Wow

Just wow. Seriously:

• "We've got a domestic situation!" exclaimed Phil Strazzante, a Chicago police recruit, as he quickly sized up the scene — a man struggling with a naked woman just inches away from a knife lying on the floor.
  
  But this was no crime scene. Strazzante and 15 other recruits were checking out "Tarquin and Lucretia," a painting by 16th century Italian artist Tintoretto, as part of an unusual exercise Thursday at the Art Institute of Chicago. The aim was to teach soon-to-be patrol officers to sharpen their observational skills when they respond to shootings, robberies or traffic crashes.
  
  The department started the museum visits a couple of years ago but discontinued them until recently. The afternoon session was one part of the recruits' months-long training.

We're all for art appreciation, but this sounds more like a field trip to no apparent purpose. There has to be some other way to enhance recruits observational skills? We remember the gym instructors taking us for a run through a number of not-so-nice neighborhoods, then a few alleyways and then demanding to know the address of the building we were behind, how many people were on the sidewalk out front and what the car on the corner looked like. That was an eye opener to say the least.

Media Influence on Sheeple

This is ridiculous:

• As Chicagoans put away their snowblowers and "dibs" chairs — for now — city officials can look back on the Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011 and congratulate themselves: An overwhelming majority of residents think the city did a good job responding to the storm, according to a Tribune/WGN poll.
  
  Nearly three-quarters of the Chicagoans surveyed — 73 percent — gave the city an overall passing grade for how it handled the storm.
  
  In fact, when it came to the storm's most conspicuous consequence — the hundreds of vehicles snowbound along Lake Shore Drive — respondents were more likely to blame the stranded drivers than the city.

Almost 1,000 cars abandoned on Lake Shore Drive and the city gets a passing grade? Not only as passing grade, but the respondents blame the stranded drivers?

We don't know about you, but if we see an entrance ramp open to a main thoroughfare, we assume that the road is passable, drivable and safe for us to proceed on. We mean, why else would you leave a road open?

But Shortshanks and Tommy Thumb and everyone else started the blame game early and said the citizens should have known better than to drive on a road for pete's sake. Why think you could get anywhere on a road? The media ran with it and all of the sudden, the city did a fine job during a blizzard.

Now imagine if you had a major newspaper or two making political endorsements for a candidate that says things like "politicians shouldn't trade on their connections to make money," but somehow forget to ask that same candidate how he made $18 million for under two years work for a connected buyout of a power company. Or how he got paid another few hundred thousand for attending just 6 meetings for a government agency that precipitated the mortgage meltdown. Or how his enemies list rivals that of Richard Nixon.

Oh wait, you don't have to imagine it. It's happening right now and the object of the media affection is approaching 50% of the vote total from people who don't know any better.

Smooth Move

What could possibly happen if you don't have your own technicians in house?

• The whole arrest system for the entire city crashed last night. Officers sitting in stations because no one could process prisoners for hours. No one would make the decision to revert to paper. Word is that the ISD Commander (JL) [laid] off all the civilians that worked on the system and farmed the work out to an outside company. They took forever to respond. I think when I left work at 0800, they were still down. So we are shorthanded, and those that still make arrests are sitting around wasting time because the system they use to process prisoners is down.
  If they don't think the system used to process prisoners is important enough that they farm it out to outsiders, what is the message they are sending out to us? Just saying. Stay safe.

No arrest reports, no photographs, no fingerprints, lines of prisoners headed out the door. It was an amazingly bad display of bureaucratic incompetence and no one in charge willing to make the call to go to paper reports for the moment. But hey, we saved money somewhere, right?

It's a Miracle!

Lura Lynn Ryan has returned home from the hospital and appears to be doing well around a month after she was at death's door and managed to get some face time with the imprisoned ex-governor. Thompson wouldn't have lied to everyone, would he?

Who's Got the Inside Track?

Next up - an insider:

• Picking a new police superintendent, getting more cops on the street and looking at where they're deployed will be considerations for Chicago's new mayor.

  Mayor Richard Daley's successor also will have to figure out a way to deal with the Chicago Police Department's perception problem: Statistics show the city is safer than it has been in decades, yet high-profile, persistent gun violence in some neighborhoods has blunted that message.

  Police Superintendent Jody Weis has served as a political football during the campaign, with the four top mayoral contenders saying they won't renew his contract.

  Candidates Gery Chico, Miguel del Valle and Carol Moseley Braun say they'll name someone from within the department's ranks.

So who has the inside track? Rumors are that our leaders are going to take a page from the "Chicago Code." What does everyone else hear?

Saving Money by Fighting Cases

As advocated by coppers for years:

• In 2009, Chicago’s court system was hopelessly clogged by cases alleging police misconduct. For years, the city’s Department of Law had watched as the number of misconduct allegations crept upward. With the increasing strain on municipal resources, Chicago’s attorneys were forced to settle many cases out of court, which reflected poorly on the city’s bottom line and police force.

  But Chicago found a somewhat counterintuitive way to save money and save face -- by taking every single police misconduct case to court.

The result?

• The move is working better than anyone had anticipated. In the first year after the city began taking every case to court, the number of federal civil rights cases filed against police officers dropped by almost 50 percent. In addition, cases brought against officers are being voluntarily dismissed at higher rates. In 2009, about 18 percent of plaintiffs voluntarily dropped their case. By October 2010, nearly 46 percent of plaintiffs dropped their case. The Department of Law told the city that the results are "nothing short of astonishing."

Astonishing only to anyone who wasn't paying attention for years. It is a simple fact of economics - if you reward misbehavior by plaintiffs, you are going to get more of it. If you fight it, and fight it early and wholeheartedly, you will get less. In this case, a whole lot less.

There is no doubt in our minds that certain law firms were getting a lot of business steered in their direction by the lure of easy payouts from the city. And we don't doubt more than a few of those settlement dollars found their way into certain political campaigns. We're glad someone finally saw the light and shut off this spigot.

St. Baldrick's Event

Word is the fundraising is a little bit behind last year's totals. The economy is rough and times are tough all over, but this is a worthwhile cause that has always proved to be a good time:

• St. Baldrick's is one month away and it's not too late to sign up. Come join us on Friday, March 11, 2011 at the Academy, Area 2 or Area 5 from 0700 - 1700 hours as we raise money to help fund research for a cure to childhood cancer. Just go to THIS LINK RIGHT HERE!!! and choose the location that's best for you. Click on "participate" under participants and get yourself signed up. Hope to see you on March 11th!

You can sponsor a "shavee" if you're attached to your own locks. Ask around they're out there collecting pledges.

The County Axe Starts Trimming

Preckwinkle versus Alvarez, and so far, Preckwinkle appears to be winning:

• Just a day after State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez told the Cook County Board that budget cuts would severely impact her office, she issued pink slips to more than 100 office staff members.

• Most of the 101 workers were called throughout the day Wednesday. The remainder will be called by Thursday, Daly said.

  Seven court reporters were told they were being laid off last week, for a total of 108 job losses so far, Daly said.

• Fifty-eight assistant state’s attorneys and 20 investigator positions could also be eliminated to meet the 8 percent reduction Alvarez is willing to cut in her budget, Daly said. But Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has demanded a 10 percent cut.

So what will be the effect on court operations? Fifty-eight ASA's probably means no "third chair" in anything but the big trials. Twenty investigators means a whole bunch of witnesses and summonses don't get delivered. The savings in gas and vehicles might be substantial, but the always inefficient court operations may grind to near immovability in short order, and a system that can't even convict murderers in 66% of its cases may see that number climb even higher in other categories.

ACLU Criticizes Cameras

Listen to Shortshanks spout his bullshit:

• Chicago’s network of more than 10,000 public and private surveillance cameras has solved crimes, prevented police misconduct and made residents feel safe, Mayor Daley said Tuesday, rejecting the American Civil Liberties Union’s call for a moratorium on new cameras and strict controls on existing ones.

  One day after the ACLU proposed reining in the Big Brother program, Daley talked about expanding it to prevent senior citizens living in high-crime neighborhoods from becoming prisoners in their homes.

  “Don’t you think we should be concerned for seniors that someone is standing out there at 2 o’clock in the morning or 8 o’clock in the morning? A senior is going to church in the morning. Don’t you think that senior should be protected as he or she leaves a building or their home?” Daley said after ribbon-cutting ceremonies at a new senior citizens complex in Pilsen.

Once again, cameras don't prevent anything. That armored car robbery in 011 last week? Directly under a POD camera. It didn't deter anything and didn't even provide decent footage of the event. Instead of everyone "thinking about the children," Shortshanks uses the elderly as his crutch for spending millions of dollars to prevent nothing.

You know what protects the senior citizen? Cops on the streets. Or concealed weapons on the senior citizen. The ACLU is worried about abuses of the cameras and one of our regular e-mailers from the west side tells us that Penny's Pod Room isn't allowing regular citizens in to view cameras until they undergo training on Fourth Amendment issues as we do. Seems only reasonable.

What worries us is the ACLU taking a very close interest in anything to do with the Pods. We figure it's only a matter of time before they file some sort of lawsuit against the Department over camera usage and some copper who was only trying to generate activity for some mission is dragged into Federal court and finds his house is on the line for civil rights violations.

Ballots are Arriving

Vote damnit.

Do some research, talk to your coworkers, get behind some candidates. Then when it's all over, stand behind the leadership, attend some meetings and see if we can't protect the things we've negotiated for over the years.

It's going to be more important than ever very shortly.

Another $25 Million Pissed Away

Who the hell does the accounting for the city? They really need to have their asses kicked:

• Chicago’s public pension funds, already reeling from years of inadequate contributions, took another financial hit when Mayor Richard Daley’s administration and the city’s unions agreed to require workers to take unpaid furlough days, according to a report released today by the city Office of the Inspector General.

  Under the agreement, city workers were not required to make pension contributions for the furlough days even though they continued to accrue benefits. The city, meanwhile, gave itself a pass on another $13 million in payments for its share of pension contributions for the furlough days.

  That means city pension funds were shortchanged nearly $25 million over the three-year period, at a time when funding had fallen to levels that threaten the retirement security of thousands of policemen, firefighters, teachers and municipal employees.

But somehow, this is all our fault?

We will repeat ourselves once again:

• we contribute 9% to our own pensions - that contribution is about to climb to 12%
• the city has refused to increase their pension contribution for almost 30 years now
• we cannot collect Social Security
• after 20 years service, we get 50% of our salary - under $40K a year.

But we're the reason for the pension crisis according to Rahm?

Here Comes the Cold

Once again, we point out, it's February in Chicago:

• The Chicago area's latest weather challenge is moving in this morning with arctic chill and breezy winds expected to linger through Thursday.
  
  A wind chill advisory is in effect from 9 p.m. today until noon Wednesday, with wind chill values today reaching as low 5 below to 15 below early this morning and 20 below to 25 below tonight. Wind chills at the latter level will cause frostbite to exposed skin within 30 minutes. Today's high temperature will be 10 to 14 above.

Just to show how goofy the media is making all this, next Monday is predicted to break 40 degrees. So do we really have to get everyone into a tizzy over a day or two of cold?

Chicago Code Reviews

It's kind of funny when a completely fictional character is credited with having more balls than the actual superintendent.

It's hilarious when we all know it's true.

You can use this post for critiques of the show. Frankly, we didn't see much that caught our interest. Whoever was "consulting" on the show missed a lot of opportunities for inside jokes and veiled criticisms which would have endeared it to audiences familiar with Chicago.

Predict This!

Larry Yellin gets to the bottom of everything with hard hitting questions and a serious investigation:

• Yellen: Have you had an example in the last few months, since the predictive analytics group was put together, where you predicted a crime would occur in a particular neighborhood, and you were able to get there much quick than without the group? For example, where this person said, based on my data, we're going to have something within the next week in this neighborhood because it was busy at this time last year?

  Weis: That's hard to measure, because if we get there ahead of time, you are able to prevent it. When you talk to Brett [Goldstein, Director of Predictive Analytics], though, where he can cover you, is where he has anticipated some areas by a block, and like three hours afterward, there's been a shooting two hours away from where he actually thought there would be something.

Well that's a big fat "no" to a softball question. Yellen gives J-Fled and company a huge window of opportunity to demonstrate any tangible result, any definitive incident to justify the expenditure of how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary, software, programming along with god knows how many man-hours and they come up with zero? Hell, we predicted that exact outcome here months ago. How about paying us a Director's salary, giving us a corner office and a staff of dozens?

The fact is you cannot predict random events. Most crime is opportunistic and, yes, random. You might be able to spot trends or similar crimes over a period of time ranging from days to weeks to months, especially in the cases of serial killers, rapists and some robberies, but cops have been doing that without "predictive analytics" for decades now. Even then, it relies mostly on the criminal falling into habitual behavior (comfortable surroundings, repeated successes, available time to commit the crime and available victims to confront). These aren't "GATTACA" or "Minority Report" type scenarios full of genetic markers and "precogs" dealing with preordained outcomes.

And you have to love how Weis comes right out and says, "That's hard to measure, because if we get there ahead of time, you are able to prevent it." So let's get this straight....

• If we make an arrest, we must have been successful in being on scene;
• If we don't make an arrest, we must have been just as successful because we prevented a crime from occurring

Amazing. There is no downside for J-Fled or the Crystal Ball Unit. Does anyone else smell what this jackass is shoveling?

Rahm Admonishes the Help

This ought to be bigger than it is:

• Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police and the state's largest public service workers union came out Friday afternoon with stern statements admonishing Rahm Emanuel over a new television ad.
  
  In the spot, dubbed "Service," Emanuel vows to be mindful of taxpayers' wallets.
  
  "We're going to deliver a service to the taxpayers. We're going to get them the best price for what they pay for," Emanuel says in the ad. "And that means making sure that everyone that works for the city government knows that they're actually a public servant representing and helping the people that pay them."
  
  It's four words in that phrase -- "actually a public servant" -- with which the groups take issue.

After five police line of duty deaths and three firefighter line of duty deaths, we don't think we need a lecture from Rahm Emanuel about "service" or anything else for that matter. And the crack about "get[ting] them (taxpayers) the best price for what they pay for" reeks of insincerity.

First up, we are taxpayers. In fact, we probably pay more in taxes than most of the people we serve. And for our troubles, we will shortly be paying around 12% of our salaries into an underfunded pension that if we're lucky, may provide us with 50% of our pay after 20 years - assuming it exists by then.

And we're lectured by an asshole who preaches "public servants" shouldn't be using their connections to enrich themselves while collecting hundreds of thousands from Freddie Mac while attending 6 meetings a year as the mortgage industry dragged the economy into the ground, not to mention the millions from his ComEd work, none of which had anything to do with "connections" we're sure.

What a stroke.

CFD Retro

And someone is bitching?

• Chicago firefighters and paramedics will get $94 million in back pay dating back to June 30, 2007 — bankrolled by debt likened to “borrowing to pay for last year’s groceries” — thanks to a contract ratified Monday.

  “We’re very concerned. It’s enormously expensive to borrow to pay for operating costs. Future taxpayers are gonna have to pay, not only for their own city services but debt on services they did not receive,” said Civic Federation President Laurence Msall.

  “It’s similar to borrowing to pay for last year’s groceries. It demonstrates a failure to plan and leave aside adequate funds” for an expense the city knew was coming.

Well gee Larry. If someone, namely Shortshanks, had negotiated in good faith and hadn't delayed countless meetings and truly wanted to wrap things up in a timely manner, then the city wouldn't have been burdened with this completely predictable "expense," the same way it was with the police contract.

Airport Lawsuit

This could get interesting:

• A judge today ordered Chicago Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino to testify in a pre-trial deposition in connection with a lawsuit United and American airlines filed against the city over financing the expansion of O’Hare International Airport.

  Cook County Circuit Judge Richard Billik denied a motion by the city’s attorneys saying that Andolino is too busy to testify and that other city aviation officials could fill in for her. A date for Andolino to give her deposition was not immediately set.

  The airlines are seeking to stop Chicago from selling about $1 billion in bonds, without airline approval, to start building the final phase of new O’Hare runways, at a projected cost of $3.4 billion. The airlines contend the city's borrowing plan to finance construction will cost the carriers $7.7 billion in debt service.

We had never heard of the "too busy to testify" defense until today. We'll have to try that on for size one day soon. but here's a woman, politically connected as all hell, attempting to saddle the city and airlines with a near insurmountable amount of debt just to keep connected construction firms in business.

We can see exactly why Shortshanks and his people don't want her testifying.

Running to Remember

A good cause to run for:

• As his knees buckled with five miles to go in the half-marathon, Chicago police Detective Greg Jacobson focused on the five colleagues he had recently lost in the line of duty.

  Mile 9 was for Sgt. Alan Haymaker, mile 10 for Officer Thomas Wortham IV, mile 11 for Officer Thor Soderberg, mile 12 for Officer Michael Bailey and the last one for Officer Michael Flisk, Jacobson said, his voice breaking with emotion.

  "Whenever you're in trouble, you always count on another officer coming to your help," he said. "At mile 8 1/2, I was in a little bit of trouble so I called on these guys to get me through it — and they did."

All of the events this year, St. Jude, The Run to Remember, Police Memorial Week here and in Washington, the motorcycle runs, all of them are going to be tinged with memories of a very painful year just past.

FOP Pushing Hard for Chico

A couple of events coming up:

• There will be a First Responders Rally for Mayoral Candidate Gery Chico on Wednesday, February 9th. The rally will take place at 115 Bourbon Street from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. Come out and meet and greet one on one with our next Mayor. Tell, text, or just bring your friends.

A comment said that tickets were $25 and of that, $10 was headed to one of the Police Memorial Funds, but the FOP site doesn't say which one. Can anyone verify?

Also, this one:

• Come out and support the FOP endorsed candidate for the Mayor of the City of Chicago, Gery Chico.
  
  The Lodge will be hosting a phone bank at the FOP Hall to support Gery Chico's campaign for Mayor. This event will take place on Thursday, February 10th from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm.
  
  All members are invited to volunteer and attend this event. Refreshments will be served. Please contact Mary Pat at 312-733-7776 to volunteer.

Whatever it takes to get Chico into the runoff.

Another Secret Meeting

J-Fled had another secret meeting at 35th Street. Seems he's been told he can stay until the new mayor is inaugurated at the beginning of May. No word on how that contract extension is going to play out.

But seriously? The city is going to pay something like $25,000 a month if the terms of the previous contract are intact. We'd be better off if Shortshanks just turned over Department to some of the existing exempts and told them not to touch anything until the new guy got in. He'd save the taxpayers some money for the first time ever.