Seriously?

Open enrollment packages are arriving in the mail and this is what readers are seeing:

"So Proud to Call Chicago Home" that they use a picture of London cops?

We feel so appreciated.

Nolle Pros = Lawsuit?

This does not bode well for policing:

• The war on cops is moving from the streets to the U.S. Supreme Court. Last week, the Justices heard a case that threatens police officers with financial ruin if they make arrests and the charges later get dropped.
  
  It started with a late night bash. District of Columbia police officers were called by neighbors at 1 a.m. to investigate a rowdy party at an unoccupied row house. The police found 21 partygoers, liquor, trash, and used condoms strewn about, the smell of marijuana, and women with cash stuffed in their thongs. The partygoers scattered, hiding in closets.
  
  When questioned, some told police “Peaches had invited them.” Some gave other stories. The police phoned “Peaches,” who admitted not having the owner’s permission to use the house. The police then called the owner, who confirmed no one had permission. Two hours after being summoned, the police made the decision to arrest the partygoers for trespassing — the judgment call at issue in this case.
  
  The charges were later dropped, because it wasn’t clear beyond a reasonable doubt the partygoers knew they were trespassing. But sixteen turned around and sued the police for false arrest and violating their constitutional rights.

Luckily, President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and this suit should die an ignominious death:

• The justices should put a stop to it. Fortunately, the Court has a long record of protecting the police from legal liability, provided there’s no evidence of malice or a deliberate violation of the Constitution.
  
  If merely making an arrest puts cops at risk of getting sued and clobbered with legal fees and damage awards, what police officer will ever make an arrest? One mistake could mean losing their home and everything else. Faced with that risk, who would ever want to be a cop?

But in case you were wondering what the end-game is of the ACLU and Rahm's "consent decree:"

• Twenty-six states and the federal Justice Department are weighing in with a strong warning that allowing the lower court ruling to stand would have “vast consequences” for law enforcement everywhere. On the other side, the American Civil Liberties Union is pushing to shrink or even eliminate the police’s legal immunity. The ACLU wants police to have no room for error.

All sorts of interesting and informative links at the original article. It wouldn't hurt anyone to  read a few.

Money Saving Idea

Hey Rahm? You want to increase the number of officers on the street? Officers with a lot of years under their belts? And at the same time, cut some dead weight out of the upper echelons? Follow the lead of the Dallas PD:

• The Dallas Police Department is about to undergo a shake-up — including possible demotions — to put more officers on patrol.
  
  Hundreds of officers have left the department in the last year, leaving fewer officers working the streets. In that time, officers have been slower to respond to emergency calls.
  
  Chief U. Renee Hall said Monday she plans to significantly reduce the number of assistant chiefs and deputy chiefs who oversee the department. She is also considering reducing the number of detectives in investigative units and officers serving on task forces.
  
  Her plan may mean that some officers serving as assistant chief could be demoted to lieutenant and that some detectives could be put in patrol, which Hall called the "backbone" of the department.
  
  "We've lost nearly 500 officers, so we need to reflect that at the top," she said. "I'm assessing the Police Department as a whole."

Chicago has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 officers, yet the brass has increased with about 54 commanders currently on the payroll along with 16 Deputy Chiefs. If you'll recall, before Rahm arrived on scene, the CPD got by with 6 Deputy Chiefs and something like 35 Commanders.

This plan would work two different ways:

1. cutting needless, redundant, political spots saves hundreds of thousands of dollars instantly, and
2. most of these useless gold stars would retire rather than face the streets, office work, or people they stepped over on the way up.

Feel free to ask us for more ideas. We've been posting them for a dozen years now.

What a Deal!

Too good to pass up:

See you there!

Inspector General Ferguson is the Belle of the Ball.

More Section 8 North

Seems another member of the Machine is set to drink from the Section 8 spigot up north:

Dump an 80 unit apartment complex in Galewood. what could go wrong?

Greatest Video of 2017

We think we broke a rib laughing. Be sure you have the sound up for the finale:

Now the window breaker has a GoFundMe page up to raise funds to repair his teef. He needs $4,000 and has raised about $200.

DNAInfo has the backstory and an uncensored version of the video.

Vegas Investigation

This is not instilling anyone with confidence that the investigation is going well:

• Before the Las Vegas massacre began, a wounded Mandalay Bay hotel security guard called hotel officials to warn them about a gunman on the 32nd floor, an investigator told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.
  
  But police did not arrive at the room where the guard had been shot until after Stephen Paddock had finished a 10-minute shooting spree on a crowd gathered below for a country music festival, the investigation now shows.
  
  The revelation that hotel security had been alerted comes a day after Las Vegas police changed their timeline of how the Route 91 Harvest country music festival massacre started on Oct. 1 — not with an attack on a crowd along the Strip at 10:05 p.m., but with the shooting of Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos inside the hotel about six minutes before.

So six minutes before the terrorist rained death down on the crowd, an unarmed security guard got shot AND alerted his bosses of a problem on the 32nd Floor. And the gunman only fired for about ten minutes, leaving behind hundreds, if not thousands of rounds of un-expended ordinance for reasons unknown.

The more time that passes without even a hint of a motive, the more conspiracy theories that pop up. We understand an investigation of this magnitude takes time, but giving out completely wrong information and then contradicting it does no one any favors, in Vegas or in any investigative capacity nationwide.

Residency Again

This would NEVER happen here with the fine schools, the reasonable taxes and the understanding mayor, right?

• More than 1,000 Philadelphia police officers have abandoned city living since the department’s residency rules were softened five years ago — many lured to the suburbs by the prospect of better schools, cleaner streets, and safer neighborhoods.
  
  The figure, based on an Inquirer and Daily News analysis of payroll data, represents about 15 percent of the nearly 6,000 eligible officers, a tally likely to grow each year.
  
  In 2010, their union won a battle to end the residency requirement for members with at least five years on the job. Firefighters and sheriff’s deputies earned the same right a year ago, but most of the rest of the 30,000 municipal workers must be Philadelphians.
  
  The exodus could have been even more pronounced. The police union tried to end the requirement altogether in negotiations for the three-year pact that was approved this summer, but the Kenney administration opposed it. Among its complaints: Losing high-paid city workers — the average salary for police officers who have moved out of the city is about $75,000 — weakens the property-tax base and ultimately harms city schools.

Anyone up to hypnotizing Rahm to (A) fall for this and (B) cluck like a chicken? We'd settle for either.

Not a Hate Crime? (UPDATE)

Just blocks from the future Obama Library:

• Her car damaged, her nerves shaken, the victim of an alleged group attack near the University of Chicago campus spoke exclusively with ABC7 Eyewitness News.
  
  Police say two people were arrested and charged, but Susan Pedersen says several dozen people were involved in the attack that left her two children covered in broken glass. They were in the back seat of the vehicle, which was left dented with the rear glass shattered.
  
  [...]
  
  [...] Pedersen says she had just dropped off a friend at the University of Chicago when she stopped at a red light and found her car surrounded by several dozen young people.
  
  "They were walking around both sides of the vehicle - in the front, in the back - and as they were walking across, they were hitting my car, using racial slurs and telling me that I didn't belong in their neighborhood because I was white," Pedersen said.
  
  The group, all African-American, she says, kicked the vehicle and shook it violently. Her children were screaming from the back of the vehicle.

And the charges? Misdemeanor Damage to Property.

All those "visiting scholars" are going to have an adventure for sure.

UPDATE: Old story - no idea why it popped up as "current" - it was likely linked to our "You might find this interesting" news feed after the story about the Obama Library not having any original documents in it.

Comments closed now.

Even the Kids Are Leaving

No one wants to stay in Illinois - even for college:

• The state of Illinois is among the states leading the nation in the number of college freshmen pursuing higher education in other states, according to a state agency.
  
  The State Journal-Register in Springfield reports the Illinois Board of Higher Education says between 2000 and 2014, the number of freshmen who left the state to attend college rose by about 64 percent.
  
  The mark was hit before the state's two-year budget impasse, which negatively impacted the finances of the state's colleges and universities.
  
  Only New Jersey, which also has had state budget woes, exceeded Illinois in loss of students to out-of-state schools.
  

And if these kids actually pay attention, they might actually learn that there is life outside of Illinois. And that could truly spell doom for the State.

"At Issue" Rip Job

Here's the link. We're searching for a physical transcript.

Andy Shaw takes Rahm's talking points "balls deep" and then gargles with them.

Among the lowlights:

• Homicide clearance rate is 5%? HeyJackass has it at 12.5% while the Department claims 17%. How about you ask Foxxx why she won't charge the killers? Pathetic, yes, but not all the Dpeartment's fault.
• Overtime - Cops get three hours pay for 15 minutes of work. First, it's a contractual agreement. Again, talk to Foxxx why she subpoenas a dozen officers for court, then gets continuance after continuance.
• Overtime again - manpower shortage. That's a political issue.
• NYPD clears more cases and monitors "social media" better. It's mis-allocation - that OT you're bitching about? Look at who racked up well-over $100,000 in unsupervised overtime. If you calculate backwards, they had to work 12-hours a day, every single day, with no days off all year - impossible, but the Department still cuts them checks. Who are they kicking up to?

We've heard some political hit jobs before, but Shaw takes the cake with this one. A typical Rahm/Machine move. No one is actually "negotiating in the media" but golly, the City message is certainly getting out there somehow. The FOP ought to sit on their hands for a year then file for arbitration. There's no reason to talk to Rahm - he's completely full of shit and won't negotiate anything without disciplinary concessions and that should be a non-starter.

No Bail? Can He Afford That?

Shots fired at/by the police:

• Bail was denied Saturday for a reputed gang member accused of firing multiple shots at Chicago police after locking himself inside the basement of a South Side residence the day before, according to Cook County prosecutors.
  
  Chicago police body cameras captured William Jones firing multiple shots at officers inside the basement of a home in the 7600 block of South Lowe on Friday afternoon after police tried to question him and another man, prosecutors told Judge Mary C. Marubio at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
  
  Jones and the second man fled into the home’s basement and locked the door behind them, leading officers to search the rest of the home before coming back to the basement, prosecutors alleged.
  
  After getting permission from the homeowner to search the rest of the home, police searched the home’s upper floors before proceeding down a “blackened” rear stairwell toward the basement, Assistant State’s Attorney Bob Groebner said.
  
  One of several officers announced their office before opening the basement door and entered but were met with gunfire as Jones fired two shots from a .40-caliber handgun, Groebner said. Jones then fired multiple shots at the approaching officers, who retreated and returned fire, though no one was struck. Chicago police’s SWAT unit staged a barricade incident at the scene. Jones allegedly threatened to shoot police officers, but later surrendered. Only Jones was in the basement and the whereabouts of the second man wasn’t clear.
  
  Police recovered two .40-caliber handguns and 17 spent shell casings, according to Groebner.

There must be a misprint of some sort - the article says that a convicted felon somehow got guns, and we all know that more gun laws would never allow that to happen. Hopefully, that gets straightened out. Good job by all involved in safely taking this many-time loser into custody.

Pushing the "Narrative"

Even if it's lie after lie after lie:

• Chance the Rapper streamed a police stop on Sunday, telling viewers he was doing it in case the stop went "sideways."
  
  The video, which was streamed on Instagram, shows Chance and his daughter's mother, Kirsten Corley, in a car with a police car behind them. The rapper is quiet while looking at the phone screen for several minutes.
  
  Corley asks Chance if he's live-streaming the stop.
  
  "Hell, yeah, I'm not gonna be playing around with these [indecipherable]," Chance says.

[indecipherable] our ass. He says it clear as day -- "n***az." Let's not pretend media, we all heard it.

Kudos to the cops for keeping it professional - as 99.9% of cops do day in and day out, even in the face of outright lies perpetuated by the rich, famous, entitled "social justice warriors."

Any word on where Chance was for the 1-month old beaten to death this week? Or the eight killed and 29 maimed by...not cops. Or any of the 3,000 wounded this year?

Yeah, we didn't think so.

This is Funny

Funny "haha" and funny "like a clown:"

Illinois gets a B+ despite Chicago's 720 gunshot deaths, 3,659 gun shot woundings, and a total number of homicides exceeding 800?

And those 10 shaded states - Chicago alone had more murders than any single one of them. Wyoming seldom has 20 murders a year - that's a bad month in Englewood or Lawndale some years. But Wyoming gets an F?

As has been said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

Here a Tax, There a Tax

Discussions are underway to replace the missing $200 million that Prickwrinkle already spent on next year's County budget. Among the proposals:

• The new plan is to put $100 license fee on bicycles. Got to pay for all bike paths and lanes on streets that clog traffic. Not a bad idea kind of like a user fee. Also planning on a $75 ticket for no helmets. Got to replace the sugar revenue. Toni, is livid feels betrayed. Look out she is about to become very vindictive.

This has been floated before, especially as the cost for bike lanes was revealed (6-digits per mile) and:

• the gas taxes took a hit from all the gas that wasn't being bought by bikers, 
• parking fees that dried up, 
• parking violations that didn't exist,
• boot fees that can't be collected,
• and traffic violation that couldn't be issued.

We'll probably have bike chases being called off for whatever reasons as riders flee traffic stops.

About Those Gun Thefts...

Might be open season on the rail yards if this is correct:

• FYI...Union Pacific Railroad is laying off all eight police officers from Ogilvie station, so no more cops there. They’re also laying off three more street officers that are supposed to be patrolling the yards and two more quit amid the layoffs. That leaves only about eight police officers responsible for rail yards in most of Illinois, Wisconsin and part of Iowa. Many more gun thefts from Chicago rail yards to come!

Are the aldercreatures listening?

Wrong House Punk

Armed citizen stops crime again:

• A home invader was stopped in his tracks after a homeowner shot him several times Saturday night in the Bronzeville neighborhood, Chicago police said.
  
  The incident occurred in the 4500-block of South St. Lawrence Avenue at about 10:54 p.m., police said.
  
  A man was trying to force his way into the home with a crowbar when the 60-year-old homeowner shot him.
  
  The suspect fled in vehicle to a hospital and is in critical condition. Charges are pending against the 44-year-old suspect.
  
  The homeowner was not hurt and has a valid FOID card and concealed carry permit.

Someone should start an "Ammo Fund" for the decent citizens who make our job easier by taking out the trash.

Nonsense Story

In Chicago, you can pass the 500th murder TWICE!

• A man shot dead Friday evening was the 500th person to be killed in city gun violence since the start of the year during a weekend in which three people have been killed and at least 19 others wounded in Chicago shootings.
  
  The city reached 500 shooting homicides about a week later than it did last year, on Sept. 29, 2016, according to data maintained by the Chicago Sun-Times. At this point last year, there had been 511 people shot to death.
  
  In all, 537 deaths have been ruled homicides in the city since the start of this year, according to Sun-Times data.

You see what they did there? The Slum Times celebrates the 500th gun murder before mentioning the citywide total is actually 537 (HeyJackass.com has the total at 545.) They also attempt to put lipstick on this pig by Chicago is about a week off of last year's blistering pace, noting 511 had been shot to death last year.

This tells us two things:

1. There is still a better than average chance that Chicago hits the 700 mark for the second year running, and
2. since homicides are down from last year, and the only difference is who the President is, we can assume that Rahm will give Trump full credit for the reduction in homicides, especially as he was so eager for Trump to take the blame for other gun crimes.

Rahm can't possibly take credit since everyone else is to blame....someone else must be doing something right.

Lemon Arrested

Evidently, being a pain-in-the-ass in Texas is against the law:

• OT Mr Lamon Reccord was arrested Saturday night at DFW airport. He was charged with criminal trespass. He attempted to re-enter a restricted area and became loud and bellicose with officers. He and Jedidiah Brown have now labeled themselves freedom fighters, achieving justice across the country. He will be arraigned Sunday.

He might actually serve some time in Texas instead of being treated as some sort of hero.

Good Question

Looks like another few million dollars are about to be wasted:

• Once the Obama Presidential Center is constructed, it will have a children’s play garden, sledding hill, green spaces for picnics and outdoor gatherings, basketball courts and even a recording studio, officials have said.
  
  But what the space won’t have is all of former President Barack Obama’s manuscripts, documents, letters and gifts he collected during his time in office. While the Presidential Center is about four years from opening, a conversation has begun about what the facility will mean to scholars and to local research universities without those items.
  
  Traditionally, Presidential Libraries are places where historians, academics and college students travel to dig through paperwork and hold the first drafts of speeches, letters and legislation in their hands. But without those papers on site, some have begun to ask whether the Obama Center can even attract researchers to the University of Chicago, Chicago State University or the University of Illinois. What will it mean to have those documents online rather than in a physical form for inspection? And with digital technology constantly changing, how will the National Archives and Records Administration ensure the documents will be placed online in a timely manner and accessible over time?

Traditionally, a Presidential Library is built with donations and gifts, then the entire complex is "gifted" to the National Archives which maintains the facility itself. However, the exterior stuff - grounds, roads, parking, etc, is maintained by the municipality in which the Library resides.

Without the physical archives on site, we're imagining that the projected hundreds of thousands of visiting scholars will be less than hundreds of thousands and might drop into mere thousands. At first. Then drop off into hundreds as they can access the assorted paperwork online from the comfort of their homes and offices without braving the elements and criminal playground of Chicago.

And taxpayers will be saddled with yet another monstrosity that sucks up money.