Officer Recovering

Out of surgery and resting.

It appears he was wounded through a closed doorway and the bullet struck below his vest - one of the worst spots to get shot:

• When officers approached the door, the man allegedly shot through it and struck a police officer.

  The officer was shot in the lower abdomen and was taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital.

Twenty years ago or so, we remember seeing the HBT people (this was before SWAT) had a large ballistic shield - almost like a Kevlar curtain - that had to measure al least six feet by six feet square on a frame. It appeared to be mounted on a pipe frame for ease of movement.

This was in addition to the man-portable shields with a visual window to see through that covered from the top of the head to the knees, protecting the vital organ areas. 

Were none of these available? 

Prayers and best wishes to the wounded Officer for a full recovery.

Confused Conehead

Somebody asked for this photo:

 

We're told that's a common expression most of the time.

Fifteen Years (minus four)

Already four years off for custodial credit though:

• A Chicago man who fired a machine gun at an off-duty Chicago police officer during a road rage altercation on the Stevenson Expressway has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, court records show.

  Neither the officer nor the accused man, 26-year-old David Abarca, was injured in the August 2022 shootout. But a 24-year-old woman driving the car Abarca was riding in suffered serious injuries when one of the officer’s bullets struck her in the head.

  [...] Investigators found a handgun with an extended magazine outfitted with an auto-fire switch and a green laser sight lying on an embankment about 15 feet from the crashed vehicle. They also found 23 shell casings that had been ejected from the recovered firearm. Abarca initially denied possessing a firearm.

  Abarca had faced attempted murder and other charges, but those charges were dropped after he pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun in a vehicle. Judge Steven Watkins sentenced him to 15 years in prison with credit for 1,493 days earned while in the Cook County Jail.

No Federal charge for the switch?

Officer Shot

 Albany Park area:

• A Chicago police officer was shot Monday morning in Albany Park.

  The shooting happened in the 4600 block of North Springfield at around 11:45 a.m.

  The officer was taken to Illinois Masonic. Their condition is not available at this time.

We will update when we can.

Heavy Phone Calls

You probably aren't going to hear much about this one unless some enterprising "reporter" steals it from an alternative site:

• 16 July 2026; 1904 hours; 2711 W Flournoy
• M/1/21; son of State Senator Lakesia COLLINS arrested for PCS and Resisting Arrest 

We certainly hope the Senator hasn't been calling the 011th District desk attempting to "seek information" and maybe get her son released....oh wait....

CB number and RD number available for FOIA requests to interested parties.

Aldercreature Neighbor?

The Contrarian had this on their social media feed the other day:

The reason this is concerning to 19th Ward people is surprising:

• the aldercreature lives almost directly across the street from this problem residence - literally the width of the street.

So the "ward leadership" is undoubtedly 100% aware of this problem building, the problem residents, and the issues that lead to 022 police resources being expended there on a weekly basis.

Are they political donors or something? 

Wounded Suspect was What Now?

From yesterday:

• A suspect is recovering in the hospital on Saturday after he was shot during a struggle with officers who were working to disperse a crowd on the city’s South Side overnight.

From the comment section since:

• Apparently this goofy was on off duty IDOC agent. Whatever that means. Misdemeanor charges also.

"Goofy" would be an understatement.

Just so you know, the on-duty Officer is always assumed to be in the "right" in terms of Department Policy and the eyes of the Law. 

There is no "right to resist" and certainly no "right to be an off-duty goofy." That's why there are investigative processes to figure out things after the fact - in the meantime, do what you're told and complain later.

 

Everyone is Packing on the CTA

If you're unfortunate enough to ride the CTA, might as well:

• Two men are jailed after a tipster informed Chicago cops that the pair had guns on the Red Line downtown, and for one of the accused men, it’s the second time he’s been jailed for allegedly having a gun on the Red Line.

  Officers assigned to the CPD’s Public Transportation Section tactical team arrested the two convicted felons and recovered two firearms early on July 15, 2026, with the help of the tip, police said. The team was conducting a routine check at the Jackson Red Line station, 230 South State Street, when a witness approached officers and reported a man on the platform with a gun.

  Officers relayed the description to colleagues working in the Public Transportation surveillance camera room, who located footage allegedly showing the man entering the station by jumping a turnstile. The surveillance officers used the CTA’s extensive camera network to provide tactical officers with his live location, CPD said. Tactical officers stopped the man, identified by police as 22-year-old Davonte Sims, and recovered a firearm from his bag, according to police.

  The surveillance team also spotted a second man placing a bag containing a gun inside a seat on the Jackson platform, CPD said. That man departed on a train before police realized the firearm was in the bag. But the surveillance officers once again used live video feeds to track him down. They located the second man, 28-year-old Terry Sturgis, at the Garfield Red Line station and sent patrol officers to arrest him, police said.

Nice job by the Officers. Nice job by the camera operators who were able to follow the suspects from camera to camera until apprehension.

That's why if you're packing, don't attract attention to yourself, don't commit other crimes, and avoid the "tells" that might giveaway that you're armed. 

Gold Coast Stabbing

It's everywhere!

• A man was left in critical condition after being stabbed during a fight in Chicago's Gold Coast Saturday night.

  Police said at 9:35 p.m., the man, age unknown, came up to a woman on Oak Street near Rush Street and they got into a fight.

  The woman took out a sharp object and stabbed the man in the neck, police said.

  The man was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

We're pretty sure there are roughly 200 cameras within a mile of that location.

And 9:35 PM on a Saturday night is prime tourist/nightlife time.

And someone still got stabbed, because crime is down.

Suspect Wounded

Likely by his own gun:

• A suspect is recovering in the hospital on Saturday after he was shot during a struggle with officers who were working to disperse a crowd on the city’s South Side overnight.

  Officers said the incident unfolded around 12:32 a.m. in the 5300 block of South Princeton Avenue, in Fuller Park.

  [...] As officers worked to control the crowd, they say they saw a man who had a firearm and tried to stop him. A brief struggle ensued between the officers and the suspect, however.

  Amid the struggle, police said the suspect’s gun went off, striking him in the leg. Officers immediately called for an ambulance and rendered aid to the suspect at the scene.

We guess that's one way to avoid the thirty days of desk duty - make sure he wounds himself. 

But also, if you see a gun, it's probably easier to shoot the gunman from a distance from behind cover. 

What's the Story Here?

Deadly Force can be used in self defense OR in defense of another. So what happened here?

• A suspect was arrested after allegedly fatally shooting a man who she saw stabbing a woman Friday night in Englewood on the South Side.

  The situation unfolded as a 22-year-old woman and 38-year-old Marcus Young were arguing inside a home in the 400 block of West Marquette Road around 10:55 p.m. and Young pulled out a sharp object and stabbed the woman in the abdomen, Chicago police said.

  When Young pulled the 22-year-old outside of the home, a female inside the home who witnessed the altercation, shot Young in the chest. Young was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

  The 22-year-old was taken to the same hospital in good condition, police said.

  Officers arrested the female and recovered the gun, police said. Charges were pending.

Black woman defending another black woman from being stabbed by a black man. Sounds like straight up "defense of another" at this point.

But it is the Slum Times "reporting," and we all know how inaccurate they are six-times-out-of-ten. Three-times-out-of-the-other-ten, they just lie.

Twice in Three Days

CWB asking what the lame-stream media won't:

• A Chicago man is accused of carrying a machete on a CTA train just two days after a judge released him to await trial on an earlier machete arrest, and questions are now being raised about why he wasn’t hit with a more serious charge the first time around, one that could have kept him detained from the start.

  Chicago police arrested Ronald Reed, 31, at the Clark-Lake station around 2:51 p.m. on July 8 after officers discovered he had a machete, according to a CPD report. A police spokesperson said officers initially stopped Reed for having an open can of alcohol and then subsequently found the weapon.

And we'll answer the same way we usually do:

• crooked judges
• SAFE-T Act nonsense
• democrats love criminals

But until we get a few more citizens stabbed, shot or lit on fire, don't expect voters to wise up.

But we remind everyone, if criminals can get machetes on board CTA trains, then you can certainly get a pistol on board to defend yourself or others. 

Try it - you might like it. 

They'll Be Back

Someone was asking what happened to HeyJackass.com as they haven't updated in a few days.

This post appeared there shortly after:

• Gone Fishin' 

 

So not to worry - they're just taking some time off, same as we did a few weeks ago.

Open post for a smokey Sunday. 

Police Layoffs?

Not likely among the rank and file, but among PPOs without Contract protections? It's been done before waaaaay back under Harold Washington:

• Some Chicago city employees, including police officers, could face layoffs this fall as Mayor Brandon Johnson and members of the City Council's budget accountability coalition clash over responsibility for a projected $98 million midyear budget shortfall.

  Johnson's administration outlined the deficit in its latest budget update, prompting a new round of fingerpointing over stalled revenue plans and the potential impact on jobs and a planned $260 million advance pension payment.

Conehead was bitching about the City Council refusing to enact his Head Tax, something that has been proven time-and-time again to drive businesses OUT of Chicago, some merely establishing their addresses across the street in a border suburb.

Oh, and what the Hell is a "pension advance payment"? 

• The $16.7 billion budget approved by a City Council majority that rejected Mayor Brandon Johnson’s corporate head tax required the city to make a full $260 million advance pension payment to stave off another costly reduction in Chicago’s bond rating.

  The Johnson administration ignored that mandate, made a half payment of $130 million in January, and promised to pay the other half in the second quarter of this year. Now that second installment is in jeopardy.

So Conehead and his people (folks?) lied again.

But he had $500 million for ILLEGAL ALIENS.

$400 million in TIF money for a soccer stadium.

$100 million "redirected" to some anti-violence grifters.

And extra $800 million in fantasy money that might have bought back the parking meters.

Now they might miss a "pension advance payment"?  

Close these Money-Pits

How long have we been pointing this out? Ten years? More?

• Proposed cuts, furloughs and a spending freeze are part of Chicago Public Schools' budget plan as the district works to balance its finances, but the proposal does not include school closures because of an ongoing moratorium.

  The issue has renewed debate over the cost of keeping severely under-enrolled schools open, including Frederick Douglass High School on the city's West Side.

  The school, which can hold about 900 students, now has around 30 students enrolled.

And we all know exactly who is to blame for all this waste:

• "It's costing CPS about $94-95,000 a year per student at this school," Ferguson said.

  According to Ferguson, the average cost per CPS student is typically about $18,000. He also noted that the Chicago Teachers Union contract requires certain staffing levels regardless of enrollment.

  "We're talking about 30 students. We're talking about 30 full-time employees for a student-teacher ratio of one-to-one," Ferguson said.

And of those 30 students, guess how many read, write and math at grade level? Go ahead, guess.

We don't have the answer, but someone probably does. And someone probably has that link we used to use with all of the under-enrolled schools that are wasting literally tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions or scarce taxpayer dollars for pretty much zero return on the "investment." 

Don't Get Middled

Most readers here (not all) are Chicago Police Officers.

You have pretty much zero authority to investigate Federal agents, no matter what Conehead and the alder-morons claim:

• City officials were summoned to a testy City Council committee hearing Friday to provide answers about the delayed implementation of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s order directing Chicago police to investigate potential crimes committed by federal immigration agents.

  Members of the Committee on Immigrant and Refugee Rights spent about two hours peppering mayoral aides and police leaders with questions about Johnson’s “ICE on Notice” executive order, asking what the decree has accomplished and what additional steps are needed to enforce it.

  Police officials said the department had finalized internal procedures to implement the order, nearly five months after the mayor’s 30-day deadline. However, they wouldn’t say why it took so long.

  “We value CPD and want to believe that officers are indeed here to preserve and protect our communities. But it is long past time for accountability to the public,” said Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th), the committee chair.

They even want third party complaints to be "investigated" when the complainant wasn't there, witnessed nothing, and has zero standing. 

Don't fall for their bullshit, because they WILL NOT back you when the Federal courts decree you operated outside the scope of your local authority. 

Waller Making Moves

 Not much time being wasted:

• Deputy Chief Jill Stevens (BOP) to Chief of Patrol.
  
  Deputy Chief A. Parham to Deputy Chief BOP.
  
  Cmdr R. Watson (BOP) to Deputy Chief replaces Parham.
  
  Cmdr L. Courts (007) to Cmdr Narcotics replacing Josh Wallace (Retired).
  
  Lt Miles to Cmdr 007.

Anyone hoping things might get better just got kicked in the teeth.

Tracking SAFE-T Act Failures

This "transparency" thing seems to be a serious self-own:

• A newly released report shows that 10% of the people enrolled in the Cook County court’s electronic monitoring (EM) program were missing as of June 1, the latest disclosure in what Chief Judge Charles Beach has described as a renewed transparency effort following the killing of an on-duty Chicago police officer and the critical wounding of his partner by an EM escapee in April.

  But the program continues to be plagued by high-profile failures, including recent revelations by CWBChicago that a 10-time felon who was supposed to be confined to his home while wearing an ankle monitor was found in Gov. JB Pritzker’s backyard. And another man, alleged by federal authorities to be a member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, is charged with kidnapping and murdering an 18-year-old man while wearing one of the chief judge’s monitoring devices.

The only reason the "high-profile failure" even see the light of day is the outstanding reporting of the CWB blog - no other media outlet is doing it. And the number of "low profile" escapees is likely in the hundreds....many hundreds.

Something that should be spotlighted by persons running for higher office on a daily basis.

This is a Law?

This has been around for almost a century?

• A man who fatally punched a House of Blues patron outside the River North venue in November 2023 was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, according to court records. Jamie Miller, 32, was originally charged with murder. But prosecutors were unlikely to win that charge at trial, based on nearly a century of Illinois case law holding that a person cannot reasonably expect a single punch to kill someone.

  Miller’s sentence will be cut in half under state law, and he will also receive credit for 912 days spent on electronic monitoring and in jail while awaiting trial, according to an order from Judge Mariano Reyna.

That's a Hell of an assumption because we've known a few Golden Gloves fighters and more than a few street brawlers, and we always assumed that they could kill someone with their bare hands if the decided to go that route. In fact, killing someone with bare hands accounts for more murders than rifles most years, so the possibility is there for anyone who cares to research it. 

Giving this "freebie" to criminals who "didn't know" after they've spent years perfecting the ability to end a fight as quickly as possible is questionable at best, irresponsible at worst. 

But maybe we can use if for the Street Vigilante Committee in the future? 

More PPP Accountability

But only for the CPD?

Probably because it's easier to fire cops for Rule Violations than it is to get rid of union members with all sorts of delaying tactics:

• Eight more Chicago police officers now face dismissal for fraudulently obtaining federal Paycheck Protection Program loans during the pandemic, City Hall’s inspector general announced Wednesday.

  The officers falsified statements on government documents to obtain a total of $282,639 in federal funds intended to help small businesses during the COVID-19 crisis, according to Inspector General David Glockner’s first quarterly report.

  Glockner stepped into the watchdog role in April, succeeding succeeding Deborah Witzburg. Witzburg, now chief of staff to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, previously issued reports showing a total of 28 other cops had bilked the PPP program, which was rife with fraud.

  The eight officers highlighted in Wednesday’s report are accused of breaking the law, making false statements and discrediting the police department, among other things. Their names weren’t released.

Still no word on OEMC workers, of which there are dozens upon dozens.

And CPD exempt members are still being allowed to retire (with credentials) if they got caught up in this shitshow. 

(on a side note, we had to call 9-1-1 the other day for an incident - the phone rang thirteen times before being picked up....that hints at staffing issues that might have something to do with them slow-walking the OEMC investigations, especially if they suddenly had to fire fifty calltakers.)