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. 

Good Question

In light of the recent "firework death" on the Eisenhower, a forward-thinking readers raises the following:

• Okay, If thats what had happened then are the firework shells considered deadly. So when there is a street take over with vehicles driving all crazy doing donuts inside a gasoline ring of fire and lighting firework shells and throwing them at the police its considered what ??? Where do artillery shells appear on the "use of force" chart ?

Any Use of Force Sexperts want to take a break from banging recruits and chime in on this one?

Zero Enforcement Means.....

Anyone know when this became legal?

Riding ATVs on the sidewalk with a child under the age of ten on your lap. It looks like a lot of fun.

Wait...what? This isn't legal? 

But it's happening all over the Hyde Park neighborhood in broad daylight.

Oh....Hyde Park. They probably voted for it. 

Carry on. 

Again?

How incompetent are Cook county officials? This incompetent:

• Property tax bills usually sent out in July will once again be delayed, according to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

  Preckwinkle, who announced the two-month delay Tuesday, said she intends to reopen a no-interest loan program for government bodies that rely on the property tax revenue they now won’t get on time.

  Suburban tax districts, such as schools and libraries, that would otherwise need to take out pricey short-term loans to cover their budgets can instead borrow from the county’s $300 million Property Tax Bridge Fund Program, Preckwinkle said. That program mirrors one put in place last year when tax bills were delayed four months due to a computer issue.

Guess who isn't eligible to participate in Prickwrinkle's program?

• Chicago Public Schools, however, would not be eligible for that loan program. That could be a problem for CPS, which last year paid $220,000 in interest per day on short-term loans it took out to make payroll.

  CPS officials said last year’s tax bill delay has forced them to take out at least $1.6 billion in short-term loans for operating expenses and another $246 million loan to keep its teachers pension fund solvent — making for $33 million in interest payments down the line.

Don't worry though - Conehead will figure out some way to stick it to Chicago taxpayers at the behest of his political masters.

This could be a good thing though - getting the tax bills so close to election season might remind people exactly why Chicago, Cook County and Illinois are in such bad financial shape. 

It's the democrats.

This Took a While

This one was a long time coming, and the CWB blog does (as usual) an outstanding job reporting on how the entire system worked to keep this piece of garbage OUT of prison....until it just couldn't any more. Some highlights:

• More than two years after a judge found him guilty of participating in an armed robbery that left a man dead outside a suburban movie theater in 2017, Torrey Lewis has been sentenced to 85 years in prison.

  While CWB Chicago did not report on the original murder case, Lewis drew our attention in 2024 when he was charged with possessing firearms after being shot while on electronic monitoring in the murder case. It was the second time authorities accused him of possessing guns while wearing an ankle monitor after the killing. 

Got that so far?

• gets shot
• and caught with a gun 
• while on EM for murder
• for the SECOND time 

After being charged with 160 counts of murder (yes, one-hundred sixty) and twenty-five other charges, he got a bail of $300K....and the fun really began. We aren't going to steal all of CWB's reporting, but the story reads like a dystopian documentary of a "justice system" that failed at every turn.

It culminates in an appearance by ....  (wait for it) ....the SAFE-T Act!!!

• But barely a year later, while still on electronic monitoring in the murder case, Lewis was again accused of illegally possessing firearms. This time, authorities said they discovered the weapons after Lewis was shot while taking advantage of the unrestricted movement afforded to electronic monitoring participants under the SAFE-T Act.

  Around 10 a.m. on January 31, 2024, Lewis was using one of his weekly “free movement” days, during which people on electronic monitoring in Illinois are permitted to leave home as long as they remain within Cook County.

Yep, he used his "unrestricted movement" day to commit more crimes! Who would have thought such a thing was possible???

He must have been too politically embarrassing to remain free as an example of the SAFE-T Act failures, so a judge was told to sentence him to 50 years PLUS 31 years PLUS 4 years - all to be served CONSECUTIVELY, not concurrently, with a projected release date of 2096 at age 103.

Go read it all at CWB. Then stop voting for democrats.

Firework Suicide?

Deliberate?

• Authorities now know what happened on the Eisenhower Expressway last Thursday, leading to a bomb squad response and shutting down the interstate for hours.

  It was a firework mortar that went off inside the SUV being driven by 47-year-old Jorge Vaca from west suburban Cicero. A senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the case told NBC Chicago the fireworks rocket was ignited inside Vaca's vehicle and shot into his chest.

  It wasn't a bomb, and nobody did it to him, they said. The question is, still, why did it happen?

  Heavy fireworks are supposed to be blown off in open spaces - for obvious reasons - or into the sky, well away from people.

  But that is not what happened inside the SUV being driven westbound on the Eisenhower Expressway.

There were also a bunch of reports regarding shell casings scattered around the crime scene, but seeing as how it's the Ike, what neighborhoods it runs through and what happens there on a daily basis, these were probably just left over from one of the usual eight or ten weekly shootings.

UPDATE: Based on the descriptions of the wounds, it seems likely that the deceased was attempting to "fire" the mortar out of a moving vehicle, whether in celebration of some unknown event or at someone who he was trying to intimidate / wound / kill. 

Darwinism in action.

Shell casings - either as we said before (leftovers from another shooting) or maybe the target was armed also?

Pretty soon, we'll have grenade attacks like much of Scandinavia. 

Crime WAS Down

But the trend appears to be reversing:

• The number of people shot and killed over the weekend doubled compared to the same weekend last year. While the total remains significantly below long-term averages, the increase underscores the ongoing challenge of sustaining 2025’s public safety improvements that Mayor Brandon Johnson frequently touts in the media.

  Through the end of May, homicides were up 6% compared to 2025, and the number of non-fatal shooting victims had increased 7%, according to CPD. Johnson now faces the unenviable task of trying to maintain his narrative while shootings appear to be on the rise as summer heats up.

And as we've stated for decades now, tying your messaging to week-by-week numbers, let alone month-by month comparisons is foolish in the extreme because of exactly this. 

Not to mention, the Machine doesn't really want Conehead to run again, so the media is being told to twist the numbers any was possible to make the citizens think things are worse than they might otherwise perceive (though in this case, they're not that far off the mark).

Can We Demonize This One?

What do you think Conehead?

• A 13-year-old boy was ordered held on gun charges Monday, hours after Chicago police publicly accused him of carrying out a weekend shooting that wounded four children in Bronzeville.

  In a news release Monday morning, police said the teen pulled a gun around 9:40 p.m. Saturday in the 4500 block of South Prairie Avenue and opened fire on the four other boys.

  Responding officers later found the boys — an 11-year-old, two 13-year-olds and a 14-year-old — suffering from gunshot wounds, police said. They were taken to hospitals in conditions ranging from good to fair. The suspected shooter was arrested about 20 minutes later in the 4600 block of South Calumet Avenue.

Luckily, it looks like Felony Review will get the charges downgraded for now:

• Police initially said he was charged with felony counts of aggravated battery, unlawful possession of a weapon and having a gun without a license.

  But the Cook County state’s attorney’s office later said he isn’t actually charged with the counts of aggravated battery tying him to the shooting. He appeared in court Monday and was ordered held on three counts of unlawful possession of a weapon. the state’s attorney’s office said.

  In a second news release, issued after the hearing, police said “charges were amended in court pending additional investigation.”

Still, very much "demon-like" behavior.

Channel 7 Still Stealing from SCC

The content thieves over at Channel 7 seem to have discovered crime reporting is part of their jobs again, and guess what they're doing? Right there on their front page:

• At least 18 people have been shot, two fatally, in gun violence across Chicago so far this weekend, police said.

  ABC7 is tracking the shootings across Chicago from Friday at 6 p.m. to Sunday at 11:59 p.m.

Seriously? We've been doing Friday 1700 to Sunday 2359 hours for nearly two decades (extra bonus hours on holiday weekends), and Channel 7 moves an hour and pretends it's an original idea? Are they accounting for rush hour or something?

• here's a hint - those doing the shootings aren't usually coming home from jobs, so that hour doesn't mean much. We used 1700 hours because the number of potential innocent victims on the street went up.

If they use anything different from HeyJackass.com stats, then they're continuing the propaganda BS put out by the Department.

If they start betting pools based on casualty counts, we're going to be mildly irritated....and amused.

By the way, nice Saturday night Conehead:

• Nearly half of the victims shot overnight in Chicago were children and teenagers, including an 18-year-old who died from his injuries.

  Chicago Police have reported at least 15 people were shot from around 9:30 p.m. Saturday to just after 5 a.m. Sunday. Seven of the people shot were between 12 and 19 years old.

  The violence hit nearly every side of the city, including a shooting that left a woman critically wounded in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

We'll guess Conehead didn't ask the pope for divine intervention regarding crime.

CTA Crime Still an Issue

In the first two pages of the CWB blog, there are no fewer than five separate CTA crimes in recent days along with a few others that finally reached resolution via the courts. 

Another criminal who (A) can't read signs, (B) doesn't recognize the red circle BANNED meaning and (C) happens to be a felon who can't have a gun in the first place:

• A 43-year-old Chicago man is facing gun charges after Cook County Sheriff’s Police allegedly found him rolling a joint on the Red Line and then discovered a loaded gun in his jacket.

  Around 2:35 p.m. on May 31, deputies were conducting a routine patrol on a train car at the 69th Street station when they saw Kenneth Stapleton rolling what appeared to be a cigar stuffed with a green leafy substance, the sheriff’s office said Friday.

  Stapleton was detained for violating CTA rules, and a records check turned up an active warrant connected to a forgery case, officials said. During a search, deputies recovered a loaded firearm from his jacket and learned that he did not have a Firearm Owner’s Identification card or a concealed carry license, according to the sheriff’s office. Prosecutors approved a charge of aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon later that day.

That Red Line certainly is a shit-magnet.

This one got Federal charges:

• Federal prosecutors have charged two men with kidnapping a DePaul University student and taking him on a terrifying crosstown Red Line ride during which they repeatedly threatened to kill him while making electronic bank transfers and issuing ransom demands to his friends and family.

The sheriffs can't do it alone, so a couple of successful federal prosecutions would go a long way to making the CTA ride-able again.

New Category at HeyJackass.com

It might not be totally new - their site is chock full of information all the time that it's sometimes difficult to keep up with everything, but we saw this one yesterday and it made us chuckle:

 

Yep, the two sites that we check daily are working together on crime stats....something you most likely won't see in any the so-called "main stream" sites that are nothing more than propaganda arms of the Machine. Hopefully, this collaboration runs smoothly an for many years to come.