage for [scumbag], 46, to stand trial for first-degree murder later this winter.
  
  In a series of recent hearings before Judge Erica Reddick, officers recounted the moments leading up to Bauer’s February 2018 death and [scumbag]’s arrest, including the initial approach by officers who noticed [scumbag] appearing to relieve himself on Lower Wacker Drive.
  
  [scumbag] took off running after police tried to stop him, sparking a downtown pursuit that Bauer ultimately joined. Bauer followed [scumbag] to a stairwell outside the Thompson Center, where [scumbag] allegedly shot the veteran officer six times.
  
  In an effort to block prosecutors from introducing the gun, drugs and body armor found on [scumbag] as evidence at the upcoming trial, his attorney, Scott Kamin, had argued that officers didn’t have legal justification to try to question [scumbag], let alone chase after him, for what amounted to an ordinance violation.
  
  But Reddick disagreed, finding that the officer was justified to try to question [scumbag] because he "reasonably believed he was urinating or about to urinate in a public setting.”

R.A.S. 101.

Exploiting Bauer

This is Rahm not "letting a crisis go to waste:"

• Lawmakers in Springfield will discuss gun safety Tuesday.
  
  A new bill that honors Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer will be introduced.
  
  Bauer was shot and killed on Feb. 13 while chasing a man who was wearing body armor and had an extended magazine in his handgun.
  
  The new legislation would ban the sale of body armor and high-capacity magazines to anyone except police officers, licensed security guards and members of the military. It would also require gun dealers in Illinois to be licensed.
  

Rahm's puppet is going to Springfield to not let "a crisis go to waste:"

• Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson will travel to Springfield to testify in support of the state bill.
  
  “I am all for Americans who have legal rights to own firearms only, but you can not convince me that high-capacity magazines are needed in the city," said Johnson. "As a legal gun owner, you can't convince me you need an AR-15 in the streets of Chicago, you just won’t convince me of those things."

None of which has anything to do with Commander Bauer. Last we heard, there were all sorts of rifles being used on the west and south sides of Chicago, so the law is failing. And the CPD deploys officers with multiple round magazines for pistols and 30 round magazines for rifles just to keep up with criminals. So it's obvious Ed is being used as a propaganda tool.

As far as we know, the Commander didn't volunteer any opinions on gun ownership, but we know he said, clearly and eloquently, that keeping repeat offenders behind bars was the primary driver behind lowering the crime rate. But we don't see that Bill being introduced anywhere for some reason.

It isn't the legal gun owners brandishing and using the weapons. Punishing the law abiding for the actions of the criminals doesn't seem to make sense, does it? And doing it in the name of a dead cop is truly shameful.

Prosecution Rests

Bauer trial:

• Cook County prosecutors Wednesday rested their case against Shomari Legghette, the gunman who allegedly murdered Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer in 2018.
  
  Cook County Medical Examiner Dr. Ponni Arunkumar was the final witness called by the state, and spent about an hour on the stand cataloguing Bauer’s six gunshot wounds.
  
  Jurors saw a handful of autopsy photos that were flashed on a courtroom monitoring screen. The three aisles in the courtroom gallery reserved for Bauer’s family were empty.

Scumbag is scheduled to take the stand Thursday and attempt to excuse his murder as "self-defense." It might be good to have a strong showing Thursday in court. If you're in the building, stop by. At the very least, the family might appreciate it when this walking pile of shit spouts his lies.

#29

Commander Bauer's star was retired today:

• The No. 29 star of Cmdr. Paul Bauer, which he received when he attained the rank of captain, was placed by his wife, Erin, and teenage daughter, Grace, in a glass cabinet alongside those of some 500 other Chicago police officers who died while serving the city.
  
  Bauer was the highest-ranking Chicago cop to be killed in the line of duty in decades when he was fatally shot outside the Thompson Center in the Loop on the day before Valentine’s Day. The gold star Bauer was given when he became commander of the Near North patrol district was presented to his family.

RIP Sir.

Judge Reddick, Squash This Quick

This is an insult and most likely illegal:

• An attorney for a four-time felon charged in the killing of Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer said in court Wednesday that he is exploring an argument that Bauer was shot in self-defense — a tactic that would surely prove controversial in the high-profile case.
  
  Attorney Scott Kamin, representing Shomari Legghette, requested access to Bauer’s disciplinary and training records in preparing his defense.
  
  Cook County Judge Erica Reddick said she would review the records in private before deciding if they would be relevant to the defense.
  
  In raising the need for the records, Kamin noted that Bauer and Legghette were alone together at the bottom of a stairwell outside the Thompson Center at the time of the shooting, so “there is a question of self-defense,” he said.

Except there is no provision for "self-defense" where an arrest is concerned.

Persons are REQUIRED BY LAW to submit to an arrest and then seek redress via the civil process should said arrest be determined to unlawful. Otherwise, everyone will be resisting on the street for even petty offenses and the law of the jungle will apply - with a lot more people getting shot.

Officers at court registered their disgust with this line of defense:

• The comment earned murmurs of disdain from police officers and civilians who routinely pack the courtroom for hearings for Legghette at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. The group remains standing for the duration of each hearing as a show of support for the slain commander.

This better get squashed quickly, unless you want a wholesale fetal movement to take hold across the State.

Special Ed Loses His Mind

Again:

• Don’t count on running into Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson at your local multiplex to catch a screening of the Chicago-set remake of “Death Wish.”
  
  The Bruce Willis movie is “not the type of narrative we want for our city,” Johnson said Friday, criticizing MGM for releasing the violent revenge fantasy so soon after the killing of Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer in the Loop.
  
  “It’s unfortunate,” Johnson told WLS-AM 890’s Bill Cameron on Friday when he was asked about the timing of the release of the movie, which opens with the downtown killing of a police officer. “But of course I don’t think Hollywood really pays attention to that type of thing.”

Hollywood is a business Ed. Movies are planned and filmed a year, sometimes more in advance. Publicity screenings, posters, press releases, tours...Rahm's brother could explain it all to you, but they don't really care about local conditions seeing as how they're running a world-wide empire.

And what does a four-time felon murdering Commander Bauer have to do with a remake of a doctor who suffers a family loss at the hands of a recidivist criminal and embarks on a path of revenge when the justice system fails him? Is this somehow going to inspire Mrs. Bauer to take up arms and start executing criminals? She could run for mayor on a platform like that. Unless you're admitting that the release of violent criminals without adequate punishment onto Chicago streets might actually be a bad thing, despite what Dart, Prickwrinkle, Evans and Rahm are telling everyone?

Side note: Critics are panning this remake, with something like a 15% positive rating on assorted sites. However, test audiences are giving it an 80% positive rating, and many are calling it a "must see" revenge flick. We're all for seeing the guilty punished along more biblical lines.

Cranky Commander

Is he putting it all on the line? Or is he doing what he's told?

• Arrests are up from last year but what happens after an arrest is what frustrates the commander of downtown Chicago’s 18th police district. Commander Paul Bauer says there is a “high bar to prosecution” in Cook County, requiring Chicago police to get approval from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office before a suspect can be charged.
  
  
  “Sometimes they want to come out and...talk to the victim,” said Bauer at the annual meeting of River North Residents Association. “If you think about it, we’re sometimes victimizing this person twice. You just got your phone snatched from you. You got knocked down. Now you’re going to be in the station. You got to stay here for another couple hours until the State’s Attorney gets out here.”
  
  [...] According to Bauer, 75 percent of the crime in the 18th district is theft-related, whether it’s theft from a building or theft from a person, including a suspect who, while riding a bicycle, recently swiped mobile phones from people in River North.

If this guy is like most commanders, he's never had an original thought in his life, and criticizing Foxxx's office isn't going to earn him any love from that part of the Machine...unless this is part of an on-going feud behind the scenes.

Rahm has to realize that 018 is going under, and it's going to go faster if tourists keep getting mugged. Is someone making waves among the business community who have noticed the long-term trends in the profit margins and Rahm is reminding the County side that a deserted downtown is in no one's interests?

Soccer Club Event

Honoring Paul Bauer:

• The Chicago Police Soccer Club is hosting a tournament in Chicago May 3-4 and all CPD players will be wearing uniforms with the number 29 in honor of Commander Paul Bauer. We will also be selling these shirts at  https://cpdsoccer.itemorder.com/sale  The shirts are $20 and all profits made will be donated to the Bauer family. The online store will stay open until March 26 at which time all orders will be printed and shipped. We’re trying to get the word out to raise as much money as we can for the family. Thank you!

Jerseys at the embedded link above. Mark the date.

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Disgusting Article

We aren't going to quote it, but the link is here. Chicago Magazine spends way too much time attempting to explain the actions of a career criminal who ended up murdering Commander Bauer. The authors attempt to soften it up by interspersing information about Bauer, but then they attempt to draw parallels between Bauer and his killer. Why the fuck would anyone do that?

We don't really give a rat's ass about his difficult upbringing. Plenty of people had it worse (or better) and most of them didn't end up with extensive felony records, prison careers and being a net drain on society for their existences - oxygen thieves to be mildly polite. Pretty much no one is going to miss this piece of shit when he shuffles off into oblivion.

This quote...:

• We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. - Ronald Reagan

...ought to be studied by more than a few "journalists" and their editors.

Update to Anti-Police Hater

The jewelry store owner who was bashing the funeral of Commander Bauer is still at it, though under a new name:

• The jewelry store lady Sherri Bourdage that bashed the funeral of Cmdr. Bauer has changed her name on fb to Sherri Crisan.
  
  She is now on fb attacking the son of a line of duty death officer.

She also changed the name of her store:

• Update: The name of the business has been changed to "I Do Pearls".
  
  Also, Yelp has removed comments related to her Facebook posting.

Adjust your shopping plans accordingly. Mention it around town, too.

Three Years

Not the justice we'd prefer to see:

• A decorated military veteran who sold firearms without a license — including the Glock used to kill Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer — was sentenced Thursday to about three years in prison in federal court in Wisconsin.
  
  Thomas Caldwell, 68, has significant physical and mental health challenges and has ended his obsession with guns, according to his attorney. Still, the feds say he had been warned by authorities to stop selling weapons without a license.
  
  He refused to fill out an application for a Federal Firearms License because it was “too much paperwork,” prosecutors said.
  
  “Caldwell did not kill Chicago Police Commander Bauer and he should not (be) held accountable for doing so,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy O’Shea wrote in a memo filed Tuesday with the court in Madison. “The way Caldwell sold firearms, however, made a tragedy almost inevitable.”

The "...almost inevitable" finding should result in massive civil liability. It isn't going to heal any wounds, but it might be a warning to others.

Scumbag Remains Silent

Closing arguments tomorrow:

• [Scumbag]’s lawyer had promised jurors that the man accused of killing Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer would take the stand and tell them what really happened in the Thompson Center plaza in 2018.
  
  But attorney Scott Kamin (also a scumbag - SCC) rested his case Thursday afternoon without calling [Scumbag] to testify in his own defense.
  
  [Scumbag] had been expected to tell jurors that he did not know Bauer was a police officer, and that he fired in self-defense after a strange man chased and started to attack him, Kamin said as the trial began last week. He was also expected to say that after he opened fire, he heard someone else fire a gun.

Can the prosecution ask the judge to tell the jury to disregard all of the defense's opening statement as pretty much none of it was supported during the trial? The lawyer promised one thing and didn't deliver. Now, we know lawyers are typically liars, and constantly over-promise, but to present a theory in opening statements and then to completely neglect even offering a scintilla of evidence to back it up....it should be specifically disregarded in jury deliberations.

Police Week Begins

Four names go on the wall this year:

• Four fallen Chicago Police Department officers were honored in Washington, D.C. Sunday as National Police Week begins.
  
  CPD Commander Paul Bauer and Officers Samuel Jimenez, Eduardo Marmolejo and Conrad Gary all died in the line of duty in 2018.
  
  The families of the fallen officers can now see the names of their loved ones on the National Police Officers Memorial wall.
  
  Several events were held for the families to commemorate the lives of the officers, including a wreath laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

If you could, take time out of your week to remember the fallen in your own way.

How Many Chances?

And as this article asks, "At what price?"

• Last November, a deranged 26-year-old man, Devin Patrick Kelley, opened fire on worshipers inside a church in Sutherland, Texas, killing 26. High-casualty mass shootings are tragic in human terms but anomalous statistically, at least in terms of the portion of total U.S. homicides that they represent. The vast majority of murders, which take place disproportionately in America’s low-income and minority neighborhoods, don’t get nearly the same attention. The Texas church shooting does have an important point of commonality with the majority of American murders, however: its perpetrator had a troubling criminal record. The deincarceration movement, which would return thousands of convicts to American streets, presents a threat to public safety. Repeat offenders already commit a substantial portion of the nation’s violent crime—according to one study, 53 percent of killers have at least one prior felony conviction. They will be walking the streets in greater numbers if deincarceration advocates have their way.
  
  Consider a few examples. In October 2017, Radee Prince shot and killed three people in Maryland. Prince, it turns out, had 42 prior arrests and 15 prior felony convictions. About a month earlier, a police officer in Yonkers was shot in the face by an 18-year-old assailant not unknown to police. He had recently been sentenced to probation and classified as a “youthful offender,” despite being caught with an illegal firearm, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a machete, and brass knuckles. Earlier in 2017, Baltimore police named Cortez Wall, an 18-year-old murder suspect, “Public Enemy No. 1.” Wall had already been convicted of a gun charge, for which he was on probation. That didn’t stop a Maryland judge from releasing him on bail on a drug charge; he had allegedly murdered someone before his release, though police did not yet suspect him. Had bail been denied, Wall would have been in custody when he became the prime suspect in the deadly shooting.

The final example in the article is the murderer of Commander Bauer. The article continues with cold, hard facts that show recidivist felons commit the vast majority of crimes, including murder. And it also points out that "progressives" like the current city and county administrations are driving the crime rate solely through their asinine policies.

Some people don't deserve to walk the streets. Some don't deserve to see the sunshine. And some don't deserve to breathe the same air you and we do.

Bauer 3rd Annual Benefit

Late notice, but it's happening tomorrow night (click for larger version):

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Another $50 From Fran

Good lord Fran, just pay the chaplains for pete's sake:

• A political and emotional brush fire is smoldering within a grieving Chicago Fire Department over a national anthem protest that marred a charity football game dedicated to the memory of two fallen Chicago heroes.
  
  Camron McGarity, an African-American firefighter, kneeled while the Star Spangled Banner was being played before the CFD Blaze faced off against the Chicago Police Department’s Enforcers last Saturday in the eighth annual “First Responders Bowl.”
  
  A photo of the protest clearly shows the firefighter, wearing the No. 7 jersey, kneeling on the sidelines while players on either side stood at attention dressed in bright red jerseys and matching red pants.
  
  Fired Chicago Police Superintendent-turned-mayoral-challenger Garry McCarthy, who was at the game at Brother Rice High School on the Southwest Side, said the solo protest generated plenty of “grumbling” among the crowd of roughly 1,000, in part, because the game was dedicated to the memory of slain 18th District Commander Paul Bauer and former dive team member Juan Bucio, who died during a Memorial Day rescue on the Chicago River.

CFD is making noise about banning him from the team, and since it's a club sport (not an officially sanctioned CFD organization), we imagine they're completely within their charters to do so. It doesn't make him any less of a dick for being inappropriate at a moment meant to honor a deceased firefighter diver.

Four Time Felon

Isn't it far past time for a "three strikes" law, not to mention a "truth in sentencing" law?

• A repeat felon with a decades-long rap sheet was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder of a police officer in the fatal shooting of Cmdr. Paul Bauer.
  
  Shomari Legghette, 44, is also charged with aggravated use of a weapon by a felon and drug possession, officials say.
  
  [...]
  
  Legghette’s adult criminal record includes convictions for armed robbery, resisting a correctional officer and felony drug possession.
  
  In 1998, he robbed a Forest Park couple in their driveway. Legghette claimed he was urinating when an acquaintance nicknamed “Trouble” pointed a pistol at a man in his car and ordered his wife to turn over her valuables.
  
  Legghette was arrested after getting away in a car and running from police. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the holdup, according to documents in his unsuccessful appeal.
  
  More recently, Legghette was charged in 2014 with selling heroin to a man. Five baggies of the drug and $138 were found on him. He was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison.

That's quite a criminal history there. And it didn't stop him from getting another gun. Why is that do you suppose?

And finally, this bit of nauseating theater:

• Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx stressed the weight of the charges against Legghette.
  
  “There is no more serious offense than the killing of a police officer in the line of duty,” she said.

The single biggest hurdle to getting repeat felons charged and keeping them in prison for the sentences imposed by State Law is the Cook County States Attorney's office. And to have her up there spouting off about "serious offense[s]" is an insult to crime victims across the County.