Settlement in Progress?

After Crimesha's amazing sworn testimony the other day where despite believing an offender was guilty as charged (and convicted), she refused to defend the jury finding, it turns out that the (former) offender already has a settlement offer from the City and it's big enough that it's before the City Council at this very moment:

• A man exonerated in a brutal double murder in Bucktown who later obtained a certificate of innocence after the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office under Kim Foxx did not oppose his petition — even though Foxx now says she believed him to be guilty — has reached a settlement in principle to resolve his 8-year-old wrongful conviction lawsuit against the city and the detective whose investigation put him in prison, federal court records show.

  Attorneys representing Arturo DeLeon-Reyes, the city, and former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara informed the court Wednesday that they had reached the basic outline of a settlement. A final pre-trial conference scheduled before a trial set to begin Monday was canceled, according to docket entries. Details of the proposed settlement have not been disclosed.

  [...] Last week, attorneys for Solache reached a separate settlement with the city that is now awaiting City Council approval, according to WTTW. The exact figure has not been disclosed, but City Council sign-off is required for any settlement exceeding $100,000.

Has anyone filed an ARDC complaint against Crimesha yet? 

Maybe an Official Misconduct charge?

Another Shotspotter Miss

Only a critical wounding at this time:

• A jogger found a man shot and critically injured in Hyde Park on Thursday morning, but the victim may have gone undiscovered for more than 45 minutes because the mayor disconnected the local ShotSpotter network in 2024, and the only call about gunfire in the area was not precise enough for police to locate him.

  At about 4:06 a.m., a 911 caller reported hearing three shots fired near 55th Street and Cornell Avenue and seeing a car speeding away eastbound on 55th Street, according to CPD dispatch records. Officers responded and searched near the intersection, but did not find anything unusual.

  More than 45 minutes later, at 4:54 a.m., police were sent to investigate a person shot call in the 5400 block of South Cornell Avenue after a jogger discovered a 31-year-old man shot near Cornell Park. Officers found the victim with two gunshot wounds to his chest, one to his back, and one to his arm. CPD said he was taken to the University of Chicago Hospital in critical condition.

  Police located three shell casings in the grass next to the street, near where the man was found. That detail suggests ShotSpotter would have pinpointed the location for first responders had the system not been deactivated by the mayor.

It seems the victim was a CCL holder, which is too bad. We're convinced the only way crime is going to go down significantly is with citizens doing the job that police aren't allowed to do any more - removing criminals from circulation.

Contrarian Articles

Another couple good ones up on their site.

The first one deals with the SAFE-T Act leading directly to violence against the police:

• When you build a system that frees violent criminals, you don’t get to act surprised when it kills a cop

  Anybody who lives in Chicago knows what’s going on.

  Anybody who reads the papers knows what’s going on.

  Anybody who’s paying even the slightest attention knows this city has turned its criminal justice system into a revolving door for violent offenders.

  Except, apparently, the people running the criminal justice system.

  Because if they understood the reality they created, maybe Officer John Bartholomew would still be alive.

The second is Porkulous lying about the SAFE-T Act:

• During the 2022 campaign, Bailey made the exaggerated but memorable claim Chicago was “living The Purge when criminals ravage at will and the cops are told to stand down.”

  Bailey was alluding to The Purge movie franchise, where one day a year, people can commit crimes without facing punishment.

  The Loch Ness Monster

  Not true, Pritzker answered back. The SAFE-T Act was written to protect a mother. A mythical mother, the Loch Ness Monster of petty criminals.

  The governor, many times during the campaign, repeated this lie.

  “Making sure that we’re also addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.”

  ‍Yes, I said Loch Ness Monster, because such a woman — sorry “Nessie” believers — never existed, except in Pritzker's imagination.

  Eventually, Pritzker added baby formula to the mother’s “the heist.”

  In response, Patrick Kenneally, who was then the McHenry County state’s attorney, and 100 other Illinois county prosecutors — out of 102 — opposed the SAFE-T Act, and in a lawsuit called the law a “clear and present threat to public safety.” And Kenneally said that under Illinois law prior to the SAFE-T Act it was impossible for Loch Ness Mother to be jailed pretrial for simply stealing diapers, calling Pritzker’s claim “misinformation appealing to emotion.”

  And amid that discussion, Pritzker launched another lie.

  "Well, let’s just set the record straight with everybody. The SAFE-T Act is designed to keep murderers and domestic abusers, violent criminals in jail.”

  Yet Talley, despite being a seven-time felon who was accused of violence, a parole absconder, and someone who stopped charging his electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, was not locked in a jail cell on the morning he allegedly murdered Bartholomew.

The articles are far to extensive and detailed to quote, so head over to the links up top and take your time reading them.

Keep spreading the word - there's something brewing out there. Don't know if it has momentum yet, but people are getting sick and tired of the lies being told.

DC Brass Being Fired

That post we have a few days ago about Washington DC bosses falsifying crime data is having real world fallout (click for larger view):

Now imagine if that sort of accountability was enacted here. There might be a shortage of "merit" bodies to fill all the holes. 

Media Trust Continues to Die

This was the Slum Times a few days ago:

Why would they use a CFD ambulance graphic for a death in Evanston?

Oh yeah, because they're lazy, unprofessional, DEI hires assisted by A.I. 

Cleared After Almost Two Years

In car camera, body cameras and outside security cameras captured the shooting and it still took almost two years to clear the Officers:

• Chicago’s police oversight agency has cleared two officers in a 2024 Pilsen shooting, finding one was justified in fatally shooting an armed 16-year-old and the other was justified in firing at a person who ran from the scene.

  The Civilian Office of Police Accountability released its findings on Thursday night in the August 18, 2024, shooting death of Alex Cortez, of Plainfield. COPA previously said state law barred it from releasing video of the incident or identifying Cortez by name because he was a juvenile. CWB Chicago identified him through other public records.

  CPD has said its own investigation found that Cortez was one of two people who opened fire on a nearby vehicle before the officers arrived, critically wounding two occupants. Again, CPD did not identify Cortez by name.

The Officers fired through their own windshield to neutralize the threat - an armed offender pointing a gun at their squad car from at most, ten feet away.

An excellent job all around and hopefully put to rest now. 

Rootbeer Said What Now?

At a deposition? Under oath?

• In a series of stunning revelations made under oath, former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said last month that she personally believed two exonerated men whose certificates of innocence were not opposed by her administration were, in fact, guilty of “a heinous act of murder.”

  One of those two men recently reached a wrongful conviction settlement with the city of Chicago so large that it is awaiting City Council approval. The man accused of being his accomplice is preparing to take his lawsuit to a federal jury next week.

Are you fucking kidding us? She's admitting she enabled the grift? 

This is legal malfeasance of the highest order. 

Crimesha ought to be paying out of pocket for what taxpayers are on the hook for. She had a legal and ethical obligation to prosecute criminals AND defend those convictions, especially if she believed the offenders to be guilty.

She certainly shouldn't be practicing law ever again - and never from the bench as the rumors about her being in line for a judge spot keep popping up. 

No Bail Fail....in New York

Looks like this "no cash bail" thing is a failure everywhere:

• Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch released new crime statistics indicating that, compared to last April, crime in New York City last month was down 9.5% overall.

  That is very good news, and kudos are due to her and to the men and women of the NYPD.

  But before we start popping the champagne corks, we have to understand that comparing statistics year over year obscures the real crime story in NYC.

  You really have to compare crime in NYC pre-bail reform to crime post-bail reform.

  Crime in NYC began its historic rise not last April but in 2019 when bail reform was passed, releasing thousands of career criminals onto our streets.

  While murders are down 14% from April 2019 to April 2026, robberies are up 8.8%, grand larcenies are up 9.4%, felony assaults up 50% and auto theft a whopping 171%.

  We are seven years into this bail reform “experiment” and felony index crime overall is up over 26% from what it was before the law passed

CWB recently did a piece about how crime was actually up after the yearly stats caught up with the warming weather, and we really hate to ask their number crunchers to dig deeper, but....

• What are the chances of a New York Post-type comparison, i.e. before and after SAFE-T Act numbers?

The best way (in our opinion) to get a look at trends is (A) year over year or (B) after some significant event that altered behaviors. In this case, we'd look at:

• the election of Crimesha and her non-prosecution of felony cases
• COVID interruptions to crime
• SAFE-T Act implementation

Numbers on both sides of those significant events would expose a lot of number manipulation and more than a few lies. 

Circling the Drain

As we have been saying for decades, if you don't have consequences for bad behavior, you will get more of it. Here it is again:

• Forty percent of Chicago Public Schools students miss 10 percent (or more) of school without a valid excuse. How do we know that? Because the Illinois State Board of Education produces an easy-to-understand “report card” for every school in the state.

  But that report card is changing as the state pushes to better gauge improvement, regardless of a school’s individual challenges.

  Part of the rebrand is deleting the term “chronic absenteeism.” Schools will no longer be downgraded if students fail to show up, but a school’s overall grade can be “lifted” if students demonstrate “consistent attendance.”

So if students "consistently" show up 89% of the time, well....that's consistent, right? Even if it tops the 10% threshold that indicates a problem.

And they won't be holding school personnel, administrators or parents for that matter accountable. 

But you know what their solution will be when kids can't read at grade level when they're pushed out the door? More taxes for a failing product.

Ghost Hammers

A bunch of good suggestions in the comment regarding the unregistered purchases of hammers by the mentally ill:

• Hammers should have serial numbers and be controlled
• You should need three forms of ID to buy a hammer
• you really should have a background check before you are allowed to buy a hammer. Fingerprints and a DNA sample should go to the Feds for every hammer sale
• What Illinois needs to do is create an H.O.I.D. card so that we know when people buy a hammer they have been trained and the hammer is registered

All good suggestions....but they don't address the most concerning aspect of this entire class of weapons:

• Ghost Hammers

Did you know that you can actually build your own hammer? Without any sort of government oversight? And then you can sell these blunt instruments on the street....for profit....and without any sort of background checks? 

Look at some of these we found on-line:

You can tell some of them were recovered at crime scenes because there's a evidentiary ruler in the picture so as to document the barrel, handle length and caliber of the hammer. 

And according to fbi statistics, hammers are used in far more homicides that "assault rifles"

Are they 3D printing hammers yet? There ought to be a law about that. 

Blaming Who?

Aldercreatures say dumb shit all the time.

This DEI alder moron said just about the dumbest thing we've heard all year:

• A Chicago alderman, incensed by the upcoming closure of a Walgreens store amid safety concerns, stated that the corporate retailer should be charged with "first-degree corporate abandonment."

  Ald. William Hall, along with several community members, held a news conference Monday to voice their anger over the company's decision to close the location in Chicago’s 6th Ward in the Chatham neighborhood.

  "Walgreens should be charged with first-degree corporate abandonment," Hall said. "It should be a crime, the way they're treating our elders. It should be a crime, the way they're treating our families."

Not a word or a mention about how his constituents are treating Walgreens though?

And is this one running for mayor or something?

• Ald. Raymond Lopez, a Democrat, said he understands the community's frustration but questioned the timing of the outrage.

  "Where was that anger when the stores in our communities were under years and years of assault by criminals allowed to shoplift, vandalize, and destroy neighborhood institutions?" Lopez asked in a statement to Fox News Digital. "Many leaders say it is simply an insurance matter. They are wrong. There are real-world consequences for crime running rampant. This closure is the perfect example of that effect."

He certainly isn't making any aldercreature friends talking like that.

Whoops

Suburban school "oops:"

• A person of interest is in custody after a resource officer misplaced his gun while using the bathroom at a northwest suburban school Monday afternoon, leading to the cancellation of classes on Tuesday.

  According to Arlington Heights police, the incident unfolded just prior to school dismissal at Forest View Educational Center, located in the 2100 block of South Goebbert Road in Arlington Heights.

  Police say the school resource officer removed his firearm from his duty holster while using the restroom, but realized the gun was missing shortly after students were dismissed for the day.

  The resource officer searched the restroom for the gun, but did not locate it and contacted authorities to help in the search.

The gun wasn't located that day, but a review of security footage has led to an arrest of a "person of interest."

Any bets if Porkulous and Kwame will insist on more gun restrictions because Indiana has looser laws that enable gun running over the border?

PPP Indictment

A white shirt who must not have had enough time on to retire with a pension the way so many others did:

• link here

Over $40,000 scammed for a loss of a pension amounting to almost six-figures.

Smooth move there.

Politicizing the Shooting

The polling must be disturbing to the Machine because they're using it to slime each other. Fata$$ has blamed the judge, the judge has blamed the legislature, and now an "anonymous defense attorney" (who probably contributes major amounts of cash to Machine politicians) is bad-mouthing the States Attorney who beat the Prickwrinkle's hand-picked choice:

• After Alphonso Talley allegedly killed Chicago Police Officer John Bartholomew and critically wounded another officer at Swedish Hospital last weekend, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke blasted a judge for placing Talley on electronic monitoring months earlier. But court records show her office never asked the judge to reverse his release order and never appealed the matter to a higher court.

  Talley is also accused of beating and robbing a Family Dollar cashier in Albany Park before shooting the two officers with a gun prosecutors said he kept hidden on his body after being arrested. A seven-time convicted felon, he had absconded from electronic monitoring six weeks earlier while awaiting trial on armed carjacking and armed robbery charges.

  “Electronic monitoring is not an alternative to detention. It does not keep people safe,” O’Neill Burke said Tuesday, calling the county’s monitoring program “broken.”

  But defense attorneys and former prosecutors who spoke with CWB Chicago said that while Burke’s office is quick to criticize judges when things go wrong, it rarely challenges questionable pretrial release decisions in court.

And there are examples given, pro and con, for this poor excuse of a "Law."

And Kwame "give me all your guns" Raoul is bragging about how non-political he's been over this killing:

• Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the state’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer, runs what may be the state’s most prolific press release operation, regularly publishing one, two, or even three releases on any given weekday. This week alone, his office put out at least 13 of them, covering topics ranging from his support for work authorization for asylum seekers to curbing illegal vaping product sales.

  Contacted on Friday by CWB Chicago, Raoul said he made a conscious decision to avoid commenting on the shooting.

  “The murder of one Chicago police officer and the life-threatening injuries of another officer who is in critical condition are horrific,” Raoul said in response to our inquiry. “These officers were serving our community and could not have predicted the senseless gun violence they were met with while at a hospital. The families of both officers are in my prayers as they process this tragic, life-altering event, and we join in their mourning.”

  Raoul acknowledged making a deliberate choice to stay out of the broader policy debate. “I have intentionally avoided politicizing this tragedy because the officers should be honored while we continue to prioritize the safety of our communities from preventable gun violence,” he said. “It must end. Full stop.”

But he raised zero objections to the Law when it was being passed and has refused to criticize any shortcomings of the Law since implementation....because he supports criminals. That's why he wants you disarmed.

Hammer Guy Again

Aren't "hammer control laws" supposed to prevent him from re-arming himself with hammers?

• A man who went viral this spring when video circulated of him boarding a Red Line train and threatening to kill people while wielding two hammers is cooling his heels in the Cook County Jail after allegedly threatening to kill a sheriff’s police officer who woke him up and told him he could not sleep on the Red Line — with hammers.

  Eric Vinson, 51, of Bartlett, has been arrested at least 49 times since 2015, according to court records, including twice since he gained a fleeting moment of internet fame with that cellphone video in mid-March.

  The footage, which has been viewed tens of millions of times on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, showed Vinson boarding a Red Line train while brandishing a metal hammer in each hand and threatening to kill passengers, one of whom recorded the incident. Other passengers tried to ignore him by looking at their phones or staring at the floor. Ultimately, no injuries were reported.

  About 10 days later, on March 27, Chicago police arrested Vinson after he allegedly threatened to kill a 55-year-old service station employee with a hammer in the 8700 block of South State Street.

It's only a matter of time before someone shoots this asshole, probably the police. But we wouldn't be surprised if someone else does it.

Well Boo Hoo

Actions have consequences....as well as the lack of actions:

• Six Walgreens have closed on the city's South Side during the past year.

  One alderman calls it pharmaceutical genocide.

  Walgreens says one location in Chatham is closing on June 4 because of high levels of theft and violent incidents. This is the same area where a Target store recently shut down.

Because the community refused to raise their children correctly....

Because the community insisted crime go unpunished....

Because everything is someone else's fault....

Well, now you found out. 

St Jude Coverage

A few local media sources:

• here
• here
• and here

An especially poignant event this year on the heels of last weeks Line of Duty death.

Facial Recognition Again

Once again, a tool democrats don't want police to be able to use....because it helps find criminals:

• Facial recognition helped investigators identify the man who allegedly helped suspected cop killer Alphonso Talley violently rob an Albany Park dollar store last weekend less than four hours before Talley used a hidden pistol to shoot two CPD officers who were guarding him during a hospital exam, officials said.

  The revelation comes as four state legislators have signed on to legislation that would ban law enforcement agencies across Illinois from using facial recognition as an investigative tool.

One day soon, these creatures are going to demand the banning of Body Cams. It's already happening in other states, so give it some time. 

In the meantime, there's still a chance to remove some of these idiots from office.

Rumors Abound

Every rumor starts with an element of truth in it and this is no exception:

• word out of hq: that big promotional class of 37 lieutenants, plus sergeant retirements starting this month wiped out almost all of the 51 sergeants that got made in march. cpd hr formally requested a summer class of 50 sergeants, which has not yet been approved, in addition to a fall class of 50. 

  Recruit classes all summer are scheduled in advance with ILETSB. But city hall said fuck no and cancelled all recruit classes until September. not a single one until mid-september.
  
  and last night, 12 PO's, 4 SGT's and a LT were dumped from the academy back to districts due to poor performance. 

This is due to be yet another summer of above average retirements as the 1997 people are hitting their twenty-ninth year. Long time readers and veterans will recall the gigantic hiring wave of 1993-thru-1998 where something like five-thousand bodies went through the Academy. The Department is at the end of that run (mostly) and hiring since has never quite kept up with attrition.

For more proof, check out the post directly below this one. 

Nice Manpower Conehead

Wasn't the "Consent" Decree going to fix all this?

Down Cars:

• Early side - 1215, 1225, 1233, 1235, 1271 
• Late side - 1232, 1234, 1214A

We list 1234 as "down" because they're actually driving the late Wagon, so they're not really a beat car any more.

One Man Cars that should be 10-4 Units:

• 1211, 1212, 1213, 1214, 1221, 1222, 1223, 1224, 1231

So what should be Watch manned by about thirty-five Officers was on the streets with eleven Officers - around 31% of listed strength. - on a Saturday night. 

Completely safe and efficient! 

Remember, Democrats Love You

Look at how much they love New Yorkers:

• Some of the most infamous killers in history, including John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman and “Son of Sam” serial murderer David Berkowitz, could soon be freed if Albany passes a pair of woke parole bills, critics warn.

  The Elder Parole bill would let violent criminals dodge their minimum sentences, regardless of how heinous their crimes, and be granted early parole hearings after they’ve turned 55 and served 15 years of their sentences. 

  A second lefty measure, the Fair and Timely Parole bill, would require the state parole board to release convicts regardless of the severity of their crimes unless they are a “current” danger to the public.

There is a whole list of infamous killers at the link up top.

The morons proposing this are "progressives" and avowed socialists.

At this point, it's probably safer for the killers to remain in prison for the rest of their lives anyway, because there are still plenty of surviving family members who'd appreciate the chance to extract their own revenge on these murderers. 

Can you imagine getting a chance to take out the "Son of Sam"? It might become a tourist draw.

Accomplice Apprehended

US Marshals grabbed the other robber:

• A suburban man is charged with helping Alphonso Talley violently rob an Albany Park dollar store last Saturday morning, shortly before Talley allegedly went on to kill a Chicago police officer and gravely injure that officer’s partner by shooting them with a firearm he had hidden on his body after being arrested following the holdup.

  A U.S. Marshals Task Force arrested Jeron Tate, 18, of Maywood, on Thursday in the 7500 block of South Carpenter Street, Chicago police said. He is scheduled to appear in court for a detention Since he was long gone before Talley got arrested, we don't think there's any way to stack Felony Murder charges on him.

Since he was long gone before the shooting, we don't think there's any way to tag him on a Felony Murder case.

However, there's plenty of pressure to bring to ensure he testifies against Talley regarding the initial armed robbery to get him a life sentence.

Thank You Ms Velezquez

This is the worker at the Dollar Store that was pistol whipped by the armed robber who went on to kill Officer Bartholomew:

• The woman who was pistol-whipped during an armed robbery at a Family Dollar store in Albany Park last weekend said she was horrified to learn one of the two men who were arrested was also accused of later shooting two Chicago police officers, killing one of them.

  Maria Velezquez was still badly bruised nearly one week after the attack, but despite her physical scars, she was speaking out, because she wants people to hear what she endured while simply working at her job; a job she's terrified of returning to now.

  Velezquez was working at the Family Dollar store at the corner of Lawrence and Sawyer avenues on April 25, when two men robbed the store. One of them hit her three times in the face with a gun, breaking her nose.

Despite her injuries, she gave responding Officers a decent enough description of the offender to lead to his eventual capture. She was as horrified as we all were of what transpired afterwards.

There's a GoFundMe for her. It isn't getting as much notice as the multiple fundraisers for the Bartholomew family, but even a couple bucks might be a simple enough "Thanks" for stepping up after taking a beating like she did.

This Sounds Familiar

Imagine if we had this sort of accountability here in Chicago:

• The [Washington DC] Metropolitan Police Department’s internal investigators have sustained accusations against at least 15 high-ranking police officials—including captains, commanders, and assistant chiefs—in a sweeping investigation into crime statistics, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

  [...] One of IAD’s findings, according to a source, is that Second District Cmdr. Tatjana Savoy directed two captains to reclassify as many as 390 thefts as taking property without a right, a misdemeanor. Thefts can be classified as felonies or misdemeanors depending on the circumstances, but they are all reported in D.C.’s daily crime report and to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. Reclassifying thefts as taking property could give the appearance that the crime is decreasing. Total thefts dropped by 10 percent from 2024 to 2025, according to statistics posted to MPD’s website.

The article devolves after pointing out what the NYPD and CPD did for years - killing crime on paper, downgrading and reclassifying everything that didn't involve dead body, though there was a bit of that going on at times, too.

No one seems to have gone to prison, so it will likely continue in one form or another.

Best Explanation So Far

CWB doesn't only report crime. They did something that no other media outlet even considered as far as we can tell:

• It’s the question everyone is asking: Was Judge John Lyke required to release suspected cop killer Alphonso Talley under the SAFE-T Act?

  Talley, a seven-time convicted felon with armed carjacking and armed robbery cases pending before Lyke, later escaped from his ankle monitor and, prosecutors say, brutally robbed a store cashier Saturday morning and then shot two CPD officers, killing one.

  To understand whether Lyke had any real choice in the matter, it helps to walk through exactly how Illinois’ pretrial detention law works.

And then, by God, they walk through it, step by step. Here is the real meat of the article:

• Then, and this is where Lyke crossed the Rubicon, the judge made his finding: “This court cannot find that the state has met its burden by clear and convincing evidence that there is no condition or combinations of conditions that this court can impose to protect any person or persons in the community when weighing everything with a fresh set of eyes and understanding.”

  At that point, the SAFE-T Act required Lyke to release Talley on the least restrictive conditions Lyke believed were necessary to keep the public safe. He had no choice in the matter. A judge cannot decide that electronic monitoring is sufficient and then keep someone locked up anyway. The law does not allow it.

  The answer, then, is yes. Once Lyke determined that conditions existed that could protect the public while Talley awaited trial outside jail, the SAFE-T Act required him to release Talley on those conditions.

Simply put, Lyke's determination that....

• a multiply convicted violent felon, 
• with additional pending violent felony cases 
• committed while already on Electronic Monitoring

....wasn't enough proof that Talley was a danger to the community. So the only way forward was to release Talley on yet another useless Electronic Monitoring anklet because Lyke closed off every other avenue to himself. That "under-developed brain" bullshit was Lyke just closing another off-ramp that would have kept a violent repeat felon in custody.

Fata$$ was actually technically correct - this one is on the judge, a useless DEI hire who misapplied the craptacular law that Fata$$ signed into existence. Plenty of democrats to blame for this one.

An SCC salute to the crew over at CWB, just about the only journalists worthy of the name any more. 

Parking

When we posted about the parking conditions over at the wake and funeral for Officer Bartholomew yesterday, we didn't expect so much whining about it. We were just warning people to plan ahead. 

The family gets to choose the location of services and Special Events does what they can to make it work as well as they can. They've done great work in the past under similar circumstances.

Some commentators suggested car pooling and Uber rides. Someone else said the Park District is going to make lakefront parking available. 

How about this - the Department had dozens of those 15 passenger vans they used for events and deployments in the past. Have those cleaned up and station three or four at the following locations:

• 019 - huge parking lot
• 020 - multistory parking garage
• 024 - Streets and San Ward yard

Then run a shuttle service to and from St. Andrew's. 

There are ways around the parking issue and that shouldn't be something that deters members from attending to show the family support during this trying time.

 

 

Hey, Look!

Actual investigative journalism!

• Two months after a Chicago Sun-Times Watchdogs investigation revealed that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s city budget director Annette Guzman had taken illegal property tax breaks for five years, she’s paying back the rest of what she should have paid.

  The Sun-Times reported in May that Guzman had taken property tax breaks she wasn’t entitled to for the past five years, saving her $3,432 in taxes on a South Loop condo she leases to tenants.

  Annette Guzman got the approval she needed to claim those tax breaks from Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, her former boss.

  After being asked why he’d approved those tax breaks, Kaegi decided Guzman should pay up for only a portion of what she’d failed to pay: $2,071.29, covering only the past three years, out of the five years for which she’d gotten the illegal tax breaks.

  Following the Sun-Times report, records show, Guzman made good on the rest of the property taxes that she should have been paying, the remaining two years. She sent Kaegi two checks on April 3 to cover the additional $1,360.80 she should have paid for 2020 and 2021.

Remember, this is Conehead's BUDGET DIRECTOR. The person in charge of determining how much money Conehead needs to run the city and how to gather that money from taxpayers - all while cheating taxpayers out of her portion of the tax burden. 

This is how you can tell that Conehead probably doesn't have the backing of the Machine. At least not to the extent that they'd bury this story under normal circumstances.

Funeral Arrangements

Services for Officer John Bartholomew:

• Funeral services for Chicago police officer John Bartholomew, who was fatally shot at Swedish Hospital last Saturday, will be held next week in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood.

  Visitation will be 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. May 7 at St. Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Church, 5649 N. Sheridan Rd., according to an obituary posted Thursday. Funeral services will be held there at 10 a.m. on May 8.

We have only attended one event at that location and parking was a challenge, so allow yourself plenty of time. Check the AdMin Fax messages for St Jude's information.

Illinois Number One!

We hadn't heard of this survey before:

• Americans have spoken out about which states they love to hate. 

  A ranking has named Illinois the most disliked state in the nation, with 25 percent of its own residents saying it is the worst place to live.

  New Jersey landed in the number two spot, reinforcing its long-standing reputation as a frequent target of jokes across the country.

  New York followed closely behind, with a significant portion of residents admitting they believe their own state ranks among the worst. 

  The World Population Review analyzed three key factors to determine which states inspire the strongest negative feelings: how many residents said their own state was the worst place to live, whether population numbers were shrinking and how frequently other states named them as their most disliked neighbor.

This isn't a US media source, but a United Kingdom paper. 

But the population decrease is a dead-on indicator.

Stealing Hydrant Parts

We had this article on standby for late last week, but events kind of drove it off the radar:

• DETROIT (WXYZ) — Thieves have destroyed nearly 75 fire hydrants on the west side of Detroit in the last 48 hours, stealing parts and putting lives at risk.

  Crews with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department are racing to repair the broken hydrants along Southfield Road and across the west side after thieves tore through dozens in about two days.

  "We think the number is about 75 so far," DWSD Deputy Director Sam Smalley said.

  The thieves are targeting metal nozzles and stems on top of the hydrants, which are worth about $600.

Just when people are saying Detroit has turned a corner, you get something like this, endangering the entire community for a few bucks worth of metal (that $600 price tag is the retail price for the machined part and labor to install - scrap brass goes for under $3 per pound). But it's Detroit, where they used to burn down a couple hundred abandoned buildings pre-Halloween every year....until they ran out of buildings.

Chicago might end up there yet.

RIP Deputy Coyle

Crittenden County (Kentucky) Deputy Rick Coyle, former CPD, died this morning weeks after being shot:

• Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office officials say one of their deputies has died following an officer involved shooting that happened earlier this month.

  According to a press release, Deputy Rick Coyle passed away Thursday morning after he was shot in the line of duty on April 2.

  As we’ve previously reported, officers from the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office, along with staff from the Kentucky Department of Community Based Services, responded to the 2800 block of KY 365, to serve emergency guardianship paperwork.

We met Rick on a couple of occasions, shooting scenes and such. He was friendly, funny and professional, and he obviously left this impression on his Kentucky department after retiring from CPD. Their loss is fresher than ours. 

Prayers to his family, friends and co-workers both there and here. Godspeed Sir.

Small Progress

At this point, we'll take any good news we can get:

• A gravely wounded Chicago police officer, shot in the face during the same hospital ambush that killed his partner John Bartholomew, is showing signs of improvement, the police union president told the Sun-Times Wednesday.

  Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said earlier this week it was “going to take a miracle” for the surviving officer to recover from his injuries. “It’s very bad. It’s extremely critical. It’s not good,” he said at the time.

  But the outlook has improved since then, to the point where there’s at least a glimmer of hope for the wounded officer.

  “There has been some positive physical reactions from the officer in the hospital. I don’t want to say alertness, but I was informed that he was breathing on his own for a little while yesterday. That’s a positive sign,” Catanzara said. “He did seem to have some reaction to conversation around him yesterday. So those are all [reasons to] keep praying and hope for the best, positive signs that he comes out of this on the other side, positively.”

It's still going to take a series of miracles, but every miraculous journey starts with a single step.

Godspeed Officer. 

Other Fundraisers

The GoFundMe page has been verified as legit by numerous sources.

The 100 Club and Police Memorial Funds are doing their usual good work.

There is an additional fundraiser at Reilly's Daughter - if someone has the date, time and address, let us know and we'll post the info. 

SAFE-T Revision Possibility?

It's becoming apparent to anyone with two brain cells that the SAFE-T Act is a slow motion failure that is rapidly gaining speed. 

It's also obvious that assorted politicians are uncomfortably aware of this fact, but they're too scared of the Black Caucus to make too many waves, but they are making faint gestures and suggestions that there might be room for some alterations:

• Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson commented on the Safe-T Act on Wednesday. This Illinois statute has garnered scrutiny following the shooting death of a Chicago police officer and the critical injury of another. 

  Those critical of the no-cash bail law argue it allows repeat offenders to remain on the streets, prompting a call for legislative amendments. 

  Pritzker has stated that he is open to reviewing new proposals for the Safe-T Act. Still, on Wednesday, at an unrelated event at Olive-Harvey College, he defended the foundation of the no-cash bail law. 

Porkulous also threw the judge under the bus, making us wonder about the 2028 judicial races:

• “You saw that the judge wants to blame everybody else, but it was right before the judge. The judge who could’ve made the decision didn’t make the decision,” Pritzker said.

That isn't what judges have been told, nor what judges have read into the judicial record from the bench on a number of occasions.

Here's what the behind-the-scenes people are talking about though:

• Trump DOUBLED his share of the black vote in 2024, from 8% to 15%. This was predicted and is why democrats imported 20 million illegals - they couldn't count on the monolithic black vote (92-95%) to carry them over the finish line any more, especially if those voters were actually making more money, opening more businesses, improving their economic lives and wanting to keep their newfound wealth. So they imported a Third World voting bloc and now are fighting like Hell to keep them here in the hopes of a future amnesty.

This is why a directed PR campaign by the Bailey people, supported by Law Enforcement, directed at the people who are bearing the brunt of repeat felons being released into their communities poses a real threat to (at the very least) their super-majority. 

There's even an off-chance at the governor's seat, though how effective he'd be with dem majorities in both houses would be minimal. It would certainly wreck Fata$$'s national ambitions though.

Crime is Up

Remember all those times, all those years, we said "Don't read too deeply into daily or weekly trends. Trends develop over months....years even."

Turns out, we were correct and crime is actually up:

• Chicago crime is no longer just rising — it is accelerating.

  What began as an early-year drop has now fully reversed, with violence pushing further above last year’s levels.

  The latest data shows the increase is not slowing down — it’s intensifying across multiple categories.
  This is no longer a rebound — it’s an established upward trend.

SubX News has links and charts up from the CPD data portal - SIXTEEN weeks worth, all posted, all linked and all from CPD's own statistics which not only show 2026 numbers increasing, but accelerating.

This data is available to all "investigative" reporters and the public, but it takes time and actual effort to plow through it all. It even takes basic MATH skills - something the CPS and CTU are incapable of teaching any more because they're too busy indoctrinating students into supporting communism.

All the signs of a bad summer are rapidly coming to the fore.

GoFundMe Link

We were sent this by a number of people.

• GoFundMe Link 

We have no reason to suspect anything untrustworthy about the fundraising effort, but we also have our usual concerns knowing that there are people that use these events to swindle and scam those who just want to help.

DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE BEFORE DONATING.

Perhaps the FOP could verify the legitimacy of the fundraising efforts? 

In fact, knowing that GoFundMe routinely takes a percentage of the money that ought to be going to the fallen Officer's family, maybe there ought to be an Official Committee delegated with directing or utilizing alternatives that make sure 100% of the donations end up where they'll do the most good?

Just a thought. 

Judge Says, "Not My Fault"

Damage control over at the Criminal Courts:

• The Cook County judge who released a repeat violent felon with four pending felony cases on electronic monitoring last December, the same felon prosecutors now say escaped that monitoring and shot two Chicago police officers, killing one over the weekend, acknowledged during the hearing that the defendant likely would have faced “a minimum $1 million bail” under the state’s old cash bail system.

  But Judge John Lyke said that era was over.
  
  “Our esteem[ed] Legislature says, no, we’re not going to do that anymore,” Lyke said in reference to Pretrial Fairness Act provisions of the SAFE-T Act. “We’re going to make judges take a critical look at it.”

  And moments later, after explaining that he believed Alphonso Talley’s life of armed robberies and carjackings might have been the result of an underdeveloped brain that had since matured — even though Talley had allegedly committed an armed carjacking and an armed robbery with the same brain just eight months earlier — Lyke decided to let him go home on an ankle monitor.

  Lyke noted, however, it was “over the state’s rigorous objection.”

So after claiming the Legislature forced him to take a look at the criminal record and then OUT OF THE FUCKING BLUE makes a medical determination that maybe this shitbird's brain is "underdeveloped" due to his extensive armed habitual criminal habits, he lets him go on a electronic monitoring system that has been proven TIME AND TIME AGAIN to fail to keep criminals in check.

You know what we remember worked pretty well at keeping criminals in check?

• concrete walls
• iron bars
• twelve feet of barbwire topped fencing 

But democrats don't want that. 

Series of Failures

This really REALLY needs to become a political issue this fall:

• When accused cop killer Alphonso Talley vanished from Cook County’s electronic monitoring system for more than 17 hours last month, then disappeared entirely after letting his ankle bracelet battery run dead, a series of safeguards were supposed to kick in.

  A judge was supposed to be notified within 24 hours. A warrant, once issued, was supposed to be fast-tracked for service. A seven-time convicted felon already on pretrial release for armed carjacking and armed robbery was on the loose, and authorities were supposed to round him up.
  
  That didn’t happen.

  Those safeguards were the centerpiece of a high-profile push by Chief Judge Charles Beach, who made overhauling the county’s troubled electronic monitoring programs the very first move he announced publicly after taking office on December 1. People had been steaming about electronic monitoring for days since Lawrence Reed allegedly set a woman on fire aboard a Blue Line train in the Loop after repeatedly violating his monitoring terms on a felony battery case.

How's that case going by the way?

If the FOP isn't too busy, they ought to grab a few Board members and have them contact the CWB blog editors and start compiling a list of Electronic Monitoring failures....

• by date
• by charge
• and by judge

....and start hammering the ever loving SHIT out of judges, legislators and Porkulous. In fact, maybe contact the other guy running for governor (Bailey) and his people start drafting campaign commercials or billboards or bus posters. Target minority neighborhoods that are suffering the lion's share of these recidivist criminals. Point out that democrats are not making their neighborhoods safer and are actually endangering their families. A reader suggests getting various Police Chief Associations to endorse a recall/revision/repeal of the entire SAFE-T Act.

Dukakis the crap out of them.