Ten Years is a Bargain

A one-man multi-year crime wave:

• A man who cut off his ankle monitor, fled a murder scene in a stolen car, and then ran over a Chicago police officer who tried to arrest him has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Antonio Gonzalez, 22, struck a plea deal with prosecutors that closes a tangled series of cases spanning from 2021 to 2022.

  The story began on May 29, 2021, when Gonzalez was the front-seat passenger in a car that police pulled over for a traffic violation. When officers arrested the driver for not having a license, they searched the vehicle and found a loaded handgun in a bag that Gonzalez admitted was his, prosecutors said. He was charged with illegal gun possession and released from custody.

  Four months later, police allegedly spotted Gonzalez behind the wheel of a car that had been hijacked less than two hours earlier. [...] Because the carjacking victim couldn’t positively identify Gonzalez, prosecutors charged him with possessing a stolen motor vehicle instead of vehicular hijacking. He was placed on electronic monitoring.

  On April 27, 2022, Gonzalez allegedly cut off that ankle monitor and tossed it into a garbage can. Sheriff’s deputies issued a warrant after finding the GPS device, prosecutors said.

  The following month, Gonzalez resurfaced. According to prosecutors, he was riding in the back seat of a stolen car with three other people when the man sitting next to Gonzalez opened fire on 21-year-old Justin Gamino in the 5100 block of South Elizabeth Street. Gamino, who was unarmed, preparing to graduate from high school, and the father of a 2-year-old girl, died.

  The stolen car crashed a short time later. All four occupants ran, but police captured three of them, including the alleged gunman, who was charged with murder.

  As for Gonzalez, he ran to Damen Avenue and jumped into a car that had been left running with its keys inside. As two uniformed officers tried to pull him from the driver’s seat, Gonzalez hit the accelerator, throwing both officers to the ground, prosecutors said. One officer was run over by the car’s back tire, leaving tire marks on her arm and uniform and causing a fractured wrist and concussion, according to prosecutors. Her partner suffered abrasions to her hands and arms.

  The entire event was recorded on the officers’ body-worn cameras.

Hopefully, Dart's people have someone who knows arithmetic so they can figure out the amount of time in custody, on electronic monitoring, self-release from monitoring, SAFE-T Act free weekends, along with the day-for-day credit for multiple felonies.

He'll probably be home for Christmas this year. 

Aiding / Abetting is Illegal, Right?

A bunch of democrats ILLEGALLY fled Texas so as to avoid doing their jobs in the Texas legislature. It seems that they're "big mad" that Republicans are taking a page out of their playbook and redrawing political lines so as to garner some extra seats in DC.

Boo Hoo. It's bit like democrats haven't done the same thing for years wherever they're in charge:

• 2024 Election (Illinois) 55% D, 45% R - but 14 of 17 reps are dems (82%)
• 2024 Election (New York) 56% D, 43% R - but 19 of 26 reps are dems (73%)
• 2024 Election (California) 58% D, 38% R - but 43 of 52 reps are dems (83%)

Not very proportional, and even less so when you include the two dem senators from each state. So spare us the fake outrage.

Now, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is threatening the missing democrats with arrest for abandoning their elected posts:

• Texas House Republicans on Monday voted 85-6 to authorize the House sergeant-at-arms and related officers to track down and civilly arrest Democrats who fled the state, many heading to Illinois, in protest of GOP redistricting efforts.

  "The sergeant-at-arms and any officers appointed by her are directed to send for all absentees whose attendance is not excused for the purposes of securing and maintaining their attendance under warrant of arrest, if necessary, until further order of the House," said Republican state Rep. Dustin Burrows, the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

As you may or may not know, they're here in Illinois, guests of Fata$$ and making public appearances to screech and whine about how "democracy is dying" somehow....while the majority party enacts what the majority of their citizens voted for.

Our question is this though:

• Could Greg Abbott get a Texas Grand Jury to make a case for indicting Fata$$ for aiding and abetting the Texas dems in their illegal acts?

It might toss a wrench in his national ambitions and certainly cost him private attorney fees - this isn't a governmental function of any sort in Illinois, breaking Texas laws. An interesting bit of speculation. 

"Best Weekend" in Years

We don't think twenty-five people wandering around with extra holes in the body is much to brag about, but it's supposed to be the lowest August opening weekend in the past ten years:

• Shootings left 23 people wounded and two people dead in Chicago over the weekend, the fewest victims for the same weekend since at least 2015, according to HeyJackass, a site that independently tracks city crime data using open-source and official databases. The victims, 20 men and 5 women, ranged in age from 18 to 65.

  Adding to the relatively positive trend, no children were shot and there were no mass shootings, defined as incidents in which four or more people are struck by gunfire.

We thought the fbi definition of a "mass shooting" had to involve at least one death, but the anti-gunners change the definition every chance they get so as to include what are 99% gang shootings anyway.

But crime continues to lag behind previous years, probably because they're running out of targets. 

Use of Force Falling

What could be the reason?

• The number of police uses of lethal force is on the decline according to a new report from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

  Researchers with the school’s Cline Center for Advanced Social Research compiled data to track and identify the use of lethal force by officers throughout the country. They found that from 2021 to 2023 the number of such incidents fell by 24 percent nationally. The drop was about the same in Illinois.

  The report includes any incident in which police used a firearm, including those with nonfatal outcomes, as well as any other use of force that resulted in a death. But it doesn’t draw conclusions as to why the decrease is occurring.

Gee, could we form a few conclusions? How about these for starters:

• the constant anti-police drumbeat of the past half-decade has led to fewer police being hired;
• the fewer police being hired, the less backup there is, the less "specialized" units concentrating on high crime areas and high crime individuals, meaning few interactions with criminals;
• the lack of an incarceration penalty (no consequences) has led to a conscious decision to disengage by authorities who figure, "Why bother?" when the criminal is going to be out almost immediately;
• the needless, redundant and overreaching "oversight" that exists not to correct mistakes or improve policing, but to punish the tiniest infractions as harshly as possible, endangering not only continued employment, but actual freedom.

The end result would be a black mark upon an otherwise stellar career, resulting in job termination and making further employment in most fields unattainable.

Opinions? 

He's Dead...No Wait....Yep...Nope

This has the potential to be the most entertaining execution in US History:

• Tennessee plans to execute Byron Black on Tuesday for the 1988 murders of a woman and her two young daughters, despite concerns from his attorneys that a device implanted to restore his heartbeat could repeatedly shock him as he's put to death.

  The device - an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD - is at the center of a court battle that has been unfolding for several weeks. Black's attorneys want the device deactivated at or immediately before his lethal injection Tuesday morning.

  If it isn't, they say, the effects of the lethal injection drugs will cause the ICD to shock Black's heart, perhaps repeatedly, in an attempt to restore it to a normal rhythm. This will cause Black a prolonged and torturous execution, the attorneys argue, violating Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

So he'll be subject to lethal injection, which first renders him unconscious, then paralyzes muscular responses to stimuli, then stops his heart. Meanwhile the defibrillator (placed there at taxpayer expense no doubt) will (theoretically) be trying to restart his heart with a series of electrical shocks, while the drugs continue to do their work.

Personally, we're hoping that it takes a few hours, and he feels every single minute of it. That would be a small measure of justice for the deceased and their family. 

Off Duty Shooting

The lame stream media report:

• An off-duty Chicago police officer was involved in a South Side shootout on Sunday morning, officials said. Police said the shooting happened just before 6:15 a.m. in the Back of the Yards neighborhood's 4800-block of South Bishop Street.

  Multiple armed people confronted the officer, and there was an exchange of gunfire. The officer was not shot but suffered a minor injury after being hit by broken glass. The officer was taken to a local hospital for observation.

The much much better CWB report:

• Three masked gunmen leapt out of a stolen car and opened fire on an off-duty Chicago police officer in Back of the Yards on Sunday morning, according to preliminary information provided to CWBChicago.

  At approximately 6:13 a.m., a 30-year-old police officer was near her garage in the 4800 block of South Bishop Street when a white sedan approached. Three masked men reportedly exited the vehicle and began shooting at her. The officer returned fire, according to CPD. The gunmen then fled north through an alley in their car, which was driven by a fourth person.

  The officer suffered a minor injury from broken glass and was transported to a hospital for observation. No other injuries were reported.

  Less than an hour later, Chicago firefighters responded to a car fire near 46th Street and Winchester Avenue, where they found a white four-door Lexus stolen from Indiana engulfed in flames. Authorities said it matched the description of the suspects’ vehicle.

So not just random, but planned as they obviously followed her to her garage. Stay alert boys and girls, check those mirrors, maybe even circle the block once to see if anyone follows you into your alley. 

Glad you're okay Officer - enjoy the last days of summer off the street. No Billiken, Air and Water Show or that teen takeover for you!

This Keeps Happening

Hey Conehead, the signs aren't working:

• An 18-year-old man was shot and critically injured during a robbery aboard a Red Line train at the 95th Street station late Saturday night, according to Chicago police.

  The shooting happened around 10:02 p.m. inside a train car when an unknown male offender approached the victim and demanded his belongings, CPD said. The robber then pulled out a gun and opened fire, striking the victim in the chest and right side. Paramedics transported the victim to the University of Chicago Hospital.

  An officer who reviewed surveillance video said CTA footage shows the gunman fleeing the station in a group. The group was described as Black males, all wearing ski masks, who ran east on 95th Street and boarded a northbound bus, possibly a #3 King Drive.

Gee, an accurate description of the offenders....must be CWB!

In the meantime, all those metal detectors and x-ray screenings along random frisking and body cavity searches don't seem to be stopping people from bringing guns on the CTA. 

Planned Destruction?

We're having a difficult time interpreting this any other way:

• Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced late Friday afternoon that he signed the Chicago pension sweetener bill.

  This is one of the most financially reckless decisions in modern Illinois history, on par with Mayor Richard M. Daley’s parking meter deal.

  Chicagoans deserve to know the truth about why Pritzker did it. And that may require going to court. More on that in a bit.

  What happens now?

  The governor’s timing could not have been worse.

  The city already faces a $1.2 billion budget deficit, the Chicago Transit Authority is staring down a fiscal cliff, and Chicago Public Schools is in financial freefall.

  The bill adds more than $11 billion in unfunded liabilities to two of the worst-funded pension systems in the entire country: Chicago police and fire. Those funds will fall to 18% funded, speeding up a march toward insolvency. The bill will also almost certainly trigger a downgrade for Chicago’s credit rating, returning the city to “junk” status.

There's a lot to unwrap here, but adding $11 billion in unfunded liabilities to a pension fund already staggering into a sea of red ink is reckless in the extreme. Fata$$ and Springfield aren't offering any assistance to Chicago, just stacking on the future insolvency.

Any word from the unions yet about what this all means? And don't be tooting the benefits today if the whole thing goes belly up tomorrow. 

And Conehead better start looking at cutting waste, redundancy and closing under-utilized schools as a first step toward fiscal sanity. 

UPDATE: Here's another article about things. 

Water Bill for What?

We guess this is one way for Conehead to balance the budget:

• A senior citizen's vacant home in the Back of the Yards neighborhood racked up a staggering $233,000 water bill, despite not having any plumbing for years.

  Diane Carli, 82, said the city of Chicago is threatening to garnish her pension, and she's looking for help because the Water Department isn't backing down on an outrageous bill she says is clearly an error.

  You don't need 20/20 vision to see this house in the Back of Yards neighborhood is abandoned.

The City contacted her and told her she needed a new water meter installed, even with no plumbing in the house, and then proceeded to bill her for half-a-million gallons of water that they claim the meter tracked over six months.

After repeated complaints, the City replaced the meter with a new one, which then registered ZERO gallons of water used. 

But the bill still stands. 

Another "Freebie"

Porky keeps sticking the government's nose where it doesn't belong, spending money that Illinois doesn't have:

• Illinois public schools will soon be required to give students annual mental health screenings under a new law just signed by Gov. JB Pritzker.

  The bill, SB1560, requires all school districts to provide screening in grades 3 through 12 at least once a year, starting in the 2027-2028 school year. It also partners with psychiatric hospitals to inform patients about the state's BEACON (Behavioral Health Care and Ongoing Navigation) Portal as a pathway to care.

After recent years where "educators" have been keeping secrets about kids from parents regarding the "educators" grooming and psychologically abusing students, we'd be highly skeptical of any screening promoted by the government.

We're told there is an "opt out" for parents who correctly don't trust the politicians to have children's best interests at heart following the vaccine follies of just a few years ago.

We'd feel comfortable speculating that this "mandatory" screening will have more than a couple check boxes that a head shrinker can check that will come back to haunt anyone daring to apply for an FOID card in the near future.

T-Shirt Fundraiser

From our email:

• Grunt Style is honoring one of our own. Sgt. Ed Dougherty was an amazing human being and a great Sergeant in the 008th district. Sadly, after having a stroke and dealing with numerous health issues, he took his own life unexpectedly. If you’d like to support the cause and purchase a shirt, here’s the link. Please share.

Shirt pictured here:

Link here.

Comments closed - informational post only. 

Still Missing ShotSpotter

The ticker never stops moving up over at the CWB blog:

• A man and a 19-year-old woman were shot on back-to-back nights in two Chicago neighborhoods where the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection network once operated—but in both cases, nobody called 911 to report the gunfire.

  Instead, a passerby found the man lying in the street, and a Chicago Fire Department ambulance crew discovered the woman bleeding from gunshot wounds. The 35-year-old man later died.

Still no movement that we've heard of regarding a replacement company or a rebidding of the previous contract. 

Anyone know if ShotSpotter pulled their equipment off of poles and out of neighborhoods? Or was it just left up there for the scrappers to come by with a ladder and get what they could?

Another Teacher Pervert

How many complaints of sexual misconduct were there involving CPS employees the past decade or so? A few hundred? Here's another one:

• A 27-year-old Chicago Public Schools teacher has been charged in federal court with receiving and distributing child pornography online, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday. Federal prosecutors say Jaron Woodsley used the encrypted messaging app Telegram last fall to trade explicit material with a Colorado man who was the subject of an FBI investigation.

  Over the course of four days last September, Woodsley allegedly sent at least 13 videos of child sexual abuse material and received six videos in return, including one that prosecutors say involved a 3-year-old boy the Colorado man “had access to.”

Here's to hoping he gets a lengthy stay in General Population.

Statewide Lagging

With a billionaire governor who inherited every penny of his wealth:

• Illinois’ real gross domestic product fell by 2.2% between January and March of 2025, according to latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

  The national GDP declined 0.5% in the same period. Illinois ranked 42nd for its real GDP growth rate in the first quarter of the year.

  The sharp drop is not isolated. It is part of a long-term pattern of stagnation.

  Since the first quarter of 2019, Illinois’ gross domestic product has only grown by 5.2% – fourth-slowest in the nation. The national economy grew by 15.1% during that time.

And he wants to run for president based on what exactly?

Not success, that's for sure. 

Twenty-Six "Ideas"

What they mean is "twenty-six ideas to relieve you of your hard earned money:"

• Staring down the barrel of a $1.12 billion shortfall, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration on Thursday distributed a list of more than two dozen revenue generating ideas to take the temperature of City Council members who refused to raise property taxes a year ago.

  The itemized list includes 26 ideas — along with high- and low-end revenue estimates. Eighteen of the ideas originated with members of the City Council. Seven came from civic organizations. One simply states “external stakeholder.”

  The biggest potential money makers are an increase in property taxes with a high-end estimate of $396 million, and an increase in the $9-a-month garbage collection fee with a potential yield of $296.9 million.

More:

• Other big-ticket items include: imposing a congestion surcharge ($103 million); raising taxes on liquor ($90 million), restaurant meals ($20 million), bottled water ($27.9 million) and checkout bags ($13 million); extending the amusement tax to resellers ($38 million) and imposing a city tax on sports betting ($17 million).

  Lump sum “payments-in-lieu-of-taxes” imposed on hospitals, churches universities and other non-profits exempt from paying property taxes made the chart compiled by the mayor’s finance team with an annual revenue estimate of $52 million.

Many of these taxes and fees can be avoided by simply shopping in the suburbs. Southeast siders can cross state lines easily. Eat out less, smoke, less, gamble less, etc. More people (and businesses) will simply pack it in and leave. 

Of those twenty-six proposals, not a single one seems to deal with cost cutting. Not a single school has been closed, even when enrollment falls below 10% of capacity. That proposal to only pick up garbage every other week? If you thought the rat problem was bad now....whoa nelly.

They make useless pronouncements about "efficiencies" but make no effort to cut middle management. Here's a clue - if a government job title has the word "assistant" in it, it's a useless spot....and that includes Assistant Deputy Superintendents and Assistant Principals and Assistant Anything at City Hall. 

We're already under a "hiring freeze" as another 200 cops are on tap to retire by the end of the year, but not a single spot has been cut from Conehead's 145 cop detail. It's going to get so much worse.

#1 Again!!!

Leading major cities in total murders for years.

Most rat infested city for a decade or so. Same with bedbugs.

Top of the list for multi-billion dollar industries leaving town.

Now, worst oxygen:

• Chicago officially has the worst air quality in the world.

  As a haze of Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed the metro area, no other major city in the world had air pollution worse than Chicago as of midday Thursday, according a world ranking by IQ Air, a Swiss air-technology company.

  “The air quality is officially dangerous in Chicago,” says Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs at the Chicago-based Respiratory Health Association. “It’s going to send people to the emergency room. Some people may die because of what they’re breathing,” he said.

It's supposed to be Canadian wildfires, but some claim it's the amount of lead in the air, too.

Lollapalooza

We had forgotten this monstrosity was going on this weekend.

Any Department issues with it or have they shifted most of it to private event security and such? 

Man, we do not miss that kind of stuff at all. 

Get that P-Day In!

You're going to want to avoid this:

Let's see - no curfews, no spike strips, little-to-no traffic enforcement, a bunch of fireworks going off downtown and sporadic looting. 

Sounds like Conehead's lil darlings will be out in force.

Don't Demonize!

Stolen Gun Lawsuit

The depositions for this one are going to be interesting....if they ever see the light of day that is:

• A woman who was shot with a Glock handgun that had been stolen from a South Side police station and then was used in a series of violent crimes has sued the city of Chicago, saying the gun was taken by police, and the theft was covered up.

  Twanda Willingham was shot in her right thigh early last Aug. 14 as she was parking near her home in Auburn Gresham, according to police records and the lawsuit, which was filed this week in Cook County circuit court.

  The .45-caliber Glock 21 had been turned in at a police gun buyback at St. Sabina Church on Dec. 2, 2023. It was then taken to the tactical team office at the Gresham District station.

  “CPD Officers are also not immune to the allure of Glock pistols,” the lawsuit says. “CPD Officers assigned to work the Turn-In event at St. Sabina remarked on how good the Glock 21 pistol looked. CPD Officers who were not working the buyback event at St. Sabina showed up at the tactical team office to get a look at the Glock 21 pistol.”

The witness list is going to be extensive, and not only because of the paper trail.

Was Yoyo was still in charge of IAD when this was swept under the rug "investigated"?

Dumb Idea Inbound

This is going to trigger yet another business exodus:

• [Mayor] Johnson is in a bind of sorts. His 2023 campaign promise never to raise property taxes or fire city workers looks pretty stupid right now. Johnson still says he won't raise property taxes, but his own comptroller told the media that property taxes are "likely" going up.

  The mayor is falling back on an old idea that was discarded more than a decade ago by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel: a "head tax" on corporations, charging companies $8 per employee.

  "Last year major corporations such as Caterpillar, Citadel, Boeing and Tyson Foods announced relocations out of the Chicago area. Guggenheim Partners more quietly made moves to leave the city and join fellow investment firm Citadel in Miami," reports Hot Air's Beege Welborn.

  Expect the exodus of major corporations to pick up if the "head tax" is passed.

A company could (and has) left a dozen employees in a downtown office for a "boutique address" while centering operations with hundreds of employees outside of city limits, defeating the minimum head count that triggers the tax.

Alternatively, it costs very little to "relocate" a company by simply re-routing IP addresses, redirecting telephone switchboards, and incorporating in a different state. 

This is why downtown is deserted during the day, a virtual ghost town overnight and sporting a vacancy rate higher than it's been in years. And it's indicative of the doom spiral accelerating - higher taxes on a diminishing number of companies. 

Curious....

Is the media reading the blog again? Last week, we wrote about election integrity efforts via a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, including this obvious fraud:

• In sworn testimony before a House committee (linked here), Thirty-four of Illinois' 101 counties didn't even file Federal paperwork stating that they had made even a preliminary effort to verify voters existing - and in nineteen of those counties, not a single voter was removed from the rolls for having died in the past two years. 

Wednesday, the Slum Times "discovered" what was going on and gave it their own left wing spin:

• The Trump administration has asked Illinois election officials for a copy of the state’s voter registration database, including sensitive data about individual voters and detailed information about the state’s efforts to scrub ineligible voters from the rolls.

  In a letter dated Monday, July 28, lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division also asked for a list of all the election officials in Illinois who were responsible for carrying out federally mandated efforts to keep the state’s voter rolls accurate and up to date during a two-year period leading up to the November 2024 elections.

  State officials did not immediately comment on the request Tuesday. But David Becker, a former attorney in the DOJ’s voting section who now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the letter is similar to requests filed in multiple other states and that it goes far beyond the Justice Department’s legal authority.

Election integrity is a national issue, more so in traditionally scandal plagued states that harvest votes from dead people, from people who left the state years ago and ILLEGAL ALIENS who get Driver Licenses and end up with voter registrations.

They "discovered" the crossing guard cuts to private / Catholic schools somewhere after we mentioned it, too.

Yoyo Stripped of Control

About damn time someone took responsibility away from this waddling disaster (Tribune article behind a paywall):

• The second-in-command of the Chicago Police Department appears to have been stripped of virtually all of her duties related to the department’s daily operations, according to a new organizational chart sent Wednesday to CPD personnel.

  Yolanda Talley has overseen much of the department’s day-to-day operations since March 2025, when Supt. Larry Snelling promoted her to the role of first deputy more than a year into his tenure at the helm of CPD.

  Under the new order, released to department members in an administrative message, the first deputy’s office will supervise the department’s records division, which is staffed by civilians, its alternate response section, which handles non-emergency calls, its Office of Community Policing and the department’s detached services division, which liases with other public bodies like the Office of Emergency Management and Communication.

No word if her recent run in trying to park in a secured CFD parking lot was the final straw, but the list of offenses that should have disqualified her from even holding this position is extensive:

• Talley, a 30-year veteran of the department, was previously the head of the bureau of internal affairs. She is the first Black woman to serve as first deputy superintendent, reporting directly to Snelling. Prior to internal affairs, Talley was commander of the Austin District (15th) on the West Side.

  In February 2022, while Talley was still heading the bureau of internal affairs, her personal vehicle was involved in a narcotics arrest in the Harrison District (11th). The first deputy’s niece was driving the car, and a man in the passenger seat was seen by police throwing a package of heroin out the window before officers placed him under arrest. In body-worn camera footage previously obtained by the Tribune, Talley’s niece told responding officers, “Don’t even worry about it cause my auntie’s probably your boss.”

  Talley’s niece was not arrested, but the man later faced narcotics charges and ultimately was sentenced to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Former CPD Superintendent David Brown later said there was “no evidence of any misconduct by Chief Talley.”

That proximity to dope deliveries IN HER PERSONAL CAR alone should have kept her out of the job.

The PPP Loans, too. 

The fact that she got her car back without it being impounded should have brought her up on charges.

And the Tribune helpfully leaves out the fact that the "man in the passenger seat" ended up being the informant on the Anjenette Young search warrant that cost the city taxpayers millions in settlement money.

For all you people with little institutional knowledge of the CPD, here's a short manual:

• In the old days, the First Deputy ran the show. When we arrived, it was Townsend and he was connected enough that they waived the Mandatory Retirement at 63 requirement. That is the definition of power. After Townsend, we think it was John Thomas? We didn't really pay attention that much because we were busy having fun in those days. But we knew where the buck stopped.
• When Cline came in, he reversed the roles entirely. He wanted the headlines....and the power. So the First became a figurehead. Dana Starks was made First, but he had almost none of the power aside from promoting his people. Cline ran the show and sowed a lot of seeds of destruction. 
• When the mayors started appointing outsiders, the First regained a bunch of the previously held power because they were familiar with the players and the power structure.  J-Fledgar tried to upend it by shaking up exempts, but the First just moved all thirty of them around - no one got demoted. McCarthy was too busy screaming "CompStat!" and skirt chasing and drinking, so the First gathered more power. Beck froze everything in place, knowing he wasn't there for long, and the First was getting back Townsend-like powers.
• Then with Eddie "the Underwear Arsonist" Johnson, we were back to moron for a superintendent while the First and subordinate exempts actually "ran" things. Which brings us to today.

Unfortunately, the damage has been done along with the political class having far more influence on the Department that ever before. The second and third tier exempts had no idea how to run a department, chased away experienced people with brains and put the "friends and family promotional plan" on warp speed. There was no Townsend or Maurer waiting in the wings, just a couple pretenders.

Larritorious was a gym teacher who probably hasn't seen or signed an arrest report in fifteen years, let alone approved a TRR, and he was gifted how many promotions inside of 30 months? They wouldn't even allow him to pick a First for over a year, instead hanging onto a retiree with as much baggage as a small aircraft.

So Yoyo's fall from grace is certainly a good start. Demotion would be better.

CTU Political Tentacles

Austin Berg is the Executive Director of the Chicago Policy Center and political gadfly who shines a very bright spotlight on the political underbelly of the Machine and the corruption contained within. This piece he wrote shows how embedded the CTU is in the upcoming elections and how much money they're prepared to spend to keep owning Conehead's ass:

• The Chicago Teachers Union plans to spend more than $4 million on local politics ahead of the next mayoral election, according to a leaked internal budget document shared with The Last Ward. The budget also shows record spending on union overhead and officer salaries.

  But how much influence that political spending will actually create remains unclear, with recent races suggesting CTU money carries more baggage with Chicago voters than ever before.

  Let’s dive in.

And dive in he does, with leaked documents, easy-to-read explanations and the result of the increasingly toxic atmosphere promoted by the CTU....along with the fallout that might be expected.

Go read it all. We aren't sure how SubStack works, but this article seems to be out in the open and free for now. 

Look Who Caught Up

What would the media do without independent voices tipping them off to things they ought to have discovered on their own? You know....like "journalism" is supposed to be:

• Grappling with a massive budget deficit, Chicago Public Schools is ending the practice of providing crossing guards for intersections that exclusively serve private school students.

  Chicago Public Schools said providing crossing guards for private schools is outside its core mission. And facing a $734 million deficit, officials are looking for savings wherever they can find them. The district also said at least two of the crossing guards were students who attend suburban Catholic schools.

  All together, CPS is eliminating 102 crossing guard positions, a third of which only serve private school students. CPS had 732 crossing guard positions last year.

And as we alluded to this past Saturday, it would appear that pretty much all of the cuts are at private / Catholic schools. Other cuts were at those "Safe Passage" locations already manned by parents getting $10-per-hour or more.

Did you know that at many private schools, the teachers have a rotating schedule where they actually act as crossing guards? We say try that at CPS, but you know the CTU would demand even more money than the crossing guards were making.

Bodies Litter the Streets

CFD overtime cuts??

• Hey SCC. Here is a good one for our friends at C F.D. Yesterday morning C F.D. ambulance job at the bus stop at 47th Campbell in 009. They get there and person is D.O.A. They call for us but no cars available at the time. What do they do? Put a white sheet over the body and leave. Some citizen calls 911 a half hour later and asks "Is this how something like this is handled? Beat Sgt asks for a C.F.D.supervisor on scene. Gets in touch with assigned ambulance who relates they left because it was shift change.Can't make this up and all documented in death investigation report.

You think there will be a directive to "allow" overtime so dead bodies aren't sitting in the bus shelters?

Stop Already

Back in the day, you used to be able to access the blog on Department computers. So many people were doing it however, that Phil Cline had the eggheads ban it - it seems that so many people were reading and commenting that it directly affected work, and you can't have government employees being inefficient!

Someone should remind everyone that's doing their shopping online using Department computers, too:

We're assuming this is off-duty after working hours, because there isn't a Watch Operations Lieutenant in the city that would allow this clothing during work hours, right?

Good Idea

Can they correct a wrong done to a fine Officer?

• Former leaders of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) are urging federal prosecutors and Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill-Burke to bring charges against three members of the Spanish Cobras street gang in the 2011 murder of Officer Clifton Lewis.

  Lewis, an off-duty officer working as a security guard at a West Side convenience store, was shot during an attempted robbery.

  Alexander Villa, Edgardo Colon and Tyrone Clay were indicted in connection with the murder but had their charges dropped by former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

  Former Chicago FOP President Mark Donahue and former Second Vice President Martin Preib contacted National FOP President Patrick Yoes to request federal involvement and urged O’Neill-Burke to refile capital murder charges.

We'd certainly like to see Justice done for Officer Lewis and his family (he was a friend). Finding an appropriate Federal charge would certainly be a big step in the right direction, not to mention further reinforcing the correct perception that Crimesha was a useless turd of a states attorney.

Courtesy Abused

Way to go Yoyo!

• A couple of weeks ago, a woman approached a firefighter standing in front of a downtown firehouse and asked if she could park in firefighter parking lot which was locked. Firefighter responded no that's just for members working that day.

  Woman responded well I'm the first deputy superintendent for CPD open the the gate. While it should be noted didn't identify herself from start, civilian clothes, civilian car, didn't show badge, or ID.

  Firefighter responded I'm sorry but I don't know you but you can park on the street right there that's reserved for us. She asked if she would get a ticket which the firefighter shrugged his shoulders and said I don't know.

  She rolled her eyes and walked away to high-end restaurant across street and FaceTimed someone ranting while showing firehouse. Within minutes CFD exempts pulled up to firehouse to scold the members.

  We have no problem giving you guys parking when you properly identify yourself with ID, professional courtesy goes both ways.

Yoyo makes $226,872 per year - not counting what she might charge her niece for loaning her the vehicle used to deliver heroin on the west side. And here she is hassling a firefighter, calling CFD supervisors, and wasting their time coming to scold someone who was just making sure CFD property was occupied by CFD personnel.

Missed Payment? (not likely)

THIS IS AN UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR FROM A COMMENT SECTION in regard to an allegation that the City missed a scheduled payment to Nationwide Retirement Solutions (deferred comp):

• Ask your FOP rep.
  The deduction was taken as usual from your paycheck, However, the payment was not accepted by nationwide.
  
  The story that was given to me by the FOP is that the city submitted Their lump sum to Nationwide with a shorted amount, therefore nationwide did not accept the payment and no purchasing of investments went through. So until the city rectifies this discrepancy, no investments have been planned.
  
  This is not just a problem with police. It is also on the fire end and I’m sure other city services. 

THIS IS AN UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR FROM A COMMENT SECTION.

We don't have a way to verify it and as we said twice already, it's an UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR.

As we understood Deferred Comp during our careers, you decided how much to have set aside, the City makes the adjustments, the deferred money goes to Nationwide Retirement Solutions and is invested at your direction. It was never an issue during our years.

But as the city finances continue to degrade over the years and Conehead attempts to run a budget with a billion dollar shortfall while spending tens of millions on illegal aliens, we could see it becoming an issue.

AGAIN, THIS IS AN UNSUBSTANTIATED RUMOR FROM A COMMENT SECTION and long time readers know that occasionally, we give airtime to rumors, if only to stomp on them and stop the misinformation that floats around.

But He Promised to be Good

Another SAFE-T Act failure, this time for someone attempting to murder two police officers:

• A man accused of trying to kill two Chicago police officers is back behind bars after allegedly cutting off his ankle monitor and forcing a U.S. Marshals task force to use tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and a police dog to flush him out of hiding.

  Shaquille Parker, 32, was initially held on $10 million bail after prosecutors said he fired a gun at two uniformed officers who tried to stop him for a suspected drug deal in the 7100 block of South Cornell Avenue in August 2023. One officer returned fire, striking Parker in the side. Prosecutors said body camera video, ballistics testing, and Parker’s own admission justify the attempted murder charges.

  Despite the seriousness of the allegations, Judge Laura Ayala-Gonzalez decided to release Parker on an ankle monitor in September 2024 after his attorney argued that he deserved release under the SAFE-T Act’s no-cash-bail provisions.

  The lawyer claimed Parker was experiencing serious, ongoing medical issues related to his gunshot injury. They also claimed that other inmates held Parker hostage in a Cook County jail bathroom where he was beaten, kicked, and stabbed because his wife would not transfer $1,500 to an outside bank account.

  Ayala-Gonzalez’s decision unraveled on June 16 when, according to authorities, Parker cut off his ankle monitor and disappeared.

He shot at two cops, got charged with attempted murder, admitted it during questioning....and he's still eligible for no bail ankle monitoring.

Crap reasoning to crap law - must be another DEI judge, and yet another confirmation that our decision to never vote for a judge in Cook County is the correct one.

Equal Opportunity Misery

So, they're not only screwing Midnight Officers. Now - it's everyone:

• the dept just scheduled a bunch of 2nd watch officers for training at 1900 hours after they've been sticking it to 1st watch officers for a while now by scheduling them for training at 0600 and 0700 hours.

  When downtown is told there aren't 8 hours between the regular tour of duty and training, they just shrug and say "adjust the start time."

  Adjusting hours doesn't help for shit not to mention how it affects families. Police couples have to burn time just so one can attend training. Family first? My ass

  PS And I know a bunch of 3rd Watch just got assigned to training at 0700hrs

Morons, one and all.

OT Cuts Coming?

Rumor from the comments:

• Many don’t know this, but after Bud Billiken the department intends to drastically cut back on all voluntary OT that doesn’t directly affect district operations. Only OT will be offered in order to man downed cars. Overtime related to missions and any extension of tour other than a late arrest will be one. Counter terrorism OT will be cut along with all other bureaus. Only a [???]  number will be allowed since that is outside funded OT. Traffic, robbery and violence missions are gone for watches, districts tac and units. The last “forced” ot will be for Bud Billiken, air and water and Labor Day for 4th watch and then Mexican independence weekend for the whole department. Otherwise, it’s going to be an OT desert.  

Of course, by then festival season will be over, the schools will be open and classes at the Academy (which are suspended until November anyway) will be starting up, so the Department can pretend to "cut" OT.

Until May 2026 that is. Then - unless there's been a massive change involving ten-hour days - OT will start up again because another 400 cops are scheduled to retire before next summer.

Look!

Accountability in some form!

• Nearly 375 workers in government agencies across Illinois engaged in misconduct related to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a long-running investigation by the state executive inspector general’s office has found.

  They either put in for and got PPP loans they didn’t qualify for or didn’t disclose to their government employers the side businesses they claimed to be running to get the money, according to the inspector general’s office.

  Susan Haling, the executive inspector general, began the investigation in 2022. Her office investigates wrongdoing involving state workers and employees of some local government agencies, including the CTA and PACE.

  The agency said Friday that it has found 373 people — out of 501 cases it has investigated involving suspected PPP fraud — engaged in some type of wrongdoing. Investigations involving 54 workers were closed in the year that ended June 30, state records show. Those cases involved about $1.19 million in suspicious PPP loans, according to the state agency. Two of those 54 employees ended up being fired. The rest resigned.

So a batting average of about 100% for all intents and purposes in terms of removing the criminals from the payroll. No word on how many were eligible to retie anyway, how many are currently collecting a pension and how much money was actually recovered.

And of all the government agencies being investigated, there don't seem to be any from OEMC or CPD, which were notoriously involved with a bit of the fraud. A quick search of the PPP database provided a roadmap to numerous offenders.

New Outdoor Bathrooms!

Look what they're installing across the west side:

• Dozens gathered Saturday morning as the since-demolished Illinois Black Panther Party headquarters was honored with a plaque in the sidewalk where it once stood on the Near West Side.

  It was one of 12 plaques to be placed around Chicago — as well as another in Peoria — denoting historic sites of the Black Panther Party in Illinois; the full set will be permanently placed before Oct. 15, said Leila Wills, executive director of the Historical Preservation Society of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. They were first revealed last October after a fight over how the organization’s legacy would be preserved.

  Billy Ché Brooks, former deputy minister of education for the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, said it was important for the party to tell its history through its members instead of letting others do it, and possibly distort it. 

If and when we manage to pass through the areas these plaques are installed, we'll be sure to leave a calling card on each. 

Trouble in Paradise

"Paradise" being 35th and Michigan:

• Apparently snelling and Talley have been locking horns lately and it’s not going so well. Allegedly the 1st deputies office is a mess and is pretty much unorganized chaos on a daily basis. Snelling finally got pissed and they got into it. [Unfortunately], there is nothing he can do about it.  

When you have two untalented hacks with something like six "merit" promotions between both, along with an embarrassing amount of #metoo stories and covered up criminal charges, you're going to have conflicts at the very least.

Why so Much OT?

We aren't sure if Channel 7 understands what this program is actually showing:

• More than $3 million. That's how much police overtime cost taxpayers last month alone.

  You can see how much the city is spending on those extra hours as the Office of Inspector General has created the "Sworn CPD Member Overtime Summary Dashboard."

  It provides information such as the rank and title of the officer, the reason for the overtime and the police district.

  The inspector general says the police department's overtime spending is larger than the entire budgets of many other city departments.

And why would the overtime budget be so large? Well, there are 277 police Beats in Chicago. To adequately man those beats, you need (at a minimum) 

• two officers on First Watch
• one officer on Second Watch
• two officers on Third Watch 

Remember, we're talking minimums here. We'd all like to see two on each watch, but that isn't happening. So that's a total of 1,385 Officers working every day just to man the beat cars. And one third of the Districts are RDO on any given day with the current schedule, so the math kind of works out to 2,078 Officers actively working beat cars and still getting their RDOs. 

Then supervision for twenty-two Districts, three Sectors per District:

• 1 sergeant per sector (+1 for RDO coverage) on three watches
• 2 lieutenants per District on three watches
• 1 captain per District
• 1 commander per District

We're up to 440 white shirts just for the Districts (again, minimum). The real numbers with furlough reliefs and such are significantly higher, but still, we haven't even cracked 4,000 with those basic numbers. Adding in a single wagon per watch makes little difference.

Anyone know the current manpower numbers? It's in the neighborhood of 9,000, nearly double the basic numbers we just came up with....and they still can't man the 277 beat cars on a daily basis. 

You want to track down the OT expenditures, it's far past time to take a long hard look at where the manpower is hidden. We've been pointing it out for years:

• Commander offices with seven-to-ten people for what should be four spots maximum;
• Detective Areas with PO's answering phones instead of ::gasp:: detectives....or civilians;
• FTO's working at HQ where they'll never teach a recruit;
• there are FTO timekeepers - a spot that was civilian at one point; 
• Academy staff with eight Officers teaching an eight-hour course - one for each hour;
• Homan Square with entire units that exist only to push paper and never see the street;
• HQ....have you tried parking there in the past ten years?

Imagine the massive cost savings if police officers did actual police work in police districts. 

What Could it Be???

A nationwide trend?

• A new study shows Chicago’s crime decline is part of a national trend that’s driving murders, carjackings and sexual assaults below pre-pandemic levels.

  The report from the Council on Criminal Justice shows nationally, violent crime rates for the first half of 2025 were lower than in the first half of 2019. In Chicago the drop in homicides from 2019 to 2025 was significantly larger than the national average.

It's almost like someone turned off a....leaky faucet or porous or an open door or something.

And then, took a sponge or a mop and bucket or something similar and started cleaning up and deporting the mess that had been inflicted on the entire country, but especially in the place where the "water" was deeper than the rest of the country. 

But that would make sense. It must be something else.