Friends of Fisher Fundraiser

We just got word of this event. If you're looking for a place to spend Friday night and provide a bit of support to military families of wounded veterans, this is a good place to start:

• Similar to Ronald McDonald Houses, the Friends of Fisher House is a full service facility for veterans families whose loved ones have been injured in combat. The facilities are set up near Veterans Hospitals across the country.
  
  Tonight, there is a benefit concert and we're encouraging our readers to attend.
  
  
• Joe's Bar, 940 Weed St., Chicago, IL 60642
  Friday, October 15, 2010
  Chris Young Benefit Concert: 10 p.m.
  For Tickets & Details, Visit www.joesbar.com OR www.fofhil.org
  
  All Partners Donations and a Portion of Each Concert Ticket go towards the FOFH-IL mission to help support Hines VA Fisher House - the Only "Home Away From Home" In Illinois for Veterans and Military Families Facing Medical Crises.

According to their website, over 220 military families have stayed here free of charge while their service members underwent rehab. There's an entire section regarding donations and contributions if you prefer.

More Mayoral Dropouts

Madigan and Gutierrez say "No:"

• Congressman Luis Gutierrez and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan both ruled themselves out as possible candidates for mayor next year.

  Gutierrez, who said several weeks ago he was circulating petitions, announced his non-candidacy Thursday afternoon at the Latino student center at U.I.C.

  The 56-year-old congressman, recognized as the national leader in the movement for the reform of federal immigration laws, says he would not abandon what he called his vocation to begin a campaign for mayor.

  "We're not going to win simply because of Chicago. We have to have a moment that stretches across this nation...and I'm committed to making that movement a movement that will bring about comprehensive immigration reform," said rep. Luis Gutierrez (D).

  Hours earlier, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan emphatically denied she was considering running for mayor.

Yeah, Gutierrez supporting cop killers, illegal aliens and blanket amnesty in sanctuary Chicago wasn't going to play to a wider audience. Madigan, like it or not, carries her father's baggage, and Rahm has campaigned in deeper sewers than that. So we're on Meeks-watch, Fioretti-watch and Chico-watch? Anyone else?

Five Cops Hurt Overnight

A series of (un)related(?) traffic crashes, including the one mentioned late last night involving shots fired:

• Five Chicago Police officers were injured overnight in a series of crashes on the city’s West and Northwest sides.

  In the first incident, two officers were injured while conducting a traffic stop at Sacramento Avenue and Addison Street in the Irving Park neighborhood.

• Just 20 minutes later, a vehicle struck a police officer after shots were fired at the officers at Marmora Avenue and Irving Park Road in the Portage Park neighborhood.
  
  
• In the third incident, three people – including two police officers – were injured in when a vehicle hit their a squad car and sent it into a building at Cicero Avenue and Erie Street, on the cusp of the West Garfield Park and South Austin neighborhoods.

Here's the screen capture from the Channel 2 website of one of the incidents:


It is truly fortunate no one was killed last night. Quick recoveries are wished upon all the involved Officers.

Another Mayoral Entry?

Madigan? Lisa Madigan?

• NBC 5's Carol Marin and Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed hear rumbles Attorney General Lisa Madigan is eyeing a bid to run for mayor of Chicago.

  Both Sneed and Marin hear the popular statewide vote getter may be waiting until after the Nov. 2 election to announce her entry into the mayoral fray. Filing deadline for the mayoral battle is Nov. 22. Madigan will only publicly state “it is my intention to run for Attorney General”..but refuses to state a simple “Yes” or “No” to the mayoral bid.

So the big question is - is she being set up to pull votes from someone? Rahm? Fioretti? Or does Daddy think she can win the whole thing?

Town Hall Closing

Currently the oldest station in the city:

• The cramped, creaking Town Hall police station in Lake View is itself like an old, battered cop who, despite being years past his prime, can't bring himself to retire.

  And like that grizzled veteran, if it could, the building at Halsted and Addison streets in Lakeview would tell stories about its glory days.

  Ever hear about the time in 1969 when some nut set off a bomb just outside the station? Or when those crooks running booze for "Bugs" Moran during Prohibition marched toward lockup with bracelets on their wrists and egg on their face? What about the time some professor came into the station, claiming somebody stole his rooster?

  They don't make them like this building anymore, still standing after 15 Chicago mayors and 26 top cops. And now, the department's oldest still-operating police station finally has to go.

So which building is the oldest now? 013? 012?

Officers Injured - Car Wreck

On the northside:

• Two Chicago police officers were injured when their squad car was rear-ended as they were making a traffic stop on the Northwest Side tonight, police said.

  The officers were making a traffic stop at 9:03 p.m. in the 3000 block of West Addison Street when a car rear-ended their squad car, said Chicago Police News Affairs [...].

  The officers were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital with non-life threatening injuries...

  However, a Fire Department spokesman said one officer was taken in critical-to-serious condition and one was in serious-to-fair condition. The two officers were outside the squad car when they were injured, said fire spokesman [...].

Any updates would be appreciated. Get well Officers!

Almost a Darwin

So close:

• Phoenix police are searching for a man who pulled a plastic bag over his head as a disguise and nearly suffocated when he robbed a Circle K on 75th Avenue and Thomas Road on Sept. 19.

  The robber walked into the convenience store about 7 a.m. wearing a clear plastic bag over his face.

  "It gives the impression, looking at the pictures, that he was using it kind of like a nylon to distort the appearance of his face," said Phoenix Police Silent Witness Sgt. Darren Burch.

  He said he would shoot the clerk in the head if he didn't get the money from the register, Burch said. "But he was having problems with his airflow."

Unfortunately, the offender took the bag off his face to catch his rapidly depleting oxygen supply.

Fortunately, this gave the surveillance cameras a very good shot of his face and a manhunt is underway.

Shots Fired in 016

Info trickling in. Officers fine, one subject taken to hospital. Unsure if he was shot or injured during a chase. In the area of Bernice and Melvina for you north side readers. Updates as possible.

UPDATE: Here's the first report.

UPDATE: Channel 7 says cop was injured by fleeing vehicle that had fired shots.

Teams Disbanded

No longer a rumor, but a fact - according to Bureau of Patrol Order #10-0235 that is:

• Cancellation of Saturation Team and Midnight Tactical Team Detail
  
  Effective 0001hrs 14 October 2010 (11th Police Period), all members (Sergeants and Police Officers) currently detailed to Area Saturation Team and the Area Midnight Tactical Team, will return to the Units of Assignment. Their details will be canceled.
  
  These members will be assigned to watches and Day off Groups at the discretion of the Commanders of the Districts they are returning to.
  
  The order effectively ceases the operation of the area saturation teams and area midnight gang teams.

So the Districts will be getting between a few people back before they strip them away again for the new platoon as MSF. Someone can correct this if we're wrong, but don't Day Off Group changes usually have to have 7 days notice?

And will someone buy a Grammar and Capitalization guide for Downtown Ernie Brown's office?

Lynwood Cop Released

Will County might want to look into a new prosecutor:

• Hours after Will County prosecutors appeared at a court hearing with a Lynwood police officer charged in a bizarre two-state shooting spree, they set him free Tuesday evening with an apology and the hope that he understands their error.

  A relieved Brian Dorian, 37, was released from Will County Jail as local law enforcement officials dropped a murder charge against him and resumed their hunt for a man known as the "honeybee gunman." Dorian had been held in lieu of $2.5 million bail since his arrest Friday morning at his Crete home.

  "I feel horrible that Brian Dorian went through this," Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow said. "I certainly would apologize for any inconvenience he has suffered. But at the same time, he is a police officer, and if he were in our shoes ... Brian Dorian would have acted the same way."

Well actually, we'd hope that Officer Dorian checked out the alibi given prior to putting someone into jail and dragged before a judge under bond of $2.5 million. Identified via an eight-year-old driver's license photo? F#$%ing ridiculous. Glasgow ought to be impeached, sued and disbarred.

The Best He Can Do

Wow! 200 cops:

• Hiring 200 more police officers next year may not be enough to keep pace with attrition, but it’s the best City Hall can do and still keep its hands out of taxpayers’ pockets, Mayor Daley said Tuesday.

  “I need a thousand. Make it 10,000. I mean — everything is not enough. The Park District, the schools — even your family. . . . You don’t have enough. But do taxpayers have enough money to pay more taxes? Do they? That’s the question,” Daley said.

  “Do they have more money to pay taxes — local, state and federal taxes? Do they have more money to pay fees? I doubt it. I think America’s families and individuals are suffering from the economy. . . . You have to do more with less. And you have to have fiscal restraint, which is hard to do.”

Because Daley has just been the very picture of fiscal restraint for the past 20 years, after burning through all the city "reserves," selling Lincoln Park land to connected developers for $1, fencing everything in wrought iron, putting in flower boxes that seriously impact citizen safety and hinder emergency responses, the list is endless. Oh yeah, and standing aside as the aldercreatures vote themselves a 6% raise, gave their staff a 5% raise, increased the "discretionary" funds (legalized bribes) to something like $1.3 million per aldercreature. Then retire, because you've drained the tub.

And it isn't even going to make a dent:

• Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Donahue said the two new classes will not be enough to keep pace with the “natural rate of attrition” that prompted 358 officers to retire during the first six months of this year. At least 116 more officers have signed up to retire next year, taking advantage of Daley’s offer to retire at 55 with premium health benefits.

The movie "Field of Dreams" had a line in it that has stuck with us through the years. Burt Lancaster as Dr. Archibald "Moonlight" Graham said:

• "You know we just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they're happening."

Unfortunately, we think we recognize this one coming.

Hey Fran? You're Welcome

Once again, SCC readers write Fran Spielman's columns for her. First up...:

• It's one thing for motorists to vandalize Chicago parking meters to vent their anger over the steep schedule of rate hikes tied to the 75-year, $1.15 billion deal that privatized the city's 36,000 meters.

  It's quite another to abscond with the entire pay-and-display box.

  The Chicago Police Department is investigating a rash of recent thefts of the 200-pound pay-and-display boxes installed across the city to replace individual meters and make it unnecessary for motorists to stuff their pockets with quarters.

Fran's dateline? 12 October. SCC's readers broke it in our comment sections on 06 or 07 October, and we had the actual AdMin Fax posted by 08 October.

Then we asked a simple question:

• Here's a question though - some people pay with credit cards. It that info stored somewhere in the meter box and can it be recovered by someone with some no-so-pure motives?

Fran got an entire second article out of that one:

• Motorists who used credit cards to pay for parking at 20 pay-and-display boxes later yanked out of the ground and stolen should not lose sleep about credit card fraud, Chicago’s embattled parking meter contractor said Tuesday.

  One day after the Chicago Sun-Times disclosed the rash of thefts, Chicago Parking Meters LLC moved to reassure motorists concerned that their credit card information might have been stolen along with the boxes.

So Fran once again demonstrates herself to be an intellectual thief of the lowest caliber.

Hey Fran? How about throwing $250 or so at the Police Memorial Foundation as a gesture of thanks seeing as how you troll here constantly for ideas?

South of the Border Problems

We don't think anyone has covered this story locally in any detail. It began 30 September on a lake in Texas that straddles the border:

• Mexican pirates operating on Falcon Lake, which is shared by the United States and Mexico, on Thursday shot an American tourist who had crossed the border on a Jet Ski.
  
  Tiffany Hartley, 29, said her husband, David Michael Hartley, 30, was shot in the back of the head as they tried to escape an ambush on the lake, The Associated Press reports.
  
  Hartley tried to turn around to save her husband but said she had to continue to retreat when she heard bullets whizzing by. Today, search teams continue to comb the Texas side of the lake for David, who is presumed dead. Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he had asked the Mexican consulate to conduct a search on his country's side of the lake as well.

Falcon Lake is a known transit point for narcotics entering the U.S. and the pirates are believed to be an offshoot of the "Zetas" cartel doing robberies as a side job of sorts. Mexican authorities promised to cooperate in the investigation and have been looking for the body of the dead American for weeks now.

The entire incident has taken a decidedly bad turn yesterday:

• The lead Mexican investigator in the Falcon Lake case, Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, has been killed, his severed head delivered Tuesday in a suitcase to the Mexican military, officials told CNN.

  "His head was delivered to the army garrison this morning in a suitcase after he failed to report back home last night," Zapata County, Texas, Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. said.

  A spokesman for the attorney general of Tamaulipas state in Mexico, Ruben Dario-Rios, confirmed the killing Tuesday afternoon in a telephone interview.

This isn't the first incident of American's being killed within sight or sound of the border by armed invaders. The lawlessness is spilling over in increasing waves though.

In 1801, President Jefferson sent the US Navy almost 5,000 miles to protect American interests from pirates. Now, the southern border is a sieve of narcotics and human trafficking and innocents on both sides are suffering. Maybe someone ought to look at sealing the border a little closer?

Morale Survey - One Year Plus

Passing through the archives, we found that the one year anniversary of the "Morale Survey" results being sealed in a blue barrel and buried in a lonely farm field somewhere near Peotone had passed without noting. Our article from that fateful day can be located at this link here:

• word is that the spring morale survey has been completed but was ordered buried because jfed was in fact the cause of the shit morale the department currently enjoys
  
  jfed had promised that if it was learned that he was to blame for poor morale he would quit. another broken promise from the lying non-police fed

Just another in a long string of lies told by our fearful leader.

Short Every Other District

Looks like we're robbing Peter again:

• look out on the north side--- 012, 014, 016, 017, 019, 023,024 are all giving up one car a night on third watch to the 025 district--- a full 8.5 hour tour of duty and they are being arbitrarily picked by the w/c with no regards to seniority--- can you say GRIEVANCE and also TIME AND ONE HALF come the next o/t check--- the funny thing is they are sitting at a fixed location and not taking any jobs--- so what's the point--- if 025 is drowning in a backlog every night then you would think that the manpower being robbed from other districts would be used for radio assignments pending--- the genius who thought this one up should be tied to a pole and flogged--- if 025 has so many problems with response times, then why don't they open up some bid spots in the unit to increase manpower--- i'm sure they will find plenty of guys who would like to work there.....

Of course, if they pull another 100 people out of districts to man the new MSF platoon, all those cops are going south, which means more shortages across the board up north, which means more "borrowing" cars to cover shortages. We're pretty sure moving people from their bid spots is a winnable grievance.

More brilliance from the brain trust.

No Preventive Maintenance?

What could possibly go wrong by not filling positions and conducting scheduled vehicle inspections on buses?

• The CTA driver involved in the weekend crash of a packed bus on Lake Shore Drive said Monday that she mustered all her strength to try to straighten out the accordion-style vehicle after it started veering to the right, but it felt like the power-steering system had failed.
  
  
• Officials with the bus drivers union said it's clear that a mechanical failure involving the front suspension of the bus occurred. Union officials blasted the CTA for falling behind on bus preventive maintenance and for failing to fill nine vacant mechanic positions. The union also called for an outside agency to conduct an independent investigation.
  
  The union did not present any evidence showing that maintenance was deferred on the bus involved in the accident. The bus, delivered to the CTA in 2008, was still under the manufacturer's warranty, CTA officials said.

They did however present evidence that over one-third of the fleet is behind on scheduled maintenance. That's the trouble with machinery - you have to maintain it. Look at our garage disasters.

Shooting Sunday

Missed this one the other night:

• Police early Sunday arrested a man who ran from them on the South Side after he had been shot by officers for pointing a gun at police.

  At approximately 12:53 a.m., Calumet Area Gun Team officers on surveillance in an area with known gang conflicts in the South Chicago District heard gunfire in the vicinity of the 8900 block of South Escanaba Avenue, according to a release from police.

  The officers observed a male firing a handgun in the direction of a group of males, the release said. The officers then saw the man flee into an alley, where officers approached and announced their office, at which time he pointed a gun at the officers, the release said.

Cops OK, gun recovered, bad guy in custody after getting shot. Well done guys.

Once Again, CAPS Dead?

Will someone just put a bullet in this thing already?

• Each district will have 1 Sgt and 2 POs in their CAPS office. Sgts were called down to 35th & Mich yesterday, as were DAC Chairs. Downtown Ernie Brown stated there will be no more graduations [from] academy after 2 current classes through 2012.

Wait a minute...

No more classes again? For all of 2011? Even though they're giving a test? Even though hiring didn't keep up with anything near the retirement numbers? And they're talking about pulling another 100 people out of Patrol?

Who's got the scoop?

Inspectors? Again?

From the comments:

• OT-apps for inspectors-UNREAL! So apparently there is an abundance of Lt's with nothing to do that they would bother to fill these spots instead of getting rid of this position. While the rest of us in districts and units are struggling to get by with barely any manpower and being denied TD. Keep beating us down!

We thought they were saving money, allowing the Field Inspector ranks to dwindle to one. It was the least painful way to cut the number of useless gold stars floating around and reduce the number of take-home rides by the barest of minimums. However....

If we recall, the recently signed and approved Captains contract provides for Field Inspector spots to go to Captains. Since they aren't making Captains anymore, is this a grievance or an unfair labor practice?

No Kidnapping Charge?

Got to love the west side idiots:

• A West Side man was ordered held on $50,000 bond Sunday on charges alleging he stole an ambulance that had two paramedics inside working on his friend in the Garfield Park community.

  Judge James Brown ordered Jimmy McCoy held on $50,000 bond during a hearing in Cook County Criminal Court.

  McCoy, 27, who was charged with felony possession of a stolen motor vehicle, is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing Oct. 15 in West Felony Court (Br. 44).

  McCoy has four felony convictions on drug charges and one attempted robbery, Assistant State's Atty. Michael Cheronis said in court. Police said McCoy had previously been arrested 32 times.

Thirty-two arrests? Not a record breaker by any means, but still. Nothing that 10 more years behind bars wouldn't cure.