Second City Cop

• You should know that the City of Chicago is currently planning to give a sergeant's exam in 2019 and a lieutenant's exam in 2020. If you are going to be taking either of these exams, the information below will be important to you.

Labels: promotions

• A Chicago police captain was shot in the leg Tuesday afternoon when a gun accidentally went off in his squad car in Albany Park on the Northwest Side, authorities said.
  
  The officer drove to Swedish Covenant Hospital on the North Side, where he was stabilized before being transferred to Illinois Masonic Hospital, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
  
  "The officer was talking, alert and in good spirits," Guglielmi said in a tweet.
  
  Few details were being released, but the shooting occurred around 1:35 p.m. in the 3200 block of West Argyle Street, police said. "The accidental shooting happened while the officer was in his vehicle," Guglielmi said.
  
  The shooting prompted Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson to leave the Police Department’s budget hearing at City Hall.

Labels: officer injured

• At a heated hearing that offered an in-depth preview of next month’s trial, prosecutors laid out their case against three Chicago police officers accused in a cover-up of the Laquan McDonald shooting — and defense attorneys attacked it as a sham, asking the judge to toss the case entirely.
  
  Prosecutors accuse former Detective David March, ex-Officer Joseph Walsh and Officer Thomas Gaffney of covering up for Jason Van Dyke, who fatally shot McDonald while on duty in October 2014. All three are charged with official misconduct, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.
  
  Over four hours Tuesday, attorneys argued over nearly every aspect of the case, dealing with multiple pretrial motions that must be decided before the trial begins late next month. Judge Domenica Stephenson said she would rule Monday.

Labels: events

• JVD sentencing is scheduled for tomorrow. Is there a plan in place for anything if he gets a sentence that is less than what the "community" demands?

Labels: department issues

• Chicago aldermen have voted down a long-shot proposal to give an elected board power over Chicago police, including authority to investigate and fire officers.
  
  The Public Safety Committee voted Monday on the Civilian Police Accountability Commission ordinance pushed by Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, which would have given the agency power to appoint and fire the police superintendent, investigate all police shootings and alleged misconduct, and overhaul the current disciplinary process.
  
  CPAC is a popular idea among some activists but has not found much support from city officials. The committee voted by voice to reject the proposal.
  
  Some aldermen raised concerns about professionalism of investigations if CPAC went into effect. Others said they were worried about bias.
  
  Ald. Walter Burnett, 27th, said he has attended hearings where the idea was discussed and said some of the plan’s advocates seemed "somewhat hateful of the police." It concerns him to put police under the authority of people "who don’t like the police," he said.

Labels: good news

Labels: crime, stats

Labels: info for the police

Labels: info for the police

• A gunman in a minivan unleashed a hail of bullets on another vehicle as they traveled on Lake Shore Drive outside of Soldier Field overnight. No one was injured, but police found shell casings spread over a half-mile stretch of the southbound drive. No one is in custody.
  
  Police officers were investigating an abandoned vehicle that was crashed into a viaduct near 18th Street and Lake Shore Drive around 2:10 a.m. when they reported hearing gunfire to the north.
  
  Moments later, a black Chevy Tahoe pulled up to the officers and the driver reported that he had been fired upon as he entered Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt. The gunman shot from a blue Honda minivan as the vehicles continued south on the drive, the victim said. Police said the Tahoe was hit by at least seven rounds, but no one was injured.
  
  Officers found a trail of shell casings in the southbound lanes that stretched from 1400 to 1800 South Lake Shore Drive.

Labels: sarcasm AND silliness

• Five people were killed, including a 16-year-old boy, and at least 32 other people were wounded in shootings over a violent Halloween weekend.

Labels: crime

• Police are looking for the gunman who shot a man during a bustling Saturday afternoon in the city’s Loop.
  
  It happened shortly after 2 p.m. on Wabash Avenue near Monroe Street, police said.
  
  The victim, a 21-year-old man, was walking north on a sidewalk when suddenly another man pointed a gun at him and shot him in the arm, police on the scene said.
  
  The victim was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was expected to survive.

• The shooting suspect stands about 6-foot-2, is black and was wearing a black jacket and black pants, police said. He was carrying a black book bag with red lettering, they said.

Labels: crime

• Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee in Florida's gubernatorial race, said Wednesday that police are going "too far" if they have to pull out a gun, baton, or taser when approaching a potential suspect.
  
  Gillum made the comment on the liberal podcast "Pod Save America," where he pushed back against his Republican critics who believe he is an anti-police candidate.

Labels: dumb ideas, out-of-state

• For more than four years, the family of Chicago police officer Tito "Mannie" Rodriguez, Jr. has endured court hearings as they wait for answers in his death.
  
  Dennis Anderson was charged with reckless homicide in the 28-year-old’s death, but two weeks ago the family was dealt a crushing blow by the state’s attorney’s office when Anderson was offered a plea deal, according to the family.
  
  "It felt like Mannie died all over again," said his father (also named Tito Rodriguez).
  
  He was killed in 2014 while driving his motorcycle on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Witnesses say Anderson recklessly crossed traffic lanes illegally that night before striking Rodriguez’s motorcycle near 71st Street.
  
  "We lost him because of a man that did something reckless," his father said.
  
  The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office would not confirm whether there was a plea deal.

Labels: un-fucking-fucking-believable

• Enrollment at Chicago Public Schools dropped to historic lows this autumn after the district recorded one of its largest single-year declines in 16 years.
  
  The 361,314 students counted on the 20th day of classes represents a reduction of 10,000 students from last school year.
  
  That’s not quite as big a drop as in the 2016-17 school year, when enrollment went down by about 11,000 from the preceding year. But it continues a long-standing trend as CPS enrollment has been in steady decline since 2003-04.
  
  Unlike in previous years, there will be less of an impact on the budgets of schools that saw enrollment declines. CPS opted this year to base school budgets on enrollment counts from last school year instead of this year’s 20th day of classes.

• The property tax assessment portion tied to the schools.

Labels: money questions

• Read it here - we're too disgusted to quote it

Labels: un-fucking-believable

• A shooting that wounded five men in the Washington Park neighborhood Wednesday night may have been in retaliation for an ambush outside the funeral for a local rapper that injured six people earlier in the week, according to Chicago police.
  
  "It’s a high probability that the shootings were connected," said Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the Police Department.
  
  In Wednesday's shooting, five men between the ages of 22 and 49 were shot just before 9 p.m. outside a home in the 6200 block of South King Drive, police said.
  
  They were standing on the sidewalk when several people walked up and opened fire, police said. The gunmen fled in a white sedan, police said. None of the wounds were considered life-threatening.

• Detectives are looking into a possible connection to a mass shooting Monday afternoon outside the Bethlehem Star Missionary Baptist Church at 9231 S. Cottage Grove Ave. As people were leaving the church, six people were wounded by at least two gunmen, a police spokesman said. As many as five mourners drew their own weapons and returned fire during the broad daylight attack.

Labels: crime

• The Civilian Office of Police Accountability released several video and audio clips Wednesday of a nonfatal police shooting that occurred in Bridgeport last March.
  
  Wen M. Chen, 31, was shot after officers responded to a call of a domestic disturbance in a home in the 2800 block of South Throop on around noon on March 13.
  
  Newly released body cam footage shows Chen with a butcher knife in hand as officers open the door to the room in which he’d locked himself.
  
  After the door is opened, one officer, whose Taser was drawn and pointed at Chen, tells him to drop the knife six times before deploying the Taser. Another officer on scene also deploys his Taser and Chen can be heard screaming in pain.

Labels: shooting

• A hyper-animated mayoral candidate Paul Vallas on Monday laid out his five-year plan to confront a 28ドル billion pension crisis that Mayor Rahm Emanuel — even after an avalanche of tax increase — has only begun to solve.
  
  Almost screaming from the podium at a City Club of Chicago luncheon, Vallas called for creating a "third-tier pension program" requiring a third of all city employees — those earning more than 100,000ドル a year — to contribute more toward their pensions and health insurance.
  
  Vallas would further squeeze the city’s unionized employees by negotiating "revenue-based labor contracts" that tie future pay raises to available city revenue.
  
  "I’m not begrudging people a fair wage. But we’ve got ... to look at those individuals making those higher salaries and we’ve got to ask them to pay more. We’ve got to control those salary increases, but we’ve also got to require that they make a larger contribution," Vallas said.

Labels: city politics

Labels: department issues

• More than a dozen vehicles have been vandalized and ransacked this month throughout the West Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side.
  
  In each case, someone has damaged a vehicle before going through the interior, according to a community alert from Chicago police. In some instances, multiple cars in the same block were damaged about the same time.

Labels: crime, stats

• Paraisia Winston looks forward to having the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, 4 miles from her South Shore home, to add a new historical treasure to her already culturally rich African-American community.
  
  She believes the center will spur investment and economic development in her South Side neighborhood — one that has long struggled to secure basic amenities like a major grocery or a recognizable clothing store.
  
  But recently, as development of the Obama center has faced obstacles and groundbreaking has been pushed back, Winston and some of her neighbors have begun to worry about the project’s fate. It faces a legal challenge in federal court over the use of park space for the center, and its chief local backer, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, recently announced he will not be seeking a third term as mayor.
  
  The result is anxiousness that has swept over some residents and communities on the South Side as they brace for a possible long wait, a bitter fight or even another grand disappointment.

• Echoing that suit, a group of environmentalists is arguing that the city and Chicago Park District should not build the Obama project in Jackson Park. Transferring parkland to a private entity such as the Obama Foundation is a violation of Park District code and state law, the plaintiffs contend.
  
  Part of the suit hinges on the expectations for the project itself. Instead of an official presidential library managed by the National Archives and Records Administration, the center will highlight the presidency of Obama without the physical presence of his paper records and will be managed by the foundation, which is not a government entity.
  
  "The new, renamed ‘Presidential Center’ would instead be privately owned, managed and operated in ways that the private Foundation itself would decide," the federal complaint states.

Labels: dumb ideas

Labels: county

• A recently-created special task force targeting gang violence at funerals in Cook County hasn’t been established long enough to have made a visible impact. Six people were shot Monday when more than 50 shots rang out at the funeral for a rapper known as Vantrease Criss, or "Dooksie Da Man."
  
  The massive shooting scene encompassed two blocks in the Burnside neighborhood, on the 9200 block of South Cottage Grove.
  
  No one was in custody Monday night, and city officials said shootings at funerals for gang members are an increasingly-common occurrence.
  
  "What we saw today was total savagery in our streets and mayhem," said Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin. "Frankly we must put an end to that."

Labels: county, dumb ideas

• Overtime spending in the Chicago Police Department is rising again after a 30 percent drop in first-quarter spending driven by tighter controls aimed at holding supervisors accountable.
  
  From January through April, Chicago police officers were paid 29ドル.7 million in overtime, down from 42ドル.1 million during the same period a year ago.
  
  But the trend was short-lived, according to records released in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
  They show that police overtime for the four-month period ending in August was 50ドル.9 million, a 71 percent increase from first-quarter spending.
  
  In May, an additional 7ドル.1 million was spent. That includes the 1,000 moonlighting officers assigned to keep a lid on violence over Memorial Day.

Labels: department issues

• Brien Jackson returned to a parking lot at an Orange Line station to find his 1999 tan Toyota Camry stolen.
  
  Officers found it a few days later on the South Side. But then they lost it again.
  
  An officer had parked the recovered car in front of the Englewood District police station where someone apparently stole it a second time. It’s still missing.

• Now Jackson and his father have filed complaints with the department's internal affairs office and with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, saying they have not gotten a satisfactory explanation about how this happened.

Labels: silly people

• Cook County Judge Joseph Claps was acquitted Tuesday of a misdemeanor gun charge by another judge who said prosecutors failed to prove the object dropped by Claps in a courthouse lobby was, in fact, a firearm.
  
  Claps held his hand to his face, then wiped away tears as Will County Judge Edward Burmila announced his acquittal following a brief bench trial in the branch courthouse in west suburban Maywood. Burmila had been brought in to preside over the case due to Claps’ working relationships with other Cook County judges.
  
  Prosecutors played surveillance footage appearing to show a gun falling out of Claps’ jacket and onto the floor of the lobby of the Leighton Criminal Court Building in early July.
  
  Two Cook County sheriff’s deputies testified Tuesday they were in the lobby when it happened and said the object was, in fact, a gun.
  
  In ruling from the bench, Burmila, though, said he "can’t believe" the deputies didn’t immediately seize the weapon under those circumstances.

Labels: corruption, county

• A longtime Cook County judge has been referred to anger management counseling and reassigned to administrative duties until further notice.
  
  Judge William Hooks, who has been a criminal courts judge for nearly 10 years, is accused of "acting in such a manner that created a hostile work environment for another judge," according to a statement Monday evening from Chief Judge Timothy Evans’ office.
  
  The alleged incident or incidents did not occur inside a courtroom, the statement said. Court officials noted that Hooks "expressed contrition" about the matter before the Executive Committee of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
  
  It was not immediately clear who was the other judge involved.

Labels: corruption, scandals

• North Side residents of Chicago have been terrorized by a rash of carjackings and stolen vehicles, often by offenders brandishing guns. Residents are afraid to sit in their cars for even a few moments for fear that they will be confronted by the bands of armed thugs.
  
  But what these North Side residents don’t realize is that the officers trying to combat these carjackings and thefts are not only risking their lives, they are risking their jobs as well.
  
  Consider what happened to Officer [LS].
  
  [LS] was working a three-man tactical car earlier this month when the three got a call that a Jeep had been stolen from Lincoln Avenue and Irving Park when the driver left it there to go into a store.
  
  Because the Jeep had a tracking device, its owner could relay its location to dispatchers. [LS]’s team followed the announcements on the radio. As they approached the scene, they observed the Jeep in an alley. They pulled up, preparing to conduct an investigatory stop. But the Jeep began driving toward them. It careened out of the alley, right at the officers who were in uniform. [LS] was attempting to get out of the backseat of the car.
  
  The offender, now using the car as a deadly weapon, drove right into [LS], who jumped backward into the car to protect himself from the attack. As the Jeep struck the police car, [LS] fired at the vehicle, whose driver was now engaged in using force to evade a felony arrest. As the Jeep pulled away, eliminating the threat, [LS] ceased firing. The offender escaped, and the Jeep was recovered nearby.
  
  The whole incident is captured on video.

Labels: info for the police

• Muggings are being reported at least twice as often as they were just five years ago in the heart of Chicago’s business and tourism districts, according to city data. A police beat that covers the Magnificent Mile and Streeterville is now among the worst for robberies in the entire city.
  
  And the police beat that covers the River North dining and nightlife district has seen robberies spike nearly 400% since 2014. If you want to get robbed in Chicago, River North is the place to go. It is now the #1 police beat for robberies citywide.
  
  Overall, the Near North community area, which includes the Magnificent Mile, River North, and Gold Coast, is experiencing a 146% robbery increase compared to 2014 and a 5% increase compared to last year.

Labels: crime

• At least six people were shot after a funeral service for a Chicago rapper at a church Monday afternoon in the Burnside neighborhood on the South Side.
  
  The mass shooting happened about 12:30 p.m. outside Bethlehem Star Missionary Baptist Church, 9231 S. Cottage Grove, authorities said. The most seriously wounded was a man, who was shot in the head and in critical condition at University of Chicago Medical Center, but the rest of the victims were in stable condition, authorities said.
  
  Also at U. of C. Medical Center were a 25-year-old man shot in the arm, a 27-year-old woman shot in the leg and lower body and a 24-year-old man male shot in the leg. An 18-year-old man was shot and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and a 23-year-old man shot in the leg was taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital.

Labels: crime

• Two-year-old Julien Gonzalez left the birthday party and walked through the backyard, apparently following his father toward a fight that was getting louder in the alley.
  
  As he aproached the gate, somene yelled out, "Bust, bust, bust," an order to a fellow gang member to open fire. The little boy stepped into the alley and was almost immediately scooped up by an older teen running for cover.
  
  But they were both caught by the red light of a laser sight before they could reach the gate. At least 10 shots rang out. The 18-year-old was hit in the back and the leg, and Julien was shot once in the neck. The teen survived, Julien did not.
  
  On Monday, prosecutors laid out the tragic chain of events from Oct. 6 as Alexander Varela, the man accused of giving those orders, appeared in court on charges of murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery. Police said they are still searching for the gunman and others.

• People from the party came out into the alley and began fighting with Varela and other members of his maniac latin disciples gang. Police have said members of another gang, the young latin organization disciples, were apparently at the party.

Labels: crime, good news

• The NYPD has suspended the use of a certain kind of body camera "effective immediately" after one of them exploded.
  
  A police officer was wearing a Vievu model LE-5 body-worn camera on a "midnight tour" on Saturday night when he noticed that it was smoking and took it off, the NYPD said.
  
  Not long after, the camera exploded, according to the NYPD. No one was injured by the explosion, the department said.
  
  "The incident revealed a potential for the battery inside the camera to ignite," the NYPD said in a statement. "The cause and scope of the defect are currently being investigated."
  
  Axon, the parent company of Vievu, said it was working closely with the NYPD to investigate.

Labels: out-of-state, safety issues

• I heard a range instructor pulled up on the computer a brief history of the cop killer and read it out loud to the class. He acted like he just stumbled across it and never acknowledged the goofy Dame that changed her name. If true I'd like to buy him a bunch of beers lol. That might be who she got a C.R. against.

• Start the fucking paper trail on her. Because you know she won't hesitate to jam you up and claim racism. Shes a racist. Any whiff of mistreatment, drop paper. Hostile work environment. EEOC.

Labels: info for the police, safety issues

• Seven people have been fatally shot and 14 others wounded in Chicago since 5 p.m. Friday, including three men caught in gunfire in East Garfield Park.
  
  Shots rang out and struck three men about 3:40 p.m. Sunday in the 400 block of North Springfield Avenue, Chicago police said. A 37-year-old man was shot in his head, and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he died. The Cook County medical examiner’s office hasn’t released details about his death.

Labels: crime, stats

• A driver who got into a dispute with people in another car Friday night in the East Ukrainian Village neighborhood, then hit and killed a man who had been a passenger in the other car, was released without charges, police said Sunday.
  
  The driver who killed a man identified as William Gonzalez, 38, of the 1000 block of North Avers Avenue, was released without charges after detectives determined the driver acted in self-defense, police said Sunday.
  
  Gonzalez and the driver of the four-door sedan that hit him started arguing around 8:15 p.m. Friday in the 1600 block of West Augusta Boulevard, police said.
  
  Gonzalez got out of the car he was in and walked up to the sedan, holding a knife, police said.

Labels: info for the police

Labels: events

• A Chicago man was arrested the day after he allegedly carjacked a woman's vehicle from a business parking lot in Oak Lawn. Dwayne Corley, 25, appeared before Cook County Judge Peter Felice wearing blue hospital scrubs on felony charges of unlawful vehicular invasion and robbery. Corley is currently on parole and was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet at the time of his arrest, prosecutors said.

Labels: crime, we got nothing

• The merit sergeant who changed her name to a cop killer was assigned to 015. Watch yourselves - she got a CR on one of the instructors at the academy during training.

Labels: un-fucking-believable

• In a speech Friday to a friendly law enforcement audience in Chicago, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called a proposed consent decree that would reform the Chicago Police Department an "insult,’’ saying, "Chicago police are not the problem.’’
  
  Sessions’ remarks came before a crowd of about 40 business and law enforcement representatives, including U.S. Attorney John Lausch, at an event sponsored by the Chicago Crime Commission.
  
  [...]
  
  Sessions bemoaned the city’s spike in violence in 2016, blaming "the ACLU effect," a reference to the city’s agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois that required police to more thoroughly document street stops.
  
  "If you let ACLU set police policy, crime will go up,’’ he said.

• Though he didn’t specifically refer to controversial "stop-and-frisk’’ policies backed by his boss, President Donald Trump, Sessions said that if police "don’t stop,’’ they "don’t find’’ illegal guns and fugitives.
  
  He called the ACLU agreement a "colossal’’ mistake that reduced public safety and placed "minorities, particularly at risk.’’

Labels: info for the police

• A Labor Day protest march may have failed to reach the Kennedy Expressway near O’Hare International Airport, but it did reach into taxpayers’ pockets for tens of thousands of dollars.
  
  Police agencies assigned to the march spent at least 152,871ドル.52 on their efforts, according to information obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
  
  Add to that the cost of an August march that shut down a northern stretch of Lake Shore Drive, and the total tally hits 214,662ドル.82.
  
  Illinois State Police wouldn’t say how many officers it allocated for the Labor Day protest; they did, however, provide the total personnel cost, including benefits: 119,391ドル.90. The Chicago Police Department, sent 48 officers, which cost taxpayers 27,526ドル.33. The site, on the Park Ridge/Rosemont border, also was staffed by 24 Park Ridge opolice officers (5,528ドル.22) and two officers from Rosemont (425ドル.07).

• For a much-larger march that shut down a portion of the northbound Dan Ryan Expressway — during which included Supt. Eddie Johnson walked arm-in-arm with Father Micheal Pfleger — the state police cost was about 198,000ドル. The total estimated cost to taxpayers for that march was over 300,000ドル.

Labels: money questions

• On Friday morning, a boy bolted up a lime green slide in a small park tucked away on a corner of the Southwest Side. Two others pumped their legs back and forth on swings, flying up into the air and holding on as tight as all the yellow-spotted leaves still clinging to their branches. A young girl smiled and ran past a newly minted sign: Irma C. Ruiz Park.
  
  Thirty years ago, Ruiz, a Chicago police officer who "took care of everyone," became one of the first female officers to be killed in the line of duty when a gunman entered a Near West Side school and shot at Ruiz, instantly ending the life of the beloved wife, mother of four and police partner.
  
  A Chicago park in the Archer Heights neighborhood was officially renamed in her honor on Friday. More than a hundred friends, family, fellow officers — even the horse named after Ruiz — gathered for the dedication. And before and after the ceremony, Ruiz’s grandchildren played in her park.

Labels: events

• Two people were injured Thursday, including an Oak Forest Police officer, following a carjacking in which the injured officer fired his gun at the fleeing vehicle, police said. The carjacker, described as a male in his late teens or early 20s, was at large as of late Thursday, Oak Forest Police said.
  
  Shortly before noon, Oak Forest Police were advised of an aggravated carjacking involving a gun that had taken place in Orland Park. Oak Forest officers saw a vehicle matching the description traveling at a very high rate of speed east on 159th, and the vehicle attempted to turn north onto Cicero Avenue, where it hit a construction worker, police said.
  
  The driver got out of the vehicle and fled on foot east on 159th, with Oak Forest officers in pursuit, police said. The man carjacked a second vehicle, and as officers tried to apprehend him, he ran over one of the officers with the vehicle, who fired his weapon toward the stolen white Mazda, police said.

Labels: crime, officer injured, suburban

• It’s hard to gripe with the general idea behind the Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF). The organization raises money to post bond for people who cannot afford to post their own while awaiting trial.
  
  But there seems to be a problem.
  
  One man who was freed by the fund while awaiting trial for attempted murder in North Center went on to be arrested four times in three months for battering and threatening people in Boystown. Despite being arrested repeatedly while on bond and even being ordered to serve two jail sentences for those crimes, his bond was never revoked.
  
  And a transgender woman accused of robbing a man in Boystown in 2017 was freed by the fund in May 2017. Since then, she has repeatedly skipped court dates and she has been arrested three times. The bond fund was twice ordered to forfeit the 50,000ドル it risked on the woman’s freedom, only to have the money given back after filing motions with the court. Most recently, a litany of social service agencies virtually begged the court to let the woman go free on bond again. The judge agreed. And the woman is now AWOL. Again.

Labels: crime, dumb ideas

• Five teenagers are in custody after the carjacking of an off-duty police officer in the city's Edgewater Beach neighborhood. Police said the officer, a 47-year-old woman, was approached by a group of offenders after parking her Lexus SUV in the 5800 block of North Winthrop around midnight Thursday.
  
  One of the offenders pointed a gun at the officer and demanded her vehicle, then took the keys out of her hand, got into the SUV and drove away.
  
  Police spotted the vehicle on the Southeast Side and pursued it. The offenders were captured after hitting a dead-end at 55th and South Shore. The suspects include a 16-year-old, a 19-year-old and three 18-year-olds. Police recovered a weapon from inside the stolen Lexus.
  
  Charges are pending.

Labels: crime

• A day after 11 people were shot, including three fatally, Baltimore officials condemned the city’s drug trade and announced plans to get more police officers on the streets.
  
  About 230 Baltimore Police Department officers assigned to administrative duties will leave their offices for patrol work as the department seeks to combat a spike in violence across the city.
  
  Interim Commissioner Gary Tuggle temporarily shut down administrative operations at police headquarters and in every district, he said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. Those officers have been reassigned to the streets, bringing the number of officers patrolling the city to about 650, he said.

Labels: out-of-state

• Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said she believes a county SUV used "nearly exclusively" by her security chief and found abandoned in the early morning hours after the 2016 election with campaign materials in the back was stolen, even though officials never reported it to police.
  
  Preckwinkle also said she has not investigated the incident and declined to comment on whether she has asked her security chief whether he placed the political materials in the vehicle, saying she won’t discuss "personnel matters."
  
  Instead reiterated her spokeswoman’s statements from earlier in the week that she does not allow county vehicles to be used for "the dissemination of campaign materials" but doesn’t know who placed the materials in the vehicle.
  
  "My conviction is that it was stolen," Preckwinkle, a candidate for mayor of Chicago, said of the vehicle. "That’s as far as I intend to comment on it."

Labels: corruption, county

• Three weeks before Election Day, staffers who have worked for J.B. Pritzker’s campaign have filed a federal lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in their months on the job, accusations the Democratic governor candidate quickly called "just not true."
  
  The lawsuit comes in the final stretch of an increasingly bitter campaign between Pritzker and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that has seen both sides break spending records and accuse one another of criminal activity.
  
  The lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges that African-American and Latino campaign staffers "are herded into race-specific positions where they are expected to interact with the public, offered no meaningful chance for advancement, and receive less favorable treatment than their white counterparts." Of the 10 campaign staffers named as plaintiffs in the suit, nine are black and one is a Latina.

Labels: state politics

• An on-duty Chicago police sergeant was charged with drunk driving Wednesday morning after failing a random drug and alcohol test at the police department’s headquarters on the South Side.

Labels: we got nothing

• Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker has promised a number of new spending programs as well as closing Illinois’ current structural deficit. To finance these promises, Pritzker has proposed a progressive income tax hike.
  
  But how much would these promises cost? And how high would taxes need to be to finance them?
  
  Reasonable estimates show the cost of Pritzker’s spending promises demand an income tax hike of 13ドル billion to 18ドル billion. This would require approximately doubling the state’s personal income tax to 9.95 percent on the high end and 8.51 percent on the low end from the current 4.95 percent income tax rate.
  
  That means within the existing flat income tax structure, which would remain in place until at least 2020, the typical family in Illinois making just over 79,000ドル would pay an additional 2,500ドル to 3,500ドル in income taxes in order to finance Pritzker’s spending promises.

Labels: state politics

• The last time New York City experienced a weekend without a shooting, Ruth Bader Ginsberg had just been named to the Supreme Court, "Jurassic Park" was thrilling audiences and the world wide web made its debut.
  
  And then this weekend happened.
  
  New York City officials announced no one had been shot in all five boroughs Oct. 12-14 — the first weekend free of shootings since at least 1993, the New York Post reported.

Labels: good news, out-of-state

• Video released Tuesday shows an off-duty Chicago police sergeant opening fire from his vehicle and wounding an apparently unarmed man as he stood on a sidewalk in front of a home in the Morgan Park neighborhood on the Far South Side.
  
  The Civilian Office of Police Accountability released police dashboard camera, home surveillance video and police reports more than a year after Ricardo "Ricky" Hayes, then 18, was shot in the arm and chest in the 11100 block of South Hermosa Avenue.

Labels: department issues

• The acting head of the Metropolitan Police locked himself in a car as one of his officers was murdered metres away during the Westminster attack, an inquest has heard.
  
  Sir Craig Mackey was commissioner of Britain’s largest force at the time of the atrocity, where Khalid Masood ran down four victims with his car and stabbed PC Keith Palmer to death.
  
  An inquest into Masood’s death heard that Sir Craig was being driven out of the Houses of Parliament when the attack started on 22 March 2017.

Labels: international news

• Three adults have been arrested and charged in connection with the armed robbery of a Christian Dior boutique near the Magnificent Mile this week after they agreed to meet with an undercover officer to sell a stolen Dior purse for 9,000,ドル according to police and court records. A juvenile girl has also been charged in the case, according to a police department source.

• One of the accused persons is currently on probation after he pleaded guilty in a robbery-related incident at the Magnificent Mile Saks Fifth Avenue store this summer.

Labels: crime

• The EXACT SAME THING happened at County years ago, and this will happen to you. Mostly in this order, with very little variation.
  
  One: you will attract less and less talented applicants. Less and less people want to work for CPD or be the police in general. The Darren Wilson/JasonVan Dyke cases, de-policing in general since 08/09, increased micromanagement and metrics-based supervision for suburban departments and weaker organized labor all contribute. Not only that, but you have an economy that is insanely good: unemployment nationally at 3.7%? Hasn't been this good in decades and more better-paying jobs are to be found elsewhere- with stock options and bonuses.
  
  Two: with low-talent applicants, you will hire low-talent people. Which means over the long-term, low-talent officers will be promoted to low-talent so-called-Sergeants.
  
  Three: increase in cameras. There will be more cameras that you know what to do with. In locker rooms, in break rooms, put up in blind spots in the station, in lockups, everywhere. You'll have body cameras for every officer in the department. You'll have dash-mounted cameras inside the squad car aimed at the officers inside. You'll have cameras mounted in the cage in the vehicle. The camera systems will be Ultra-High Def 4K shit, with great zoom lenses, and audio capability. They will be able to be real-time streamed. These cameras will be able to be accessed by command staff ay any time, any where. Directors in CCSO can access this shit from their houses, from their iPads. And they do. They will watch the cameras from home, call into the jail and ask Chiefs, Superintendents, Lieutenants and whoever they want, why officers are doing certain things. This happens daily to us and it will happen daily to you.
  
  Four: increase in civilian directors and oversight. You'll have civilians who are not the police, being put in charge of units, groups and teams. These people are not your friends.
  
  Five: New units for Use of Force Review, Video Monitoring, Internal Affairs, etc... You'll have re-organized units, re-structured units, new units and the like. Lots of juice babies will be placed in this units. The administration will fight you tooth and nail and a lot of the people in these units will not investigate Use of Force incidents correctly.
  
  Six: A hell of a lot of discipline. They'll rewrite the entire General Orders of CPD. They'll fight the FOP on everything, hire a lot more lawyers and they will push for the maximum amount of discipline possible for a lot more officers. They will make examples. They will suspend without pay. They will push to fire more officers, by a factor of 5 at least from that the current level is. There is no mistaking it, people will absolutely lose their jobs.
  
  Seven: The Department will drown the union with more and more lawyers and opposition and struggle during normal operations. Everything from lunches to reliefs to overtime, to uniform/appearance standards, to medical call-ins, FMLA use and the pettiest stuff imaginable. This will increase the workload on the stewards in the districts and units and also the union office, making the office do more and more work. It will make you choose your battles more and it will make officers have less and less faith in the union.
  
  Eight: A ton of good officers will retire. They will be fired. They will stop caring. They'll become even more cynical and jaded that they are now. They'll impact the younger generation and then, they too, will become lazy and not care. More officers will transfer to suburban departments, federal agencies or choose different paths altogether. The department attrition will increase substantially, which will make officers invest less and less in their careers and themselves.
  
  Nine: After years of mismanagement and sinking morale, after hundreds of officers are fired and hundreds more leave, the department will change direction slightly and try to "improve" it. Special teams, special units, special work hours/shifts/days off, perks, etc., will be offered. Those Use of Force units, Internal Affairs and the administration will realize what has happened and try and fix it. This will happen slowly at first and then pick up speed. This is the phase the county is in now- especially at the jail. But the damage will be done.
  
  If you think this is bogus, ask officers who left the jail to come to CPD. County loses between 4-8 per month going to CPD. Talk to them in the districts. Everything I mentioned will happen, or has already started.

Labels: department issues

• Billionaire Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker has portrayed himself as a champion of working families and received substantial support from organized labor, but he used nonunion workers to remodel his Gold Coast mansion.
  
  Nonunion labor from three trades was hired to work on the yearslong, 25ドル million renovation of Pritzker’s 20,000-square-foot residence, according to a June 2007 email filed as part of a court dispute that arose between Pritzker and the general contractor.
  
  "A note of caution," wrote construction consultant Douglas Kaulas to Pritzker’s brother-in-law Thomas Muenster, who oversaw the renovation. "Now that the front yard is screened off and scaffold is going up, the jobsite has a much higher visibility. We’re perfectly legal with our permits, but we do have a non-union mason, demo contractor and roofer working. We are a little concerned that the union (business agents) may come to visit."
  
  For Democrats, the support of organized labor is key and using union workers can be a litmus test. Pritzker now joins the list of Illinois Democrats who championed labor on the public stage but employed nonunion workers when it came to their personal lives.

Labels: state politics

• Can anyone shed any light on the [r]umor that a handful of our newest finest, had an offender that they were trying to place in custody and the offender fled to the police car and tried to drive off. He didn't have keys to drive the vehicle off so he locked himself in and when he tried to exit the vehicle to either fight with these new police officers they locked the door and wouldn't let him out. They then called a field Sgt. to assist and the Sgt. had to show them [how] to take a shit head in custody. If this story is true and if it in fact happened the way I heard it, the dept. certainly has, Be The Change, well in hand. That policing thing, not so much.

Labels: un-fucking-believable

• One of Larry Hoover’s loudest advocates believes the imprisoned Gangster Disciples leader would be a voice for peace in Chicago if he were freed by President Donald Trump.
  
  Hoover would urge gang members to "stop the killing," according to Wallace "Gator" Bradley, a former GD.
  
  "Maybe what they need is the fear of God," Bradley said Thursday. "I am not saying Larry Hoover is God, but when they took the leaders off the street, they took the street disciplinarian away."

Labels: media, un-fucking-believable

• I had the pleasure, a few weeks ago, of attending a seminar at Ryerson University as a specially invited guest to hear University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson address a colleague’s students on freedom of speech and gender issues that have made him a household name in Canada.
  
  I was of course already familiar with much of Peterson’s material from his videos, which didn’t diminish by an iota my sense of privilege in experiencing the force of live presentation. But my ears perked up at something new in his remarks: an allusion to the "Implicit Association Test" (IAT). According to Peterson, the IAT, a pseudo-scientific diagnostic test to measure an individual’s personal biases, has been introduced into the CBC as a tool for identifying and measuring unconscious biases among its senior executives, in all likelihood with the objective of weeding them out through training.
  
  By coincidence, I had just read a lengthy, detailed and quite damning indictment of the IAT by scrupulously thorough investigative reporter Jesse Singal of New York Magazine’s Science of Us. I hope the honchos at the CBC will read it as well.

• Given all this excitement, it might feel safe to assume that the IAT really does measure people’s propensity to commit real-world acts of implicit bias against marginalized groups, and that it does so in a dependable, clearly understood way. After all, the test is hosted by Harvard, endorsed and frequently written about by some of the top social psychologists and science journalists in the country, and is currently seen by many as the most sophisticated way to talk about the complicated, fraught subject of race in America.
  
  Unfortunately, none of that is true. A pile of scholarly work, some of it published in top psychology journals and most of it ignored by the media, suggests that the IAT falls far short of the quality-control standards normally expected of psychological instruments. The IAT, this research suggests, is a noisy, unreliable measure that correlates far too weakly with any real-world outcomes to be used to predict individuals’ behavior — even the test’s creators have now admitted as such.

Labels: un-fucking-fucking-believable

Labels: department issues

Labels: info for the police

• A man shot four-years ago by Chicago police has been injured again in another police shooting.
  
  Alonzo Smith, 31, was critically wounded Wednesday in a shootout with Milwaukee police. Authorities say officers were responding to reports of shots fired, when they say Smith shot at them. Officers fired back, critically wounding him.
  
  Several guns and a knife were reportedly found after the shooting.
  
  Smith has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
  
  He reached a 180,000ドル settlement with Chicago after the shooting in 2014.

Labels: out-of-state, sarcasm AND silliness

• Apparently, the Chicago Police Department has partnered with the Anti-Defamation League for a training class that will be presented to all Chicago Police Officers. This training class will address implicit bias. Initially, in order to participate in this class, Police Officers were required to complete a survey prior to attending the class.
  
  Several members contacted the Lodge inquiring whether they had an obligation to complete the survey. Initially, the Lodge did not have a response as the Department failed to advise us of the existence of both the survey and the training itself.
  
  The Lodge made inquiries to the Department asking what agency compiled the surveys, what agency was going to use the data from the surveys, would the data be saved or destroyed, and who or what agency would have access to the survey data.
  
  While the Lodge is certainly in favor of any training that will enhance our members' policing skills, we are more interested in ensuring that our members rights are protected. We advised the Department of our objections to this survey: There was not any guarantee that your answers would be kept private, there was not any guarantee that your answers would not have a negative personal impact, and there was not any guarantee that your answers would not have a negative impact on either the Department or Lodge as a whole.
  
  The Department took note of our inquiries and objections and has removed the survey.

Labels: department issues, FOP

Labels: promotions

• Three people were carjacked over 40 minutes in Lakeview and Lincoln Park late Wednesday and early Thursday -- and two of the stolen cars were later found in the same South Side police district, one parked and the other crashed, according to Chicago police.
  
  Those carjacked included a food delivery driver robbed at gunpoint and two women, police said.

• Chicago police issued a community alert Wednesday saying there have been six carjackings or robberies on the North Side. This comes on a day that the police superintendent and mayor announced that there will be more technology on the streets to track stolen vehicles.
  
  License plate readers on squad cars can scan up to 1,000 plates per minute, picking up whether a car is stolen. Two hundred more patrol cars will be outfitted with them, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Wednesday.

Labels: crime

Labels: dumb ideas

• The City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate Thursday unanimously approved an ordinance for the Obama Foundation to pay 10ドル for a 99-year agreement for the Obama Presidential Center, moving the foundation one step closer to being able to break ground on the project.
  
  Before the vote, Ald. Raymond Lopez, (15th) and Ald. Deborah Mell, (33rd) pressed Obama Foundation members on the ongoing concerns that the center would displace longtime residents and that it would not be a presidential library.

Labels: dumb ideas, money questions

Labels: department issues, FOP

Labels: state politics

• At the risk of being repetitive, we return once again to the Los Angeles Times, whose writers and editors seem to leap at any opportunity to present police officers in an unfavorable light. They are so eager to do so, in fact, that they are willing to omit relevant facts from their stories to achieve the purpose.
  
  The latest example came on Oct. 4, when Times writers Joel Rubin and Ben Poston (with help from staff writers Ryan Menezes and Ruben Vives) wrote more than 3,500 words on what they and their editors believe is a serious problem within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, to wit, too many Latinos being stopped and searched for drugs on a 40-mile stretch of Interstate 5, known in Southern California as the Grapevine.
  
  "The team of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies cruises the 5 Freeway," the story begins, "stopping motorists on the Grapevine in search of cars carrying drugs. They’ve worked the mountain pass in Southern California since 2012 and boast a large haul: more than a ton of methamphetamine, 2 tons of marijuana, 600 pounds of cocaine, millions of dollars in suspected drug money and more than 1,000 arrests."
  
  Up to this point the reader might be saying: "That’s a lot of arrests and a lot of drugs. Sounds like good police work."
  
  But this is the Los Angeles Times, remember, where any law enforcement accomplishment must be viewed with the suspicion that the police did something improper to achieve it. And so comes the ominous kicker: "But behind those impressive numbers are some troubling ones."

Labels: info for the police

• Three Chicago police officers were attacked and locked inside an Englewood home as they chased a woman who had spit in the face of one of the cops, authorities said. The officers were able to get out of the house in the 7000 block of South Throop Street and arrested a woman and two men around 2:30 p.m. Monday, police said.
  
  Senneca Traylor, 19, was charged with aggravated battery of an officer and resisting an officer. Janice Lewis, 20, was charged with aggravated battery of an officer. Robert Williams, 28, was charged with unlawful restraint and resisting an officer.
  
  The officers had been chasing Lewis when another person threw a piece of wood at the back of an officer’s head, police said. The officers chased that person into a nearby home and other residents of the house locked the officers inside, police said. All three officers were treated at hospitals and released.

Labels: safety issues

• The Justice Department will later this week oppose a pending consent decree the city of Chicago agreed to in the wake of police misconduct allegations tied to the Laquan McDonald case, the Sun-Times has learned.
  
  This comes a day after President Donald Trump told a gathering of police chiefs in Orlando that an agreement between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on stop and frisk policies was "terrible."
  
  Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement, "Chicago’s agreement with the ACLU in late 2015 dramatically undercut proactive policing in the city and kicked off perhaps the greatest surge in murder ever suffered by a major American city, with homicides increasing more than 57 percent the very next year.
  
  "Now the city’s leaders are seeking to enter into another agreement. It is imperative that the city not repeat the mistakes of the past — the safety of Chicago depends on it. Accordingly, at the end of this week, the Justice Department will file a statement of interest opposing the proposed consent decree. It is critical that Chicago get this right."

• Thieves made off with thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise from a Dior store in the Gold Coast on Monday.
  
  Four women entered the store in the 900 block of north Rush Street at about 1:30 p.m. Monday and took 10 purses off the shelves before fleeing the store without paying, police said. The women threatened to spray a store employee with mace if she interfered with the theft.
  
  The women took off southbound on Rush street in a dark-colored sedan that had two men in it, police said.
  
  Authorities are investigating.

Labels: crime

• Bail was reduced on Tuesday for a 25-year-old man charged with trying to kill a suburban police office with his car during a traffic stop last week on the Far South Side.
  
  Jamal Campbell faces a charge of attempted first-degree murder of a police officer after he allegedly tried to run over the Alsip officer early Wednesday and was shot by the officer in the parking lot of an apartment building in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

• At a hearing to review his bail on Tuesday, Campbell’s attorney Michael Oppenheimer said the police-involved shooting might have been racially motivated and questioned whether Chicago police were covering up for the suburban officer.
  
  "Although this was an Alsip officer [who shot Campbell], this happened in Chicago and there is a history of cover-ups, as we saw last week," Oppenheimer said in reference to the conviction of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke on Friday.

Labels: un-fucking-believable

• Chicago police said an officer responding to a residence was injured and is now in the hospital.
  
  The incident happened in the 7000 block of South Throop.
  
  A person threw an object at the officer who was outside, striking him in the head.
  
  He was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he is listed in serious condition.

Labels: officer injured

• Once again focusing on Chicago crime, President Donald Trump on Monday said the city should implement a "stop and frisk" policy and get out of what he called a "terrible" agreement between the ACLU and the police department made after a study showed the stops targeted minorities.
  
  Trump, speaking to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Orlando, also said he was instructing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to "immediately" go to Chicago.
  
  The Chicago Sun-Times has learned the Justice Department will have announcements on Chicago later this week.

Labels: we got nothing