The Fix is in Already

This crooked Cook County judge again:

• In a courtroom at 26th and California on Thursday, two CWB Chicago story arcs came face to face: the effectiveness of facial recognition as a law enforcement tool and the frequency with which Judge D’Anthony Thedford refuses to grant detention petitions. The coincidental combo came after sheriff’s deputies brought Merlin Lu into Courtroom 102 to face hate crime, arson, and other charges for the high-profile cross-burning incident in Grant Park last week.

  Prosecutors told Thedford that on June 9, Lu was captured on surveillance video holding two long planks of wood, walking from his Halsted Street home toward Grant Park. At about 1:52 p.m., he allegedly nailed two pieces of wood together, wrapped toilet paper around the cross, doused it with a gallon of kerosene, and tied a red hat to the top. Prosecutors said Lu propped the cross against a tree and set it on fire. Viral video recorded by a witness captured the cross and the tree burning, with flames extending into the tree’s upper limbs.

  [...] Prosecutors said that after being read his Miranda rights, Lu admitted to purchasing the materials, assembling the cross, and burning it. Prosecutors said Lu also identified himself in two still images, one showing him buying kerosene at Home Depot and another showing him walking toward Grant Park with the wood planks.

  Judge Thedford rejected the state’s request to detain Lu and did not require him to be placed on electronic monitoring, either. However, Thedford did instruct Lu to avoid purchasing items that could be used to start a fire, such as wood or kerosene, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.

Ooooo....that'll stop crime!

CWB reports that Thedford has quite the disqualifying history:

• “Between 2011 and 2018, the state and federal governments filed liens against Thedford and his wife seeking to collect about $249,000 in unpaid taxes, interest, and penalties,” Injustice Watch reported. “In 2020, the couple declared bankruptcy and reported that they owed the IRS some $220,000 and owed the Illinois Department of Revenue about $10,000.”

But that didn't stop him from landing a seat on the bench.

Bright Future for This One

Another SAFE-T Act success story!

• A 19-year-old woman on pretrial release in a felony gun case tried to kill four Chicago police officers by repeatedly firing at them during a vehicle pursuit on the Southwest Side, according to prosecutors.

  Alexia Castellanos, of Bridgeview, was detained Friday by Judge Shauna Boliker on charges that include four counts of attempted murder stemming from the April 25 incident. She is the seventh person accused of killing or trying to kill someone in Chicago this year while on felony pretrial release.

  According to prosecutors, it all started around 1:12 a.m. when four Chicago police officers working in a tactical unit spotted a Dodge Charger parked in an alley in the 4400 block of South Mozart Avenue. As the officers approached, the Charger sped away, and the officers activated their vehicle’s emergency equipment and began pursuing it.

  During the chase, Castellanos allegedly leaned out of the passenger-side window and fired shots at the officers, then fired at them again moments later. Neither the officers nor their vehicle was struck, but a nearby parked vehicle was hit by a bullet, prosecutors said. 

After being charged previously with ::gasp!:: a gun crime, she got out, procured another gun, and used it to shoot at pursuing officers, from a moving vehicle AND while fleeing on foot after the vehicle rolled over.

No doubt she'll be out again shortly. 

Obamanation Situation Gets Worse

Chicago is going to have a shitload fewer minority contractors around after 2026:

• The Obama Presidential Center was billed as a lasting legacy to former President Barack Obama, and its construction was touted as an ambitious model built with aggressive goals for minority-owned and local businesses.

  But now, some of the very subcontractors who helped build the 19.3-acre campus on Chicago’s South Side say they are facing financial ruin as they race to recover millions of dollars they claim remain unpaid ahead of the center's grand opening Friday. Overall construction costs were reported to be $830 million in 2021, and have likely climbed past the $1 billion mark.

  A Fox News Digital investigation identified multiple construction firms claiming losses ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions. The allegations cut against one of the Center's defining goals: helping minority-owned businesses and local contractors grow through one of Chicago's highest-profile construction projects. Several of the complaints reviewed by Fox News Digital come from firms that were supposed to benefit from that mission. 

And that maintenance fund? 

• The allegations emerge days after a Fox News Digital investigation reported that the Obama Foundation’s reserve fund — originally promoted as a $470 million financial safeguard intended to help protect taxpayers if the project encountered financial trouble — remains funded at roughly $1 million. 

So that $469 million shortfall will likely be eaten by Chicago....which is broke.

We're told it's even worse than people realize. 

• every single contractor has been stiffed to some extent so far....100%

Did you see the list of attendees?  A whole lot of "formers" listed at that link.

Newscum made it, but current governor Hochul?  Walz? Canceled. Corey Booker? Canceled. Where's AOC?

We heard that of the over 120 invited politicians, over 80 canceled, almost like they don't want to be seen at something that's going to turn out to be a campaign issue - namely bankrupting companies full of UNION workers who usually vote in lockstep with leftist politicians.

Remember, Chicago is Broke

But they found the secret Rahm Money Tree somewhere....probably in Conehead's Gift Closet:

• The city could be running its first intercity bus terminal under public ownership by late summer following a vote by the City Council to buy the ailing South Loop Greyhound station.

  The ordinance passed Wednesday allows the city to purchase the terminal at 630 W. Harrison St. for $19 million. The deal also pumps millions into renovating the neglected terminal — and saves the nearly half-million people who use the station each year from potentially being kicked to curbside bus service.

We'll expect this to be losing money within a year.

Missed Gun....Again

This time in the 009 District lockup:

• an arrest by the Tact Team (who should have searched the arrestee on scene) 
• transported to the station by either a cage car or a wagon (who should have searched the arrestee before accepting custody) 

...was found to have a gun in his groin area by the lockup keeper.

Completely inexcusable.

Has Academy instruction gotten so bad that Officers are afraid to properly search an arrestee?

Gold Star Union?

This might not end well:

• Off topic but apparently the exempts, Commanders and Deputy Chiefs, are attempting to unionize.

One of the main points of even having the Exempt rank is to have expendable people who are beholden to their political masters. 

If they're allowed to unionize, the political side of the equation loses their hold over them. 

Not that we're in the habit of giving Conehead advice, but if you want to stop this in its tracks, propose getting rid of the Gold Brain pensions provisions and revert to the top tier to the last testable rank (lieutenant). Not only would it kill this effort, it'd be a small step to extending the life of the pensions.

Returning to Basics?

Another interesting rumor:

• Narcotics is going away. They are making 5 area narcotics teams that will fall under the patrol area deputy chiefs. That’s it. They will work out of the same offices as the PRT teams and still have access to 1505 and the Bursars office for money. Wallace is jumping ship and put in his papers for mid July. They told him he was going back to Lieutenant or he can retire. He chose to leave and not do the rest of the summer. This will all happen in September.

Is Homan Square being emptied out? Back in the day there were overd 1,000 personnel assigned there in fifteen or twenty units and sub-units. It was probably larger than HQ on occasion in terms of total bodies.

In practical terms, nothing should be manned until all of the beat cars on all watches are covered adequately. And once the beat cars are covered, then you can start with District tact teams and 06 cars.

After that, you can spend money and personnel on citywide units.

Lighter Font

A couple comments complaining about the text in comments being a lighter gray color, harder to read and annoying as all get out.

It appears to be something Google (that owns eBlogger) did and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it yet.

We're looking into it. 

Interesting Voting

So Aldercreature Lopez again tried to hold parents responsible for crimes committed by their kids:

• Three months ago, Southwest Side Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) tried to hold Chicago parents accountable for curfew violations, street racing, and drug, alcohol and firearms offenses committed by their children.

  His attempt to use parental responsibility to, as he put it, “create better parents” was shot down by a City Council committee — even after Lopez offered to entertain amendments that would have softened the potential legal blow to parents and legal guardians.

  The debate showcased the Council’s political divide. Conservative alderpersons, who are among the police union’s staunchest supporters, want to get tougher on crime. Democratic socialists and other progressives seem more, or at least equally, concerned about preserving individual rights.

Um, there is no "right" to commit crimes, take over streets, disobey traffic laws, etc. 

Here's a picture showing how each aldercreature voted (click for larger view):

 

 

A couple interesting votes there, especially in Wards where a large number of police, fire fighters and city workers live. Everyone knows why the commies and race-baiters voted no, but why did the others vote no? 

(we're looking at you O'Shea)

New Fire Equipment

This article is from two days ago and seems to have little coverage from the local media types:

• The Chicago Fire Department has placed one of the largest emergency apparatus orders in North America, selecting E-ONE and Wheeled Coach to supply 120 new vehicles in a deal valued at more than $100 million.

  The order, placed through Fire Service, Inc., includes 42 E-ONE pumpers, 38 E-ONE aerial ladder trucks and 40 Wheeled Coach ambulances.

  The investment is intended to support firefighter safety, fleet modernisation and reliable emergency response across the city.

We've written before about CFD equipment being so old that the feds threatened to pull accreditation for the entire Department.

And tonight, if you do a google search for "chicago fire department buys new trucks" there aren't any local media outlets covering the story. $100 million is a big deal for one-hundred-twenty pieces of equipment.

Is this because they don't want to embarrass a democrat blue city $hithole that isn't (and hasn't) providing the fire department with appropriate equipment to protect citizens?

Or is it because when you look up E-ONE and Wheeled Coach, they're both based in Florida because Porkulous has driven vehicle assembly lines out of Illinois, so we're sending tax dollars to factory friendly red states?

In any event, congrats to the CFD for finally getting some new vehicles. 

Don't scratch the paint - you might not see another one for thirty years.

They're Shooting Bicyclists Now?

Well, it was after midnight, so there's that:

• A man died after being shot while riding a bicycle near Grant Park in the Loop early Tuesday morning, according to Chicago police.

  Officers responded to a report of a person shot in the 300 block of East Jackson Boulevard around 12:15 a.m.

  Police said a 27-year-old man was riding a bicycle on the sidewalk when he heard gunfire and felt pain. He had been struck in the upper leg.

  He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition and later died, CPD reported.

Sounds like a femoral artery hit. 

As of this writing, no one knows who the dead guy is, if he was targeted or just happened to catch a bullet in Conehead's "Crime is Down" camera infested downtown. 

Vallas Roasts Rahm

The Contrarian article is quite the read:

• There he was. It was Rahm Emmanuel on national television attending a New York Knicks–San Antonio Spurs championship series game. The former Chicago mayor was sitting in floor seats of which the price ranges between $75,000–$135,000. Who knew he was a Knicks fan? It's convenient to have a super-agent brother who also happens to be securing you an interview on practically every mainstream cable show and podcast, lecturing us about how the Democratic Party has lost its way while presenting himself as its moderate voice of reason.

  I had been reluctant to write about Rahm, who in presidential preference polling is barely registering. Illinois’ other presidential hopeful — Governor JB Pritzker — is polling at just two percent. One gets the feeling the country is tiring from Illinois expatriates running the country. Not our best export. However, Emanuel took time out of his Don Quixote-like quest for the White House to stop in Chicago to meet with my biggest supporter to urge them not to support me making another run for mayor or a run for Chicago School Board president.

And after that, it's off to the races as Vallas pretty much roasts 9.5 for almost twenty paragraphs.

Fun times and a good reminder of what a tool Rahm always was.

Go read it all. 

More "Crime WAS Down"

SubX News charts a slight deviation from Conehead's message:

• Chicago’s first full weekend of June delivered another reminder that crime statistics only tell part of the story.

  Using the official HeyJackAss weekend methodology, Chicago recorded 4 killed and 23 wounded between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.

  Compared to the same weekend in 2025, homicides increased 33.3%, non-fatal shooting victims increased 130%, and total shooting victims increased 107.7%.

  Those numbers alone would make this one of the more violent weekends of 2026.

  The broader reality was even worse.

SubX News also tracks four separate "mass shootings" that wreaked havoc with Conehead's contention that he's doing a great job with the crime numbers.

Interesting Correlation

Want to bet that the CTU uses this as an excuse not to close schools?

• As Chicago officials prepared to close 50 schools in 2013, the most at one time in American history, neighbors warned that the ramifications would go beyond worse academic outcomes for students. They worried the vacant buildings left behind would hurt their communities.

  Thirteen years later, a new study from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that the closings, in fact, led to a 10% increase in gun violence in the areas surrounding the vacant closed schools compared to neighborhoods with similar demographics where schools didn’t close.

  The researchers found no statistically significant increase in shootings in communities where closed schools were repurposed, which city officials promised would happen.

  “We found that school closure and subsequent building vacancy were associated with significant increases in firearm violence in affected neighborhoods, and that this association appeared to be partially mitigated by subsequent school buildings re-use,” the authors wrote in the study, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

Interesting take - that closed schools (or schools that don't get re-purposed) lead to more gun crime?  Schools mitigate conflict? 

Color us skeptical at the very least.

Cross Burner IDed

As predicted by anyone with a brain, manufactured outrage:

• It was a startling and offensive scene.

  A burning cross in Grant Park last Tuesday - the century-old flaming symbol of racism and hatred.

  For nearly a week, Chicago police and the FBI have been trying to identify the man who was suspected of setting up the cross and torching it.

  NBC 5 Investigates has identified a 21-year-old college senior who said he is the person in the photo released by police and who described what he did and why.

Not caught by the CPD or the feebs, despite well over 100 cameras pointing at and around Grant Park and the streets downtown. Named after sending some sort of manifesto to NBC, who then interviewed the subject.

Guess what his motivation was?

• University of Illinois Chicago senior Merlin Lu said he knew the implications of a burning cross and had placed a MAGA hat atop the cross, explaining his motivation was to protest Trump administration injustice - not something racist.

A red hat? On top of a burning cross?  Anyone know why no one in the media mentioned that part? 

Or why pfather pflaggot went in front of the cameras screeching about racism and offering $10K for identification of the suspect? 

Or how presidential-hopeful Porkulous used the typical "racism and facism" dog-whistles to imply that Trump supporters were to blame instead of a delusional Naperville UIC student?

NEWSFLASH - he's one of YOU democrats, willing to disregard the entire history of burning crosses and what they symbolize in order to spread your derangement. Fuck you one and all.

If Bailey had half a brain, he'd be having his publicity people splicing footage of Fata$$ jumping (jumping? hahaha) to his stupid blame-game conclusions and asking how someone this dumb could be governor.

Any word on when the Apology Tour starts? We're betting other media outlets bury this one faster than Gacy buried his victims.

Shooting

Overnight in 020:

• A suspect in a deadly shooting in Ravenswood was shot and critically wounded by Chicago police in Uptown Monday night, CPD said. Police said officers were on patrol at about 8:20 p.m. when they responded to a report of shots fired.

  A 63-year-old man got involved in an argument with a male suspect, who took out a gun and shot the 63-year-old man, police said. The victim was transported to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

  The suspect fled from the 4800-block of North Clark Street and was later located by officers in the 1400-block of W. Argyle Street, police said.

  Police said after a brief foot chase, the suspect turned and pointed his gun in the direction of officers, who fired their weapons and struck the suspect.

So the killer got killed. Free advice to COPA - account for the fired bullets and close the case.

A job well done by the Officers. 

UPDATE: killer is still alive for some reason. The advice to COPA still stands though.

President Porkulous Probability

The good news is he's polling worse than ever:

• A new public opinion poll says Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker remains low on the list of voters’ preferred choices in the 2028 Democratic Party primary election for president.

  The Center Square Voters' Voice Poll was conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, a nonpartisan public opinion polling firm, from June 1-4, 2026 and surveyed registered voters nationally.

  Former Vice President Kamala Harris finished first with 27% of the vote among 1,013 Democrats who responded. 17% said they were not sure.

  Next was California Gov. Gavin Newsom at 14%, former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 11% and New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 8%.

  Pritzker and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear both came in at 2%.

The bad news is that means Illinois is stuck with his ass

Small Measure of Justice

Thirty-five years for Attempted Murder:

• A man who shot a Chicago police officer in the face in Lincoln Park and then yelled, “You will die!” pleaded guilty Monday to attempted murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, court records show.

  [...] At one point, prosecutors said, McPherson ripped an officer’s COVID-19 mask off and grabbed the officer in a bear hug.

  McPherson then moved into the parking lot, sat inside the woman’s car with the door open, and allegedly told an officer, “I got a gun, too.”

  “What? You want to fight?” McPherson allegedly asked the officer as body-worn camera footage recorded the encounter. “I’m not leaving. This is a good a** gun, too, b****.” After an officer alerted others that McPherson was armed, McPherson allegedly responded, “Y’all not going to get this. I’m too strong for this s***.”

  Prosecutors said McPherson then pulled a handgun from beneath his legs and pointed it at the first officer, who could see directly down the barrel of the weapon. The officer grabbed the gun and pushed it away from his face. Two shots were fired, and one bullet struck the officer in the cheek, causing a through-and-through wound.

Literally, inches away from death.

He'll serve 85% of the sentence (29.75 years) but probably gets credit for the five years spent in custody. 

Charges Dropped Why?

While we're more approving than disapproving of O'Neill-Burke's efforts to turn the States Attorney Office around from defending criminals to actually prosecuting crimes, we're going to want an explanation for this one:

• Charges have been dropped against two suspects in the death of Chicago firefighter Jermaine Pelt.

  The men were accused of starting the fire that killed Pelt in the West Pullman neighborhood in April 2023. They were about to go on trial when their cases were dismissed. Charges against a third man were dropped in 2024.

  The Cook County State's Attorney's Office said the case is still open and their commitment to seeking justice for Pelt remains unwavering.

The way you maintain public approval and trust is by being open about what you're doing, why your doing it, and how you're correcting the mistakes made by Crimesha.

Saying the case is "still open" and you're "seeking justice" is a soundbite meant to placate the short-attention-span people. Firefighters (and cops) have long memories. Tell them what's going on.

Surprised?

No, not really:

• Multiple elected officials are condemning the vandalism of a mural honoring three fallen Chicago police officers, as a reward is offered for information leading to an arrest.

  The artwork, located along South Pulaski Road near West 68th Street in the West Lawn neighborhood, pays tribute to officers Luis Huesca, Andres Vasquez Lasso and Enrique Martinez. Cook County Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $1,000 for information in the case.

  "The act of vandalism damaged a memorial created to pay tribute to the sacrifice and service of a fallen member of law enforcement and has deeply impacted the officers, family members and community members who view the mural as a symbol of remembrance and respect," Crime Stoppers said in a poster about the vandalism.

  The incident is under investigation by detectives.

Hopefully, it gets solved.

Didn't They Outlaw Switches?

And wasn't that Tire Flattening Unit supposed to be deployed to prevent these types of incidents?

• A 21-year-old Indiana man was killed when a gunman armed with an illegally modified pistol opened fire during a stunt driving “sideshow” in the Ford City Mall parking lot early Saturday, according to Chicago police and videos posted on social media.

  Martin Isaac Cantu Murillo, of South Bend, was standing outside in the 7600 block of South Cicero Avenue around 2:50 a.m. when someone began firing and struck him in the head, police said. The gunman fled the scene in a red SUV. CPD has not revealed a motive for the shooting, and no arrests have been reported.

  An officer who responded to the scene counted 25 shell casings scattered across the parking lot, according to preliminary information.

CWB has video at the link of a masked individual pulled out a switched pistol and firing it, proving once again that Illinois will pass any law they can to feel good (without actually doing anything) about the crime they're enabling every single weekend.

Where are the Stop Stick people? 

Speaking of Crime....

Channel 7 is going all in competing with HeyJackass.com and tracking shootings all weekend:

• At least 16 people have been shot, five fatally, in gun violence across Chicago so far this weekend.

  Here's how the news is developing.

They then list all the shootings with a summary of each - something we haven't seen the media do for years, a decade or more actually. 

They still won't describe the offenders though.

But it seems like yet another indication that Conehead is being undercut by the Machine flunkies in the media. 

Traveling Day Again

Returning to town, so posting is light and comments might be delayed.

Seems like another one of those "crime is down compared to years ago" but don't look at the climbing trend.

Open post for now. 

What Now?

From the comments:

• OT: anybody investigating the former head of mayors details wife? Brand new merit LT S.L. They cut her lock at 640 and found $37,000.00 in cash. And then she demanded it back. Luckily NW was there. Lisa A trying to cover it up.

Did someone forget to pick up the"merit" payoff? A lot of connected names in this one.

Hmmmm

Why are we just hearing about this now?

• Two weeks ago, someone drove into the 020 parking garage and committed suicide. The body remained undiscovered for (depending on who you talk to) an hour or a few hours.

And no one tipped us off.

A Bomb?

Not really:

• A Chicago alderman says someone set off a bomb outside his home early Saturday, shattering a window as his three children were sleeping. But police dispatch records show CPD was not sent to any calls of an explosion at the time of the blast and an initial police investigation later on Saturday morning found the object appeared to be a firework.

  Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez (25th Ward) says the blast happened around 12:45 a.m. near his home in the 1900 block of West 21st Street. He posted a video Saturday evening that appears to show a large firework detonating at a street corner. Glass is heard shattering, and a vehicle horn is triggered by the explosion.

It was a firework. 

A BIG firework with the potential to maim, burn or kill, but still a firework. Lopez and his press people are screeching about a bomb though and someone is pushing the nine-hour response time as something unusual - which it would be....for an actual bomb.

One of those "Police District Councilors" is calling it political violence before any investigation has even been begun, so leap to your own conclusions.

But it wasn't a "bomb." 

Any Truth to This One?

We get emails regularly alleging all sorts of things. 

Some are obviously trolls. Some sound like something that could happen:

• So the latest from the Police Department news, they are going to strip Northside Police Districts of their most important resources, Patrol Officers. Some districts are losing from 25 to 50 Officers, depending on their actual Officers assigned.

These Districts are already short from everything we've seen and heard. Sometimes someone sends us the daily worksheets and the cars are half staffed. Someone sent us pictures of a parking lot and it was full of unused squad cars. We couldn't determine if it was shift change or something else, so we filed it under "interesting" but didn't post about it.

Moving Officers though - now you're talking about Contract violations and time-and-one-half for being shipped out of bid spots. After all the talk about OT cuts, we can't see paying dozens of Officers OT just for showing up for work.

But we know where there are something like 150 Officers guarding a west side residence and driving family members around when there used to be only twenty-four in years past. 

They're all Detailed, so Contractual protections may not be as big of a hurdle.

Look! (again)

Lack of enforcement leads to....more crime!

• Maeve Priestley was overcome with anxiety when she woke up early one morning and discovered the driver’s side window of her Honda Civic had been smashed out. Priestley, 26, cried outside her Lake View condo building as she assessed the damage and realized an air bag had been ripped out of her steering wheel. She didn’t know what to do, so she called her dad.

  “It’s a very violating experience,” says Priestley, a special education teacher. “I felt very panicked.”

  She was among the more than 1,200 victims of air bag thefts in Chicago in the first four months of this year. Between 2023 and 2025, there were only 70 such thefts, according to Chicago police data.

  Amid this year’s surge, the Chicago Police Department has suspended air bag theft investigations more quickly. And virtually all of the cases have gone unsolved, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of the data found.

Gee, a teacher in Lakeview was the victim of a crime - wonder how she voted.

And the Slum Times is "analyzing" the data:

• A police spokesperson says theft investigations “often take time and can be difficult to solve without video or forensic evidence.”

These Thefts can be accomplished in about thirty-seven seconds (ask us how we know!) using a rock and a box cutter - that's it. 

• no one is calling 9-1-1 during that time frame, 
• no one at 9-1-1 is picking up that call that quickly and typing up a ticket, 
• no one is dispatching that call in thirty-seven seconds (it's a Priority 3, tops)
• no one is responding in that amount of time

And if - completely by chance - an Officer stumbles on a Theft in Progress, they aren't allowed to chase, on foot or by vehicle, for a misdemeanor Theft. 

Any proposed "crackdown" by the City council is political posturing at best. 

Sparklefarts the Swindler?

Anyone surprised? (paywalled article over at Crain's)

• The Obama Presidential Center has been touted as a launching pad for jobs and workforce development on the South Side. But some of the local contractors hired to help build it say they are paying the price for the project’s delays and cost overruns.

  Several subcontractors on the nearly finished $850 million campus say they are quietly fighting to collect millions of dollars in unpaid bills for completed work and are being pushed to the financial brink, providing a new window into the fallout from the center’s widely reported construction issues.

  The companies, including several established minority-led firms, allege a portion of the unforeseen costs on a project that came in hundreds of millions of dollars over its original estimated budget has been pushed onto them and other small contractors least able to afford them — jeopardizing jobs and the future of some businesses the historic project was designed to elevate.

  Their claims reveal a hidden human cost of the project’s inflated price tag and threaten to spoil the legacy of one of the highest-profile developments in the city’s history.

Any updates on that $470 million maintenance fund that was only funded with a single million dollars? Chicago taxpayers are looking down the barrel of a $469 million shortfall that is 100% unaffordable.

Firefighters Injured

Imagine a warm overnight and then going to fight a fire decked out in bunker gear.

No thanks:

• An extra-alarm fire in the Back of the Yards neighborhood tore through a building, leaving four people including two firefighters hurt and more than a dozen people displaced Thursday morning.

  The fire, which started near the 4500 block of South Laflin Street and was extinguished by 6:45 a.m., erupted about 5 a.m., according to a fire department spokesperson.

  The department’s response was elevated to an extra-alarm, bringing more than 100 firefighters to the scene and at least five ambulances, according to the spokesperson.

  Two occupants of the building were taken in good and fair condition to hospitals, while two firefighters suffering minor injuries were also taken to hospitals, the spokesperson said.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

It's NOT a Toy, Dumbasses

You're supposed to be professionals:

• Newly released dashcam video shows a Pasadena police officer getting shot by a fellow officer in what the police chief described as a "horseplay" incident.

  The footage, taken inside a Pasadena police parking garage, captures a patrol car pulling up behind two officers standing near another vehicle. One of the officers standing outside is seen quickly drawing his gun and pointing it at the officer in the patrol car. After a few seconds, he re-holsters the weapon.

  The video does not show what happens next, but the police chief said the officer seated in the patrol car also drew a gun, which discharged. The bullet traveled through the windshield and struck the other officer in the shoulder.

  The shooting happened last September, but the department released the video Wednesday.

That seems to fall far outside the recognized definition of "horseplay." And the narrative indicates there are TWO morons here who shouldn't be trusted anywhere near firearms, let alone carrying them as part of their jobs.

You don't draw a loaded weapon and point it at someone or something you aren't willing to shoot in the defense of yourself or others - LEAST OF ALL at a fellow officer.

It's a Mystery

Anyone notice how the "Hantavirus" scare disappeared completely from the media? 

Like it never existed?

Like it wasn't getting the traction it needed to scare everyone into submission again?

You can see they're trying to do something with the recent Ebola outbreak, except Ebola kills the infected too quickly to have a "patient zero" running around getting everyone else sick.

Shades of Juicy

When the demand for "racism!!!" exceeds the supply, you get crap like this:

• Chicago police are investigating after a cross was burned in Grant Park.

  Police said officers and firefighters responded to the 600 block of South Columbus Drive around 2:30 p.m. Tuesday after reports of an “object” on fire. Firefighters extinguished the blaze.

  The “motives and circumstances” of the burning are under investigation, police said. No one was hurt, and no one is in custody.

We're surprised there weren't clothesline nooses and puddles of bleach amongst the Subway sandwich wrappers littering Grant Park.

That didn't stop the usual suspects from screeching that this was (A) racist, (B) Trump related and (C) related to the Texas murder trial that just wrapped up. Even pfather pflaggot is offering a ten-thousand dollar reward for apprehension of the suspect....who appears to be Asian (pix from CWB blog).

With all the cameras around Grant Park, it's only a matter of time finding and tracking this mope down and discovering he was paid by the SPLC or some other left-wing outfit to gin up fake outrage in a blue city, blue state, $hithole that voted overwhelmingly for Sparklefarts, Hillary, Biden and Kamala. 

 

Task Force Shooting

One of the Task Force members seems to be a CPD Officer detailed there:

• Two suspects were shot as part of an ATF gun trafficking operation in Country Club Hills Tuesday night, the ATF said.

  The incident occurred near 189th and Loretto Lane in Country Club Hills.

  The ATF said it was conducting the operation at about 5:30 p.m. when an ATF special agent and a task force officer fired their guns in response to an attempted armed robbery of undercover agents, hitting two suspects. Authorities said the task officer is with the Chicago Police Department.

  Both suspects were taken into custody and transported to the hospital, where they were in stable condition. Three other suspects were taken into custody at the scene, the ATF said.

COPA appeared on scene but will undoubtedly have a difficult time investigating as federal agencies aren't required to cooperate with them on any level. 

We aren't sure about the CPD member who is (technically) detailed out and therefore, employed by the feds? Would it depend on who's signing the checks or what Rules are operated under?

Good job all around though. 

Nice Workaround Porkulous

A billionaire avoiding taxes?

But still raising taxes on the working people.