Another?

Word of another Officer committing suicide yesterday.

The Chaplains (and even EAP) are ready, willing and able to take your calls if you're having a bad time. It's gotten far better than it used to be when we were new. 

The holidays are fast approaching and that has always been a rough time for everyone, including the police. Keep an eye on your co-workers and friends.

Extremely Slow Justice

Seven years is a long time to wait for charges:

• More than seven years after two Chicago police officers were shot while working in Back of the Yards, a second man was charged with the crime on Saturday.

  Edgar Barron, 25, was 17 years old when he allegedly shot plainclothes officers Leo Augle and Colin Ryan on May 2, 2017. On Saturday afternoon, Judge Deidre Dyer ordered Barron detained pending trial on two counts of attempted murder. Court records show he has never been charged with any other crime in Cook County.

  “Great news!” Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) tweeted Sunday. “I’m glad the judge detained him so he can’t run back to Mexico again.”

The accomplice (driver) got five years and walked out - time served - a few years ago.

This asshole (shooter) has supposedly been back from his "holiday" for a few years.

77 Judges - 77 "No" Votes

Even the Slum Times admits there are some judges who shouldn't be in the running:

• The 77 judges asking Cook County voters to keep them on the bench in November include some with unexplained tax debts, arrest histories, official censures, unflattering reversals by higher courts, and ties to indicted or convicted politicians.

  Those judges — alongside the many with cleaner reputations and records — all want another term to continue deciding who goes to prison, who loses their homes, and who keeps their kids.

  Despite the stakes, the races have made barely a ripple in public with weeks to go, as most of the judges appear to prefer.

  Injustice Watch this month published its judicial retention election guide, which offers professional and personal information on the 75 circuit judges and two appellate judges up for a vote in Cook County on Nov. 5.

  Every two years, a small part of the judiciary stands for retention, and to stay on the bench, judges must clear 60% “yes” votes among people who cast votes in their races. Unlike candidates seeking the bench for the first time, these judges typically seek reelection as a group, trying to persuade voters to hit “yes” for all the little-known names listed in a daunting expanse at the bottom of the ballot.

Sixty-percent isn't that high of a bar to get over....but it also means that every single "No" vote carries a bit more weight than just skipping the judicial voting altogether.

We know the FOP put out a list of endorsed judges, but just to be on the safe side and make sure that a judge elected today doesn't turn out to be a bought-and-paid-for tool of the Machine tomorrow, it's safer just to vote "No" on every single judge...and there are many this cycle, so be prepared. 

Make them sweat a bit.

WTF Blue Island?

A lot of hot tempers out there:

• An off-duty Blue Island police officer is in custody after he allegedly shot at an off-duty Chicago police officer’s car during a road rage incident Saturday evening, according to internal CPD communications provided to CWBChicago.

  CWB is not identifying the Blue Island officer by name because charges have not yet been approved in the case.

  According to a CPD report, a female Chicago officer who’s on maternity leave was riding in the front seat of a car that became involved in a minor crash with the 47-year-old Blue Island officer around 5:03 p.m. in the 4700 block of South Union.

  After the crash, the report stated, the suburban cop “proceeded to pull alongside” the Chicago officer’s car. He “drew his weapon and discharged one round in the direction of [the Chicago officer’s] vehicle, striking the passenger side door barrier and ricocheting off the front windshield.” No injuries were reported.

  The drivers of both cars chased each other and called 911, the report stated.

Ten-to-one no one had any idea who they were in conflict with, but still, blasting away at other vehicles i traffic?

F#$% the Inspector General, Too

Playing politics with political associations:

• For the first time, Chicago's Inspector General is asking state regulators to ban a number of Chicago police officers from serving in law enforcement.

  Since Jan. 6, 2021, more than a dozen CPD officers have been tagged as members of radical, sometimes violent groups, even as they deny it and remain on the job.

  Some of those officers, and others with seriously flawed work histories, may be among the names targeted for state de-certification after a history-making move by the Chicago Inspector General.

  "In order to serve as a police officer in any department in Illinois, a person must be certified as eligible to do so by the state of Illinois," said Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.

Of course, she doesn't name whom she wants de-certified and refuses say who they are.

Here's the thing:

• the ones who needed to be investigated, WERE investigated already;
• they were cleared...or the evidence was insufficient to sustain the charges;
• some resigned or retired.

Most of the rest were involuntarily signed up as part of a recruitment effort or were lured under false pretenses and placed on a mailing list. They attended ZERO meetings, contributed ZERO dollars, and associated with NO ONE. 

This is political BS and is going to end up costing taxpayers many millions of dollars at some point.

Knock it off.

ISP Trooper Killed

We had forgotten that ISP still had a motorcycle unit and this is a horrible way to be reminded of it:

• An Illinois state trooper was killed in a car crash while on duty Friday in central Illinois.

  Corey Thompsen, 28, had finished a traffic stop about 3:40 p.m. when he was driving his police motorcycle east on East Leverett Road in Champaign County. The driver of a truck traveling south on County Road 1300E stopped at the intersection then drove into the roadway and struck Thompsen on his motorcycle, Illinois State Police said.

  A witness stopped to render aid to Thompsen until paramedics arrived. Thompsen was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 4:32 p.m., police said.

Deepest sympathies to the entire ISP community.

Godspeed Trooper Thompsen.

Always Remember This

It was poison, it was always poison, and they wanted to poison you:

• A major study involving 1.7 million children has found that heart damage only appeared in children who had received Covid mRNA vaccines.

  Not a single unvaccinated child in the group suffered from heart-related problems.

  In addition, the researchers note zero children from the entire group, vaccinated or unvaccinated, died from COVID-19.

  Furthermore, the study found that Covid shots offered the children very little protection from the virus, with many becoming infected after just 14 to 15 weeks of receiving an injection.

This is from the UK, so of course, the US media isn't covering it. Also, the vaccines "offered" overseas weren't always the same ones on this side of the pond.

But.....

It was never a danger to children, almost never a danger to adults, and the typical death was a senior citizen, over 65, suffering from at least four additional co-morbidities.

But Groot wanted to strip you and fire you, and she had plenty of help among the brass-holes, including Larry.

F#$% COPA.....Again

To Larritorious' credit, he argued this was a mere two-day suspension for failing to turn on a body camera. 

COPA thinks otherwise:

• Over the objection of Chicago’s top cop, a police officer now faces dismissal for fatally shooting a man who was holding a handgun after a foot pursuit in Garfield Park last year.

  On April 15, 2023, Officer Fernando Ruiz fatally shot Reginald Clay Jr., 24, following a brief foot chase in the 3800 block of West Flournoy Street. Clay ran from officers who approached him and a group of people about 10 a.m. that morning, according to statements released by the police department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

  Body-worn camera footage released by COPA shows Clay walking away as two officers pulled up. Clay flees through a gangway into a backyard and then into another gangway that’s blocked off. Clay is seen turning toward the officers while gripping a gun in his right hand before he shifts the weapon to his left hand and apparently tries to put it down on a back porch. Ruiz opens fire as Clay appears to scream and grab his chest.

  After completing its investigation in May, COPA recommended that Ruiz be dismissed from the department over the encounter. The agency alleged that the officer violated CPD’s foot pursuit policy, failed to notify the Office of Emergency Management and Communications of the pursuit per that policy, failed to activate his body camera in a timely manner, and failed to use de-escalation techniques before using force.

Foot pursuits are dynamic situations that don't lend themselves to regimented protocols. It's not, "If A, then B, followed by C, but if A1, then B1, followed by D."

It's usually, "A-C-WTF-B-D" in the span of seconds, even tenths-of-seconds. Look at "lil homicide" in 010 the other year. That one went down in something like hundredths-of-seconds.

The dead asshole is running with a gun. He's moving the gun from one hand to the other - is he left handed? Is that his shooting hand? Is he ducking for cover to shoot the pursuing Officer? How much of the action recorded by the camera is obscured by the Officer's arm coming up to shoot?

And most of the prevailing law handed down by the US Supreme Court uses the phrase, "...a reasonable police officer..." when making judgements about split second decisions.

Snelling is correct in this case. COPA is wrong. 

And the family can take a flying f#$% at a rolling donut. The only one to blame for Clay's death is Clay and his useless family who "raised" him to be a lottery ticket.

How Bad is Crimesha's Office?

So bad, that a guy, caught impersonating the police on multiple occasions, acted as his own lawyer in court the other day....and beat a (supposedly) college educated litigator....AGAIN!

• Robert Ellis, once again accused of impersonating a police officer, has won another big legal victory over the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

  Acting as his own lawyer, Ellis successfully argued that Cook County Circuit Judge Carol Howard should toss out his arrest and the evidence against him in a 2021 felony police-impersonation case accusing him of posing as a cop outside Guaranteed Rate Field after a White Sox game. Howard argued that the Chicago Police Department didn’t have probable cause to stop him.

  Earlier this year, Ellis, 66, got Howard to throw out the evidence in a separate, 2018 fake-cop case, which prosecutors later dismissed. In that case, he’d been accused of posing as an official with Kankakee County’s Pembroke Township police department, even though there’s no such department, according to prosecutors.

The judge bears a bit of the blame here, too. But we assume she went to college and got some sort of degree, too.

The cops did an excellent job supporting their Reasonable Articulable Suspicion:

• an illegally parked car with municipal plates
• the car is a Mercury sedan, not a Ford
• the ID presented looked like it was run off a copier
• a quick internet search revealed no such police force in existence
• the search also revealed a previous arrest for impersonation

And the judge let him go with an admonishment of "You have to stop doing that." This is his third arrest for pretending to be a cop.

Vote "No" on all judges, every single time.

C'Mon now Jay

Advise in the comment section....and advice given to off-duty cops for the past few decades - leave your shit at home if you're drinking:

• Former Chicago Bears great Jay Cutler was arrested on Thursday and charged with drunk driving and possession of a loaded handgun while under the influence.

  The former NFL star was arrested and booked into the Williamson County Jail in Franklin, Tennessee, after police were called when Cutler ran his car into the back of another vehicle on Thursday afternoon, according to the Daily Mail.

Don't leave it in the car either. Scottie Pippen found out about that mistake, too.

Nice Shot Officer

Cop returns fire after being shot at:

• New details have emerged about a police shooting that left a man injured inside a Brighton Park bar over the weekend. The information comes as prosecutors charge the man, 36-year-old Fernando Guzman, with attempted murder and other felonies, saying he fired a gun at Chicago cops before an officer returned fire, striking him in the head.

  Guzman, 36, remained hospitalized as the allegations were presented to Judge William Fahy at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse.

We're thinking that there's a TV show in the making here, with that County Sheriff nailing his guy five times and the CPD Officer almost - but not quite - finishing off this waste of protoplasm. 

In any event, well done.

CWB Posting

If you aren't subscribing, maybe you ought to. These guys are doing the only real crime reporting in Chicago any more:

• Is that a machine gun in your pants or are you just happy to see me? - It’s not easy to run from the cops while handcuffed. It’s gotta be even harder when you have a machine gun stuffed in your crotch. But prosecutors say that’s exactly what Tyrus Walker did in Chicago Lawn last Thursday. And his sprint for freedom was caught on video.
• More crime committed while on bail - Prosecutors have charged a Chicago man with stealing ATMs from two businesses while on pretrial release for trying to burglarize another business in May. Marquis Alexander, 24, is also on parole for aiding and abetting possession of a stolen motor vehicle and gun charge, records show. Yet, despite picking up three felony charges since May, the Illinois Department of Corrections still hasn’t moved to revoke his parole.
• This useless bitch - The mother of convicted cop killer Emonte Morgan is now the subject of an arrest warrant, court records show, after she stopped appearing in court for a case that started when she allegedly pushed cops who were guarding Morgan days after he killed Officer Ella French and gravely wounded her partner in August 2021.

And now she's skipping court - something she might not be doing if she had been charged appropriately and had a cash bail set against her.

Well, Lookie Here

Seems rumor is becoming reality:

• They’re screaming in delight as they dance in the streets of Bridgeport, Hyde Park and Hegewisch. They’re shouting praises to the heavens in Homewood, South Holland and Calumet City. They’re hooting and hollering and making plans for ceremonial burnings of their “SELL THE TEAM” signs when the baseball gods at last deliver them from the ownership of Jerry Reinsdorf.

  Is Reinsdorf really going to sell the Sox? Can it be?

  The 88-year-old chairman is in discussions with a group led by former major league pitcher Dave Stewart, the Sun-Times confirmed. Word of this spread instantly through Soxdom on Wednesday, the first sign of excitement those parts have seen since the 2021 postseason.

And Dave Stewart's group is in negotiations to bring a MLB franchise to Nashville. Or Oakland.

But as the article also states, this could be a ploy by Reinsdorf to leverage another new stadium out of taxpayers.

Jury Chosen....Finally

Seven days to screen and seat a jury?

• Finding a jury to hear the case against former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan took as long as some trials do from start to finish.

  After seven days and scores of interviews, eight women and four men have been chosen to decide if Madigan is guilty of a racketeering conspiracy. Two of six alternate jurors are still needed, but the judge is aiming for opening statements to begin Monday afternoon.

  So what took so long?

  U.S. District Judge John Blakey seemed to blame the amount of time lawyers spent questioning the many candidates over the last two weeks. In fact, the judge said Thursday he’d no longer take the lawyers at their word when it comes to estimating the trial’s length.

The cynic in us supposes that Madigan's corruption runs so deep that there is an entire subset of people whose lives he's touched in one way or another.

Now they're talking about an eleven week trial, running nearly until Christmas time, and with unforeseen delays likely to pop up, this could run even into the holidays.

We did hear Ed Burke is looking for a roommate though.

Nice Job Meathead

Remote training is often CD - Civilian Dress. A nice break from the uniform, wearing "soft clothes" in case you had to do something physical and didn't want to ruin expensive work clothes. 

In almost every case, the order would read "conservative dress" which almost everyone took to mean jeans and a collared polo shirt and gym shoes. Some t-shirts weren't objectionable as long as they weren't full of holes and objectionable content.

Thanks to this appearing at LEMART the other day, soft clothes might be out for a while:

Seriously? What the actual f#$% is this? Not only the clothes, but we don't recall the "broccoli"haircut on the list of approved styles. Bump card? And if he shows up to work like this?

A commentator said he got SPARred and so did the Sergeant who failed to take corrective action. Another comment said all training will be in uniform from the time being, including detectives.

Feds Edit Crime Numbers

Remember a few weeks ago at the Presidential Debate, Trump contended that violent crime was up under the Biden/Kackler regime? And ABC "news" fact-checked the ex-pres and said fbi stats showed crime was down? And we (along with others) pointed out that LAPD and NYPD didn't even report their crime stats to the feebs so the numbers were suspect at best.

Seems the fbi is conducting election interference....again:

• When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime.

  But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.

  The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release.
  

They changed the stats, and didn't even bother to mention the alterations, leaving it to professionals with far more time that we have, to download the new spreadsheets and manually compare them to the ones ABC "news" and the Kackler used during the debate.

SURPRISE! The fbi lied (via omission) again!

And these aren't tiny lies either - they're whoppers:

• While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term. Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large.

  The increases shown by the NCVS during the Biden-Harris administration are by far the largest percentage increases over any three years, slightly more than doubling the previous record.

If you lie to the feebs, you're going to spend - at minimum - a year in prison. Even inadvertent omissions or misinterpretations of events are considered "lies" and you will be prosecuted. But the feebs can lie ot the American people with impudence and attempt to influence an election - on multiple occasions (Russia-gate, Hillary's server, Hunter's laptop, J6, etc)

Disbanding isn't even a question any more. Prison terms should be insisted on.

School Endorsements

A couple of graphs to assist you in voting (click for larger versions):

The Illinois Policy endorsements.

And the full slate of people taking money from Stacy Davis Gates and the teachers' union:

Anyone in red doesn't deserve your vote.

You're only going to see one of these races on your ballot (by school Districts), so check out hte map up top, figure out where you live, and vote appropriately.

008 Tact Shooting?

A comment said there's almost no coverage on a "shots fired at the police" incident in 008 the other day.

They're correct - we can't find anything about it aside from two comments here.

Obviously, no one got hit. And obviously, the media doesn't care unless they can spin it as the police doing something wrong, so they deserved it. We remember when shooting at cops used to be a big deal.

Who's got info?

Election Advice

Along the lines of our recommendations on judges:

• The CTU is endorsing a candidate in every school district race. Vote for the other one.

Both papers have interviews with candidates this week. 

Here's the Slum Times one.

And here's the x/Twitter feed of the candidate the CTU is backing in the 9th District:

No, we aren't joking, even a little bit. This is from the Contrarian, so you know it's 100% legit. Lanetta Thomas is a psycho.

Voices of Defunding

Austin Berg is doing some awesome reporting on alternative media platforms. He recently posted this forgotten interview from a few years back:

• Three key members of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration discuss defunding and abolishing the Chicago Police Department. 
• Head of Intergovernmental Affairs Kennedy Bartley ($192,000 salary): “As an abolitionist, when I say defund the police it is through an abolitionist lens.” 
• Senior Advisor on Community Safety Alyx Goodwin ($103,488 salary): “The thing I would add here is that the demand to defund is like also an anti-capitalist demand.” 
• Deputy Budget Director of Community Safety Adam Slade ($135,084 salary): “I agree 100% with both of those views.” 
• Footage source: Panel discussion held April 7, 2021, hosted by Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Ice Miller LLP

Three of Conehead's top advisors, stealing almost half-a-million in salary, all advocating for the abolition of the CPD. 

But none of this came out during the election - "progressives" and their media lapdogs are great at hiding their true intentions.

(tip of the hat to the Contrarian for the info)

Dana Starks - RIP

Word trickling in that Dana Starks passed overnight.

Love him, hate him, whatever, we met him maybe twice during our career.

We do know he played politics (as all higher up bosses do), but he also righted a few wrongs when he knew someone was wrongly screwed over (which is more than a lot of other bosses did).

No Hits

No runs, no errors:

• Officers investigating a woman’s 911 call, claiming she was unsafe in a vehicle with people who had four guns, fired shots at a suspect’s car and later arrested a person in Old Town on Sunday evening. No injuries from gunfire were reported.

  According to initial information, the woman called 911 around 6:36 p.m., reporting that she was not safe in a silver car northbound on Lake Shore Drive near Ontario Street. She told a 911 operator that the people in the car had four guns.

  After receiving additional information about the car’s location, police stopped a vehicle matching its description in the 300 block of West Division around 6:50 p.m.

  According to a CPD statement, the car’s occupants refused to follow the officers’ commands and the driver struck one of the police vehicles. An officer fired toward the vehicle, which fled the scene, according to the statement. Police did not say why the officer fired on the vehicle.

With little to fear from actual prosecution or jail time, this has now become common. 

Be careful out there.

"Stupid" but not a Smuggler

The evidence begs to differ:

• A British woman allegedly caught carrying more than 90 pounds of cocaine in her luggage at O’Hare International Airport is “stupid,” but she’s not a drug smuggler, according to her father.

  John Hall told reporters in the UK that a couple of men promised his 28-year-old daughter, Kim, a free vacation in Cancun if she traveled home with two suitcases they had packed for her. They allegedly told Kim that each suitcase contained $250,000 cash, but they actually contained about $4.5 million worth of cocaine.

  Homeland security investigators intercepted her luggage and arrested Hall in August as she tried to make a connecting flight home to Manchester, England, according to court records.

  Hall’s father told a British paper that his daughter met two men claiming to be Mexican real estate developers while on vacation in Portugal, and they offered her a free getaway in exchange for her willingness to take two suitcases back home from Cancun.

Gotta admit, that sounds pretty stupid.

Hilariously, the judge refused to keep her in custody and ordered an ankle monitor. At the same time, the judge ordered her passport confiscated so she couldn't leave town. According to County policy, ankle monitors can only be issued to those with a fixed address, which a British citizen doesn't usually have, meaning she's been in custody at the jail since her August arrest.

Perhaps the judge is the stupid one here?

Indoctrination Factories

Not that this should be a surprise to anyone reading, but CPS is filling kids heads with racist ideology backed by lies and propaganda. A sample of what's being handed out in schools recently (ckick kfor larger versions):

 These authors are typical leftist bomb-throwers.

The "cages" supposedly for children, were leftovers from the Sparklefarts administration, as documented by even legacy media outlets.

Why do they insist on making heroes out of criminals?

This is what's being taught in Chicago schools today, which makes the school board elections seem a bit more important. Anyone accepting money or endorsements from the CTU shouldn't get your votes.

Who is This A$$hole?

We're trying to load this as a audio file - it's a squad car crash in the 010 District and the dispatcher is asking for a sergeant to head to the scene after dispatching an ambulance:

The sergeant gets cranky with the dispatcher, violating at least one FCC regulation, says he's busy with something else and the officers better "learn to lay low." While we agree with the sentiments, they got into a crash. 

If you didn't want to be a sergeant, with all of the responsibilities that supervision entails, then why did you take the test and accept the promotion? As for the shortages, grow a pair and deal with it. You can only be one place at one time, so prioritize and handle it. 

Here's a hint - the one involving possibly injured Officers takes priority.

(if this doesn't load properly, we'll try something else in the morning when we have more time)

Another Gunshot Victim

All these people, lying in alleys, undiscovered for long periods of time without medical or police response....it's actually a bit entertaining, it's providing CWB with lots of material for articles, and it ought to be embarrassing to politicians:

• A woman shot and critically injured lay on the ground in pain for more than 20 minutes before first responders located her early Sunday morning. Nobody called 911 to report gunshots in the area, which used to be served by the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection network.

  At about 1:40 a.m., an anonymous 911 caller reported hearing a woman calling for help in the 7500 block of South Sangamon. According to police dispatch recordings, she said she thought the woman was in the alley or maybe around some nearby railroad tracks.

  Cops went to the area, but they didn’t find anyone. As they were wrapping up their search, around 2 a.m., another 911 call came in. This time, the person reported hearing a woman screaming that she had been shot in an alley behind the 7500 block of South Sangamon.

  Within two minutes, the officers and firefighters located the 33-year-old woman. She was in the alley between Sangamon and May, south of 75th Street.

This winter, we'll guarantee some shooting victim freezes to death while waiting for police/ambulance responses that aren't arriving in a timely manner.

Off Duty Sheriff

Someone tried to rob and off duty sheriff:

• An attempted armed robbery ended in a shooting and a car engulfed in flames on the city's West Side. The shooting happened on Sunday around 1:41 a.m. near Lake and Morgan in the Fulton Market District, according to Chicago police. Police said the offender jumped out of a Ford SUV and tried to rob a man at gunpoint.

  The victim was an off-duty correctional deputy, according to the Cook County Sheriff's Office. The off-duty deputy pulled out his own gun and fired several shots toward the offender.

  No one was hit. The suspect ran off.

"No one was hit." And no one can explain the burning SUV or if that was just coincidence.

Except, CWB discovered this:

• There’s a plot twist to report in the overnight attempted robbery of an off-duty Cook County correctional officer in the West Loop. The officer pulled a gun and fired at the robber and a second man as they ran from the scene, Chicago police said, adding that no injuries were reported.

  But we have learned that a man with five gunshot wounds arrived at Rush Hospital in an Uber about 30 minutes after the shooting. Investigators were working to determine if he was shot by the correctional officer.

If this sheriff scored five hits, well done indeed.

Members Sue Union

No, not the FOP....at least, not yet.

This was emailed to us the other day:

 And then this was published by IllinoisPolicy.org:

• The Chicago Teachers Union is facing a lawsuit by four of its own members for breach of contract because it failed for over four years to provide an annual audit to members, as is required under the union’s rules.

  Attorneys for the plaintiff CTU members sent a letter to the union on Oct. 1, 2024, demanding the union release audits for the missing fiscal years. When the union failed to comply, the members filed suit.

  The last time CTU released the required document was Sept. 9, 2020, covering the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 fiscal years. While keeping its members in the dark, CTU has raised their dues by 13%, to over $1,400 for its 2024 fiscal year.

This (hopefully) throws a wrench in Stacy Davis-Gates' plans to extort taxpayers (by holding children hostage) to the tune of a few extra billion dollars.

An interesting paragraph in the report:

• Those who have dared to question CTU’s finances have been targeted with insults by its president, Stacy Davis Gates. Other members have just left the union altogether.

  It’s not a good look for the union: refusing to abide by its own rules, keeping its own members in the dark on union finances and then driving up their dues to pay for whatever the union’s leaders are doing with the money.

That sounds familiar to a lot of comments here over the past few months. Trouble over on Washington Blvd?

Shooting

Officers are all okay:

• An armed suspect was shot overnight by a Chicago police officer in Brighton Park.

  Police said just before 12:30 a.m., officers were investigating a call of an aggravated assault and a person with a gun inside a business in the 3900 block of South Kedzie Avenue.

  The responding officers encountered the man who displayed a firearm. When officers tried to take it away from him, police say he fired his gun. One officer returned fire, hitting the man.

This is the second time in a week or so where the reports are that Officers were attempting to "take away" a gun on a suspect. We're pretty sure we weren't taught that way and most safety protocols don't advise wrestling over a gun.

Glad everyone important is okay though.

Charges Dropped

One of two:

• Barely a month after two Chicago cops, including a high-ranking deputy chief, were charged with slashing vehicle tires while on duty at Puerto Rican Fest, charges have been dropped against one of them.

  Last month, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to file felony charges against Nieves, 53, and Gies, 26, citing insufficient evidence.

  Despite the state’s attorney’s decision, supervisors at the Chicago Police Department decided to strip both men of their police powers and directly file two misdemeanor charges of criminal damage against Gies and one count of the same charge against Nieves on September 5.

This has rapidly turned into a welcome spotlight on the corruption evident in the Bureau of Internal Affairs / Internal Affairs Division and the yo-yo in charge. She seems more determined to remove opponents and impediments to Conehead's "progressive" agenda....and maybe settling a few grudges along the way.

New ShotSpotter - CFD

Been a few days since a bullet-riddled body (alive or dead) showed up, but never fear! Chicago won't disappoint:

• A Chicago Fire Department truck crew, on their way to a major fire in Little Village on Friday evening, ended their response upon finding a woman shot in the 3400 block of West Van Buren.

  The firefighters reported hearing gunfire in the area, but no 911 callers reported the shooting before CFD found the woman. ShotSpotter, the gunfire detection system, monitored the 3400 block of West Van Buren until Mayor Brandon Johnson pulled the plug on the technology on September 22.

  Chicago police said the victim, a 30-year-old woman, was walking when someone fired shots from a vehicle around 9:19 p.m. The fire department truck crew encountered the woman and requested an ambulance more than ten minutes later, at 9:31 p.m. She was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to her abdomen, according to CPD.

Once again, not a single call to 9-1-1. 

If nothing else, it ought to be used for body cleanup efforts.

Detective List

Ain't the best pics and the margins are all over the place, but here's what we got:

Click for larger versions. If anyone has something better, send it along.

New / Old 008?

Politics throwing a wrench in this plan....and maybe for the best:

• Three members of Congress — including U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia — are pushing back against Mayor Brandon Johnson’s reliance on federal air traffic safety rules to justify his decision to use a former National Guard armory as an equipment storehouse instead of a new Southwest Side police district.

  The shuttered armory area alderpersons have wanted to turn into a new police station is next to Midway Airport. In a letter to Johnson Friday, Garcia, a former mayoral challenger, and fellow Illinois Democrats Sean Casten and Brad Schneider added federal muscle to the campaign for a new station, which would speed response times in a Chicago Lawn police district serving the second-largest geographic area with the fewest officers per capita.

  While they share Johnson’s “focus on aviation safety,” Casten, Garcia and Schneider said they “believe there is a path forward” to allow the former Illinois National Guard Armory at 5400 W. 63rd St., which the state is donating to city for $1, to be used to create that new police district in Chicago Lawn.

We've gotten a few e-mails about this building and suffice it to say, with the money needed to rehab it and bring it up to code, it might make more sense to start from scratch.

This was a military armory, under federal control. It's almost ninety years old, when certain environmental standards weren't even in existence, and once passed into law years later, a lot of military outposts were exempted from the new rules (i.e. think asbestos first, then think about diesel fuel). The potential for health related lawsuits ought to kill this thing immediately. Not to mention it's too close to a runway and too high for being inside the airport fence. They'd have to take off part of the building to bring it into compliance, and then there's always the chance off a runway overshoot that could wreck the entire structure.

Obviously, some politician has a connected relative in the building trades and wants to steer some business their way.

Amazon Delivered What Now?

Something tells us this wasn't a "Prime Day" deal:

• Police are conducting a death investigation after a man found an Amazon box containing an object that may be a human head on the West Side yesterday evening.

  The man was walking his dog when he came upon the box around 5:30 p.m. in the 2600 block of West Taylor, according to initial information.

  In a brief media statement, Chicago police said the man reported that he was “on the sidewalk and discovered a box containing an unknown victim’s remains inside.”

  The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office is examining the recovered item today. Investigators there will determine if it is human remains and, if confirmed, try to determine who they are and how they died.

Imagine being a porch pirate and stealing this off a porch.

Better stick to robbing trains on the west side.

Lieutenant Assignments

 Here's where they landed:

Check back in a month, see how many remained where they got sent.

Better Picture

You know, if you click on the pictures here, you ought to get a larger version.

If that doesn't work:

And yes, we know that in most cases, decals are printed by an outside vendor. But the vendor usually goes by what's written on the Order Form and it's usually checked by an editor. 

What the client wants, the client gets....even if it's wrong