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. 

Investigation Continues

Gun traced to a straw buyer:

• A suburban woman is facing federal charges for allegedly lying on paperwork when she purchased the gun used over the weekend to kill Chicago Police Officer John Bartholomew and critically wound his partner at Swedish Hospital.

  Olivia Burgos bought the Glock 29, a 10-millimeter pistol, at Range USA in Merrillville, Indiana, on May 27, 2024, according to a federal complaint filed in Indiana on Monday. When she completed the standard purchase paperwork, she confirmed she was the “actual transferee/buyer” of the weapon and that she was not unlawfully using any drugs, according to an ATF agent’s affidavit.

  Both of those statements were lies, she allegedly admitted when ATF agents visited her after this weekend’s shooting.

  In fact, Burgos was addicted to fentanyl when she bought the firearm and had used the drug that same day, according to the filing. She also received money to buy the gun from her then-boyfriend, a convicted felon who was legally prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms. For good measure, Burgos listed a La Porte, Indiana, address on the form when she was actually living in Highland, Indiana, with the convicted felon, the ATF agent wrote.

The ATF tracked her down pretty quick, but nothing yet on how the gun transitioned from her to Yolanda Talley's nephew.

And now we're getting word that the Detectives that tracked down Yolanda Talley's other shooter nephew was removed from the Area shooting team and the States Attorney's Office is getting pressure to drop the charges. 

Let's see if the media picks up on that one. 

Twenty Years for Window Tints

Quick!!! Outlaw "pretextual" traffic stops!

• A routine traffic stop for tinted windows turned into much more after Chicago police allegedly found a small arsenal hidden inside a pink chest in the back of a man’s car.

  Cops pulled over 31-year-old Deondre Walker around noon on April 14 in the 5600 block of West Division Street after officers noticed his 2017 Chevy Malibu had heavy window tints. As officers approached the vehicle, they allegedly spotted an open bag of cannabis sitting in the driver’s door panel, which led them to conduct a narcotics search of the vehicle, a CPD report said.

Gasp!  An open bag of weed over a tinted window stop! The horror!

• Inside a pink chest in the cargo area, police say they discovered four loaded firearms: a sawed-off Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, a Taurus .44 Magnum revolver, a Glock 21 pistol fitted with a 31-round extended magazine and a full-auto switch that police say made it capable of firing like a machine gun, and an Anderson AM-15 AR-15 rifle loaded with a 30-round magazine and equipped with a brass catcher designed to collect expended shell casings. Investigators say the rifle’s serial number had been defaced.

Gee:

• sawed off shotgun - Fed charge
• Glock switch - Fed charge?
• defaced serial number - Fed charge

Oh, and his FOID card was revoked....for being a convicted gun felon. 

Because of this "pretextual" stop, a repeat felon is looking at twenty or more years Federal time for having tinted windows is what democrats will tell you.

Or maybe it was just good police work? 

Madigan Appeal Denied

Looks like he's going to serve the majority of his sentence:

• Chicago’s federal appeals court on Monday pointed to a hidden scheme to “exchange enormous political influence within the Illinois General Assembly for over $3 million of benefits” as it upheld the historic conviction of former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.

  A three-judge panel summarily dismissed arguments from the once-powerful Democrat’s lawyers in a 29-page opinion less than three weeks after hearing oral arguments. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling could soon lead to a bid by Madigan to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  “Michael Madigan spent nearly a decade leveraging his power as one of the highest-ranking public officials in Illinois in exchange for over $3 million of financial benefits for his close political allies,” Judge Michael Scudder wrote. “…Madigan insists that this was run-of-the-mill politics. But a jury of twelve Illinois residents saw the evidence differently. So do we.”

The lawyers may ask for a full 7th Circuit hearing before appealing to the US Supreme Court, but the avenues appear to be rapidly closing and Mikey may do quite a bit of the seven-and-one-half years in the meantime.

You can still write to Mike at the prison camp (it has no fencing):

• 446 Greenbag Road, Route 857 Morgantown, WV 26501

Here's a link to the "How To Send Stuff" page for money, packages and commissary donations.

Vallas Puts Two and Two Together

Something that Marty Preib had been writing about for ten or fifteen years ago and what we had amplified for nearly as long:

• Chicago’s media outlets are amplifying a dangerous narrative that paints the Chicago Police Department (CPD) as racist and unreformable, eroding public trust and hamstringing officers who protect our streets. This isn’t journalism—its activism disguised as reporting. Criminals are increasingly treated as victims and cops as villains by so called police reformers and advocates and criminal trial lawyers with media cheerleading the distortion. Facts be damned: the story line is that CPD is biased against Black residents, and allergic to change. It’s time to set the record straight.

It was a racket - it was always a racket:

• In nearly every major settlement for wrongful conviction or police misconduct, failure to implement the Consent Decree is cited as justification for multimillion-dollar payouts. Rarely do reporter’s question whether individuals receiving these settlements were actually innocent or why the settlements are so large. Since 2000, Chicago has paid out over $700 million in police misconduct lawsuits, not because claimants were proven innocent but due to alleged police misconduct.

  The media ignored Kim Foxx’s brokering of deals with a secretive “Lawyers Committee” composed of private attorneys specializing in lawsuits against the police. These lawyers, sometimes hired as “Special Assistant State’s Attorneys,” worked to overturn murder convictions, often not because of new exculpatory evidence but due to allegations of police misconduct. Foxx’s “Conviction Integrity Unit” issued “Certificates of Innocence” even when there was no evidence to support actual innocence, paving the way for successful lawsuits against the city.

  After eight years of Foxx having her thumb on the scales of justice, Chicago has seen half the nation’s overturned convictions and wrongful conviction lawsuits filed. By the time she left office in December 2024, Foxx left as many as 275 wrongful conviction cases for which lawsuits have been or will be filed, seeking millions more in damages. These new suits could cost the city $ 1 billion. No one in the media ever seems to question whether these individuals were innocent of the crimes.

Everything Vallas wrote is 100% true, 100% accurate....and 100% years too late. Like we said, Preib led the way on a lot of this and did far more legwork than any "reporter" even attempted to do because investigative reporting is dead and "journalism" is a corrupt enterprise these days.

You can read it all at the link up top and wonder what might have been before the death-spiral took hold of Chicago and bankrupted it - financially and morally.

Worse and Worse

If a bartender overserves someone who is obviously intoxicated, they're held liable for any criminal acts committed by the drunk. 

So why aren't judges and politicians held liable for repeating criminals they free?

• A man suspected of shooting two Chicago police officers inside a hospital room Saturday morning had been a fugitive for weeks, had two violent felony cases pending against him, had escaped from electronic monitoring, and was listed as an absconder by the Illinois Department of Corrections, according to court records and multiple government sources.

  The officers were standing guard over the man at Swedish Hospital, 5140 North California Avenue, when he gained access to a gun and shot them around 10:50 a.m., CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling said.

  One of the officers died. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified him as John Bartholomew, 38, a 10-year veteran of the department. The other officer, a 57-year-old with 21 years on the force, remained in critical condition at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.

  The suspect has not been charged with the shootings, and CWB Chicago, which has mentioned him in three stories since 2017, is not identifying him by name for that reason. But sources at multiple levels of government confirmed he is the individual in custody.

Fuck it. His name is Alphonso Talley, and he might be yet another criminal relative of alleged PPP fraudster Yoyo Talley. Google his name and the CWB articles with him listed as the offender are front and center. Yoyo is infamous for having her niece use her car to drop off heroin on the west side, and if we recall had another nephew shoot and wound someone in 015?

But isn't this criminal data available to....oh, we don't know....FUCKING JUDGES who continually release him on an "electronic monitoring" system that fails, time-and-TIME AGAIN, and in this instance, costing an Officer his life and his partner any semblance of a normal existence IF he recovers?

Start voting people. And start encouraging others to start voting. And make sure they don't vote for incumbents, don't vote to retain judges and certainly don't vote for criminal loving democrats....like Conehead and Fata$$.

Lost in the Shuffle

This one got overlooked after the Swedish Hospital shooting:

• Two officers were among four people hospitalized after a downtown crash early Saturday morning, Chicago police said.

  Police said the crash happened near South Wabash Avenue and East Ida B. Wells Drive in the Loop just after 4:45 a.m.

  Investigators believe the driver of a black Jeep SUV failed to obey a traffic signal on westbound Ida B. Wells Drive and crashed into the officers' marked squad car, which was heading southbound on Wabash Avenue.

Best wishes to the Officers for a speedy recovery and we are certainly thankful your reported injuries were not more serious.

Can We Get This Here?

Good news at the national level:

• The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.

  The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

Um...who cares if a federally convicted felon experiences a moment or two of pain on their way out the door? Do you have any idea what pain they must have inflicted on members of the public to even merit a Federal Death Penalty?

Besides, who are they going to complain to? Satan? 

Do you know how long THAT line is to see the Dark Prince himself?

Terror Drones?

So were these stolen for domestic terrorism or for some foreign entanglement?

• Someone stole 15 giant agricultural drones in New Jersey — and experts fear a “nightmare scenario” if they end up in the hands of terrorists.

  The fleet of Ceres Air C31 drones, which are about the size of an ATV, were ripped off March 24 by a bogus delivery driver who duped shipping and logistics company CAC International in Harrison, according to The High Side substack.

  A phony bill of lading was presented at the pick-up location for the drones which was bolstered by a fake confirmation email that CAC International took to be legitimate, the report stated.

  The four-armed flyers can carry and spray up to 40 gallons of liquid chemicals, such as fertilizers and pesticides, and unleash the payload over a 15-acre span in just seven minutes. 

The mind boggles at the possibilities here. And if you spend a serious amount of time at it, you'll drive yourself nuts.

Stock up on shotgun ammo at the very least - you can bet the Department won't even have an e-learning module about this.

RIP Officer Bartholomew

Identify officially released:

• The Chicago police officer fatally shot Saturday at a Lincoln Square hospital was identified as John Bartholomew, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

  Bartholomew, 38, was shot alongside another officer at Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital, 5140 N. California Ave., by a robbery suspect who had been arrested earlier that morning, police have said.

  No update was provided Sunday on the second officer, who has not been named. He was “fighting for his life” in critical condition, police Superintendent Larry Snelling said Saturday at a news conference outside Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where both officers were taken after the shooting.

More details to follow over the next few days.

One Post Only Tonight

We don't know where to begin with all this.

One deceased Officer, one still listed as critically wounded in the press, but our comments and text messages have all sorts of other info, none verified 100%.

Larritorious saying a third gun was recovered from the scene at Swedish, which implies a breakdown of Custodial Searches on more than one occasion. Guns hidden in fat folds should always be remembered as a possibility....remember Sox Park.

Someone says Swedish "wands" prisoners in custody, but that didn't discover the weapon in question. 

A name has appeared in our comment section, and if you google it, there are many other crimes committed by this individual, most involving guns, mostly in lakefront Districts, all or which should have been multi-year sentences. If the name is correct:

• here he is with a gun again, caught after committing another violent robbery Saturday, shooting two Police Officers;
• he may have been out on Electronic Monitoring, still skipped Court, so yet another SAFE-T Act failure;
• he might be related to a certain exempt who was forced out a while back;
• this might be either the same nephew (or an additional nephew) with a habit of shooting people

More info will probably trickle out today, verifying or debunking some of the above info. Like we said, we have no idea where to even begin with this clusterfuck.