PO Hester Scott Cleared

Gee, why couldn't they do this years ago?

• Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy on Tuesday ordered the badge posthumously restored to a Chicago Police officer allegedly murdered by her grandson.

  That means slain Officer Hester Scott can be buried with her police star.

• “Officer Scott’s star will be returned for her funeral,” Police Department spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton wrote in an e-mail to the Chicago Sun-Times.

  Pressed to explain why, Hamilton wrote, “Officer Scott was a 25-year veteran of this department and a murder victim, and the superintendent felt this was the right thing to do for her and her family.”

No word on the "right thing" after she was cleared by DCFS investigators. IPRA, of course, had no comment.

On a side note, whomever is posting all the BS about how the president of the FOP "got it done" and how we "owe" him some sort of apology for imagined offenses, check out the timeline of his meeting with McJerseyShore and then check out the blog postings. If anything, our readers and the postings derived from our readers laid out what would eventually be the end result seen in the paper Tuesday. We allowed a lot of crap to go through our comments during the last election. Don't take that as some sort of permission to come on here and start the new campaign running on some imagined record of success. You sound like Obama.

Start Growing Your Hair

Well, maybe not this soon, but St. Baldrick's is coming up quick:

• Once again, the St. Baldrick's Organization has requested the assistance of the men and women of the Chicago Police Department in 2012. For those unfamiliar, St. Baldrick's is an organization that raises money that goes towards research of a cure for childhood cancer. Participants agree to shave their heads in support of the kids who lose their hair in chemo treatments, and seek pledges for doing so. Participants with longer hair are also able to donate hair longer than 12" to be used by "Locks of Love" to make wigs for the patients that do lose their hair.
  
  The 2012 event will be held on Friday, March 23, 2012 from 7:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. at the Training Academy, Area 2, and Area 5 and we’re very excited because if we stay on pace with previous year’s fund-raising totals, we should surpass $500,000 raised to help stop this terrible disease that affects so many!
  
  Please go to www.stbaldricks.org and under "find an event" type in Chicago Police in the venue box and choose your location. If you are returning from last year, simply use your login information and click on register for 2012’s event.
  
  Should you have any questions or want to find out about volunteer opportunities, please contact: Bill O'Reilly for the Academy event at chromedome1269@sbcglobal.net, Bill Murphy for the Area 2 event at 50murf@comcast.net, and Anne Zamzow for the Area 5 event at anne.zamzow@chicagopolice.org.
  
  Thanks for reading and we look forward to a great turnout and going past that $500,000 mark on the 23rd.
  
  Bill O'Reilly, Bill Murphy and Anne Zamzow

Their target this year is to break the $500,000 mark. With enough lead time and plenty of participants, we're sure they can manage it.

Shortshanks to Harvard

In any other circumstances, he'd be there scrubbing toilets and sweeping floors. Now?

• Former Mayor Richard M. Daley needed three tries to pass the bar exam. He was once so inarticulate that he took public speaking lessons to overcome that.

  Mayor Rahm Emanuel has trashed his predecessor and political mentor virtually every chance he gets, even though he never mentions Daley’s name in a negative light.

  But none of that has stopped Harvard, the nation’s most prestigious university, from offering Chicago’s longest-serving and now former mayor a “visiting fellowship” this fall.

Harvard just took a couple steps down from "prestigious" in our eyes.

Apple Picking in Evanston

Guess what's missing?

• Three people on bicycles tried to rob a Northwestern University student while he was talking on his cell phone on the South Quad, according to a campus alert.
  
  The student was behind Cahn Auditorium at about 10:40 p.m. Tuesday when three people approached on bicycles, officials said.
  
  Two of the people tried to grab his cell phone, but the student was able to hold on to it and the robbers fled, officials said.
  
  The student returned to his residence hall and alerted campus officials.
  
  Police searched the area but the student could not positively identify anyone, officials said. The police gave vague descriptions of the suspects, all males.

This just screams "gender profiling." No wonder 94% of the prison population is made up of males.

Willful Blindness

This one is so out of left field, we almost thought it was just a troll trying to start trouble regarding the meeting about closing 019:

• Scc, aside from that comment the meeting was positive. Im not a cop but my son is and I live in the 19th. Every officer is going to the 23rd. Every last one. I dont know how they can wiggle out of that. I am concerned with increased response times and the motivation of this move like everyone else but if what they said last night is true, as a citizen directly affected by this I can say it seems better than losing half our officers to "low income" districts. And your representative from the FOP did a phenomenal job, just thought your readers would like to know. I dont trust the city, but if what they said was true, neither the officers involved, nor the citizens have much to be concerned about. Now lets just see if they were telling the truth!

How can you tell if a boss/lawyer/politician is lying?

His lips are moving.

We don't think anyone believes that you can just combine two districts into one, there's just too much duplicated effort. The physical building itself wasn't built to house 500 plus people. This just seems like an artful lie to give Rahm some breathing room. Remember, this joker has a history of lying - Hiring a thousand cops? He meant "moving" a thousand cops, not hiring, all video and witness in existence to the contrary.

Rumors Abound

All sorts of stuff popping up:

• A very reliable source has informed me that IPRA (formerly OPS) has been instructed to re-investigate closed CR#s especially targeting officers of retirement age. This is being done in an effort to suspend/terminate officers before they can dip their hands in the city's pension fund. Be very careful out the soon to be retirees, IPRA is watching.

This comes up every so often, the re-opening of old cases, especially with the seven year window so generously provided to the city by the old Nolan Team. We can't imagine any memory improving over the preceding seven years, but in most cases, the CR's are revisited in order to enhance charges against officers and provide another pretext for firing such as was done in the Mearday case where the third officer had an old case reopened and was fired even though he was RDO during the incident in question.

Then there's this from the CFD Captain story:

• The reports of the officer that was attacked being severely injured are 100% true. He has a fracture of something or other. Just someone who was standing at the fax machine when it came through.

Now that everyone has had a chance to blow off steam, we'd remind all that a friendly rivalry between Police and Fire is no big deal. We've been assured by many Fire Fighters that they are as ashamed of Altman as we are pissed off about it. But McDoofus isn't going to say, "Boo!" about it, Hoff isn't allowed to say anything about it and Rahm could give a fuck - it works for him to have us at each others' throats. So until the officer files a complaint or the media starts asking some uncomfortable questions, don't expect anything to occur.

No Brainer

Wow. Someone said this was a bad idea and they actually listened:

• Jurors and law enforcement officials will be spared having to pay a parking fee at Cook County courthouses after all.

  County Board President Toni Preckwinkle had recommended that drivers pay a $4.75 daily charge at the courthouses as part of her budget proposal. Some county commissioners balked at the prospect of jurors having to pay to park while fulfilling a civic duty.

  On Tuesday, county officials announced jurors and law enforcement officers would get their parking validated instead.

We heard Preckwinkle is actually starting a "Bureau of Parking Validation" so she can have a few extra payrollers working the phones on Election Day.

CTA Battery on Video

This is what passes for entertainment in certain portions of society we guess:

• Oh, those fun-loving teenagers. Hanging out on the Red Line at Chicago. Punching out homeless guys on the platform. Laughing about it afterwards.

  Disgusting.

  Thank you to the woman who helped the victim.

  Fox News Chicago later reported the attack is part of a "game" called "Point him out, knock him out." Yep, more fun and games on the CTA.

Here's the link to the CTA Tattler site.



Disturbing to say the least.

Wysinger Hates Donuts

Everyone knows Al got promoted waaaaaay past his actual skill level. His connections even got him the Department's highest award in circumstances that could best be called "suspicious," especially in the face of dozens of other more worthy nominees. But this is just asinine:

• At a community meeting regarding the elimination of the 19th district tonight, First Deputy Wysinger said the plan was about efficiency and "keeping cops from hanging out in Dunkin Donuts" all night long. What an asshole.

Really Al? Have you even listened to the radio in the past, oh let's just say five years? We know there are slower "retirement districts" here and there, but even they are operating at half strength from five years ago. And the busy districts are humping all day and all night from call to call. But to go in front of a group of citizens worried about their local police coverage and toss out a gratuitous shot at your own people using the most stereotypical unoriginal slam in existence?

This is our second-in-command. The guy in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Department. This is our "leader" who's supposed to be steering the ship through some of the most tumultuous times next summer.

First up Al, how about a fucking apology? Second, maybe you could make a comment at the next meeting about "keeping gold star exempts from licking politicians balls and sniffing their assholes," you over-promoted meri-clout-orious hack.

Multiple Assailant Video

For some reason, this isn't getting any views on YouTube. We might as well give it a push:



Some of our commentators referenced this incident from a few days back and the Channel 5 News even mentioned it in passing. But no coverage. Channel 2 has a reporter trolling the YouTube comments looking for details of the incident, but we don't imagine they're looking to do a huge story on what really happened.

No Gunshot Detectors?

From the comment section:

• Has anyone anywhere ever got one of those Gunshot Detection calls?
  Or is that something else that the city didn’t pay the bill on.
  
  11/06/2011 01:06:00 PM
  
  Went to some camera class a couple of years ago and we were told the cameras no longer have gunshot detection. Haven't for a long time.

We noticed that the number of calls coming out, allegedly from the "gunshot detection system" had dropped off precipitously over a year or two ago. We figured, probably like everyone else, that they had finally fine tuned the damn things to be able to tell the difference between a gunshot and a car backfiring, a firework, or a dropped piece of construction debris.

Evidently, that probably would have cost too much, so we understand they mothballed the program.

Professional Law Enforcement?

This can't possibly be true, can it?

• OFF TOPIC: I work at 35th Street unfortunately...been trying to get out for a while. This female PO is really bad news. Yes she did send the naked pics to the Supt. which made him pissed at all of us because he thought it was a set up. She is now claiming that she is being sexually harassed. What a joke. Im sure this is not the last we hear from her

Not only does this detract from the organization as a whole, it paints an unflattering picture of the work environments that earned 35th & Michigan the moniker of "Fort Fellatio" from some of our cruder readers.

Misogynistic rantings will be deleted in this thread - keep it clean and/or subtle and the criticism limited to the matter at hand. Blanket statements regarding women on job will not make it to publication. This is an example of one out-of-control moron doing something stupid.

Monday Night Football

The line says Bears are underdogs by 8 points or so.

Cops Hurt in Wreck

As the article states, mere feet from the triple homicide a few nights ago:

• At least four people were injured, one seriously, following a traffic crash at a South Side intersection involving two Chicago police vehicles.
  
  Authorities didn't immediately state whether any police officers were hurt in the crash that happened near the intersection of 87th Street and Martin Luther King Drive at about 8:40 p.m.
  
  The crash involved two police vehicles, according to a witness.

Get well soon officers.

Blame Game

Reading about this story and talking to people we know, this is just pathetic:

• Police officer Hester Scott made a simple vow to friends and relatives who questioned the wisdom of continuing to raise a troubled grandson who’d caused her so much grief.

  “I’ll fight till my dying breath to turn his life around,” she told her sister Marlene Thursday night.

  Less than 24 hours later, prosecutors say, that promise had become a chilling prophecy.

And the truly horrible part:

• But her world collapsed when a mentally ill Keshawn accused her of abuse in August 2007, relatives said. Though the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services eventually dismissed the allegations, the children were taken out of her care for several months, and she was stripped of her police powers pending an investigation by the Independent Police Review Authority, they said.

  Four years later, she was still doing desk duty, had not had her gun or star returned to her, and was “living under a cloud” they said, urging IPRA to close it’s investigation and the department to posthumously restore Scott’s police powers so that she can be buried with her reputation intact.

  DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe said that Illinois law prevents him from discussing the history of any investigation into Scott and Perkins “out of respect for the accused minor.”

  But Chicago Police spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton confirmed that Scott had been stripped of her police powers. She referred all questions to IPRA, where general counsel Eric Muellenbach said no details on the case were immediately available Sunday.

If our comment sections are to be believed (and they are right on more often than not), they were holding Officer Scott on a BS allegation of an unregistered weapon - a weapon with transposed digits in the serial number. In other words, complete crap, but so very typical of IPRA.

All allegations had been dismissed by DCFS. The kid was a known psycho with mental problems. But his allegation kept Officer Scott stuck at callback even though there was never any proof of any malfeasance on her part. Great fucking system we've got there.

Killed Over Candy

We guess someone just had to do the "turkey leg murder" one better:

• A woman was pronounced dead this morning after being stabbed on Halloween by a male friend who became angry over a missing bag of candy, officials said.

  Maria Adams, 49, was stabbed with several steak knives about 2:30 p.m. Monday on the 7100 block of South Winchester Avenue in the West Englewood neighborhood on the South Side, police said.

  She was taken in critical condition to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where she was pronounced dead Saturday, police said.

We can hardly wait for the next one to top this.

More Wildings

It pops up here and there, but still, minimal coverage:

• Packs of male black offenders, 15-20 years of age, wildin downtown tonight. Three battery reports already taken at northwestern. Fleeing toward redline stations. Groups of 10-15. Be careful downtown.
  
  
• NBC 5 just said there is an unusual amount of police activity on the Mag Mile. They should several young male and females blacks running around the streets.

Someday, someone will know that we and our fellow officers tried to warn people.

More Dead

The second multiple-death event down south in less than 7 days:

• Three people are dead after a shooting occurred outside of a restaurant in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood Saturday night.

  It happened in the 8700-block of South King Drive at about 5 p.m.Two people died at the scene and a third person died later at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

  Police said a vehicle pulled up, at least one person inside opened fire and the motorist drove away. Nobody is in custody Saturday night.

Save us CompStat! Save us!!!

More Shootings

All over the city:

• Four people were injured in a single shooting near Ashland Avenue and Division Street this morning, one of several overnight shootings on the North Side, authorities said.

  An off-duty police officer witnessed a car pull up and saw someone inside open fire, striking three males standing on a sidewalk outside La Pasadita restaurant about 3:48 a.m. in the 1100 block of North Ashland Avenue in the East Ukrainian Village neighborhood

The off-duty fired a couple rounds in this shootings and someone turned up at Stroger with holes in them, but no word if it was related.

• In other overnight violence, one person was shot about 3:45 a.m. at Augusta Boulevard and Milwaukee Avenue in the Noble Square neighborhood on the North Side
• A 22-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman were shot in the 1300 block of South Troy Street on the city's west side
• Another man, whose age wasn't immediately available, was shot in his shoulder about 1:13 a.m. on the 4600 block of North Monticello Avenue in the Albany Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side
• A 32-year-old man was shot multiple times in the 1700 block of Juneway Terrace in the Rogers Park neighborhood
• A 16-year-old boy was shot in his leg Friday afternoon in the South Chicago neighborhood

Btu hey, crime is still down. We all deserve raises!

Rahm Victories

Never letting a crisis go to waste, Rahm continues racking up victories:

• The Chicago Teachers Union has called a news conference at noon Friday to discuss details of an agreement reached with Chicago Public Schools over the longer school day issue.

  Neither side would provide specifics of the agreement Thursday.

And this one, too, uncannily predicted by one of our commentators a day or two ago:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel is softening the blow of his library cuts — and raising city sticker fees across the board instead of confining the increase to large vehicles — to accommodate rebel aldermen and win the 26 votes he needs to approve his 2012 budget.

  [...] The mayor’s original plan called for raising the city sticker fee for large vehicles by $15 and broadening the umbrella of drivers forced to pay the new $135 fee for “large passenger vehicles” to include 184,000 more vehicles.

  The decision to reduce the weight threshold from 4,500 pounds to 4,000 pounds came under fire from City Clerk Susana Mendoza and others because it would have forced soccer moms and other mini-van drivers to pay $60 more for their city stickers.

  The mayor’s new plan would maintain the 4,500-pound weight limit in favor of across-the-board increases of $10 to $85 for small and medium-sized vehicles; and $15 to $135 for the larger ones. That means all 1.26 million drivers who buy city stickers would pay more, except for senior citizens and motorcycle owners.

  Emanuel also followed Mendoza’s recommendation by raising the penalties for failing to display a valid city sticker — from a $120 fine and a $40 late fee to $200 and $60, respectively.

When you have a collection of submissives (which the City Council obviously is), one dominatrix can take over for the previous one and keep them in line, voting to screw everyone over and over again.