Good News, but....

This is good to see:

• Police deaths on the job fell 25% in 2025 to 111, an 80-year low not seen since World War II.

  The number of law enforcement professionals nationwide who died in 2025 declined by a quarter compared to the same time period last year, according to preliminary data provided by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

  The NLEOMF data shows that 111 federal, state, county, municipal, and U.S. Territories officers died in the line of duty in 2025. That's a 25% decrease compared to the 148 officers who died in 2024, according to the organization.

Part of this is undoubtedly better emergency medical treatment. It's a driving force behind less homicide fatalities over time.

Another part is less anti-police rhetoric being driven by democrats and the media. Americans generally like and appreciate safer communities and that means working with police.

But another part might be police disengagement, especially in blue-state blue-city $hitholes where homicides are down (reflecting a national trend) but property crimes and similar crimes are up. You have an entire generation of cops who have been ordered not to chase, not to confront, not to enforce wide swaths of the actual Law. 

If that's what society wants....

Discuss. 

Justified

Here is a slowed down and zoomed in video of the ICE shooting in Minnesota yesterday.

• video link here

She's driving directly at the agent, who draws and fires as the car approaches.

Federal Rules of Engagement are NOT Minneapolis rules, and certainly not Chicago rules. 

This would appear to be a justified Use of Force and all the noise from the left - including Walz claiming he's going to use the Minnesota National Guard against ICE - certainly seems to be insurrection-y.

How Bad is the SAFE-T Act?

Results are mixed, but some of the predicted results continue to this very day:

• More than two years after Illinois eliminated cash bail under the SAFE-T Act, statewide crime data shows no increase in violent crime, but law enforcement leaders in rural parts of the state say the reform has created new public safety and addiction-treatment challenges that statistics alone do not capture.

  The Illinois SAFE-T (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today) Act was passed in January 2021 and signed by Gov. JB Pritzker the following month. Its most controversial provision, the end of cash bail under the Pretrial Fairness Act, took effect Sept. 18, 2023, after the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the law’s constitutionality.

  Supporters argued the reform would prevent low-risk defendants from being jailed simply because they could not afford bail. Opponents warned it would lead to repeat offenses, failures to appear in court and harm to victims of crime.

And if you skate over to the CWB blog, you can see weekly, sometimes daily reminders, of how repeat offenders are infesting the CTA with attacks ranging from batteries to robberies to lighting people on fire, not to mention over half of arrested shooters are either out on no-cash bail, parole or electronic monitoring.

That lone makes it a failure in terms of keeping Chicagons and Illinoians safe. 

Find the Snitches?

We're sorry (not), but don't these pricks work for us?

• The Chicago Board of Education has launched two investigations into how internal information got into the hands of the media.

  It is looking at whether a member is responsible for revealing the names of superintendent finalists to the media and how a reporter recently got an internal update that included information about plans to hold a special meeting to raise property taxes.

  The board president is so incensed by the recent leak that he is threatening to ask the guilty party to resign.

  This appears to be the first time in recent memory that the Board of Education has investigated a breach. Across the country, such investigations at the school board level are unusual, said Jeffrey Henig, professor emeritus at Columbia University’s Teachers College, who has studied the politics of school boards. More often, school boards are accused of acting in unison and doing too much business behind closed doors, he said.

There should be cameras in the schools so parents can monitor what their children are being taught, body cams on teachers to catch the constant child molesting going on, and cameras at every meeting held by the Board of Ed, especially when they're meeting in secret to raise taxes (again and always) while completely failing to do their jobs - namely EDUCATE children.

New York is Doomed

So this happened last week:

• New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday that he is appointing Ramzi Kassem as the city’s chief counsel, the top legal position in the city. Mamdani is set to take office on January 1, 2026.

  Alongside Kassem, Mamdani also appointed Steven Banks, a self-described “social justice attorney,” as corporation counsel, and Helen Arteaga as deputy mayor for health and human services. While Mamdani has praised both appointments as critical for defending working people and ensuring justice in the city, the backgrounds of the attorneys have raised a few eyebrows.

"raised eyebrows" because Kassem defended an al-Qaeda murderer, and al-Qaeda as you might remember, knocked over a couple buildings in New York City a quarter century ago.

But it got worse this week:

• Communist Muslim New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed a “Tenant Advocate” who wants to “seize private property,” which she sees as a symptom of “white supremacy.”

  Cea Weaver is her name, and over the years, she has made no secret of her anti-freedom and overtly racist views.

  “We’ll transition from treating property as an individual good to a collective good,” she promises. “Whites especially will be impacted.”

So being white and owning a house or apartment building is now evil in New York City. This AWFL has said she'll direct inspectors to cite and seize buildings that don't meet "standards" to further the communist agenda and fight gentrification.

Of course, it was revealed that she grew up in an affluent part of town, went to one of the "Seven Sisters" colleges, and her mother lives in Tennessee in a house that was bought for $800K but is now valued at over $1.4 MILLION. Gee, real estate is a good investment and gentrification increases net worth - who would have thunk it?  She tried to delete all her social media hypocrisy, but the links above and this one here reveal quite a few of them. (UPDATE: Daddy has his own $800K house AND is the owner of a couple of rental properties - but she's anti-landlord?)

This is the "progressive" agenda and you can bet Conehead and his communist handlers at the CTU would love to implement it here. In the meantime, farewell to NYC.

Porky by the Numbers

This is what's been happening in Illinois since Fata$$ took over:

• Pritzker’s Illinois: the numbers
  
  
  • Taxes are up $1,434 per person since Pritzker took office.
  
  
  • State spending has grown $18 billion (51%) since 2019 — nearly double inflation.
  
  
  • Illinois now has the highest property taxes in the nation.
  
  
  • State & local pension debt totals $218 billion — even $1M/day wouldn’t cover it for centuries.
  
  
  • Illinois lost 2,616 businesses to other states (1994–2023), with losses accelerating since 2017.
  
  
  • Gas tax doubled in 2019 and now stands at 48.3¢/gallon, costing drivers about $143 more per year.
  
  
  Is Illinois better off?

That answer would be, "No, not at all."

But people keep voting for this crap. 

Ninety-One Years

A good start:

• Jeffon Williams, who shot two Chicago police officers during a 2020 traffic stop, later telling an investigator, “F*** that officer, I hope he dies,” has been sentenced to 91 years in prison.

  A jury convicted Williams on August 14 of nine felony counts, including multiple charges of attempted murder, and Judge Steven Watkins on Monday handed down his punishment: two consecutive 45-year prison terms for the attempted murders and a consecutive one-year sentence for unlawful use of a weapon. Williams must serve 85% of the attempted murder sentences.

  Williams was 19 years old when he shot two CPD officers in Homan Square early on August 30, 2020. At the time of the shooting, he was on bail for pending burglary and stolen motor vehicle cases. 

Eighty-five percent works out to roughly 77 years. If they count back from the date of the shooting, he'll be ninety-six....pending a democrat governor pardoning him after everyone who remembers is retired or deceased.

Conehead the Moron....Again

So, since the threat of "curfew enforcement" on New Years Eve worked (and that no one showed up to the party) there's now no need for any curfew enforcement ever again!

• Mayor Brandon Johnson said Tuesday that Chicago’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve celebration hosted by Chance the Rapper, which came off without a hitch, proves there is no need for a revised curfew crackdown.

  On the eve of a showdown vote by a City Council committee, Johnson declared his opposition to Public Safety Chair Brian Hopkins’ latest attempt to give police officers additional tools to combat teen takeovers.

  “New Year’s Eve was a testament that we did not need an additional tool in order to ensure that our young people were where they need to be, and that our parents and adults who are part of these young peoples’ lives — that they are also held accountable for their whereabouts,” said Johnson, who vetoed the snap curfew ordinance that Hopkins muscled through the City Council after a violent teen takeover last year.

So instead of just leaving it unmentioned as a tool that could be rolled out at a later date (because crime has never been cyclical in nature or driven by current events) Conehead just decides it isn't needed.

Aldercreature Hopkins calls out the hypocrisy and shortsightedness of Conehead, but you just know morons gotta moron.

Nice Job Sarge

Above (literally) and beyond:

 

Mentally ill subject on the roof, CFD shows up, but it isn't for them to confront someone armed with a knife on a roof - they're just there to pick up the pieces after he hits the ground.

So Sarge goes up, talks him into ditching the knife, and then sits up with him for a bit, talking and enjoying the sunny weather before the subject finally decides it's probably quieter on the ground....

Or something like that. We don't have all the details. But we're pretty sure this isn't in any job description - it's just something cops do, day in and day out with little to no recognition, because that's what we do.

Nice job....and anyone with the details, post them in the comments. 

Range Safety Issues

Nice to see this hasn't changed since we left:

• SCC,
  
  Yesterday I was at A/5 for combined weapons qual. During the taser portion, we had one of the new Taser T10 go down. Range people said this happens quite a bit, and 10 have already went down. We all laughed. Then, on the range the target controls were not working, requiring the range officers to walk down range between firing sessions to manually move targets between the various distance markers. On top of that, the exhaust system was inoperable, so there was noticeable guns smoke during our qual. All we could do was shake our heads.

Did anyone notify the FOP Safety Grievance committee?

Split that Vote Even More!

Another one of the regular Machine hacks lining up to split the voter base again:

• U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley said during a radio interview on Tuesday that he will run for mayor of Chicago in 2027. The Democratic congressman who represents parts of Chicago's North Side made his intentions known on WGN Radio.

  Quigley is already running for re-election to his seat representing Illinois’ 5th Congressional District in this year’s midterm election. He’s also amassed more than $150,000 in his campaign war chest.

  "Are you going to run for mayor of Chicago?" the host, John Williams, asked.

  "I am, but we'll have a formal announcement and talk about that after the March primary," Quigley said. "Look, I've filed again for reelection. I've got another year to serve. The primary for mayor is in February of 2027. Look, what I'm trying to do is show proper respect for the March 17 primary next year. That's really important. So I don't want the voters to get too far ahead of ourselves. I want to focus on the issues of the day."

In other words, he wants to make sure he has a fall-back position in case the mayor thing doesn't work out, so he'll run for the safe DC spot before committing to a local run.

So far, this is what the mayoral race looks like:

• Joe Holberg, a venture capitalist
• Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas
• Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza
• Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias

Conehead has yet to announce if his 6% will be running and we'll bet Willie Wilson will be buying tanks of gas for voters in the run-up to 2027.

More Detentions?

First, a "police surge"? There's manpower for that?

• A recently announced surge of Chicago police patrols on Chicago Transit Authority train lines is already paying dividends, with cops taking two men into custody within days for allegedly carrying loaded firearms on CTA Red Line platforms in the Loop, according to CPD and court records.

Good job on the arrests....but what's this?

• (Offender 1) - Judge James Murphy II detained him on charges of aggravated unlawful possession of a loaded weapon and carrying a firearm after a prior gun conviction.
• (Offender 2) - Moody was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a repeat felon. Prosecutors said his criminal history includes four prior gun convictions, including a 2021 armed habitual criminal case. He was ordered detained by Judge Antara Rivera.

We remember things like this happening....late last century, when we were rookies. Not any time recently though.

And Another Rate Hike

Everyone remembers the massive property taxes hikes last month?

And the CPS topping off the tax hikes up to the limit of the law?

And Fata$$ refusing the "no tax on tips" directives from Washington?

What's Porky doing with the OT tax cuts? 

Now guess who else wants a bigger cut of your paycheck?

• Chicago heating bills could get even higher next year under a proposed rate hike from Peoples Gas that would increase the average household natural gas tab by up to $11 per month.

  The city’s gas utility submitted a request to state regulators for the hefty rate hike on Monday, about two years after the Illinois Commerce Commission granted Peoples Gas a record-high $306 million rate increase. Under that decision, regulators ordered the utility to overhaul its controversial pipeline replacement program that ran far over budget and behind schedule for years.

  The hike “reflects the mandate made last year” to wrap up the work by 2035, as well as “the impact of inflation on all aspects of infrastructure work, similar to other sectors of the economy,” according to Peoples Gas.

So after 2035, everyone will see a $11 per month rate cut since the work will be all done?

Hahahahaha....no, of course not. Because those numbers never go down - they'll think up something else so they can keep it all. 

Cook County Court Miracle

We should bring back the Death Penalty for scum like this:

• A 22-year-old man from Ecuador has been detained on charges that he kidnapped and sexually assaulted a 12-year-old Chicago girl he met through Instagram, according to prosecutors.

  In a detention petition, prosecutors said Henry Lema, 22, first contacted the girl online, picked her up without her parents’ knowledge, and took her to his residence, where he sexually assaulted her.

  Chicago police began investigating around 7 a.m. on December 23 after the girl’s parents called 911 from outside a home in the 4800 block of West Crystal Street. The parents told officers their daughter was missing and that they had tracked her cellphone to that address, which was later confirmed to be Lema’s residence. The parents said they had attempted to contact their daughter by phone and knocked on doors in the area without success.

Vigilantes would work. Was this pedo an illegal, too?

You'll never guess what happened afterward:

• Judge James Murphy III ordered Lema detained after finding prosecutors met their burden under the law. Lema is charged with criminal sexual assault of a victim younger than 13 and kidnapping.

It's a freaking miracle.

CTU Commies

Remember these idiots back in 2019?

• The recent trip to Venezuela by a group calling itself a Chicago Teachers Union delegation has upset some union members and expats who question the point of the tour and take issue with the group’s praise of the country’s disputed government.

  The four travelers, who crowdfunded the July trip under the banner of the CTU, met with Venezuelan government officials and educators, visited a commune and were featured in local media.

  They wrote online about wanting to connect with Venezuelan teachers, students and unionists, criticized U.S. economic sanctions against the South American nation and wrote admiringly of its socialism, its communes and high literacy rates.

  But critics say the group glossed over Venezuela’s ongoing political and economic crises and were excessively complimentary of President Nicolás Maduro, whose administration has been accused in recent United Nations reports of “grave” human rights violations and violence against dissenters.

They're still at it in 2026:

• The Chicago Teachers Union on Saturday promoted a protest of the Trump administration's action in Venezuela hosted by a who's who of far-left organizations, including a group that openly supports socialism.

  Activists from the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, along with activists from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, organized just hours after news that Venezuela's socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro had been captured by U.S. special forces in a daring mission during the dead of night. By Saturday afternoon, protesters in cities across the nation came together with signs and promotional material made specially for the occasion.

Test scores are going what direction again? Attendance numbers are headed where? But gotta support their commie brethren.

Anyone remember this?

 

One of many police Districts where over one hundred ILLEGAL ALIENS camped out for months on end with the infestations of bedbugs, lice, unsanitary conditions and all manner of transmissible sicknesses - and overwhelmingly Venezuelan in certain Districts.

And this is what the CTU supported....and continues to support. 

Murderer Gets $3 Million???

The system is a mess:

• The CTA must pay $3 million to a woman who killed and dismembered her North Side landlord after an Illinois appeals court ruled that a trial judge properly shielded jurors from learning about the then-pending murder case during her personal injury lawsuit against the transit agency.

  Unfortunately for Sandra Kolalou, also known as Sandra White, she will be in prison until at least July 2076, when she will be 90 years old.

  In a December 31 order, the Illinois First District Appellate Court confirmed a $2.8 million jury verdict against the Chicago Transit Authority stemming from a 2018 bus crash in which Kolalou was struck while walking in a crosswalk. The court rejected the CTA’s arguments that the case should have been delayed or the verdict reduced because Kolalou was later charged, and ultimately convicted, of murder and related crimes.

It certainly looks like the CTA lawyers screwed the pooch on this one:

• Those social media posts showed Kolalou “cliff-jumping, swimming with the dolphins, roller-skating, playing tennis, wearing high heels, and traveling to far-away destinations such as Egypt, South Africa, and Mexico” while she was experiencing debilitating leg and back pain, the CTA claimed in a filing.

Instead, they missed deadlines and hung their hats on a murder trial that hadn't even taken place.

On the other hand, the family or estate of the murder victim would seems to have an excellent opportunity to sue to offender for damages....may we suggest something in the neighborhood of $3 million?

We Guess it's 003

If one of the only reliable crime reporting sites says it's 003, it must be 003:

• The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has determined that a man found shot inside a South Shore apartment on Saturday morning was a homicide victim, marking the first murder of the new year in Chicago.

  CPD said someone discovered 51-year-old Marcos Aleida face down in a bed inside an apartment in the 6700 block of South Jeffery Avenue around 9:22 a.m. Saturday. He had suffered gunshot wounds to the head, chest, and back and was pronounced dead at the scene. No other details were released.

And as many had speculated, 03 January was longer than usual for the Grim Reaper to make his initial appearance:

• Since 2001, Chicago has started a new year with a longer murder-free period only twice: in 2014, when the first victim died at 4:08 p.m. on January 3, and in 2019, when the first killing occurred at 2:37 p.m.

  Since 2001, Chicago has recorded its first murder of the year on January 1 a total of 17 times. The first murder occurred on January 2 five times. And 2026 is the fourth year in which the city’s first homicide was recorded on January 3.

We remember one year, probably the late late 90s, it took almost five days to tally a homicide.

We also recall a year when someplace like 016 or 017 won the pool, also around that same time.

See?

Exactly the theory that we had proposed:

• President Donald Trump mentioned Chicago during his Saturday news conference on Venezuela, saying crime dropped in the city because he sent the National Guard, even though its troops never actually patrolled the streets of Chicago.

  “We also helped, as you know, in Chicago, and crime went down a little bit there,” Trump said. “We did a very small help, because we had no working ability with the governor. The governor was a disaster, and the mayor was a disaster.

  “But it knocked down crime.”

Hey, could the Administration be reading the blog?

Maybe even...... 

Holy crap! 

Homicide #1 (UPDATE)

003 wins?

• Detectives are conducting a homicide investigation after a man was found fatally shot Saturday in a South Shore home.

  Marcos Almeida, 51, was found with gunshot wounds to the head, chest and back about 9:30 a.m. inside a residence in the 6700 block of South Jeffery Boulevard, Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.

  He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. 

As McCompStat or J-Fledgar would say, this one is an "innie."

It also sounds domestic related, but we'll see. 

UPDATE: And once again, our warnings come into play. A number of people are saying in the comments that someone got beaten to death in 015 a full day before this one in 003....and the one in 003 may have occurred prior to 01 January due to the condition the body was found in. 

As we don't have access to the Major Incident Log or whatever they're calling the 24-hour report, we can't make any determinations.

Sounds of the New Year

Man, we remember these nights:

When we started (and it was expectd) we ran around scooping up offenders and guns.

In later years, we spent it under viaducts where it was safer.

Fun memories. 

Further Info

More on Betancourt - Larritorious' letter:

 Slum Times coverage:

• Chicago police are grieving following the sudden off-duty death of Deputy Chief William Betancourt, who Supt. Larry Snelling said “embodied what it meant to be a public servant and great leader.”

  Early Saturday after a medical emergency while he was off-duty, Betancourt, 60, passed away, Chicago police said.

He was never in our direct chain of command, and he didn't appear much in the blog comments, which is usually an indicator of someone who could be classified as "decent." He was in charge of 010 during the ILLEGAL ALIEN sex scandal that was complete made-up media bullshit and accounted himself well enough. 

We certainly wish he could have enjoyed some of the retirement he earned. 

RIP Deputy Chief Betancourt

Following a medical emergency overnight. 

No other info at this time. 

Final 2025 Numbers

Via HeyJackass.com, the only source for actual accurate crime numbers:

• Final 2025 Totals (vs 2024)
  Shot and Killed: 362 (-32%)
  Shot and Wounded: 1592 (-35%)
  Total Shot: 1954 (-34%)
  Total Homicides: 433 (-29%)

Sizeable drops, so Congratulations to the Chicago Police Department for operating at a significant manpower deficit and during massive overtime expenditures.

We Congratulate you here because you aren't going to see much in the way from City Hall, and (if rumors are to be believed) there won't be much in the way of hiring or overtime in 2026, so it was good while it lasted. 

They Grow Up So Fast!

Eight-year-old shooter:

• A 7-year-old boy was shot inside a Humboldt Park residence Thursday evening after another child found a firearm inside the home, Chicago police said.

  The shooting occurred in the 3200 block of West Division Street at approximately 7:04 p.m. According to police and radio traffic, an 8-year-old boy located a gun inside a second-floor apartment. The child then discharged the weapon, striking the 7-year-old boy in the arm, according to CPD.

  Cops applied a tourniquet to the child’s arm before the Chicago Fire Department transported him to Stroger Hospital, where he was listed in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the left bicep.

  Police recovered a firearm from a bedroom shelf in the apartment. No one was taken into custody.

Okay, technically not a "shooter" but a curious kid.

Turns out, this might be a test case for a new Illinois Law:

• The shooting happened on the same day a new gun storage law went into effect in Illinois. The legislation aims to make it harder for something like this to happen.

This is one of those laws designed to punish after the fact, rather than prevent anything, because it can't actually protect anyone - there is no enforcement mechanism for warrantless searches of homes. But upon conviction, you can bet that this offender will never be allowed to own a gun ever again.

The fine is $10,000, but once politicians see who the offenders are, we'll see if it's ever actually enforced. 

An Indictment, Finally

The "puncher" caught a couple cases:

• A man accused of punching several women in Chicago's Loop appeared in court Friday, where he was indicted.

  Marlon Miller is facing three counts of aggravated battery.

  Some have argued the 40-year-old suspect should have never been on the streets.

"some"?

Anyone with a brain you mean?

In fact, there was a missed opportunity quite a while ago:

• Miller was also accused of throwing a milkshake at a woman near the Chicago Theatre last month and punching two women in the face on Lake Street in October. After that incident, a judge placed him on electronic monitoring.

We thought the "Crimesha Precedent" allowed for Felony charges whenever a beverage was utilized in an assault? Or was this yet another case of the political clout of the victim being the deciding factor in appropriate charging?

Don't worry, we know the answer to that one. 

No Homicide Yet?

A couple woundings, but everyone survived as of Thursday afternoon:

• Chicago police are investigating after the first person was reported shot in the city about 90 minutes into the new year, an unusually long gap for a “first victim” by local standards. At least four other people have been shot since midnight, but time — and investigation — will ultimately determine which case will become the first “official” criminal shooting of 2026.

  The leading candidate for that dubious distinction is a 43-year-old man who was wounded after ringing in the new year at a South Loop nightclub. According to police, the man took himself to Jackson Park Hospital and told officers he had been standing in the 2100 block of South Michigan Avenue around 1:30 a.m. when he heard gunfire and realized he had been shot in the lower right leg. He was listed in fair condition. 

Don't worry, we're headed into the 40s by next week.

Interesting Interpretation

The Slum Times headline:

• Chicago records fewest killings since 1965, despite Trump's attacks against the city

But has the Slum Times thought about this interpretation of facts on the ground?

• After Hundreds of Extra Officials in Uniform on the Street along with Many Hundreds of Traffic Stops, Arrests, Detentions and Deportations of Criminals, Crime Drops

Completely plausible....probable even. Criminals go to where Law Enforcement isn't - even if the law enforcement isn't local.

But did anyone expect the Slum times to be even handed?

More Please

How many future crimes did this deter - suburban or Chicago?

• A teen boy was shot and killed after allegedly trying to rob another teen Wednesday afternoon in Cicero, town officials said.

  Two teens met for a marketplace sale that began on social media about 3:20 p.m. in the 1300-block of South 58th Avenue, officials said.

  The sale did not take place, and as the teen selling the item walked away, the other teen approached him and began to struggle with him over the item, officials said.

  A relative of the teen who owned the item got out of a nearby vehicle and was shot twice by the alleged robber, officials said. The relative, who also had a gun, said he returned fire, hitting the robber once.

Based on trends and history, we'd say this prevented at least half-a-dozen, maybe as many as ten future robberies/shootings in Cook County by this individual alone in 2026. 

If any of his friends were paying attention, maybe they learned a valuable lesson and might not attempt something similar, meaning the number of prevented crimes will increase exponentially. 

Imagine this happening on the CTA or downtown. It warms our cold dark heart. 

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone is staying safe and warm.

As with most major holidays, posting may be sporadic depending on what time we end up in bed overnight. Anyone have a decent hangover cure? 

New Year, New Rumor

This one appeared in the comments a day or so ago. Remember, for a rumor to sound believable, it needs to have some elements of truth in it - and this one seems to:

• I’m hearing it is Dana “Big mama” O’Malley who will be the civilian Commissioner and the 1st Dept.  The plan is to streamline upper management and eliminate most exempt positions. Commissioner will be a Sworn member (Ursitti). One Chief to oversee the Dept under 1st and remainder chief positions will be eliminated. Most Deputy Chiefs eliminated with exception one for operations and one for administration and one for each Area (combining Patrol and Detectives for intelligence sharing reasons) and 3 street deputies with 10 hour shifts - 4 hour gap will be handled by day deputies. 
• One Commander per district and one commander per Area D unit. BCT will be cut down dramatically with Narcotics, Asset Forfeiture and Gangs merging. Vice gone and Intelligence scaled down focusing only on anti-terrorism efforts. All other units canine, airports, and swat etc will have one Commander, One Lt. and everything else run by Sgts.
• Lt.’s will have large screens in their offices which will show the district in real time with red dots corresponding to each gps’d squad car. If you leave your beat it will beep and immediately alert the Lt and your supervisor. This is being done for beat integrity and accountability.
• With murders at a ten year low and violent crime down with 2000+ police vacancies it showed them it can be done. Paying OT is still way cheaper than paying insurance and benefits for 2200 new hires. All the OT nonsense in the media is just smoke and mirrors. Eliminating all of those exempt spots will save millions over a several year plan, reduce larger pension payouts and will fulfill the Mayor’s original plan to “defund the police” by not hiring for attrition and in essence doing a reverse layoff and ultimately wiping/eliminating another 2K sworn positions as Rahm did. Based on the city’s population compared to others our size we still have too many officers even with eliminating the 2K.  

We did hear that Heineken sent out a letter gutting OT initiatives, and we wrote hear last month about there being only 350 hiring slots during all of 2026, with almost one-thousand potential retirees, so manpower is on a downward slope regardless. 

Curfew Are Racist!

Until there's a national event in town, then they're necessary and good as CWB reports:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson has spent much of his term in office arguing that curfews for teenagers are ineffective, outdated, and rooted in what he has called “the sins and the values of the past,” even as large youth gatherings downtown have repeatedly devolved into violence, including murders.

  Now, with a nationally televised New Year’s Eve celebration set to unfold along the Chicago River, Johnson is striking a sharply different tone, warning teenagers that the city will strictly enforce its long-established 10 p.m. curfew downtown tonight.

  The pivot, and that is the most charitable word available, is difficult to miss. Johnson has consistently opposed expanding or strengthening curfews when teenagers have shot each other, violently robbed out-of-towners, and even shot tourists in the Loop and Streeterville. But with ABC broadcasting a midnight countdown in the heart of downtown tonight, the mayor is suddenly emphasizing the importance of the city’s 10 p.m. curfew, which has been in place since 1992.

Conehead is a typical commie hypocrite embracing disorder and law breaking as long as it advances the leftist agenda. But when it might embarrass him on the national stage, then it's days off cancelled, twelve hour days and curfew citations for everyone!

New Years Curfew?

Is this going to be a failure - how big?

• Resolving to avoid another violent holiday-season “teen takeover,” Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday stressed the city’s 10 p.m. curfew for young people who head downtown without adult supervision for the city’s nationally televised New Year’s Eve festivities.

  The mayor and police Supt. Larry Snelling implored parents to “know where your children are” to help the city avoid a repeat of the chaos that followed hundreds of teenagers who flocked to the Loop after last month’s Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. Nine teens were shot, one fatally, when large gatherings devolved into violence Nov. 21.

  Johnson and Snelling promised a heightened police presence for the “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest” spectacle that’ll take over the Riverwalk Wednesday night.

  But keeping the peace will largely come down to family communication, Johnson said during a press conference at the West Loop headquarters of the Office of Emergency Management & Communications.

With all the cancelled days off, does anyone think Larritorious and Heineken are going to have Officers checking IDs for curfew violators? Or being off the streets for citations? Of course not.

Questions though:

• will the "stop stick unit" be deployed for the inevitable car caravans? 
• how about a response team when the usual suspects start shooting off fireworks downtown?
• and will ABC be broadcasting on a ten-second-delay to attempt to filter out the sound of gunfire?

We put the odds of gunfire being heard on live TV at about 50-50. 

Robbery inside Casino

Anyone think this ever happened in Outfit-run Vegas?

• A man who identified himself as a casino employee was attacked and robbed inside a bathroom at the temporary Bally’s Chicago early Monday morning, according to a Chicago police report. It’s at least the third robbery reported this month on the block where Bally’s is located.

  A CPD spokesperson said a 25-year-old man was inside a business in the 600 block of North Wabash Avenue around 2 a.m. when two men confronted him. The men physically attacked the victim and took his belongings before fleeing northbound on Wabash Avenue, police said.

Two guesses as to what would have happened back in the day.

Hopefully, the Last Legs

The Slum Times has turned into a joke, more so than it ever was back in the day. The past few months, it's simply been an anti-ICE anti-law-and-order rag that we wouldn't even let a parakeet crap on.

This article is just ridiculous:

• Four men — one from Venezuela and three from Mexico — are all likely heading to prison after they were arrested early this year before the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation operation swung into full force in Chicago.

  They were arrested about the time President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, visited Chicago in late January after saying the city would be “ground zero” for mass deportations due to its sanctuary status.

  What makes their cases unusual, according to federal court records, is that one of them admitted to a serious gun charge and the others, while pleading guilty to entering the country illegally, previously served prison time for gun and drug offenses.

The article highlights the "plight" of a number of felons:

• gun trafficker selling a "ghost gun" to police;
• five time ILLEGAL with a conviction for fifty pounds of cocaine;
• another UUW offender;
• another multiple charged ILLEGAL ALIEN;
• a suspect in a triple homicide

Why would the Slum Times waste ink and paper on these persons who contribute exactly zero to society? Who gives a rats ass if these types get sentenced to months or years in prison prior to being ejected from the country? 

Their website is a constant stream of pop-up ads begging for money, so we would hope they're going to finally go under one of these days. 

Officers Injured

Bad wreck involving a stolen car:

• Two Chicago police officers were seriously injured when a stolen car crashed into their police SUV early Monday in Lake View near Wrigley Field.

  The officers were southbound in the 3600 block of North Racine Avenue around 3 a.m. when a Hyundai Elantra ran a stop sign and struck their marked police SUV, Chicago police said.

  After the collision, the Elantra hit three parked vehicles and the police SUV was pushed onto the sidewalk and into a tree, police said.

  The officers were taken to a hospital and treated for “serious” injuries, police said. The Elantra’s driver, an 18-year-old man, was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center in critical condition.

There was an active search going on for the vehicle when this occurred.

Get well soon Officers. 

CPS Raises Taxes Again

And they raised them the maximum allowable:

• Chicago's part-elected, part-appointed school Board voted to raise property taxes. While it's a small amount, some Board members say any amount is too much during a time when some residents' property tax assessments have gone way up.

  While Chicago Public Schools doors are locked for winter break, the Chicago Board of Education is working. On Monday, Board members convened a special meeting to vote on raising the property tax levy.

  [...] CPS is allowed to raise the rate, but it is capped at the lower of either 5%, or the rate of inflation. When the district closed a $729 million budget deficit in August, it raised the levy slightly below the legal limit. Monday's vote was to raise it to the legal limit. All of Mayor Brandon Johnson's Board allies voted for the increase.

Remember, these are the jackasses keeping schools open AND FULLY STAFFED - schools built for 1,000 or more students, but attended by maybe 60 students in some cases, mostly on the west and south sides. And who are graduating kids completely unprepared for a modern workforce, unable to read at a sixth grade level.

PPP Fraud Movement?

Are we going to see some accountability, years later? (paywalled Tribune article):

• About 400 government employees investigated by the state of Illinois improperly tapped a federal pandemic relief fund program meant to keep small businesses afloat — part of a nationwide wave of Paycheck Protection Program fraud that siphoned tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  While more than 200 have lost their jobs or voluntarily resigned, some have been referred for criminal prosecution for fraudulently obtaining the taxpayer-funded forgivable business loans, according to an Illinois Office of the Executive Inspector General report.

  As of June 30, the end of fiscal year 2025, the OEIG found “reasonable cause” in 378 investigations, concluding that many state employees acquired PPP loans “based on falsified information,” the watchdog’s annual report released earlier this month said.

  Without naming individuals, the report listed more than 100 employees from Illinois state government departments, including Human Services, Juvenile Justice, Corrections and Children and Family Services, who received more than $2.8 million in PPP loans. Many loans were in the $20,000 range, while a few exceeded $41,000. The investigations date back to 2022.

Again, this is a state investigation. There were quite a few CPD exempts who were found to have submitted applications for these loans, many for single-employee "security firms" pretty much meaning themselves, not to mention dozens of OEMC employees and we're told, quite a few CTU members.

And accountability was minimal:

• Illinois - 501 cases that they bothered to track
• Cook County - claimed a mere 65 cases out of 22,000 employees
• Cook County Sheriff - 163 cases investigated
• Cook County Courts - 78 cases
• the City of Chicago identified over 1,000 cases, but only investigated 60 cases, closing NINE

And guess what took up the bulk of the "investigative process"?

• CPD

But that was to control the investigation of the connected - not to affix accountability. 

Consequences?

Who would have ever thought that something like this could happen at such a beacon of tolerance, understanding and anti-violence? (paywalled Tribune article)

• The Rev. Michael Pfleger is demanding offenders face consequences for Sunday’s shooting outside St. Sabina, the second shooting to occur on his turf this year.

  After an argument inside the St. Sabina gym during a basketball tournament led to a triple shooting Sunday afternoon, Pfleger said he was suspending their men’s basketball league on Sundays and is working with police in an effort to find the shooter.

  “That league for grown men on Sunday nights is suspended as of now,” Pfleger, a longtime activist against gun violence, said Monday. “There’s got to be consequences for actions.”

That's a first - consequences for actions? Never thought we'd hear that coming out of this asshole's mouth, especially after years of advocating for exactly the opposite and then refusing the consequences for his unlawful actions.

Must be a Christmas miracle or something. 

Someone Had to Say It

Might as well be this guy:

• Calling the attorneys representing the family of slain Chicago Police Officer Krystal Rivera “lower than whale sh**,” the head of the city’s largest police union has unleashed a blistering attack on the relatives’ wrongful death lawsuit that suggests another cop may have intentionally killed the officer on duty and left her to die.

  “This is as low as it gets,” Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said in a YouTube video, directing his anger at the law firm Romanucci & Blandin after it sued Rivera’s partner, Officer Carlos Baker, and the city over Rivera’s death on June 5.

Unless the City settles, this one is going to be an on-going embarrassment for years, painting the Department, hiring practices, personnel decisions and inconsistent disciplinary processes in the worst possible light.