Crimesha to be Deposed

Is her DEI law license in danger?

• A federal judge has ordered former Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx to answer questions under oath about why she ordered deputies not to oppose efforts by two women to get their murder convictions tossed out, opening the door for them to pursue wrongful conviction prosecution lawsuits against the city.

  Attorneys for the city and a former CPD detective at the center of the case are expected to probe a series of high-level meetings allegedly held between Foxx, her aides, and lawyers who simultaneously ran the Exoneration Project while representing clients suing the city over wrongful prosecution claims.

  [...] At the heart of the dispute is what lawyers for the city and Guevara describe as a troubling overlap between Foxx’s official prosecutorial decisions and her alleged private dealings with the Exoneration Project, a non-profit organization whose staff lawyers are drawn almost entirely from the firm of Loevy & Loevy, one of the most active and prominent firms suing the city of Chicago over wrongful conviction claims.

"troubling overlap[s]" is likely a polite way of saying - without actually saying - there might be financial motivations behind the scenes.

We do know for a fact that when O'Neil-Burke arrived, there was a curious backlog of cases that Crimesha refused to push forward for any number of reasons, but the ones discussed most by lawyers in the office were (A) statute of limitations running out, or (B) delays so that witnesses / victims would give up or (in a few cases) die. If an investigator retired, that was just a bonus because paperwork would get "lost" and no notifications would be sent out.

Crimesha being stripped of her license would be a small step in the right direction along with fines. We don't see her being stripped of immunity or facing jail time. After all, she's probably still running for something in the next year or two. 

Shots Fired at the Police

No return fire though:

• A suspect is in custody after shots were fired at Chicago police officers on the South Side Monday morning, CPD said.

  Police said at about 6:03 a.m. in the 7500-block of South Peoria Street, a male suspect fired shots at two marked squad cars, just blocks from a police station in Gresham. No officers were struck and they did not return fire, police said.

  The suspect then fled the scene in a black Nissan SUV and officers were pursuing him when he crashed into two marked vehicles in the 7600-block of South Union Avenue, police said.

  The suspect then tried to flee on foot and was taken into custody, police said. A weapon was recovered from the scene.

Is the shooter out on bail yet?

CTA Crime Up?

We thought crime was down?

• Aggravated assaults and batteries on the Chicago Transit Authority reached at least a 24-year high in 2025 as the Trump administration threatened to cut millions of dollars in funding after a series of jarring attacks.

  The upward trend has continued into 2026, with those crimes climbing 33% over the same period last year, according to city data going back to 2001.

  It’s bad news for the CTA and its interim leader Nora Leerhsen, who points to positive trends on the transit system as she works to secure $50 million in grant funding from the federal government.

  Unsatisfied with the CTA’s decision in December to boost the number of officers patrolling Chicago’s trains and buses, the Federal Transit Administration has threatened to withhold the money if the CTA doesn’t enact an acceptable safety plan by mid-March.

Here's an idea - won't cost a single dime:

• take down the "No Guns" signs on the CTA

The problem will sort itself out inside of a month, two tops. 

Oh, and clear out the homeless residents - in the stations, trains and tunnels.

Here Comes Another Payout

Does anyone know the Law any more? Or is it all DEI guesswork?

• A Chicago man is suing the city and three CPD officers, alleging he was arrested when he tried file a report about bullets he says went missing from his legally owned firearm during a traffic stop.

  Qwentin Howard, a registered gun owner who holds both a Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card and a concealed carry license, alleges in a federal lawsuit that Officers [...] and [...] pulled him over and placed his weapon in his trunk during the stop. Howard claims two bullets were missing when he retrieved the gun from his trunk after the stop.

  He then drove to the Wentworth (2nd) District station, 5101 South Wentworth Avenue, to file a report about the missing ammunition. According to the lawsuit, that’s when things escalated.

  Howard alleges that when he arrived at the station, he met with [the officers], along with their supervisor, [...], and informed them he would be recording the interaction to protect himself. [the supervisor] then allegedly ordered Howard to produce a physical FOID card, despite Howard having already shown [...] an electronic version during the traffic stop earlier that day.

  When Howard insisted that an electronic card was legally sufficient, as it is under Illinois law, [the supervisor] allegedly told him, “Well, you have a problem now because you’re accusing my officers of stealing your bullets.” Howard alleges he apologized if he was mistaken, explaining he simply did not want any bullets linked to him turning up later. [the stupidvisor] allegedly ordered [...] to detain Howard. Howard was handcuffed and arrested. [...] told Howard he was being arrested because he “wanted to escalate the issue and make it bigger than it had to be,” the lawsuit claims.

Well, it just got "bigger" than it needed to be (allegedly). 

Honest to god, who is this dumb? 

Suburban What Now?

NBC "reports":

• A 20-year-old man was arrested Thursday on a search warrant that prompted a shelter-in-place order for nearly an hour in parts of northwest suburban Lake in the Hills, authorities said.

  A joint investigation into "illegal activity" led to the arrest of 20-year-old Joel Fernandez of Lake in the Hills on Tuesday, authorities said.

  [...] He is charged with four counts of possession of ammunition without a valid FOID card on person.  

SWAT call out. Shelter in place order. Illegal activity.

LakeMcHenryScanner.com report:

• A criminal complaint filed in McHenry County Circuit Court alleges that Fernandez knowingly possessed – without a valid FOID card – 20 cartridges of .45 Auto Sellier & Bellot branded full metal jacket (FMJ), 13 cartridges of .223 Remington branded steel core FMJ, one cartridge of 9mm Blazer Brass branded FMJ, one cartridge of 9mm Remington-Peters branded FMJ, one cartridge of 9mm Speer branded jacketed hollow point (JHP), and two cartridges of 9mm Sig Sauer branded JHP.

Um....thirty-eight rounds of ammo? That's it? A SWAT call out and a neighborhood lock down...for thirty-eight rounds?

• The complaint did not mention whether Fernandez possessed firearms.

You've got to be f#$%ing kidding. Thirty-eight rounds and no firearm. 

So what was the actual danger?

Timely Article

Someone at Crain's is looking ahead:

• It won’t be news to readers that Chicago is struggling financially. Chicago is not yet on the brink of default, but the city has started accelerating down an increasingly slippery slope of financial undoing. The city’s general obligation bond rating was downgraded by S&P and Kroll last year, and just downgraded by both Fitch and Kroll this week. As a consequence, investors have started demanding higher returns for Chicago’s general obligation bonds and even some of its safest revenue bonds. Thanks to the property tax disbursement fiasco at Cook County, the city is now struggling with its cash flow. These are all bad signs. It’s still possible for the city to course-correct, but Chicago is nearing a financial point of no return. If we reach that point, leaders should look to Detroit’s bankruptcy experience as both an indication of things to come and a positive example of how bankruptcy can help an insolvent city move toward financial and political stability.

  Right now, Chicago spends about 40% of its operating budget on debt service and pension payments. That effectively means that only 60 cents out of every tax dollar goes towards providing services for current residents. As the city’s credit rating slips, borrowing costs will continue to climb, creating a vicious cycle that will end in service reduction, ballooning debt service payments or both. Before it filed for bankruptcy in 2013, Detroit faced an even more severe version of the same basic issue; the city spent 65% of its operating budget on legacy debt payments. Then the city filed for municipal bankruptcy.

Illinois currently doesn't allow for municipalities to file for Chapter 9, so the minute that a bill shows up in Springfield to allow it, you know that Chicago has one foot in the grave.

In the meantime, it's an interesting read with lessons learned from Detroit. Chicago is still quite a ways from insolvency, but it's definitely closer in the rear view mirror than in years past. 

Justice is so....Confusing

Get a look at this headline from CWB:

• Red Line robber was wearing an ankle monitor for a Red Line robbery he committed while wearing an ankle monitor

And it wasn't his first time getting caught while wearing an ankle monitor:

• The February 19 robbery was not Stephens’ first alleged offense while under electronic monitoring nor his first alleged robbery on the Red Line.

  Prosecutors last year charged Stephens with armed robbery and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after he and an accomplice allegedly robbed a 41-year-old man on a southbound Red Line train near 47th Street on September 12.

His accomplice was....also wearing an ankle monitor!

• Both Stephens and Gray were wearing ankle monitors at the time of that alleged robbery. Judge James Murphy III ordered both men detained on those charges, citing the ankle monitors as a specific point of concern.

Holy Crap! A Cook County judge ordered him held??? Hats off to Judge James Murphy III!

• Despite his history, Judge Carol Howard decided on November 11 to release Stephens on an ankle monitor again, according to court records.

  The arrangement quickly unraveled. One month later, a court officer notified Howard that Stephens had failed to report to their office weekly as ordered. Howard kept him on the ankle monitor anyway. In January, she modified his electronic monitoring conditions to allow him to be outside his home from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

Oh....there they go again - this time Judge Carol Howard. 

We'd say it's amazing, but it isn't - it's expected.

Stay Alert

In regard to recent world events, remember to keep alert when responding to "sensitive" areas and keep that camera rolling if you're stuck at a downtown "protest."

It's a wonder that people who claim to hate totalitarianism, aggressively defend women's rights and embrace diversity can't wait to protest in favor a regime that hasn't held an actual election in nearly fifty years, slaughtered tens of thousands of protestors, routinely beats women for singing, executes rape victims and hangs gay people from construction cranes.

Not to mention thousands of military casualties and the routine slaughter of thousands more civilians across the globe for five decades.

UPDATE: Rumors starting up about 12-hour days because of Chinese funded "protests."

Jesse Flees Illinois

After taking so much from the taxpayers of Illinois, he couldn't wait to leave town:

• A memorial caravan carrying the body of the late Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. to his native state of South Carolina is now underway.

  His widow, Jacqueline, is accompanying him on his final journey.

  Video shows the procession leaving Leak and Sons Funeral Home at 78th and South Cottage Grove earlier Saturday morning.

  His family says they want the journey to be an opportunity for friends, supporters and community members to pay their respects while honoring Jackson's life and legacy.

We've never been to South Carolina....road trip?

Um....

Who wants to tell them?

• Choose Chicago, the city’s convention and tourism agency, says it needs more marketing money to rehabilitate a Chicago image tarnished by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and high-profile crimes.

  The agency is could get it at the expense of hotel patrons.

  The City Council’s Finance Committee agreed Friday to support the creation of a so-called Tourism Improvement District and raise the hotel tax on rooms within that district to 19%, the highest in the nation. The current combined city, county and state tax on hotel rooms is 17.5%.

  The voice vote on the measure, which now goes to the full City Council for final approval, was enthusiastic and nearly unanimous.

Sure, because making it MORE expensive to visit Chicago by imposing MORE taxes is a sure-fire way to increase tourism! 

No need to stay in nearby Rosemont and just Uber, Lyft or CTA your way into town (not that the CTA is anything to write home about.)

Lieutenant Test Results Mailed

Around twenty-four hours after we asked why results were taking so long, the scores were mailed out.

Maybe we should have asked why it's taking so long to pay out the judgements against the City that are racking up interest on a daily basis. 

Must....Contain....Laughter

Look who got laid off (paywalled article):

• A second round of layoffs hit WGN-Ch. 9 this week, with three creative services employees getting the axe Wednesday, including Debbie Brockman, the producer whose aggressive detainment by immigration agents in October became a symbol of urban enforcement clashes. 

  Brockman, a 15-year employee at WGN, rose to national fame after a video captured her being forced to the ground, handcuffed and placed in a van by federal immigration agents while on her way to work at the station from her Lincoln Square home.

"on her way to work" while interfering with Federal agents and attempting to pass it off as an "assignment."

What a Pleasant Individual

Exhibit #5,319 why we need the Death Penalty back:

• Shortly after an Uber Eats driver was killed while trying to get his minivan back from carjackers outside Loretto Hospital early Monday morning, the woman now accused of killing him fired up her Facebook.

  “The [expletive] we had to do to get home is crazy,” Montoya Perry wrote. “but we made it ** if u missing a car, u can come get it! We don’t want it!!”

  Tragically, Daniel Figueroa, 28, was unable to take Perry up on her offer. Prosecutors on Wednesday said she ran over the young, hard-working father, killing him and leaving his family struggling to make sense of it all.

And guess what?

• ...she was arrested just two weeks ago by Melrose Park police for driving on a suspended license, fleeing police, and, because she allegedly identified herself as her sister, obstructing police...

This time a judge held her. 

Indiana Moving Forward

The Indiana legislature passed and the Indiana governor signed a bill to establish a Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority and lure the Bears over the border:

• The state of Indiana took another step in their effort to lure the Bears to Hammond when, on Thursday, the Indiana State Senate passed the bill to establish the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority. Gov. Mike Braun signed the bill about an hour later.

  All that’s left is for the Bears to decide between Hammond and Arlington Heights.

  “We sure give the Bears a lot to think about to come here,” state senator Rick Niemeyer said. “I think it’s very serious.”

We still think it's mostly a negotiating ploy - the Bears have a multi-million dollar facility in Lake Forest and are incorporated downtown. 

But the Illinois legislature has been dragging their feet and the Arlington Heights people have been next to useless. Chicago, thanks to Conehead, is a non-player in the entire process and will end up the biggest loser in terms of tax revenue. 

Expect the White Sox to seriously explore leaving before 2030.

Should be a fun few weeks ahead. 

Five Shot

It this the first "mass shooting" of the year?

• Five people were shot Wednesday night on the city’s South Side.

  Information is limited at this time, but the Chicago Fire Department said one person was shot near the intersection of 67th Street and Stony Island Avenue near Woodlawn, while another person was shot near the intersection of 69th Street and Harper Avenue in Grand Crossing.

  CFD also said three people who had been shot showed up at the fire station located in the 1400 block of East 67th Street in Woodlawn, just blocks from the two previously mentioned shootings. It is unclear where these three victims were shot before heading to the fire station.

No one died, so the threshold to be an actual mass shooting was not reached. But it certainly makes you wonder what's on tap.

Warm Friday

Going to get up to sixty-one degrees today.

The only thing keeping the shooting totals down might be the thirty degree drop off into Saturday.

But the warm weather gets the blood stirring....and flowing. 

Grading a Test....How Long?

Someone commented that the recent Lieutenant test was taken nearly six weeks ago and no results have been mailed out yet?

Anyone know why they're fiddling with the rankings? 

Was this the scantron portion? 

Another "Wrong Address" Payout

Are these warrants being written by DEI hires?

• A jury on Wednesday awarded $5.74 million in damages to a Chicago family who accused police of violating their civil rights in a botched raid of their home in 2018.

  Ebony Tate and her family filed a federal lawsuit against the city and the officers involved in the raid, accusing police of breaking down their door in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in August 2018, and pointing guns at them. Investigations found officers were in the wrong house and did not properly vet information from a paid informant.

As to the allegations that SWAT pointed weapons at occupants of the address, that might have happened - no Officer on a Search Warrant enters an occupied dwelling with weapons holstered and rifles slung. That would be tactically unsound to say the least. 

But once control of the residence has been established, weapons ARE holstered and rifle ARE slung. In most cases, SWAT leaves following entry/securing and leaves the actual searching, arresting and paperwork to the teams that wrote the warrant.

In this case, it didn't stop them from becoming Exhibit A, but procedurally, we really don't see an issue.  

Spending Problem

How does the saying go? 

• Illinois doesn't have a revenue problem - it has a spending problem

Example #435,966:

• Developers of Pullman’s historic Hotel Florence and the surrounding area announced plans to create a “mind-blowing entertainment experience” that is mixed with history and a new hub for local artists to showcase their talents — all headlined by a “world class” music venue.

  The roughly $100 million revitalization project will transform the nearly 145-year-old hotel within the Pullman National Historic Park into a boutique hotel with new restaurants. The hotel’s annex will be rehabilitated and a concert hall will be added in the old Pullman Factory across the street.

  Construction is set to begin in March 2027, with its completion expected in late 2028.

  [...] The Illinois Department of Natural Resources provided $21 million in funding, making the project the largest public-private partnership for the department 

That $100 million could likely be used for something else instead of enriching construction companies for a "boutique" hotel in a neighborhood that no one goes to.

Sounds Like CPS

How long until some lawyers here jumps on this bandwagon?

• A Connecticut college student is suing the Hartford Board of Education and the city of Hartford for negligence.

  Nineteen-year-old Aleysha Ortiz says she graduated from high school with honors and earned a college scholarship, but she can’t read or write.

  [...] Ortiz graduated from the Hartford Public Schools system last year, but she says she is now illiterate and still doesn’t know how to read or write.

With less than half of students in CPS reading at grade level, this might be fruitful grounds for massive class action payouts....especially if Police disengage and opportunities dry up.

Whoops - More Money Disappears

Conehead's budget keeps running into problems:

• A Cook County judge has ordered the cash-strapped city to refund $163 million in penalties it tacked onto more than one million vehicle citations, fines that sometimes doubled the cost of a simple parking ticket. Those penalties inflated the city’s already steep ticket prices beyond the levels allowed by state law, Judge William Sullivan found in violation of state law.

  Sullivan’s ruling came Thursday after the case wound its way through the county’s notoriously slow court system for eight years. Sullivan found that Chicago had illegally piled late fees onto citations for routine infractions like parking violations, in some cases pushing the total bill past $500 for tickets that state law caps at $250.

This goes back to the Groot administration and maybe part of the 9.5 Digit Midget's. 

The ruling also affects a bunch of uncollected citation debt dating back years that was never collected, but was almost certainly "spent" over the years as part of the fantasy budget numbers. 

That $163 million was also spent. It doesn't exist any more. So something else will have to (A) be cut from the existing budget or (B) covered with some as yet undetermined tax levy.

So much good news. 

Media Layoffs

It would take someone with a heart of stone not to laugh....and we don't have that heart:

• The axe is falling at WGN-Ch. 9, cutting a wide swath out of “Chicago’s Very Own” TV newsroom.

  Eight veteran reporters and anchors were laid off Monday: Sean Lewis, Ray Cortopassi, Bronagh Tumulty, Judy Wang, Julian Crews, Paul Lisnek, Chris Boden and Dean Richards, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

  [...] The massive downsizing is casting a pall over the newsroom, according to insiders, who say Dallas-based owner Nexstar Media is reducing the station to a shell of its former self.  

That's nothing compared with the "pall" assorted media companies have been casting over Chicago, spouting overly-libtarded bull$hit, anti-law-and-order crap, deliberately slanted "reporting" and opinions that don't resonate with half of their supposed audience.

WGN (and pretty much all Chicago media) embraced that philosophy years ago and this reckoning has been long overdue. 

Fortunately, there are a bunch of coding jobs that have opened up. 

And we heard CPD is hiring - maybe they can demonstrate how much better they can do our job than we did for nearly three decades.

Must be Election Season

And the Machine has begun a low-intensity campaign to thin out the field:

• The chief executive of a major Cook County contractor alleged longtime county Treasurer Maria Pappas repeatedly subjected company executives to bullying, threats and “obscenity-filled tirades,” according to a copy of a letter obtained by WBEZ.

  For months, Pappas has blamed Texas-based Tyler Technologies for technological problems that delayed property tax revenue payments to school districts, local governments and other taxing bodies across the county.

  But in a letter Monday to Pappas, Tyler CEO H. Lynn Moore Jr. bemoaned what he called the “scapegoating” of the company, which has been working for years to upgrade the county’s property tax system. Moore alleged that the treasurer has shown a “lack of accountability” for mistakes by her own office in her efforts to “deflect blame and divert attention to us.”

This is in regard to the property tax bills being months and month late, along with almost $200 million in refunds being delayed because of computer issues with the switchover to a new program. 

Pappas has already replied, saying she's fighting for taxpayers. 

Prickwrinkle says she's referring the complaint to the county Ethics Board.

Allegations like these go nowhere, but do provide juicy gossip for the campaign flyers that will be going out over the summer. 

Pappas is obviously not the choice of the Prickwrinkle Machine. 

This is a New One

We'll echo what the lawyer said in this article - we had never heard of this happening, ever:

• A Chicago police officer was about an hour and a half into a deposition Friday morning over one of dozens of misconduct allegations against him as a member of an embattled North Side tactical team when the officer’s attorney requested a break.

  The officer, [...], left the room and did not come back. A few moments later, per a motion filed aturday, [...]’s attorney told the other lawyers that the deposition would need to continue another time, because a CPD sergeant had taken the officer to police headquarters so that [...] could be relieved of his police powers.

  “This was — to put it mildly — an unusual development,” the motion states.

  The information sent the long-delayed deposition grinding to a halt and makes [...] the latest member of the 1863 tactical team to be stripped of his police powers or reassigned as complaints and lawsuits about the officers have stacked up.

  Attorney Jordan Marsh, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case that brought [...] into court that day, described the interruption in a motion as “unprecedented in the collective experience of Plaintiffs’ counsel, and likely the experience of all counsel in this matter.” He later said he hadn’t seen anything like it occur in 30 years of practicing law.

We're aware that the plaintiff attorney is likely following the pattern of all plaintiff attorneys in suits against the city - amplify the (unsubstantiated) allegations in the hopes of driving a settlement their way.

But being stripped in the middle of a deposition?

Highly unusual. 

Crap Reporting as Usual

The usual anti-police hack over at WTTW:

• Chicago police officers disproportionately used force against Black Chicagoans, even when considering they are more likely to be arrested or suspected of committing a crime in the city, according to the results of a court-ordered, first-of-its-kind study that examined four years of data.

  CPD officers also disproportionately used force against Latino Chicagoans, as compared with White Chicagoans, according to the study. In addition, CPD officers used greater levels of force against both Black and Latino Chicagoans than White Chicagoans, according to the study.

  The study, conducted by social scientists from the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Pennsylvania hired by CPD brass and crafted with the approval of a court-appointed monitoring team, blamed “systemic factors” for the disparity, not the actions of individual officers.

  The study also found that the number of times CPD officers used force against Black and Latino Chicagoans “rose significantly toward the end of 2023,” according to the study, which did not attempt to determine the reason behind that increase.

You know who else didn't "attempt to determine the reason behind that increase"?

• the "reporter"

Here's a clue:

 And that's just shootings - the stats hold across most categories of crime regardless.

And when criminals decide to break the law, avoiding apprehension and accountability is at the top of their list, which often involves resisting arrest....you know, using force against Police Officers....who are then required to fill out all sorts of forms which are used by the "social scientists" to claim there's something "disproportionate" about cops defending themselves and using force to defeat an arrest. 

Force that is completely LEGAL and AUTHORIZED by State Law by the way.

And then the media hacks spin it (again) as "disproportionate" while ignoring the inconvenient fact that the vast majority of crime (95%) is committed by two particular groups for whatever reasons and the other group tends to obey police commands when arrested.

You still don't hate the media enough. 

Death Spiral Accelerates

Surprisingly, parts of the media continue to cover the death spiral of downtown Chicago:

• Office towers that once sold for hundreds of millions of dollars are now changing hands at discounts of 70%, 80%, even 90% across major U.S. cities, as higher interest rates and remote work reshape demand for downtown space.

  Few places illustrate the shift more starkly than Chicago. There, the markdowns span every era of development, according to figures first tweeted out by Nightingale Associates.

  A century-old office building in the city’s historic Printing House Row district, 401 S. State St., recently sold for just $4.2 million, down from $68.1 million in 2016, a 94% drop.

  The prominent Loop tower at 311 S. Wacker Drive traded at an 85% discount, selling for $45 million compared with $302 million in 2014.

  Even newer, high-profile properties have not been immune. Boeing’s long-term lease interest in 100 N. Riverside Plaza, not the tower itself, sold for $22 million, down from $165 million in 2005, an 87% decline.

  And at 300 W. Adams St., a leasehold interest in the building changed hands for just $4 million, compared with $51 million in 2012 — a 92% discount.

Those four buildings alone have lost over half-a-billion dollars in value, part of a massive hole in Chicago tax revenues for commercial properties. Guess who makes up the shortfall?

• residential property owners who just got hammered citywide 

This isn't all Conehead's fault and it part of an emerging national trend. But he's done less than zero to ameliorate, alleviate or recover from this downturn....and neither has Fata$$, who wants to run on his "successful" governorship.

Light Posting

Bunch of stuff going on this week, so please excuse any delays in comment moderation or posting.

We'll be around. 

Tunnels to Towers Fundraiser

From our e-mail:

• As you [may be] aware T2T is a national non-profit that helps America's heroes by providing mortgage free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children and by building specially-adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. To date, T2T has provided support to many first responders as well as families of those who lost their lives across the country and have supported several families in the Chicago area. T2T is currently in the process of providing Chicago Police officer Carlos Yanez Jr. with a customized smart home that will accommodate his injuries suffered in the line of duty. T2T has also paid off mortgages for Chicago Police officers that have been killed in the line of duty.

  This year the Parade is honored to offer a very special commemorative poster and t-shirt featuring an amazing design by local artist and Chicago firefighter Tim McCarthy, proceeds from the t-shirt and poster will be donated to T2T.

Poster and attached QR code are below (click for larger picture):

(comments closed here - informational post only)
 

One Year Left

The next mayoral election is scheduled for 23 February 2027. 

If no one gets 50%+1 then the run off is 06 April 2027.

According to this link, there are four candidates so far:

• Maria Pappas
• Mike Quigley
• Joel Holberg 
• Johnny LoGalbo

Expect more shortly. 

(UPDATE: these are DECLARED candidates. No one has filed Nominating Petitions yet so even these four might not make it to election day. When we said "Expect more shortly" we can almost guarantee that there will be at least ten people running.)

Ghosts of George Ryan

He's not running for governor yet - first he wants to rule over the corpse of Chicago:

• The Illinois official whose agency issued potentially thousands of illegal licenses to truckers, received more than $300,000 in donations from the trucking industry in recent years. The Illinois Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias, is in a standoff with the Trump Transportation Department over its review of the state’s commercial drivers licenses (CDLs) which found that 1-in-5 licenses issued by Giannoulias’ office were done so illegally. 

  Giannoulias, a Democrat who is reportedly considering a run for Chicago mayor, is facing scrutiny over his office’s role in issuing those licenses from the Trump administration after a series of high profile big rig crashes across the country that exposed issues in how states issue non-domiciled CDLs to foreign citizens, or in some cases, to illegal immigrants. 

  In Illinois, the U.S. Transportation Department found the Secretary of State’s Office, through the Director of Driver Services, issued illegal CDLs, in some cases, to individuals who have failed to provide evidence of lawful presence, let alone proficiency in managing big rigs.

He already cost taxpayers $383 million from the Broadway bank failure.

Alexi better hope there isn't a Willis family out there somewhere.

What the...?!??

This exists?

 

We were told years ago that the current CPD Star is a copyrighted design, which is why most of the t-shirts and memorabilia that you see all have the 1955 star design - that one isn't copyright protected. We would assume that the shoulder patches were also protected, meaning you can't legally alter them like this.

More importantly, who did this? Because it's either the most arrogant thing we've seen if Heiniken did it himself or it's one of the biggest efforts at ass kissing in the history of ass smoochery. Did someone get a "merit" promotion out of this?

And before someone claims it's a photoshop or A.I., we're told the actual patch it's hanging on the wall of a business establishment frequented by Heiniken himself....at least until later Tuesday (they're closed on Mondays).

Another Conehead Corpse

And it was chilly outside:

• A man was found shot to death behind a Lawndale home on Saturday morning, and Chicago police have no idea when the murder occurred because no one called 911 to report the gunshots that killed him — and the neighborhood’s ShotSpotters were disconnected by the mayor in September 2024.

  Officers were dispatched to the 900 block of South Keeler Avenue around 8:21 a.m. after a 911 caller found the man’s body in a back yard. The victim, who has not yet been identified, appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s and had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.

At least it was in 011 - no one calls the police in 011 and finding dead bodies is a semi-regular occurrence.

It's a Fashion Accessory!

More proof that EM isn't even a mild deterrent to continuing criminal activity:

• A Chicago man was charged Wednesday with illegally possessing a machine gun after allegedly showing up to what he believed was a vehicle repossession job, only to find himself face-to-face with undercover federal agents, court records show.

  Edwin Moreno, 27, also known as “AK,” is accused of possessing a Glock .45-caliber pistol fitted with a machine gun conversion device (MCD) — a device that transforms a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon capable of firing multiple rounds with a single trigger pull, according to a federal criminal complaint. Moreno and an unidentified accomplice were allegedly recruited by ATF agents posing as repo men needing armed security. Neither man knew the purported tow operators were actually federal agents, the complaint states.

  What made the encounter all the more striking, according to the complaint, was what happened when the two men were asked how long they could work: both Moreno and his buddy allegedly pulled up their pant legs to reveal electronic monitoring ankle bracelets and then made a point of saying they needed to be back at their respective homes by 9:45 p.m.

We're surprised that ankle monitors don't come with pre-printed tags that post "Hours of Operation" so that your stupider criminals can check the info against their cell phones so they don't miss the deadlines.

More $$$ Disappearing

The Bears want taxpayers to foot the bill for all sorts of infrastructure improvements around their proposed stadium in Arlington Heights. It's one of the larger stumbling blocks to finalizing the move. Indiana has offered to pay for all sorts of new roads into and out of the Hammond site. 

It's a common ask and is usually granted as it's in the city/county/state interest to have paying crowds move in and out efficiently.

In the meantime, Chicago is spending a couple hundred million of unaccounted taxpayer dollars for the Sparklefart Memorial:

• Former President Barack Obama once declared that his presidential center would be a "gift" to Chicago, but taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden costs related to the beleaguered project.

  A Fox News Digital investigation shows taxpayers are now stuck footing the bill for surging public infrastructure costs required to support the project — and no government agency can provide an accounting of the total public cost, despite months of queries and FOIA requests. 

The "endowment" that was supposed to be funded to the tune of $470 million to protect taxpayers from exactly this is currently funded at....one single million dollars. 

We're all for increasing the tax base so as to fund necessary government services in a reasonable and sustainable manner. But driving away a tax and job generator like a major sports team while building a money-sponge of a "library" that isn't an actual repository of archival materials seems counterproductive to say the least.