Steinberg Spouts Off

You'd think he'd learn to keep his mouth shut after a while. But he's got to jump on McStreetlight's lap and start dry humping his leg. Some highlights:

• True, Garry McCarthy, the new police chief — just marking six months on the job — is an outsider, and that was supposed to be the kiss of death. But not being from Mount Greenwood would be counterbalanced, I thought, by his heroic 9/11 credentials.

  Wrong.

  McCarthy spoke at the City Club Monday. Given the ability of the angry, racist, misogynist, whiner faction of the CPD (a sliver, I like to think, but who knows? It isn’t like you can take a poll) to bellyache, I assumed that had McCarthy already become a Weis-like figure of contempt, I’d have heard about it.

  Again wrong.

Of course, Steinberg cites no alleged examples of the supposed angry racist misogynist whining. We were never contacted by him and we assume Shaved wasn't either. And seeing as how ourselves and Shaved account for some tens of thousands of clicks per day, you'd think he'd offer us a chance to defend or justify our sites. Shaved is a bit rougher around the edges, but like ourselves, he doesn't intend to prove (and certainly isn't obligated to prove) that even a single visitor spouting off in the comment section is, in fact, a Chicago Police Officer. We know we have trolls pretending here. We know the Occupy people mounted a concerted effort to get their messages into our comment sections.

• To test my hunch, I pulled on hip boots and took a wade in the septic stream of cowardly, anonymous thuggery that passes for police dialogue online. Golly. Journalistic standards plus basic human decency forbid me from even alluding to the catalog of misbehavior that various cheezed-off cop sites lay at McCarthy’s feet, already predicting — no make that yearning for his departure (is there a moderate, non-brutish cop site I’m missing? Because you’d think that some cops — most, one hopes — would bristle at allowing their foulest elements to tarnish the image of police officers 24/7, and set up such a site — notcrazycop.com perhaps).
  

This from a guy who regularly writes columns so off the wall that he has to close the comment section lest someone hand him his ass - verbally speaking of course.

Has Steinberg even done any homework on McJerseyShore? His confrontation with other police officers over a ticket given to his daughter? His liberal use of the "n-word" when confronting other officers? His freewheeling attitude toward weapon discharges while intoxicated? Not to mention the growing number of stories here in Chicago.

Cops hate a phony. Especially a phony who talks down to other cops. And a phony with an attitude a mile wide who thinks policing was invented in New York late last century?

This actually explains Steinberg's attraction to G-Mac. McCompStat is a phony and a bully, plain and simple. And so is Neil - just ask Mrs. Steinberg.

The Full Story

About the janitorial staff in 011:

• A custodian for a West Side police station allegedly stole a Chicago Police officer’s iPhone while he was in roll call preparing for his midnight shift late Thursday night, police said. Epifania Bahena, 35, of the 8900 block of South Exchange Avenue, was charged with misdemeanor theft...

Interesting how a story over a cell phone makes the papers, but a scandal involving the Evidence and Recovered Property Section, that has the potential to derail hundreds, maybe thousands of criminal cases, even if it's just motions to produce evidence in a courtroom, produces nary a whisper in the media.

As a comparison, look at this missing three kilos from the suburbs:

• Before three kilos of heroin were swiped from a Will County sheriff’s outdoor evidence storage container in October, someone parked a “food delivery truck” so it blocked a lone surveillance camera’s view of the container, a prosecutor said in court today.
  
  The truck was parked there from the early evening until the next morning, assistant state’s attorney Michael Knick told a judge this morning, not specifying the date. Investigators who reviewed about 168 hours of surveillance video believe the drugs were stolen during that time, he said. The theft was discovered on Oct. 14.
  
  The heroin is tied to a drug case against Jose Zamago-Pena, accused of transporting drugs for a Mexican cartel using a semi with California plates.

That's a big deal in Will County. But in Cook County? Not so much.

This is December, Right?

You'd think it was an early Spring day:

• At least six people were wounded in shootings overnight, bringing the total to two dead and at least 13 wounded in gun violence in the city since Friday night.

And guess where there was yet another shooting? If you said "Uptown," give yourself a pat on the back:

• A man in a car wounded in a shooting Sunday morning in the Uptown neighborhood is the latest in a recent string of shooting victims in that North Side community. The shooting occurred about 4:15 a.m. in the 4600 block of North Broadway, according to police News Affairs...

Can a good cold snap slow it down? Maybe, but as it's headed up to almost 50 degrees this week, we expect more of the same.

Denver By 3

Three?

We were going to say seven.

The windows are broken, the tires are flat, the suspension is wrecked and that noise we're hearing makes us suspect the engine just threw a rod.

Prove us wrong Bears.

Live! On Camera! NOT!

An uncommon enough occurrence that the media notices it:

• Four people were shot in a drive-by shooting in the Uptown neighborhood this evening.

  The victims were shot about 6 p.m. at Sheridan Road and Wilson Avenue, said Chicago Police Department News Affairs [...].

  The four victims were on the street when someone began firing from a small, red car heading east on Wilson that then turned south on Sheridan, police said.

The shooting happened almost directly underneath one of those famous POD cameras. We aren't talking at the end of the block or around the corner, we're talking about right on top of it. So there must be almost live, crystal clear footage of the entire event, right? Subjects identified? Prosecution imminent?

Well, no. The camera is down. Nonfunctional. No footage to be had. The trouble is, this isn't a recent problem. The camera has been down for quite some time. And evidently, the criminals know it because they shot a few other people within sight of this camera before:

• This is at least the third shooting incident with multiple victims near Sheridan Road and Wilson Avenue since Nov. 22, when a 15- and 17-year-old boy were shot about 9:30 p.m.

  About 5 p.m. on Dec. 2, a woman was shot in the thigh while she was working in a nearby store when someone opened fire at another man, also injured, in a suspected gang-related shooting.

  A 20-year-old man was also shot killed nearby, on the 4700 block of Winthrop Avenue, on Dec. 4.

If you have a hot corner, we'd assume you want that camera up and running 24/7/365. And if that camera went down, you'd have it on the repair list and you'd want it fixed yesterday.

You'd be mistaken.

And as a side note, it's nice to see that the entire POD camera debacle is progressing along exactly as predicted here by the readers. The hiring slowdown, the uptick in retirees, and the complete lack of a citywide unit to respond to situations exactly like this....combine this with the "illusion" of police presence via the POD cameras that feed tens of thousands of hours of footage into servers that no one is watching, it is a recipe for disaster.

Once Again...

...someone hired by an outside contractor finds easy pickings inside the "secure areas" of a police station:

• Don't forget to mention that one of our citizenship-challenged female custodians here in 011 boosted a 1/W copper's iPhone out of the men's locker room last night. Victim PO was able to track phone via GPS to her residence in 004. She opened the door to return the phone but "refused to come out to be arrested" (another testament to how college/hairgel fucked this job up beyond repair...but this is a topic for another time).
  
  She was processed when she showed up for work in the morning, then had the nerve to bitch about not being read Miranda in Spanish (she WAS, I was there when they were read to her). Moral of this heartwarming holiday story???? What else have these bastards lifted from the station?
  
  Out checks, personal identifiers, interdepartmental mail, WEAPONS have the potential to be swiped. If mentals and others hellbent on causing chaos wasn't enough, we now have to keep a more scrutinous eye (as we always should've been) on the hired help. It'll be interesting to see if this broad has a criminal history.

This comes up every few years. Your best bet is to never leave anything of value in a locker, and that includes gun(s) if you're headed on vacation. Everyone knows someone with a safe. Use it. Stations are the most unsecured places on earth and we aren't just talking about the lobbies.

Nice Story

Take the good publicity where you can get it:

• Chicago police say a car thief disrupted an Iowa couple's wedding preparations on Thursday when the couple's car — with the wedding dress in the trunk — was stolen from the Lakeview neighborhood.

  West side police officers recovered the dress early Saturday morning in West Garfield Park after they stopped the car because it appeared suspicious, police said.

  Police said the couple, in town for their wedding Saturday morning, parked the car about 8 p.m. Thursday night. By Friday morning, it was gone.

A sharp eye on the west side located the car shortly thereafter and the steal was recovered along with the wedding dress. The media is running with this one during the holiday season. While the involved officers might just call it "routine," it meant a lot to the now married couple and hopefully, their memories of Chicago include kind thoughts and words for the CPD.

Chase, Collision, Arrests

Another good job making the news:

• Four people were arrested early Saturday morning after their van collided with two police cars pursuing it on southbound Lake Shore Drive, police said.

  Police said the black minivan was seen near the scene of a West Side shooting about 12:30 a.m. near Jackson Boulevard and Homan Avenue, were arrested.

  In that incident, a witness saw a black minivan driving away from the scene where a 17-year-old boy was shot while walking south on Homan Avenue toward Jackson Boulevard.

• Police saw the van near downtown about 1 a.m. and tried to pull it over. The car fled north on Lake Shore Drive into the Uptown Police District before turning around and heading back south toward downtown, police said.

  The pursuit ended after an accident between the van and two police cars in the 2300 block of Lake Shore Drive, just south of Fullerton Avenue.

No injuries to the police or bystanders, four jagoffs in custody. You know what that means? Comment section closed at the Tribune! You wouldn't want the police actually getting praise on a job professionally done, would you?

Wave a Flag?

Honest to god, who thinks up this crap? And get's paid for it. And probably gets some sort of kickback:

• The City of Chicago is hoping to improve pedestrian safety at certain unprotected street crossings with brightly-colored flags that people can use to be sure cars know they are there.

  As WBBM Newsradio’s Mike Krauser reports, the flags are in what basically amount to buckets hanging from streetlight poles on either side of the street.

  Pedestrians can take one of the several orange flags from a bucket, and wave it as they make their way across the street. At that point, the flags are placed in the identical bucket on the other side of the crossing.

We almost drove off the road laughing when we heard this one. And the first intersection to have flags in the bucket? 64th and Western.

We give the buckets about a week before they're gone. The flags won't last a day.

Here's a Bright Idea

Lie to the federal penal system:

• Scott Fawell, the former chief of staff of a different convicted governor, George Ryan, is offering a tip on how Rod Blagojevich can cut his lengthy 14-year sentence.

  The former governor may be able to make a request with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to take part in a substance abuse program.

  Fawell said that’s what he did before going into prison.

  “What you do is say that in between the time you’re sentenced and the time you report, you just couldn’t stop drinking,” Fawell said.

This is Fawell brilliant advice for Blago? Fake a drinking problem? What could possibly go wrong?

The head of the Bureau of Prisons kind of shoots it down though:

• But a U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokesman, Ed Ross, said there has to be a documented history of abuse for an inmate to qualify for the program and that an inmate has to be evaluated before being accepted into the program.

Here's some better advice - flip on anyone you can.

Welcome Mentally Ill Patrons!

Again, how about a locked, secure door with a doorbell, closed circuit TV and inch thick glass. In numerous suburbs, this guy wouldn't even get in the front door. But here?

• A Northwest Side man was charged early this morning with heaving chunks of concrete at a large plate glass window at the 16th District police station in Jefferson Park Thursday night.

  Three officers were injured when they tried to arrest the 38-year-old man, Chicago Police News Affairs [...] said.

  Andrzej K. Borowiec, of the 5300 block of West Wolfram Street was charged with three counts of aggravated battery to a police officer, one count of criminal damage to property and one count of misdemeanor resisting arrest. He was ordered held in lieu of $200,000 bail following a hearing today in Cook County Central Bond Court.

Mentally ill people wandering into police stations with rifles, destroying equipment, getting tasered 30 times, and now, bringing concrete into the station to inflict mayhem.

But everything is fine.

More Scandal

This one's been percolating for a bit we imagine:

• Big shake up at ERP's. Lt was selling stuff and taking stuff for his own gain. He is now at call back. IAD handling this one.
• SCC, major scandal at ERPS. IAD locked up the LT in charge last night for stealing tons of shit out of there. How many other exempts were using it as a personal shopping mall? This one will be interesting.
• It's crazy over at Unit 167. I was told that the Commanding Officer was removed and placed in call back. He would be destroying stuff or placing it in his pocket.
• What's the deal with Lt. M. CO of ERPS getting picked up by IAD while leaving work yest? There is already a new Lt. at ERPS who has taken his place.

Thanks a lot. Someone want to point out who put this idiot in a position of authority?

Police Assist Fire

What the...?!

• A Northwest Side Fire Departmenty crew on a run this evening returned to find two men leaving their headquarters with a laptop, a department spokesman said.

  Firefighters who had been out of their firehouse, 4911 W. Belmont Ave., on a run returned to find someone burglarizing the building about 9:30 p.m., said Fire Deparment spokesman Sean Flynn.

  The firehouse's commanding officer called for police assistance and firefighters were able to hold two men--who had been trying to leave the firehouse, at least one carrying a laptop--until police arrived, according to the Fire Department.

We don't know....there sure is a lot of sharp, heavy equipment lying around a fire house. Brass nozzles, rolls of hoses, extinguishers. Why these two weren't carried out...

FOID Info Safe

Safe for now:

• An Illinois judge has ruled that the state police cannot release the names of the state's 1.3 million firearm owner identification cardholders, another victory for gun-rights advocates who had been trying on several fronts to block release of the names.

  The Illinois legislature earlier this year voted to bar the public from knowing who has FOID cards. But Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said the judge's ruling this week is significant because a future legislature could reverse course on the issue.

  “This is better,” he said.

Remember, it was Lisa Madigan's [Dem - Daddy] office that unilaterally decided FOID data was "open records" and potentially jeopardized the safety of thousands of law abiding gun owners, as well as providing a road map to police officer's homes and endangering the lives of their loved ones.

Of course, if there was no FOID card (which is unique among the 50 states for some reason) there would be no issue at all.

IG Report

An interesting read. But the good stuff starts around page 67 when Aldercreature Tom Tunney starts with a series of 17 questions:

• Questions came from 18 different Alderman, but Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) asked the most, with 17 questions to Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. [A copy of the IG's report can be found at the bottom of this article.] Among the responses to Tunney and other aldermen:
  •The merged 23rd and 19th district will have 476 officers.
  •The average response time in 2010 for a domestic disturbance or burglary in progress was 6.2 minutes.
  •In 2010 had 12,365 sworn officers received their annual uniform allowance check but only 7,047 officers were actually assigned to work a beat.
  

The question ranged the gamut from staffing to hiring to promotions. It seems kind of obvious he has someone on the inside feeding him questions that have appeared in this and other forums and are of a concern to the membership.

Hopefully, a little pushback building against Rahm and McJersey.

Murderer Murders Again

Gee, didn't anyone ever think this could happen?

• A Rogers Park man who was previously convicted of murder is accused of fatally stabbing a female acquaintance inside of his apartment.
  
  Chicago police said Larry Smith, 57, fatally stabbed Rasheda Tucker, 35, during a quarrel inside his apartment in the 7700 block of North Sheridan Road Monday night.
  
  
• Smith has an extensive criminal history dating back to the mid-1980s, according to court records.
  
  In 2003, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 18 years in prison, but was credited with three-and-half years time served, court records show.

Whoa whoa whoa. Hold the train there. 2003 plus 18.5 equals June of 2021, right? And even backdating his "credited" time, 2003 plus 15 is still 2018.

We heard a really interesting rumor that CompStat is going to start counting these types of killings as "future murders" so it won't actually show up in the statistics until the time that the offender was actually supposed to be on the streets.

So far, 2018 is shaping up to be a bloody year.

Fourteen Years

One of the better sentences handed down in government corruption cases:

• Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison and fined $20,000 for what U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald famously referred to as a criminal corruption crime spree at the time of Blagojevich’s arrest three years ago.
  
  Patti Blagojevich buried her head in her husband's shoulder and the two embraced. He pulled back to brush tears off her cheek and then rubbed her shoulders.
  
  As he left the courthouse, Blagojevich told reporters “we’re going to keep fighting on through this adversity. . .This is a time to be strong."

Dick Mell is laughing somewhere.

Wildlife Taking Over

We're sure it has nothing to do with cuts in the Animal Control sector:

• A Lincoln Park neighborhood woman says she is fearful for people walking their dogs on the North Side after a very close encounter with a pack of coyotes Tuesday morning.
  
  As WBBM Newsradio [...] reports, Kate Dodge was out with her 20- and 50-pound leashed dogs, Gordy and Madara, before daybreak, when she saw the not-so-uncommon sight of coyotes near the corner of Clark Street and Armitage Avenue.
  
  This time, she says there were three coyotes.
  
  “They were maybe 50 feet from me, so we stopped,” she said.
  
  Instead of moving on, Dodge said, they coyotes approached.
  
  “Two stopped 20 feet away and kind of just branched out a little bit around me,” Dodge said. “The third one ran right in, and it was within a foot of us.”

Of course they did - they're hunting. Here's the truly hilarious quote of the year though:

• “We’ve taken it for granted that we can mutually exist,” said Dodge. “I certainly don’t want to create any hype, but I was completely unprepared for this morning’s little episode.”
  
  “This coyote had no fear of me,” she said.

Co-exist? Not a chance in hell lady. You sound like that idiot that used to talk to Grizzly Bears in Alaska. Or the cougar victims throughout the Rockies. Once animals lose their fear of humans, all bets are off, and evolutionarily speaking, the animals are way better prepared for these types of encounters than men,. women and children. That isn't to say we should slaughter every animal we run across (which we're sure some bleeding hearts will accuse us of supporting), but wild animals conditioned to avoid humans and their habitats do much better in the long run.

Death Penalty Off the Table

Mumia wins a round:

• Prosecutors on Wednesday abandoned their 30-year pursuit of the execution of convicted police killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther whose claim that he was the victim of a racist legal system made him an international cause celebre.

  Abu-Jamal, 58, will instead spend the rest of his life in prison. His writings and radio broadcasts from death row had put him at the center of an international debate over capital punishment.

  Flanked by Officer Daniel Faulkner's widow, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced his decision two days short of the 30th anniversary of the white policeman's killing.

  He said continuing to seek the death penalty could lead to "an unknowable number of years" of appeals, and that some witnesses have died or are unreliable after nearly three decades.

Thirty more years of breathing the same air that you and we breathe while Daniel Faulkner lies in a hero's grave.

Comment Difficulties

Blogger seems to having some technical difficulties tonight. The comments seem to be disappearing and not going to the published screen. This has happened before and they just spontaneously reappear after an overnight patch job.

Bear with us. Posts will go up at midnight, comments to follow as we're able.

Open post in the meantime.