Crooked Judge Again

First, some habitual criminals got caught committing crimes....again:

• Two men already on pretrial release for burglarizing a Loop restaurant together are back in jail after Chicago police officers allegedly caught them doing the same thing again — and recovered suitcases full of Jimmy John’s cold cuts, chips and ice-cold soft drinks as evidence.

These must be two of those criminals that the democrat socialists say are only stealing because they're hungry or something.

Then it gets amusing:

• Williams has been on pretrial release since April, when he was charged with burglarizing an Uptown skate shop. At about 2 a.m. on April 21, police responded to a report of two people burglarizing Citizen Skate, 920 West Wilson Avenue, and found Williams under a parked car with multiple skateboards, clothing and skateboard hardware, a CPD arrest report said. Receipts from the skate shop were allegedly found in his pocket, and surveillance video allegedly showed him committing the burglary. Williams was released to await trial on that case.

  After he showed up for what was supposed to be a routine hearing on August 3, police arrested him at the courthouse to face charges in the June 30 Sweetgreen break-in and an overnight cash theft at Go Grocer, 345 West Wacker Drive, on June 10, according to court records. Despite the fact that those burglaries allegedly occurred while he was on pretrial release, Judge Tyria Walton released him again.

For those unaware, Walton is the judge who found Whitley Temple not guilty by reason of mental illness of running over a Chicago Police Officer with a squad car two years ago. Then after the publicity got to be too much, made unsubstantiated allegations to the media that Chicago Police Officers had made threats against her....

• without providing any actual evidence (unusual for a judge)
• without filing a single police report
• without informing the sheriff's protective detail about the "threats"
• without informing IAD or COPA of said "threats"

So not only is she incompetent at her job, she's a liar and fabulist to boot.

Good thing she's running for re-election this fall and can be removed from office....hahahahaha.

Repeat Criminals Repeating Again

More SAFE-T Act failures, squarely on the doorstep of Porkulous and the democrats: 

• Roy Pughsley caught a break last year. The 53-year-old had nearly killed another homeless man with a box cutter inside a River North Walgreens. But instead of going to prison on an attempted murder charge, he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and walked out with 30 months of probation.

  Three weeks later, he was arrested again. And then again. And again. In all, Pughsley has been arrested eight more times since taking that plea deal, according to CPD records, with allegations ranging from possessing a knife to threatening people with knives at Loop businesses. He has repeatedly missed court dates, cycled on and off electronic monitoring and had judges decline to detain him. In his latest arrest, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office linked him to an overnight burglary at the Macy’s flagship store on State Street.

Eight additional arrests, some of them violent felonies. He really need to run into a CCL holder one of these times, just to save taxpayers money.

And this one is irritating:

• The man Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera was chasing when she was fatally shot by her partner last year has been indicted on charges of conspiring to traffic fentanyl and cocaine in Chicago, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

  In June 2025, Rivera and Officer Carlos Baker chased Jaylin Arnold to a Chatham apartment, where Baker fired his gun, striking and killing Rivera. Arnold pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges in relation to Rivera’s death and was sentenced to eight years in prison in a plea deal — a sentence Rivera’s mother Yolanda Rivera called “extremely severe.”

  Arnold, 28, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury for drug trafficking carried out with four other men between January and June of 2025, according to the indictment.

So is this a custodial investigation? Meaning he is currently in prison serving the eight years and managed to land an additional indictment for another case?

This part isn't surprising, but still pisses us off:

• Arnold was previously sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted on gun charges in 2023, and has been sentenced to prison at least two other times for gun charges.

How about a "three strikes" law for repeat felons? This asshole is on his fourth (?) gun conviction and democrats (who are anti-anyone even owning a gun) can't bring themselves to apply the most severe punishments to someone who keeps violating existing gun laws.

CFD Injured

But not at a fire - in a crash:

• Four people, including two Chicago Fire Department firefighters, were taken to the hospital after a crash on the city's West Side on Tuesday afternoon.

  It happened near Augusta and Long in the Austin neighborhood.

  According to Chicago police, a fire engine collided with a white pickup, sending the fire truck over a curb, into a stoplight and then into a tree.

  Fire officials say all four people were taken to the hospital in good condition.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Stay Classy Sport Fans

It's a freaking kids' game played by millionaires:

• A large brawl broke out in the stands between Cubs and White Sox fans Monday at Wrigley Field during the start of the Crosstown Classic.

  The fight broke out in the eighth inning of the game, with fans from both teams appearing to throw fists during the heated moment, images showed.

Grow up.

Yeah, About that Casino Money

Looking less and less likely to ever appear:

• Bally’s has acknowledged its massive debt creates “substantial doubt about its ability to continue” over the next year, when the company is supposed to open its long-delayed Chicago casino complex in River West.

  The statement of “going concern” was included in Friday’s quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission from Bally’s, which says it “is pursuing a number of financing alternatives intended to enhance its liquidity, including asset monetization, an equity sale and debt financing.”

  The disclosure comes as Bally’s butts heads with City Council members who authorized video gambling terminals that the company says will eat away its revenue — providing fodder for Council members who argue that’s just an excuse to slow down a project Bally’s can’t afford to complete.

  Companies are required to issue going-concern warnings if there’s “substantial doubt” about their ability to avoid defaulting on debt over the next 12 months.

Every bad decision that could be made over this boondoggle wasn't simply made - it was embraced and sold to taxpayers as something it never was and almost never could possibly be.

Simply amazing. 

Bloody Sunday

CWB picking up the HeyJackass.com ball:

• Six people were murdered and another ten people survived being shot across Chicago on Sunday, a wave of violence that drove the weekend’s shooting total to 25 victims, according to preliminary information provided by Chicago police and reviewed by the independent crime data analysis site HeyJackass.com.

  Compared to the same weekend in previous years, 2026 will go down as the “best” in over a decade, with one fewer victim than last year. Since 2015, the weekend has averaged eight homicides with 37 non-fatal shooting victims, according to HeyJackass data analysis.

They're in contact with the HeyJackass people at some level, so that's good.

Crime is still down, though that doesn't make the families of the six dead people feel any better. 

Sig P320 Decision

This one flew under the radar:

• A federal jury in Maine said there were no defects in Sig Sauer's P320 in a case in an unintended discharge of the firearm.

  The jury considered product liability, negligence, and breach of implied warranty, and ruled unanimously in favor of Sig Sauer.

No word on the jury's experience with weapon usage, handling and ownership.

But the unsubstantiated stories were enough to panic many Departments into abandoning the Sigs as a duty weapon.

Any word on whether the City was compensating affected Officers and properly training them up on their new pistols? 

This CANNOT Be True, Right?

Right? (click for larger view)

Twenty-three people taking the test?

We got this via email, so no idea if it's true.

It's tagged as a Rumor. 

Millions "Found"

Is this Conehead's Magikal Money Tree?

• Following an advisory by the Chicago inspector general’s office, the city treasurer has asked the city council to dissolve the Community Catalyst Fund and return its more than $57 million in assets to general funds.

  The fund was set up 10 years ago to increase access to public and private investment capital for businesses and organizations in economically underserved areas.

  Inspector General David Glockner said the city provided half of the $100 million initially proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but the fund has been been effectively dormant since 2020.

Fifty-seven million, just lying around in an account, doing nothing, earning nothing, benefiting no one?

Oh....not exactly:

• Glockner said there is no indication that the money was misused.

  The inspector said the fund only invested about $21 million of the $50 million that it received. No private dollars were ever invested in the fund.

  Glockner said the fund’s investments were all made in 2020 and the money was repaid.

If we're reading that correctly, $21 million was used for some unstated purpose....and then paid back?

For what? Who used it? What benefit was reaped from what appears to be a $21 million loan? Was there an investment? A buy-in to something? A stock market speculation where someone bought low, sold high, paid back the "loan" and kept the difference?

And guess who was nominally in charge of this untapped source of money?

• Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin is the ex officio chair of the catalyst fund’s board of directors. The fund failed to submit annual reports from 2022 to 2025.

And now, suddenly, she's asking for the fund to be dissolved and the money returned to the General Fund. Why now? Has the account served it's purpose? Are the feds sniffing around this (and other unknown) accounts? How much more is out there benefiting the selected few?

So many questions that no one seems to know - or want - the answers to. 

Here Come the Socialists

They've actually been here for years....Crimesha was the end result:

• A socialist lawmaker in New York City has claimed “biological need” gives shoplifters the right to steal from store shelves.

  State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who describes herself as a “neighborhood organizer” and “democratic socialist,” made her comments on Thursday outside Manhattan Criminal Court, the New York Post reported Saturday.

  She was joined by members of Court Watch NYC, which claimed they monitored hundreds of arraignments for several days and found half of those cases were misdemeanors.

  Gallagher said:

  Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap. And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them. And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by. So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need.

You understand what this Kommunist Karen is saying, right?

• minorities NEED to steal

Talk about the racism of low expectations....from white libtarded female. Everyone else just needs to pay more so certain people (and folks) don't have to pay at all?

About Those "Violence Preventers"

We guess being a creepy chomo isn't a particularly "violent" crime:

• The founder of one of Chicago’s most high-profile youth violence prevention groups, who also works as a Chicago Public Schools counseling assistant, is sitting in the Cook County Jail after being charged with criminal sexual assault and grooming involving two 14-year-old girls.

  Prosecutors said Charles McKenzie, founder of Englewood First Responders who refers to himself as the “Mayor of Englewood,” was working for CPS at the time of the alleged incidents.

  The allegations span nearly a decade, with prosecutors accusing McKenzie of grooming one girl beginning in 2017, when she was 13 or 14 years old, and sexually assaulting another girl in March of this year. CWB Chicago is not identifying McKenzie’s relationship to the girls to protect their identities.

But it's still a bad look.

Oh, and look - he's a CPS employee.  

Wonder if he worked closely with Conehead? 

CTU Burning Bridges

The CTU is getting bad publicity nationwide lately:

• The Chicago Teachers Union’s cupidity in enriching itself, and the dismal results of Chicago’s public schools, have drained the public’s reservoir of goodwill. Among the reasons for the CTU’s downfall is a school named for someone who, as a slave, taught himself to read — a skill poorly imparted by Chicago teachers, when they teach.

  
  The indispensable Illinois Policy Institute says the Frederick Douglass Academy, whose 47 classrooms were built to accommodate 1,008 students, has 27. But the CTU has seen to it that it has 28 full-time staff. So, in the 2023-2024 school year, Douglass spent $93,000 per pupil.

  But Douglass is not entirely an outlier. At more than 50 Chicago schools, the percent of students who achieve math proficiency is 0. The 20 lowest-enrollment schools, spending $33,500 per student, have an 11 percent average reading proficiency. Students graduate unprepared for flourishing; the CTU thrives. The adjective “wicked” should be used sparingly in political discourse, but it fits the CTU’s ongoing child abuse.

This leaves aside the actual child sexual abuse running rampant in the CPS system.

The column also cites the Davis Gates hypocrisy of not educating her own child at CPS and the chronic absenteeism of almost half of the teachers.

We're still of the opinion that things haven't yet gotten bad enough for voters to make this a top issue though.

Bad Week

In light of the HeyJackass.com hiatus, we're stuck searching around for reliable numbers tracking week over week violence.

This report isn't one of them (SubX News is kind of hinky), but it's a set of numbers we hadn't seen put together in a while:

• SubX.News® Crime Report Aug 11 2026

  Chicago violence that started Friday morning continued into early Tuesday with 29 people shot 11 fatally in less than four days, along with two women stabbed to death and a 25-year-old woman struck and killed by a driver.

  The violence included three triple shootings and five double shootings, with 14 people dead overall since the first shooting at 9:14 a.m. Friday Aug 7.

It was titled "Chicago Death Zone" which was kind of catchy and appealed to our darker sense of humor. 

They also had an article up about whether or not CPD stats could be relied on for accuracy (NEWSFLASH: they cannot be as detailed here for years). 

We'll see what the future holds.

Write the Ticket....That's All

The Slum Times is whining about Traffic Stops again:

• The Chicago Police Department made fewer traffic stops in 2025 than in the previous year and less than half the stops it made in 2023, according to a new report by the Illinois Department of Transportation, but Chicago police officers continued to pull over Black and Latino drivers at much higher rates than white drivers.

  The Chicago Police Department reported 224,851 traffic stops in 2025, about 23.3% fewer than in 2024 and 58.0% less than in 2023.

You would think the lib-tards would be ecstatic about less traffic stops. You'd be wrong:

• IDOT uses two methods, or benchmarks, to measure the rates at which drivers are stopped. Those attempt to estimate the driving population or the total mileage driven within the jurisdiction of each law enforcement agency. By one measure, Black drivers were 3.6 times more likely than white drivers and Latino drivers were 2.85 times more likely than white drivers to be stopped by the Chicago police last year. By another measure, Black drivers were 5.6 times more likely and Latino drivers 6.9 times more likely to get stopped.

  Most traffic stops made by the Chicago police last year, about 67.6%, were for non-moving violations, according to IDOT.

  Those stops in particular have drawn flak, with some critics contending that police officers routinely use minor traffic violations as a pretext to stop drivers — and sometimes to search their vehicles — in hopes of uncovering more serious crimes.

  A lot of traffic stops in Chicago are for things like expired plates, tinted windows and broken taillights, said Maya Simkin, an Appleseed Network Collaboration for Justice Fellow with Chicago Appleseed and a member of the Free2Move Coalition. “It’s not about posing a genuine safety risk.” 

We've said this maybe a hundred times or more:

• A "minor" traffic violation is still....A VIOLATION!

Imagine that! It was proposed, debated, voted and codified into LAW by the elected representatives of the State and SIGNED by the Executive in charge when passed. A small part of it is about SAFETY. A larger part is about making sure tax revenues are paid to the government by ALL citizens.

And a stopped vehicle can be visually evaluated for additional violations because it's easier to inspect when it's standing still. An Officer can ask questions of the driver which might lead to more questions which might lead to the driver being asked to exit the vehicle (which they are required to do under the Law)....

...BUT...

...a driver being ignorant of their Constitutional Right to deny a search of the vehicle absent a Warrant or Exigent Circumstances isn't the responsibility of the Officers to correct. That responsibility would belong to an educated populace who understood and passed Civics 101 in a successful school system, which most blue-state shitholes don't have. And lib-tards don't want an educated populace lest they vote against leftist bullshit.

So how to solve this "issue." There are two ways to do it:

1. propose, debate, vote and codify a new LAW eliminating these so-called "minor" violations and get the governor to sign it so it applies to ALL Illinoisans - not just the black and brown ones who - for whatever reasons - economic or other - fail to properly maintain the licensing and operational safety of their vehicles, or;
2. Officer write the ticket for the stop AND ONLY THE TICKET FOR THE STOP - and walk away. No "pretext," no questions, no further investigation incident to the stop. Give them their envelope and instruction sheet about how to go through the process and let the Courts handle it all.

That's it. No more imagined scandal. No more "You only pulled me over because I'm purple" bullshit.

• you got pulled over because your ghetto hoopty is missing A, B and C, 
• it's on the squad cam, 
• it's on the body cam, 
• here's your ticket, 
• tell the judge all about it.

End of story, end of media "outrage," end of race-baiting crap that's been long overdue for a reckoning. 

Hey Look....Journalism!

You can tell the Machine doesn't want Conehead running again because stories like this keep popping up as the bought-and-paid-for "media" is told to undermine him:

• When thousands of migrants started flooding Chicago from the Southern U.S. border four years ago, a new report shows a company was paid more than $78 million to do virtually nothing.

  As the migrants arrived, the city scrambled for shelter space and contractors to handle the humanitarian crisis.

  In 2023, NBC Chicago investigations uncovered out-of-control spending by City Hall. That was the first shoe to drop, when we found millions in taxpayer dollars going to contract relief workers in questionable paychecks.

  Now the other shoe has dropped, with a new state of Illinois Auditor General report finding contract employees paid millions of dollars to do no actual work.

This $78 million is on top of the $250 million spent on other ILLEGAL ALIEN expenses after Groot lost her re-election bid.....a quarter of a billion dollars that would be pretty helpful right about now.

Another Porkulous Success!

And by "success," we mean driving another job producer out of Illinois:

• A decision to restructure its beef operations has prompted Tyson Foods to abruptly close an Illinois facility, affecting about 2,500 workers in the Quad Cities area.

  Citing “one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced,” Tyson Foods announced Thursday that it was permanently closing its beef processing plant in Joslin, Illinois, and its case-ready facility in Eagle Mountain, Utah. The company also announced plans to sell its beef processing facility in Pasco, Washington.

We drove through the Quad Cities a year or so ago on the way to somewhere else....and believe us, it can't afford to lose 2,500 decent paying jobs. 

Officers Honored

Heroism in the face of tragedy:

• Six Chicago police officers and detectives were honored Thursday for their response to a shooting at Swedish Hospital in April that killed Officer John Bartholomew and critically injured Officer Nelson Crespo.

Story and video at the link.

And in related news - the Fundraiser for Officer Crespo remains active and is a mere five-grand from the targeted amount:

• Police Officer Nelson Crespo has dedicated more than 20 years of his life to protecting the people of Chicago. On April 25, Nelson survived a tragic shooting and is now in the ICU, facing limited mobility in his arms and no mobility in his legs. His commitment to public service and his bravery have touched countless lives, and now he needs the support of the community he has served so faithfully.
  
  Nelson’s journey to recovery will be long and challenging. He will require extensive rehabilitation for the foreseeable future, and his home will need significant modifications to accommodate his new needs. These changes are essential to help him regain independence and comfort as he works toward healing. The financial burden of medical care, therapy, and home adjustments is overwhelming, and every contribution will make a meaningful difference.

The Memorial Foundation and City insurance cover the majority of expenses related to long-term disability care, but there are items that might need addressing immediately, like adapting the house to a purpose it wasn't specifically designed for. If you can, click the link and donate.

Conehead Finds Money Tree

Rahm's Magical Money Tree must have bloomed this past week, and Conehead is taking full advantage:

• Chicago will move ahead with its full $260 million supplemental pension payment, Mayor Brandon Johnson promised the city’s investors Thursday.

  Johnson pledged to make the payment — aimed at chipping away at the city’s towering unfunded pension liabilities — during the Chicago Investor Conference. But as he argued City Hall “cannot simply cut our way out” of its fiscal woes, he did not reveal what new taxes or fees he will propose to balance the city’s next budget.

  “Let me say that one more time: I want to reassure this audience that the city will make the second budgeted supplemental pension payment this year,” he told the investor crowd. “Because of property tax delays from the county, it’s a question of when, not if.”

  The pledge adds another, and possibly final, chapter to the saga of the $260 million payment, which has become a key source of contention between Johnson and the City Council.

Got to love how Conehead claims he "cannot simply cut our way out," without ever making a serious effort to make cuts. 

We'll just remind him where there are plenty of cuts that would save a hundred million tomorrow:

 And that's from three years ago.

The Axe Falls

The investigative phase has begun:

• The Chicago Police Department and Civilian Office of Police Accountability have both opened investigations after a viral video surfaced this week purporting to show an off-duty CPD sergeant profanely threatening a group of teenagers and their families on the Southwest Side.

As an aside, the post about "Abatte 2.0" wasn't a reference to the actions by the accused, but rather a observations that "now the media has another video clip to run for a dozen years or so to paint the entire Department in a bad light."

As many vets might remember, every time some scandal popped up, the media ran the video from inside the bar - even if the incident had nothing to do with a tavern or a drunk off-duty. They ran it because it was available and worked to undermine the image of the Department without actually doing anything to hold the people accountable who buried previous incidents and red-flags that would have prevented 99-out-of-100 other people from even being hired.

It became so repetitive it lost all meaning. But now they'll run this for years, but never mention other incidents that were far worse, like off-duty sergeants shooting autistic kids 

Checking Those Numbers

Not saying that this was us....but we were in the area:

• A Powerball ticket sold in Illinois matched all six numbers in Wednesday night's drawing, winning an estimated $1.04 billion jackpot, according to the lottery organization.

  The winning numbers were 4, 26, 66, 67, 69 and red Powerball 9. The Power Play multiplier was 2x.

  It's the largest Powerball jackpot so far this year, and the eight-largest Powerball jackpot in the game's history.

If we disappear suddenly, assume the best.

Is Crimesha in Trouble?

Usually, this would be an investigation working its way up the ladder....but to what end now?

• The woman who served as Kim Foxx’s top assistant in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office must sit for an under-oath deposition to explain why her office decided not to object to people convicted of murder receiving certificates of innocence even though Foxx personally believed some of the recipients were guilty.

  Foxx herself gave a sworn deposition in April and made the stunning revelation that she personally believed two exonerated men whose certificates of innocence were not opposed by her administration were, in fact, guilty of “a heinous act of murder.”

  But during her deposition, Foxx often said she did not know the details of exoneration cases or how her office investigated and determined whether to challenge certificates of innocence, legal documents that mean an exonerated person is actually innocent of a crime. Those matters, Foxx said, were under the purview of the office’s number-two executive, then-First Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Risa Lanier.

That sounds like Crimesha pretty much tossed Lanier under the bus there, so Lanier has no reason to lie for Crimesha moving forward.

The trouble is, Lanier was instrumental in the deal that freed the French actor Juicy Smollet and sealed the records from public view....until the whole thing blew up all over Crimesha....like a large root beer beverage.

It isn't exactly clear what the goal of these depositions will be because it's the City of Chicago demanding sworn testimony from Lanier and how certain decisions were arrived at. It seems like it may be an effort to fight some of the "project innocence" payouts?

Don't High Five Me Bro

These sound like fun:

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers will soon receive gloves that deliver a painful electric jolt to those who choose to fight rather than comply.

  They are called G.L.O.V.E., or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and work like a Taser. If someone becomes any kind of physical threat to the officer or chooses to become physically combative rather than comply, the G.L.O.V.E. delivers a shock.

  “ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of ‘conductive distraction and de-escalation devices’ for officers and agents by March,” reports the far-left Associated Press.

  “Compliant Technologies says the devices function as a normal pair of patrol gloves until officers press a switch to activate their electrical mode,” adds the AP. “The gloves must be applied directly to someone’s skin to deliver a pain stimulus that typically helps an officer gain compliance within seconds, according to the company.”

It would certainly be amusing if the switch was "accidentally" left on during a pat down.

Just be careful shaking hands with the ICE people though. 

Good Question

From the comments:

• Hey SCC,
  
  111 days since part 2 of the Detective exam and still no scores.
  
  Anyone have the scoop?

Obviously, they're "massaging" the numbers to get a desired outcome.

CPD Political Games

Looks like the Department might be stuck with Waller for a while:

• The process of selecting Chicago’s next top cop hit another pothole Monday when four of the seven commissioners charged with finding finalists for the job skipped a meeting where they were supposed to select a firm to conduct a nationwide talent search.

  The absence of a quorum forced Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability President Remel Terry to adjourn the meeting after taking three brief comments from audience members. Exactly what will happen next is unclear as the clock ticks down on the commission’s 120-day deadline to identify three world-class candidates for the mayor to choose from.

The four no-shows were throwing a hissy fit because they weren't permitted to change the rules and remove the one person who might have conservative leanings and happens to support the police far more often than any other panel member....because her brother was a murdered CPD Officer.

And as noted before, keeping Waller around in spite of finally having a First Deputy in place to serve as an interim Supe just shows the utter uselessness of pretty much the entire upper echelon of the Department.

 

Stadium Talks Silent

Notice what hasn't been in the news lately?

• The Chicago Bears are busy gearing up for the new NFL season, but off the field their quest for a new stadium continues to make headlines.

  As the team gathered at Stevenson High School for a walk-through practice on Monday, team Chairman George McCaskey spoke briefly to media, and was asked about the process the Bears are going through as they try to get a new domed stadium built either in Indiana or in Illinois.

  Currently the team is focusing its efforts on Indiana, and when asked about that process, McCaskey said there could be new information coming out soon about the location of that proposed project.

The lack of movement or desperation on the part of Illinois politicians leads us to believe there's a lot of backroom negotiating going on and the involved parties have been told to dial back the rhetoric while the final under-the-table donations pay-to-play bribe money negotiations take place.

CWB Quick Hits

CWB doing most of the media heavy lifting these days.

First up, downtown isn't safe?

• A concealed carry holder is among two people critically wounded in a shootout near the Magnificent Mile Monday night, Chicago police said. At least one person is in custody.

  Witnesses said a group of people had gathered in the 800 block of North Dearborn Street, behind the Lawson House Apartments, when two men got into an argument that turned physical around 9:17 p.m.

  The confrontation escalated when the two men, and potentially others, began shooting at each other, police said. A 34-year-old man was struck in the abdomen and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition. A preliminary CPD report identified him as a licensed concealed carry holder. The other man, 37, suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was also listed in critical condition. He has a lengthy criminal record involving firearms. Court records show he was charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in 2015, and he was subsequently charged with being an armed habitual criminal in 2017, 2021, and 2024.

Gee, all those "armed habitual" charges, but you know where he's not very habitual? Being held in prison.

Violent Monday by the way:

• Chicago suffered a horrific Monday, with at least five murders reported within six hours citywide, nearly matching the number of slayings reported over the entirety of the just-concluded weekend. According to information released by CPD 

Details at the link.

And another Concealed Carrier prevents a crime:

• A concealed carry holder shot a man who opened the window screen of her South Shore home during a burglary attempt early Tuesday morning, Chicago police said.

  The 30-year-old man approached the woman’s home in the 1500 block of East 73rd Street around 4:50 a.m. and opened the screen while standing on her front porch, according to CPD. The 49-year-old woman, who was inside the home, armed herself and fired a shot, striking the man in the arm, police said. 

He was apprehended later at the hospital 

To read the full stories, hop over to the links and boost the CWB traffic numbers.

Abatte 2.0?

Yes, we have now seen the video and some of the reporting:

• The Chicago Police Department is investigating one of its sergeants after a video posted online shows him threatening to knock out a teenager’s father before apparently striking or knocking a phone from the hand of a girl who was recording the off-duty confrontation.

  A CPD spokesperson confirmed Monday afternoon that an investigation is underway but said it has not yet been determined whether the matter will be handled by the department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs or the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the city’s external police oversight agency. 

Not a good look, but then these types of situations rarely look like anything professional or good.

There will be an investigation. It will take a while. More so if there are political sponsors involved in how someone got their spot.

If IAD investigates, long suspensions most likely.

If COPA, firing recommendations followed by appeals.

Lawsuit inbound - 100% guaranteed.

Whenever minors are involved, it never turns out good for the police:

• the Park Ridge bike thief
• lil homicide
• this incident

And when it's off-duty, it's usually worse, because you're supposed to be the adult in these situations, taking the place of the obvious failures of parents to raise and discipline their spawn properly. 

But this one will be replayed for the foreseeable future since the media wore out all the Abbate footage a few years ago and haven't been able to make deep-fakes to replace the video tapes. 

There He Goes Again

Get ready to fill up your gas tanks!

• Chicago businessman Willie Wilson on Monday joined the race for mayor of Chicago — for the fourth time.

  Wilson announced this candidacy Monday evening at a gathering of several dozen supporters in East Garfield Park.

  “Everywhere I go, citizens ask me to represent the city of Chicago,” Wilson said. “I believe in Chicago and I believe you deserve a leader who wakes up every morning ready to serve.”

  He joins a crowded field that already includes several public officeholders — but does not officially include the man occupying the mayor’s office now.

So how much of this is the Machine trying to split up the voting blocks and engineering a runoff between two chose candidates?

Casino Doomed?

It used to be that a casino was a license to print money....but not in Chicago:

• Bally's Chicago is pausing construction on several parts of its permanent casino as a political fight intensifies over the future of video gaming terminals in the city.

  The company says the growing push for hundreds of new terminals could drain revenue from the casino; it's a concern that has divided members of the City Council.

  At issue is a decision made during last year's budget negotiations to authorize several hundred video gaming terminals, or VGTs, as a way to help close the city's budget gap. Bally's is now pushing back, hoping to get the city to reconsider, prompting frustration from some aldermen who argue the casino operator is overstating the threat.

A casino twenty years ago might have solved a bunch of problems.

A casino ten years ago might have alleviated problems that have since grown to huge issues.

A casino tomorrow would probably end up costing taxpayers untold more millions....and still might.

The incompetency is staggering. 

Another Conehead Corpse

More than 90 now:

• Chicago Fire Department pesonnel found a man shot to death in a Back of the Yards alley early Sunday, police said, and record indicate there were no 911 calls about gunfire in the area despite investigators later recovering roughly 17 shell casings near his body.

  Chicago police officers were dispatched to the 4500 block of South Honore Street around 12:24 a.m., according to CPD dispatch records. Police said fire department personnel had discovered an unresponsive man with multiple gunshot wounds. The man, described by an officer as appearing to be in his early 40s, was pronounced dead at the scene. He remained unidentified as of Monday afternoon.

How soon until 100?

Another Flyer

A flying pedestrian this time:

• A 10-time convicted felon jumped from a third-floor window in a South Shore apartment building in an ill-fated attempt to escape Chicago police who arrived while he was allegedly burglarizing a woman’s home, prosecutors said.

  Martel Brown, 37, is charged with burglary, and officials are seeking to revoke his parole following the August 5 incident in the 2000 block of East 68th Street.

  According to a detention filing, CPD responded around 2:30 p.m. after a woman reported seeing a man with face tattoos kick in the front door of her apartment via her Ring camera feed. When officers arrived, they went to the back of the building and saw a ladder leaning against the building toward an open window, a CPD arrest report said. As officers tried to enter one of the units, they were told the burglar was escaping through a third-floor front window.

  Brown then jumped from the third floor to the ground, prosecutors said. He suffered injuries to both legs and was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was reported to be in good condition. The woman who saw the burglary on her Ring camera arrived and provided the video to police, according to the CPD report.

Evidently he wasn't drinking his allotment of Red Bull, which we're told gives you wings.

Really Eileen?

We don't know if she is just catching up or this is some political posturing for a run at higher office:

• Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke is asking Illinois residents to contact their state legislators and push for an overhaul of the state’s electronic monitoring law.

  “The whole system right now is broken and it needs a legislative fix,” Burke said in a wide-ranging interview with Landon Campbell posted to YouTube on Sunday. “So, I’m going to be asking you and everybody you know and everybody who’s listening to this to please reach out to your legislators and tell them that you do not believe that violent criminals should be on electronic monitoring. They should not and we can work out an agreement with the legislators of okay, where do we draw the line?”

  Burke said electronic monitoring was never intended to function as an alternative to detention for people accused of violent crimes.

  “Electronic monitoring first came about when we were under a bond system and it was a way if somebody didn’t have the money to make bond but they weren’t a dangerous person you could put them on electronic monitoring,” Burke said.

  But the system has evolved, Burke said, while the law governing it has created a series of problems that become more consequential when defendants accused of violent crimes are placed on monitoring.

Seriously, this has been covered here how often? For how long?

And CWB has led the way with documenting:

• 87 people charged with murder or attempted murder free on EM
• 181 defendants charged with sexual assault roaming the streets
• and over 300 people missing from EM - as in no one knows where they are

Don't get us wrong, we're more than happy to see O'Neill Burke on board with what we've been broadcasting for years, but please don't pretend it's something you just noticed now. 

It's actually the reason you got elected over Prickwrinkle's hand picked moron.

Australian Vigilante Jailed

Maybe the United States can offer her asylum?

• A female homeowner who allegedly kidnapped, chained and padlocked an intruder before taking a baseball bat to his suspected accomplices is an NDIS support worker.

  Kylee Barbette Robinson, 52, allegedly found a thief in her shed at her home in Raymond Terrace, north of Newcastle, NSW, and attacked him with the baseball bat.

  She is then accused of tying him up by the neck with a padlock and chain before ordering him to take her to other items that had already been stolen from her. 

  A bail court heard the man took her to a homeless camp in nearby Boomerang Park, where she then allegedly assaulted two other men with a baseball bat. 

  The vigilante rampage allegedly continued when she is alleged to have smashed up a car with the baseball bat, shattering its windscreen to recover stolen possessions.  

For those wondering, the NDIS is Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (scheme being another name for Agency), so she's probably of a liberal bent....but even the liberals in Australia are fed up with soaring crime brought in by uncontrolled and unvetted immigration, and this particular one took a baseball bat to express her frustrations, resulting in charges against her.

We must admit we are greatly entertained by it. 

Pay Up

What is it with CTU people not paying their fair share?

 

Between this and Conehead's water bill, not to mention the almost eight-hundred fraudulent PPP loans by CPS employees, the schools ought to be Ground Zero for reform efforts.

Citizen Speaks Up

This is from a citizen making first hand observations of the Billiken Parade, but it's not going to be a popular view amongst the community or the media that's supposed to keep you informed:

• video link here

View at your own risk.