A Heartfelt Thank You

An e-mail we decided to share:

• I would like your readers to know of incredible kindness of the Ninth District and Commander Gorman after the unexpected loss of my sister, Alice Ostrega, a time keeper for 009. The support, generosity and professional courtesies shown by the Ninth left our family speechless and helped ease the pain of our loss. The turnout by so many Officers of Nine to express their sympathy warmed our hearts, and to know she had so many friends in Blue made us proud. A "Thank you" cannot begin to convey our gratitude to the men and women of the Ninth District
  
  God Bless and Stay Safe,
  
  The Family of Alice Ostrega 

Our sympathies for your loss.

Sgt. Exam Info

Make you sure you send an e-mail confirming your attendance that you were notified of via snail mail before the 15th of October.

Sheesh.

FOP site has details if you've lost anything.

Captains / XO's List

What we have so far:

• Klich 001
  Watson 003
  Loughran 005
  Chambers 007
  Sanchez 007
  Nieves 016
  Looney 115
  Murphy 115
  Pigott 124
  Judon 126
  Lott 140
  Devereux 189
  Cesario 606

A lot of heavy names on that list.

Ka-Ching!

Better slow down:

• Speed cameras installed around four Chicago parks churned out 204,743 warning notices in just 40 days — and would have generated $12.2 million in fines — if tickets had been issued, as they will be starting next week.
  
  Mayor Rahm Emanuel has insisted that his plan to install 50 speed cameras around schools and parks by Dec. 31 — and as many as 300 by next year — is about saving lives, not raising sorely needed revenue.
  
  But the warning notices flying around McKinley, Marquette, Garfield and Gompers parks shows there’s a windfall coming, no matter what the mayor’s motives.

The Pension is saved! Oh wait, Rahm isn't going to fund it. Never mind.

No Beretta 92 FS Allowed

This is the new sign the State Police are making available on-line for businesses to post banning handguns on the premises:

And the article accompanying it:

• With some businesses eager to let people know guns aren’t welcome, the Illinois State Police on Friday released the official sign to indicate a concealed carry ban.
  
  Businesses can download the state-approved sign for banning concealed carry on the Illinois State Police Web site.

We read this as all Beretta 92FS weapons are banned. So if you carry a Glock, Smith and Wesson, Ruger, Sig, or other handgun, you ought to be fine.

Krokodil - The New Big Thing

It's pronounced "crocodile," and quite frankly, we can hardly wait:

• A street drug has hit the streets of suburban Chicago. It can cause deadly gangrene infections just days after it’s used. [...]
  
  Doctors at Presence St. Joseph’s Medical Center are treating three people with horrific symptoms of a new and deadly drug that originated in Russia. Because of its effect on skin and muscle, it’s called Krokodil as in Crocodile. It rots flesh and rots it fast.
  
  One of them is a 25-year-old woman, a heroin user for 10 years, who started using the new drug a month ago. Now she is in extremely critical condition.
  
  [...] The dirt cheap drug, also known as Desomorphine, is essentially home- made heroin, using among other things, codeine mixed with gasoline or paint thinner. It is usually injected.

Injecting gasoline and paint thinner into your body? That sounds so fucking intelligent that we can't wait for this to hit the streets. Dupe every single one of these calls to the ambulances transporting them and forget about it. Don't waste time, paper or investigative resources on people this stupid. Inside of three years, it burns (literally) through the junkie community and ::voila!:: no more dope problem.

Stop Working

No, that isn't a suggestion to the readers. That would be a violation of the Rule stating that advocating a job action is punishable by termination. We aren't falling for that one.

That's the title of an interesting article that appeared at "LawOfficer.com" about a month ago regarding the state of policing in the country today.

Now, he doesn't literally mean "stop working" in the most basic sense. Unfortunately, many took the title as it was written and it necessitated a follow-up article entitled "A Reply to My Critics" to clarify what we found to be a pretty obvious message the first time around.

Both articles are recommended reading. Any bosses or politicians who have trouble with the bigger words are welcome to post questions here or ask someone to help them find dictionary.com. It explains a lot of the frustration that we see on a daily basis and why morale seems to be in the basement not just in Chicago, but in many departments nationwide.

Rule #7

We have a couple basic rules on the right hand column - 9 actually if you include Rule #0.

We had a spate of violators regarding Rules 6 and 7 yesterday, specifically directed at the "Hey Look - A Quota" posting.  If you read the post, you can probably guess which way they were headed.

We don't really care what point you're trying to make - if it includes the phrase "...if you don't like it, quit," or something similar and we manage to catch it, it's getting flushed, no matter what else you might have to say. No one is going to voluntarily leave the job because you tell them to, especially if they've committed a sizable portion of their working life to the job and regardless of what imagined offense they've committed in your eyes.

Cops bitch about the job. They have since the beginning of time. Prehistoric officers were writing on cave walls with charcoal sticks. The bitched during the Dark Ages and they complained during the Enlightenment. They've been doing it here in Chicago since forever and have gone through a few underground publications (The Gallows) and a few websites (Second City Cop Network, Shaved, SCC).

Instead of calling everyone "crybabies," how about a few creative responses, putdowns or sarcastic comebacks to illustrate the futility of pleasing everyone all the time and just dealing with the shit sandwiches we're getting served all the time? It'd make for more interesting reading and you might actually see what you wrote making it past the screening process.

Hey Look....a Triple

We haven't had one of those in a while:

• Four people were shot to death Wednesday night, including a 16-year-old boy and two men killed when several gunmen opened fire in a South Shore courtyard in this year’s first triple homicide, authorities said.
  
  The three were standing in the courtyard in the 6700 block of South Chappel Avenue when the shooters walked up around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday, Police News Affairs [...] said.

Along with a few more shootings and a pair of stabbings, there have been something like seven or eight murders the past two days. Not bad for a Wednesday/Thursday midweek in October.

Rahm's Going to Love This

Licensing bicycles:

• Three Georgia legislators have proposed licensing bicycles in the state, in what could become the first mandatory statewide registration of all bikes.
  
  Hawaii now is the only state that requires registration, said Douglas Shinkle, senior policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. It has a one-time $15 fee for bicycles with wheels 20 inches or more in diameter; owners get a decal to attach to the bike's seat post.
  
  Other states — including California, Michigan and Ohio — allow counties or cities to enact bike license laws but none would be as broad as Georgia House Bill 689, which would revise portions of state motor vehicle law to include bicycles and place specific rules on groups of riders.

And of course, it's for your own good:

• One benefit from such a law would be to prevent bicycle theft and allow bikes that are stolen to be returned with greater frequency to their owners, Shinkle said. Oregon and Vermont proposed legislation earlier this year that tried to make bike registration mandatory, but neither bill was successful.

And the fact that cyclists don't contribute to the state coffers in the form of gas taxes or red light cameras or speeding tickets, thereby starving the government of revenue has nothing at all to do with it, right?

Hey look! A shiny ball! Look at the pretty shiny ball!

Rahm Saves Retirees $1,700

Instead of health care costs going up $6,100, they'll only go up $4,400!

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to forge ahead with a three-year phaseout of the city’s 55 percent subsidy for retiree health care will force individual retirees to pay as much as $4,440 more in 2014, City Hall acknowledged Thursday.
  
  Two days after City Hall disclosed the mayor’s decision to count on $23.7 million in savings from a subsidy cut next year, the Emanuel administration talked turkey about the financial impact on individual retirees.
  
  Out-of-pocket increases will depend on when employees retired, whether or not they are Medicare-eligible, are married and have children.

The class-action lawsuit by retirees continues apace:

• Krislov’s class-action lawsuit argues that the Illinois Constitution guarantees that municipal pension membership benefits are an “enforcible contractual relationship which may not be diminished or impaired.”
  
  The lawsuit further contends that retirees “have a property right to a lifetime health care plan” from the city “unreduced from the best terms” during their participation. Anything less would be a “depreciation of property rights” guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the lawsuit states.

You can bet a lot of people are watching this one carefully.

Two More Convictions

This is the second offender convicted for the murder of Officer Valadez:

• Kevin Walker, who prosecutors said went by the nickname of "Killer Kev," has been found guilty of the slaying of Chicago Police Officer Alejandro "Alex" Valadez.
  
  Prosecutors said Walker was driving a car on June 1, 2009, when two passengers opened fire at Valadez, a 27-year-old expectant father who was responding to an earlier call of shots fired in the West Englewood neighborhood. The jury deliberated about 10 hours before handing down the guilty verdict this morning.
  
  A second man, Shawn Gaston, was found guilty in the officer’s death in 2011 and sentenced to 125 years in prison.

And another jury is deliberating on the third offender:

• Just hours after a Cook County jury convicted the getaway driver in the fatal shooting of Chicago Police Officer Alejandro “Alex” Valadez, another jury Wednesday began deliberating the fate of the alleged gunman in the officer’s murder four years ago.
  
  Christopher Harris admitted to detectives that he stuck his arm out of a Pontiac G6 and shot a .357 revolver in the early morning hours of June 1, 2009, prosecutors Jeffrey Allen and Anita Alvarez said.
  
  “I shot the .357, but I didn’t mean to aim at anybody,” Harris is seen saying in the videotaped statement that was presented in closing arguments Wednesday.
  
  “I shot four or five [times] at the most.”

Only four or five times? Well that makes it all okay, right? What an asshole. 100 years for this jagoff would be a blessing to society. Death would be a cause for celebration, but that isn't on the table.

UPDATE: Convicted!

• A Cook County jury convicted the gunman in the fatal drive-by shooting of Chicago Police Officer Alejandro “Alex” Valadez of murder and attempted murder after nearly seven hours of deliberation late Wednesday night.
  
  Christopher Harris, 24, was the third of three defendants to be found guilty on charges connected to the June 1, 2009, killing in a vacant Englewood lot.
  
  Earlier Wednesday, a separate jury found the getaway driver in the shooting, Kevin Walker, 25, guilty of the same charges.

Finally.

Hey Look - A Quota

And written down on paper no less. And signed:

So the 014 District now has to "justify" their tour of duty. And all time due, hours that you have earned for use at a later date, is denied completely without explanation.

The only thing missing here is a list of numbers that will "justify" your tour. And we're sure we'll be getting that letter just as soon as they issue it.

In the meantime, maybe someone in 014 can explain why the Field Lieutenant is pulling 5-hour days while everyone else is being denied used time that is owed to them by the Department? We're sensing some sort of double standard here....Bueller? Bueller?

If a few hundred of our readers could just forward this to the FOP, we're sure they'd appreciate the heads up.

Want to Save Money?

An interesting proposal:

• heard from 35 th the new DSS order is about to come out. in the order, the DSS position will be filled by sergeants only. under no circumstances will a Lt. ever act as DSS. if available, Lts will be designated as filed Lts. Couple that with the fact that no Lt will ever be assigned as XO, there is now a needless rank in the department. A watch can operate without a field Lt, which means that other than feeding the exempt ranks and captains ranks, there is no real use for Lts, who are now suddenly in surplus. Don't expect a class anytime soon with the rank likely to go to appointment only, much cheaper with no lawsuits. They say the current list has already been scrapped.

Since they can't seem to eliminate the rank of captain (they just rename it), maybe they can eliminate lieutenants.

We don't see it happening, but it's nice to dream.

Bears by 7.5

The winless Giants come into town for a Thursday night game. The Bears got outplayed pretty badly Sunday. If they're angry enough, the Bears run away with it early.

Another Dirty Sergeant

And another opening for someone off the list:

• A dirty Chicago cop who swelled his city paycheck by shaking down drug dealers was slammed for his “unconscionable” behavior Wednesday by a federal judge who sentenced him to 22 months in prison.
  
  Former Sgt. Ronald Watts, 50, taught young people growing up in poverty in the Ida B. Wells housing projects “not to respect anything” when he demanded protection money from criminals, U.S. Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said.
  
  Dressing down the former Army soldier and 20-year police veteran, an angry Coleman said she believed he’d been guilty of far more widespread corruption than the single count of stealing government funds he plead guilty to in July.

Good riddance.

Carter Harrison Awardees

Two cops who both got shot in the head and one still managed to return fire and wound the gunman:

• City officials presented the top awards for extraordinary bravery to Chicago police officers and firefighters Tuesday morning at a ceremony at City Hall.
  
  WBBM Newsradio [...] reports, the city’s Carter Harrison Award was presented to Police Officers Jeffrey Friedlieb and Ruben Del Valle, who shot and pursued a drug suspect, after he shot them.
  
  Friedlieb managed to shoot the suspect after both officers had been shot in the head.
  
  “After I got shot, I went down, and luckily I was still conscious, so I was able to fire back, and wound the offender,” he said.

Congratulations Officers.

UPDATE: Title changed - as someone pointed out, it isn't really a competition, so there aren't any winners. No one in their right minds competes for what these guys went through.

These Idiots Have Brains?

You can't have guns - it will cost too much to imprison everyone!

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pushing for tougher sentences for illegal gun possession, but state officials are now warning they would have to build more prison capacity to house the extra inmates.
  
  For months, the mayor, police Supt. Garry McCarthy and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez have been urging the Legislature to approve stiff mandatory minimum sentences for illegal gun possession.
  
  On Tuesday, an Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman said the legislation would carry a hefty price tag — almost $1 billion over 10 years to house an additional 3,860 inmates in the prison system, which currently holds about 49,000 inmates.

Well we've got a perfect solution - Boot Camps!

Oh wait, that solution didn't work last time.

How about this - law abiding people carry firearms, concealed. After a few bad guys get shot while doing their stickups and such, they might learn a little bit of restraint, something they obviously never learned from their parent, school, community or society at large. The number of people actively committing criminal acts will fall as it has in 49 other states, and the savings from not incarcerating them can be a windfall refunded to the taxpayers or cut from their tax bills.

But Rahm and McDoofus aren't allowed to take credit as they never offered support in the first place.

Retirees Health Care

Welcome to ObamaCare:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel expects to save $18 million next year by starting a three-year phaseout of city-subsidized health insurance for most retired City Hall workers.
  
  The administration said Tuesday that the previously announced phaseout will start as planned Jan. 1, even though the move is being challenged in court.
  
  The savings would chip away at a projected budget shortfall of $339 million. Emanuel, who is scheduled to deliver his budget address Oct. 23, is expected to announce a series of cost-saving measures. He also hasn't ruled out increasing taxes and fees.
  
  Although retired city workers will see no increase in copays and deductibles, they will have to come up with more money to cover the cost of the insurance.

You won't be keeping your doctor either, regardless of what Obama promised. And those "average savings" of $2,400 a year? Some folks in California are finding their premiums going up by $10,000 a year:

• Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.
  
  Yet, like many other Bay Area residents who pay for their own medical insurance, they were floored last week when they opened their bills: Their policies were being replaced with pricier plans that conform to all the requirements of the new health care law.
  
  Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

Any guesses on who's to blame for a lot of this? Any mirrors around?

• Labor unions are among the key institutions responsible for the passage of Obamacare. They spent tons of money electing Democrats to Congress in 2006 and 2008, and fought hard to push the health law through the legislature in 2009 and 2010. But now, unions are waking up to the fact that Obamacare is heavily disruptive to the health benefits of their members.
  
  Last Thursday, representatives of three of the nation’s largest unions fired off a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, warning that Obamacare would “shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”

So republicans, who have been telling the truth about the disastrous train wreck that is ObamaCare, are actually fighting to delay the implementation of something that will harm, even destroy, union workers benefits? The world is upside-down.

Insurance for Judges

Guess how much they pay for health insurance?

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle fired another shot at Cook County’s Chief Judge Timothy Evans Monday, proposing to cut off the nearly-free health insurance the county offers to judges.
  
  Thanks to an obscure state law, circuit court judges are classified as county employees, because they get $500 a year from the county. So they are currently eligible for county health insurance for a percentage of their salary that works out to less than $1 a month.
  
  The actual cost to the county ranges from $440 to $1,700 a month, Preckwinkle’s office said.

Gee, and our retirees are about to be forced into ObamaCare that might leave many bankrupt and eating cat food. But Preckwinkle has a plan!

• Under the proposal, employees considered part-timers would no longer pay a percentage of their salary, but would have to pay the actual cost of the insurance or get it somewhere else, such as the new health insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act.
  
  About 30 crossing guards, as well as commissioners of the Chicago Board of Elections, would also get the same deal, but most of the 400 people affected would be judges, the county said.

Because at salaries ranging from $174,000 to $183,000 per year, you'd think that they could spend a little more on their own care.