Assaults on CPD Way Up

Anyone see this in the DOJ Report?

• Chicago police officers faced multiple attacks in 2016, one of the most violent years in the city’s history.
  
  Thirty-one officers were shot at in 2016, a 82 percent increase over 2015 numbers, the Chicago Police Department told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Only 17 officers were shot at in 2015.
  
  Nine officers reported gun-shot wounds in 2016, the CPD told The DCNF, but zero died as a result.
  
  “These emboldened criminals are responsible for destroying families and communities as well as dozens of attacks on Chicago police officers in 2016,” Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said at a press conference.

Sooooo....Officers being attacked at a higher rate just might translate into and higher number of incidents of Use of Force?

Hey Special Ed? Any way we can get the racial breakdown of the assailants? Or is that a "no-go zone" for you? Rahm told you not to defend the Department?

Narcan Order Coming?

From an e-mail:

• ...heads up, new order is in the works to get us all trained with Narcan and no more OD dupes to the ambos. We will administer and transport ourselves. Order is written and just going through the approval with CFD and CPD.
  
  And CFD is footing the bill for training and equiping us.

Any Waiver of Liability in the works? Supposedly, this is administered as a nasal spray. So what if the addict doesn't react? How many doses are we authorized to give?

What if the addict is so far gone, he ain't never coming back? Are we to pronounce them? Seems you need a paramedic for that.

What if he walks to your squad car for transport and goes down again, maybe this time a heart attack from the years of drug abuse. We're going to wait how longer for ambulance to arrive?

What if you walk him to the squad and he decides not to go? He's not in custody, so what's the liability if he walks off and dies pater? He already ingested the drugs, so what's the PC to detain him?

Let's go full-on stupid - what if you don't get there fast enough for Rahm, the junkie dies and someone says you deliberately slow-rolled the response knowing it was "just an OD, just another junkie." Who's going to make that determination - the DOJ? We're risking our careers, livelihood and property for someone who purposefully, willingly puts poison in their bodies?

Even better, will an ISR be completed?

So many questions, so much liability.

The Report

We're going to take a day or so to read it. So far, there's nothing surprising in it. In fact, we based an entire 10.5 years of blogging pointing out just about everything covered in the DOJ report:

• Training is inadequate
• Promotions are crooked
• Discipline is non-existent if you're connected

Somehow we missed the racism of tens-of-thousands of minorities killing tens-of-thousands of other minorities. Don't know how we missed it.

You can use this thread to point out the inanities of the DOJ rush to judgement.

We say "rush" because while it took nearly two years to find that Baltimore (a city with a black mayor, a black chief prosecutor, a black police chief and a department that's majority black) was inescapably racist, it only took 13 months to find CPD (a department almost five times as large), was also inescapably racist.

Buy Your Own?

Body cameras:

• MISHAWAKA, Ind. (AP) — The northern Indiana city of Mishawaka has a new policy that allows police officers to wear body cameras if they purchase the equipment themselves.
  
  The policy went into effect last week after the city and police department discussed the issue for a year to work out guidelines, including how to store and handle the recordings.
  
  Patrolman Brian Long tells the South Bend Tribune he is wearing a body camera to give him peace of mind. He calls it a "good insurance policy." Long says the camera can gather evidence and is a way to establish trust with the community. He says it also is a safety net if officers need to prove they were correct.
  
  Uniform division chief Jason Stefaniak says about 10 officers are wearing their own cameras and about a dozen others are considering buying them.

As an added bonus, you should be able to keep a copy for yourself and circulate around to Hollywood agents to see if you can get "discovered."

Wait.....What?

Sneed comes up with some stuff that just makes us shake our heads sometimes:

• Activist priest Michael Pfleger predicts the Chicago Police Department is going to get a licking when the clock stops ticking Friday.

Really? Awesome - what kind of licking?

• “I was told by Vanita Gupta,head of the department’s civil rights division, that the Chicago Police probe by the Department of Justice is going to send a message to the rest of the country when it comes to the abuse of civil rights,” said Pfleger, a Roman Catholic pastor whose South Side parish has been ravaged by drugs, street gangs and murder.
  
  • To wit: The U.S. Department of Justice is releasing a yearlong report on civil rights and constitutional violations by the Chicago Police Department on Friday, which could place Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s political career on tenterhooks.
  
  “She told me there would be no limits on who they would talk to,” he said. “No place they would not investigate and search. No one would be protected. It was a search to find the truth,” said Pfleger, who tells Sneed he was interviewed by the DOJ six times last year.....

Wait, what? Pfleger was interviewed 6 times by the DOJ? And McCarthy was interviewed how many again? Oh yeah - zero. What could this pfake pfony priest possibly have had insight into that McCarthy didn't?

If that doesn't tell every decent thinking person in the city what this report is all about, then there is no hope for Chicago. The premier paleface apologist for thug culture and disobedience of diocesan rules is somehow an expert on police procedure? If that doesn't take the cake.....

Rahm? You're letting this pissant run around telling everyone he has more information than you do? Letting Sneed imply that your political career is on "tenterhooks"? Phfleger is talking to the DOJ more than you it looks like. Is the tutu a little too-too tight around the nether regions lately?

And Blase? Not one fucking dime.

DOJ Day

And that's all the Sun Times can talk about (seeing as how they're all professionally vested in maintaining the current narrative).

First, Rahm says it's coming no matter what! (...but....)

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday there is no turning back on the road to police reform, but he would not promise to turn the agreement in principle he intends to sign with the U.S. Justice Department into a consent decree.

Really? He's not promising to sign the agreement so we can find out what's in the agreement? He's actually taking the smart road? Or course he is - he knows that there is going to be zero funding coming from DC to run a Consent Decree. And if he's really unlucky, Trump is going to undercut all of the so-called "sanctuary cities," so Rahm's coffers are going to be extremely bare shortly.

McCarthy is still making his case:

• Former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy blasted the Justice Department on Thursday, saying the feds have wrongly focused on whether officers have been stopping African-Americans disproportionately.
  
  McCarthy also blamed City Hall for “flipping over the table” on Chicago cops in 2016.
  
  [...]
  
  “They’ve already adopted the battle cry over and over again that we are disproportionately stopping African-Americans, and their conclusion is that we are biased and racially profiling,” he said of the DOJ. “They’re wrong.”
  
  McCarthy pointed to statistics on officers’ street stops in 2013 and 2014 to highlight his position that policing during his tenure was based on crime data — and didn’t violate citizens’ rights.
  
  The statistics, which he had previously presented during a speech to the City Club of Chicago in September, show the percentage of black and white people stopped over that period were almost identical to the percentage of black and white people suspected of crimes.

As we've been pointing out for years. Anyone remember this map?

Of course you don't, because no one in the media reported it except HeyJackass.com. It shows exactly where all the killings were last year. And wonder of wonders, those kind of look like economically depressed, drug market infested, majority-minority neighborhoods where "Hope and Change" went to die. Thinking people might assume that that's where the most police resources are sent...and they might be correct, except that's where all the accusations of stopping too many minorities will be coming from, so the cops are essentially handcuffed from doing anything that might possibly be construed as a Civil Rights violation.

Insurance Debacle Hits Media

And the City claims they're working on a fix (warning - Tribune link):

• Some city employees who have gone to doctors and pharmacists since the start of the New Year have been told they no longer have health insurance, a mistake in the automatic renewal process that City Hall officials said Wednesday would soon be corrected.
  
  "The city's health care vendors reported a technical error to the city's benefits division last week and are working to correct the error," city spokeswoman Mary Kay Accurso said in a prepared statement, adding that it affected both HMO and PPO members. "These employee insurance plans remain active, and there should be no issues accessing coverage once the issue is resolved."
  
  The problem became public when someone anonymously posted on a Chicago police blog about being turned away from a doctor's office and also being told by a pharmacy worker that his wife's $10 co-pay for generic heart medication would now cost him $590. Others weighed in with similar experiences, identifying Blue Cross-Blue Shield as the insurer.

Because Blue Cross-Blue Shield is so unaware of how to run an insurance business that they'd just assume without any sort of notice that the entire City of Chicago (one of their biggest clients) would stop insuring its employees on the First of January. That's totally believable.

Armed Good Samaritan

Sometimes, backup comes from the least expected places:

• A man traveling to California came to the rescue of a wounded state trooper who was struggling with the gunman who had shot him on an isolated stretch of Interstate 10, authorities said.
  
  The man, who was with his wife, stopped his car when he came upon a rollover accident and saw the struggle, according to Col. Frank Milstead, Arizona Department of Public Safety director.
  
  The trooper told the man he needed help, and the man returned to his car, got his gun and fired at the assailant when he refused to listen to orders to stop and back away, Milstead said.

Good thing an upstanding citizen with a gun was around to help.

DOJ Report Friday!

Let the Countdown begin! (warning - Tribune link)

• The U.S. Department of Justice plans to announce it has found the Chicago Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violated the U.S. Constitution, two sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Tribune.
  
  U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will make the announcement Friday, according to the sources, but the details were still being worked out Wednesday.
  
  It could not be learned how sweeping the conclusions of the 13-month investigation would be, but the two sources said the Justice Department found constitutional abuses of citizens by Chicago police.

Lynch, who ought to have been indicted herself for meeting with the husband of a subject under investigation for numerous breaches of Federal Law, is flying in for the big event.

The Sun Times has a quote from McCompStat about how disappointed he is:

• Word of the Justice Department announcement came as former Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said he is “disappointed” that federal investigators who have been probing the police department’s practices didn’t consult with him.
  
  “I was never interviewed, so I can only speculate what is in that report based on what I’ve seen in other cities,” McCarthy told a reporter in a text message.

Garry, no one has to consult with you because they know exactly what you're going to say - the same thing you said in New York and the same thing you said in Newark, both Departments which ended up under some form of Federal Consent Decree......

Hey, wait a minute.....maybe that's the connection? Anywhere Garry goes, a Federal Consent Decree follows? Stop the Presses!!!

U of C to Offer Reward - to Lie

So much for "Truth" we suppose:

• The University of Chicago’s admissions office is offering a reward to its student tour guides who can dispel the notion among prospective students and their families that the city is "unsafe" and "scary."
  
  In an email obtained by The Chicago Maroon, Colleen Belak, the assistant director of admissions at the university, offered a $500 cash prize to those who find "a creative way to dispel the negative perception" about Chicago's violence epidemic.
  
  “If you’ve paid attention to the national news (or Donald Trump’s tweets) over the last few months, you’ll notice that the city of Chicago is often painted with a broad brush as an ‘unsafe’ or ‘scary’ place to reside,” Belak wrote to the campus tour guide listhost. “Of course, certain realities should not be ignored, but at the end of the day most of us are proud Chicago residents with a deep love of the city.”
  
  “With that spirit in mind, we have an opportunity for you to win some money—$500 to be exact. If you are able to come up with a creative way to approach this negative perception, be it a video series, blog post, photo, or something else (and better) entirely… Keep in mind that the audience is a high school student and his/her family.”

While the U of C is respected around the globe as a particularly excellent university, it should be noted that they are an island, a very tiny island, surrounded by some of the most violent and depraved sections of Chicago.

Perhaps some of our readers would like to assist the University with the "message" to potential incoming students?

Homicide Numbers Even Higher?

So many numbers to choose from:

• The record-setting violence in Chicago is even worse than announced as new evidence shows the city suffered 50 more homicides last year than the numbers publicly reported in the past week.
  
  The city posted a decades-high homicide count of 812 in 2016, per the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. That’s 15% greater than the 762 murders reported by the city's police department.
  
  The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that the county tallies “homicides” while the police number counts “murders.” Murders are defined as violent acts subject to criminal prosecution. Homicides, according to the medical examiner, include instances “when the death of a person comes at the hand of another person. This does not imply that all homicides are murders that would be subject to criminal prosecution.”
  
  The city police count is also lower because it excludes violent, intentional deaths if the act is deemed justified, including police killings of residents.

And HeyJackass.com had 796, which is the closest thing to reality we can locate.

UPDATE: We're told that the six dead actually occurred in 008 in the opening days of February. So how did 009 end up with 6 homicides in 11 days last year? That place was outta control!

SeeBS Strikes Again

The media once again, telling a story that isn't there:

• A CBS Radio News report on the horrific black-on-white torture case in Chicago falsely implied that the victim was black and his attackers were white, Mediaite reported.
  
  On Friday, a listener on Reddit flagged the brief Thursday morning report which refused to clarify the races of the parties involved, deceptively suggesting that the roles were reversed:
  

  The viral video of a beating and knife attack in Chicago suggests the assault had racial overtones. CBS’s Dean Reynolds tells us the victim is described as a mentally-challenged teenager.
  
  In the video he is choked and repeatedly called the n-word. His clothes are slashed and he is terrorized with a knife. His alleged captors repeatedly reference Donald Trump. Police are holding four people in connection with the attack.

Leaving out all descriptors of the offenders and victim - you see exactly what impression the media was attempting to portray. SeeBS removed the offending report as soon as they were caught without correction or attribution.

This ties in with the State's Attorney initial hesitation to charge along with Duffin's comments that this was just high spirited children having fun.

Wait...Crime ISN'T Down?

Golly, who knew this was coming?

• There are stunning new crime numbers from the FBI: in Chicago, it isn't just murders and shootings that are up - it is all violent crime.
  
  Newly-obtained FBI data show that the crime surge in Chicago goes beyond the end of a gun. Overall violent crime - an umbrella figure that includes murder, rape, robbery and assault - jumped significantly here the first half of last year, an increase more than four times higher than the rest of the nation.
  
  According to this FBI report, violent crime in the U.S. increased a little more than five percent the first half of last year. But in Chicago during the same period, overall violent crime heaved 24 percent.
  
  While the numbers were driven by a surge in Chicago murders - 49 percent higher than the previous year - FBI data show the increase in all violent crime categories in Chicago is significantly outpacing the nation, with aggravated assault up 23 percent and robbery 28 percent higher

And those are just the stats for the first half of 2016, meaning every time Special Ed or anyone claimed "crime was down," they were lying. Anyone want to guess what the total increase in crime was once they figure out the second half of the year? It certainly didn't go down, that's for sure.

Don't Fall for Retro

You younger kids don't remember the Newsletters that used to come out around Contract time, where Bill Nolan would close every single article with "...and enjoy your retro pay," as if that was the sole factor in determining how we'd vote on a contract.

In many cases, however, he was correct. Coppers looked at the short term money that the City had held hostage (without interest we might add), and disregarded serious issues that had real long-term consequences on seniority, discipline, or bidding rights. Cops finally started to wake up around 1997 or so and the Contract that Nolan presented to the members went down in a spectacular ball of flaming wreckage that also also led to the entire eviction of the Nolan ticket (including Dean Angelo).

We're coming up to another negotiating year and you young kids are going to hear a lot of things. Here's your chance to prove you're smarter than all of us dinosaurs were back in the day:

• Don't be distracted by the "promise" of a retro check

Don't sweat the money issue. We'd suggest that the FOP ignore it, too. In fact, we'd go so far as to recommend that the FOP demand no more and no less than what Rahm awarded his inner circle in terms of percentage raises, and then walk away from that issue (Reminder - it was double digits).

Instead, concentrate on the following:

• Round up the Baby Furlo Day to a full day
• Round up the vacation time to full days, not hours;
• Lower the time to hit maximum pay via compression - every other city maxes out at 20 years;
• Restore Duty Availability to the kids - you got fucked last Contract;
• If anyone says "More cars," throw them out of the FOP;
• Refuse to negotiate disciplinary changes;
• Reduce "merit" percentages

In fact, demand "transparency" from the City. For too long, everyone has to be "transparent" except the City. Screw that and screw them:

• Post the "merit" picks;
• post their sponsor;
• post the entire promotional list in rank order so that everyone can see exactly how many spots the connected jumped up (justify that one);
• post a real and attainable set of targets that cops can actually strive for in order to be Merit.

We'd also like to see how sergeants who had to be assisted over the finish line ("merit") a few short years ago suddenly manage to score #1, #2 and #3 on the current Lieutenants list, but since that crosses different Union lines, we'll probably never see that unless it reaches a Federal courtroom. Right Special Ed?

Anyway, the big issue is going to be reducing your Rights and protections under the contract. Money should take a back seat to all of this. Numerous bad actors are claiming that the Contract is "racist" somehow and protects bad cops. We aren't exactly sure how. A document that protects the Rights of coppers of all colors, creeds and orientations is nothing that needs alteration.

Race to "Overhaul"

Kind of what we touched on the other day:

• With just days until Donald J. Trump is sworn in as president, the Obama administration is making a last-minute push for police overhauls in two of the nation’s most violent cities, Baltimore and Chicago, where officers have been accused of routinely mistreating African-Americans.
  
  In Chicago, where a city task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel concluded that “the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color,” the Justice Department is rushing to wrap up a sweeping investigation into police patterns and practices, prompted by the release of a chilling video that showed a white officer shooting a black teenager. The findings are expected to be released before Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.
  
  Such an investigation is typically the first step toward a consent decree in which a police department is required to make significant changes under court supervision. But in Chicago, President Obama’s Justice Department is running out of time to pursue such an order, and activists fear that the Trump administration will abandon the effort.
  
  Here in Baltimore, where Justice Department officials have already released a blistering report accusing the police of systematic racial bias, negotiators for the city and the Obama administration are “getting very close” to agreement on a consent decree, Mayor Catherine E. Pugh said. An announcement is likely on Thursday; the United States attorney general, Loretta E. Lynch, is scheduled to deliver a speech on community policing at the University of Baltimore.

As we said the other day, government rushing around, especially a lame duck government, never leads to anything good. If Rahm had half a brain, he'd let the clock run out. But he's beholden to a dying political regime and desperately attempting to re-make his image for another run for office.

Are You Insured?

Anyone know if Rahm has fixed this fuck-up yet?

• Please have all the members call up Blue Cross Blue Shield and make sure they have coverage. I currently have HMO and was at the doctors office today and was refused service, stating that I currently do not have insurance. I checked the BLue Cross website and it states that my insurance was cancelled on 01Jan17.
  
  I made no changes to my insurance plan from 2016. I called Walgreens to pick up my medication for my wife and the total for her heart medication which is normally $10 generic, was $590.00 dollars. Please SCC let the guys and girls know what is going on..........

Supposedly, there's a "fix" in the works, but the last recommendation we heard is "bring your charge card to the doctor." That's just fucking great - is the City reimbursing the double-digit interest charged for something that should have been covered?

Does anyone have any doubt this was a deliberate machination on the part of Rahm to stick it in everyone's ear again? How about a class-action lawsuit to make things right? Every insurance company knows that the City just didn't cancel all employees' insurance on 01 January, yet there are a sizable number of workers facing months of hassles, phone calls and letters to get their money back. Find and assign the blame and make them pay for the errors.

Contract Talks Coming

Is everyone ready for this? FOP, we're looking at you:

• The phrase “police union contracts” likely won’t appear in the U.S. Department of Justice report on the Chicago Police Department, set to be released this week. The DOJ has historically not made labor recommendations after its investigations of police practices.
  
  But the contracts have become a focal point for civil rights groups, activists, and even some politicians since the 2015 release of the Laquan McDonald video that triggered the DOJ’s civil rights investigation. The video of Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting the black 17-year-old paralyzed the city with protests, toppled a police chief and state’s attorney, and renewed citywide calls for policing reform.
  
  In the weeks after the video’s release, aldermen said for the first time that the labor contracts were a significant barrier to police accountability for misconduct. They promised to remove provisions that make it harder for the city to investigate and discipline officers.
  
  Those promises will be put to the test this year as the city renegotiates its contracts with the four unions representing officers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains. Historically, the contracts have been negotiated behind closed doors by the city’s law department and approved unanimously by the City Council.

"unanimously"? Is that true? We recall a number of contracts being negotiated and approved and someone always raised some sort of objections. The aldercreatures have always had input and believe it or not, the final say-so. Just because they were rubber stamps to Shortshanks and Rahm doesn't mean the FOP was some negotiating Superman. We got what the City gave us or what the arbitrator awarded us. The police can't strike, so we've ALWAYS operated from a weaker position. (cue liberal heads exploding)

Fortunately, they've revealed their game plan, so the FOP can be prepared:

• The task force identified about a dozen provisions that it said discouraged citizens from filing complaints, made it easier for officers to lie in official reports, and made it harder for the city to identify and discipline officers who are responsible for misconduct.
  
  For example, the contracts prohibit the filing of anonymous complaints, allow officers 24 hours after a shooting before they can be interviewed by investigators, give officers the right to amend their statements to investigators after reviewing video or audio evidence, and ban rewards for whistleblower officers.

We suppose the FOP could just offer one proposal to counter this. Agree to abide by the same provisions that the FBI operates under. After all, if' it's good enough for the federal government, it has to be good enough for the CPD, right?

In any event, keep a close eye on everything that both sides do. Whomever is negotiating this time had better be open and upfront about what's going on.

Not at All Rosy

You mean Rahm's been lying again?

• Chicago and New York rank at the bottom of a new analysis of fiscal strength based primarily on data from 2015 financial reports issued by the cities themselves. The analysis includes 116 U.S. cities with populations greater than 200,000. See the full rankings here.
  
  Chicago’s position at the bottom of the ranking is no surprise to anyone who follows municipal finance. The Windy City has become a poster child for financial mismanagement, having suffered a series of ratings downgrades in recent years. Aside from having thin reserves and large volumes of outstanding debt, Chicago is notorious for its underfunded pension plans.
  
  For example, the city’s Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund (MEABF) reported $4.7 billion in assets and $14.7 billion of actuarially accrued liabilities at the end of 2015, representing a funded ratio of just 33 percent. The actuarial calculations rely on a controversial practice of discounting future benefits at a rate of 7.5 percent, which is the assumed return on the fund’s portfolio return. If a more conservative assumption was employed, MEABF’s liabilities would be higher and its funded ratio lower.

The article admits that the impacts of Rahm's most recent tax hikes and increased employee contributions aren't fully known yet. A lot of it is going to depend on the Federal Governments attitude toward business and that effect on various markets.

But New York City is in second place, and that's even with a booming real estate market and a supposed "bull" market underway. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that democrats being in charge has something to do with it.

In any event, Rahm's predictions of sunshine, rainbows and a unicorn in every garage deserve a closer look and a wary eye.

So About that Unarmed Police Force

Given the recent shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport, it might be time to refresh everyone's memory about this:

• If armed terrorists rushed the front entrances at Chicago's airports they would find more than half of all uniform police officers at O'Hare and Midway are unarmed.
  
  At O'Hare and Midway not all 500 sworn police officers are created equal. Regular Chicago police carry guns. City Aviation Department police do not, even though they all undergo law enforcement training and certification. The unarmed airport police say that would be a problem in a terrorist attack.
  
  With passengers scattering in Istanbul, authorities say armed police near the front door brought down at least one of the terrorists and stopped him from shooting even more people before blowing himself up.
  
  At Chicago's airports there are about 230 armed Chicago police officers and nearly 300 unarmed aviation police.

Someone said that there is a movement afoot (once again) to arm the D.O.A. Police, so they don't end up DOA in the event of an attack. Remember, these are the officers who were told to "run and hide" in the event of an attack. That isn't going to be helpful.

And yes, we realize the D.O.A. Police have their share of political hacks and misfits - so do we. We would say that could be cured with an influx of training and money, but this is Chicago - who knows what Rahm would do with the money?

HQ Meeting Revisited

Looking at our post and the resultant comments about the HQ Meeting, we have these other points to bring up:

• OK with getting federal $$$, not with national guard. Not good for community relationships;

Yes, they're great to have in the event of a natural disaster, and they have all sort of equipment for moving things around. But their Rules of Engagement are far far different from ours. Their involvement would be for show - they wouldn't be allowed to surround a city block, level a building full of insurgents call in gunship support, snipe dope dealers and gang bangers - things they excel at. Special Ed has this one correct.

• FTO most important spot in department. Partners will be able to be FTO's together. Partners will work with a recruit in their car. FTO get one merit spot for every 30 people in every Sgt class;

Highly doubtful. As someone pointed out, who gets the pay? And the half-hour? And what's the point of having two FTO's ride around with one PPO when you could have twice the number of cars on the street with one-on-one instruction? This sounds like something to tell the FTO's to keep them from jumping ship once they find out they're being lied to....again.

• "Need video evidence to get protestors arrested for agg assaults to p.o."

We're still shaking our heads at this one. We've gotten charges approved for Aggravated Assault dozens, even tens of dozens of times in the era before video. What changed? Are we to assume the cops are always lying absent video proof? If that's the attitude of the Superintendent, then rest assured, everyone will be embracing "fetality" far more enthusiastically than ever before..

• Hired outside firm for performance evaluations. Should be part of promotional process;

Any word on whom this is going to be? Because the performance evaluation system is a joke.

This last item intrigues us as it opens up a whole can that Special Ed obviously didn't even think about:

• More people from patrol promoted over people in units, because in a unit you're already taken care of;

You know what Special Ed? We're going to take you up on this one. Because you know what it entails?

• Show everyone the "merit"

You want us to believe you? Post the "merit" picks. Post them all. Show us that Patrol is where the picks are coming from. Show us to that all the Unit people dumped back to Patrol right before a promotional class are actually being promoted in rank order and not in some sleight of hand effort to conceal this obvious lie. Show everyone the "merit" lists from this point forward and we'll believe everything else you tell us for your term as Superintendent. Otherwise....

Captains Coming

The resumes have been submitted and interviews are on tap. This is all theater of course - the picks are already made:

• Wait 'till you see who they are going to make captain. Most will have been sergeants only two years ago. No one with five or more years in lieutenant grade. Certainly no one in the kma. Club

Anyone with the old "merit" lists should have them ready to compare. We're going to bet 80% of the new captains will have had at least one "merit" promotion in their immediate past.

Peace Circles?

Um, what the fuck is this? Granny's last legacy?

This is from a new Special Order titled "Bridging the Divide." It looks and sounds like some left coast hippie bullshit, which makes us suspect Granny Clampett.

Any bosses want to try to explain this crap before we laugh you out of the Roll Call?

Ernie Brown Passes

Known as one of the Department's more......colorful characters (Downtown, "Don't Touch Me," Unindicted Co-Conspirator) passed suddenly of a a heart ailment.

More Crooked Promotions?

Rumor trickling in that the Lie-tenant Test scandal has reached a critical stage with allegations being served along with Administrative Rights to certain individuals. The Lieutenant PBPA has refused to provide legal representation and the Inspector General has all sorts of e-mail evidence in his hands. Perhaps a deal is on the table for the first taker to avoid prison?

Now this story breaks:

• A top Chicago police official under Supt. Eddie Johnson helped snare a promotion for an officer with dozens of misconduct complaints and close ties to two cops who had recently been jailed on federal corruption charges.
  
  Fred L. Waller - now the patrol bureau chief, the department’s third-ranking member — was commander of the Wentworth police district in 2012 when he nominated Alvin Jones for sergeant.
  
  Jones, an officer in the district, had drawn at least 40 complaints since starting with the department in 1996, according to police records obtained by WBEZ through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
  
  The promotion also took place 10 months after the arrests of Jones’ longtime boss, Sgt. Ronald Watts, and fellow tactical team member, Kallat Mohammed.

Golly, it's like the entire command staff is a bunch of "merit" promoted clouted blunderers who merely nominate an entire new generation of clouted morons with shady pasts and shadier connections. And how do they respond when confronted?

• Waller told WBEZ it would be wrong to assess his nomination of Jones for promotion by looking at Jones’ complaint record or the arrests of Watts and Mohammed.
  
  “Did you look at the other side of the coin?” Waller asked. “You’re taking a one-sided view of that person.”
  
  Asked to elaborate, Waller referred WBEZ to police department spokesmen.

So the guy who nominated the person in question knows him so well, he refers inquired to the Department spokes-weasel, who probably doesn't know the nominee at all.

And the wheel keeps on turning.

Beancounting

So what are the real reasons behind the lack of ISR's? Here's a theory from the comments that rings somewhat true:

• The old Contact Card system was good, originally, but then Jodie Weis, Garry McCarthy, and a long list of "bosses," both at headquarters and in the districts, turned those cards into a numbers game, asking for "more! more!" contact cards.
  
  The result? Officers on foot patrol were even doing unnecessary contact cards on ordinary drivers and passengers involved in minor traffic crashes, all with the knowledge of their sergeants, and the then (now retired) district commander, to keep up with the Superintendent's unreasonable demands for more and more cards. This destroyed the intent and value of the original database of contact cards. No wonder a lawsuit was filed over these, now, ridiculous and useless cards. The gold stars and bosses ruined that card database system with their unreasonable demands, and now they have to live with it.
  
  The new ISR system actually has some value. At least, reasonable suspicion has to be written out in detail, and most bosses know that it would be unwise to ask for "more and more" ISRs.
  
  DO NOT bring back the "easy" contact cards. It will only allow the bosses the opportunity to demand quotas from officers, and destroy the whole system again. Some people never learn.

This is what happens when you bring in "business" type practices to police work...bean counters attempting to quantify the uncountable. How do you measure crimes prevented? You can't, so you come up with some number counting nonsense that allows you to say, "Look at all the work we're doing!"

And it's all bullshit. Look where its gotten us to. And the people most responsible? Nowhere to be found.

Malicious Prosecution

Good news out of Baltimore:

• A federal judge is allowing key parts of a lawsuit against Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, brought by five of the six police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, to move forward.
  
  U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis ruled that claims including malicious prosecution, defamation, and invasion of privacy can move forward against Mosby and Assistant Sheriff Samuel Cogen, who wrote the statement of probable cause.
  
  Mosby's attorneys had said she has absolute prosecutorial immunity from actions taken as a state's attorney. But Garbis noted that her office has said it conducted an independent investigation.
  
  "Plaintiffs' malicious prosecution claims relate to her actions when functioning as an investigator and not as a prosecutor," Garbis wrote.

It would certainly be nice to see her disbarred and the Officers get their jobs back, seniority reinstated, back pay and damages.

Where's Kimesha?

We don't know what deal was made to have Special Ed and Duffin present the defense case to the media, thereby making the Chicago Police Department look like a (bigger) bunch of blithering idiots.

We know the media makes no distinction reporting who investigates a case (the CPD) and who charges the crime (Cook County States Attorney Office), so we've seen countless rip jobs across the blogosphere and media outlets about what morons the CPD are not immediately charging this as a hate crime. Thanks for that Ed, Kev and Rahm.

So where has ol' Kimesha Fuxx been hiding during all of this? She's been in office a whole month. This is a big heater case. Lots of face time available, local, state and national. CNN has set up a mobile office down at HQ for this. Or would this be the "wrong" kind of case for Prickwrinkle's handpicked tool to be handling? We literally haven't seen a single quote or camera appearance near this thing.

And Another Revision

Which is going to do exactly nothing to increase street stops:

• The Chicago Police Department and the ACLU have once again agreed to simplify a burdensome “investigatory stop report,” but the police union says the changes won’t be enough to reverse an 80 percent drop in street stops.
  
  No longer will the two-page form include the names and badge numbers of officers making the stop. That information will only go to a retired federal judge. Personal information about the person stopped will also be eliminated from the form.
  
  “We never really cared about individual officers. What we were looking at was a systemic fix to the abuse of street stops in Chicago,” said ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka.

::cough cough Bullshit! cough cough::

Numerous law firms are and remain highly interested in that information and they will leave no stone un-turned in their efforts to find any number of poor coppers to appear in Federal Court listing their assets for a deposition. If it's in a government database (it's in a few Department databases already), it's discover-able.

Angelo chimes in:

• Instead of tinkering at the margins, Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo said the “monstrosity of a report” should be scrapped altogether in favor of the “contact cards” that preceded the agreement with the ACLU or an expanded form of it, as used by the Illinois State Police.
  
  In addition, Angelo said the city and the ACLU must remove the shackles that limit street stops to instances where officers either observe criminal behavior spot someone who “fits the description” of someone reported to 911 as having committed a crime.
  
  “It limits stop, question and frisk completely because it was designed by the ACLU and accepted as policy by the department, which is the main contributing factor to the drop in our street stops,” Angelo said.
  
  “People think that police officers are standing down. Police officers aren’t standing down. They’re following policy. They’re doing what the order requires. That’s what everybody’s missing.”

ISR's are time off the streets. Or time sitting in one location entering data on a computer screen so unreadable and in such an uncomfortable posture that our chiropractor bought a two new cars last year.

• In August, 2015, the ACLU pressed for expanded reporting on investigatory stops in Chicago after releasing a study showing minorities have been predominately targeted for stops here.

In a completely unrelated study, HeyJackass.com, combined with Department databases and FBI statistics, proved that murders and shootings have been committed and suffered by "predominately minority communities" in the City of Chicago.

The ACLU countered with this laugher:

• Yohnka dismissed as a “fallacy” the notion that the 80 percent drop in street stops is somehow responsible for the 60 percent spike in homicides in Chicago.
  
  He noted that the University of Chicago Crime Lab recently concluded there is “no linkage” between street stops and the crime rate. In fact, when street stops declined in New York City, so did the crime rate, Yohnka said.
  
  “The reason the stops have gone down is because there were too many stops,” Yohnka said.

Really? Too many stops? Everything we see and hear in the street is "Do more stops!" At Roll Call, too. We guess we'll be telling the Commander that the ACLU said there were "too many stops" next time he comes to address the troops.

Mope-rah Rewrites the Law

Even when she tries to make sense, she can't, because she's ignorant (no links for ignoramuses):

• The hate-crime charges in this case come in contrast to what happened just two months ago. The day after Trump won the presidential election, four young black people allegedly punched and kicked a white man on the West Side while yelling, “Don’t vote Trump.” They were charged with the assault but not with a hate crime.

They were charged with assault (and maybe battery), because the crime did not have a provable racial element. "Don't vote Trump" is, believe it or not Mopey, political speech. The assault and battery portion was the law broken, along with the theft of auto committed afterward. And the dragging of the victim. We could stand in your face and shout "Obama sucks!" for hours on end, but until we make physical contact, no law is being broken.

• But given the times we live in, the criteria for charging someone with a hate crime can’t be based on outrage and political correctness.

Um, no shit Mopey. But your paper and your ilk seem to think that "dissent" is patriotism when they do it against Republicans and "hate crimes" when they do it against democrats.

Then Mopey has to go for the big One-Up:

• But let’s be clear. As ugly as the assault upon the special needs young man was, this incident pales in comparison to what happened in Joliet in 2013.
  
  Then, an even more depraved group of young white people lured Terrance Rankins and Eric Glover, two African-Americans, into a Joliet house, strangled them and then had sex on top of the corpses.

Those were some sick fucks, too. And three of the four got life sentences. But guess what Mopey? There was no provable racial element to the crime - you even quote the Will County States Attorney, so you're obviously being deliberately ignorant. Those didn't broadcast the crime on Facebook. And they weren't yelling "Fuck you black person!"

Do you get it yet? In your example, their being black wasn't the (provable) impetus behind the crime. In the current outrage, they broadcast their hatred for the victim based on his skin color for everyone to see. Big difference.

Mope-rah closes with this:

• Without a doubt, we should prosecute those who commit hate crimes to the fullest extent of the law.
  
  But we shouldn’t let the politics of race make the call.

Well it's good to see Mopey is turning over a new leaf. Let's see how that works out for a person who has defined her entire professional existence on the politics of race....when it benefits her.

HQ Meeting Highlights

So after a few misfires, there was finally a meeting at HQ. Three cars from every District (one of them from tact), 132 coppers (give or take a few), and starring Special Ed. From an e-mailer:

• DOJ report "will be ugly". Don't take it personally;
• There's a new CR matrix general order, 45 pages; Old CRs will exist forever;
• Complaints down 50% since 2009;
• "Sometimes I have to give you a time out to help you get to your pension. It's not a punishment, it's for your protection."
• Push IPRA to speed up investigations;
• More people from patrol promoted over people in units, because in a unit you're already taken care of;
• FTO most important spot in department. Partners will be able to be FTO's together. Partners will work with a recruit in their car. FTO get one merit spot for every 30 people in every Sgt class;
• 120 to 130 Sgts at end of February;
• Looking for site for new police academy. No further info;
• ISR reports - new agreement that ACLU will not get personal info/star numbers, only federal judge will;
• "Need video evidence to get protestors arrested for agg assaults to p.o."
• "I speak with protestors so you guys don't have to" in regards to taking phone calls from activists
• OK with getting federal $$$, not with national guard. Not good for community relationships;
• 60 Minutes - interview for 2 hours, used about 2 minutes;
• "I talk to the mayor once a week. He doesn't run CPD, doesn't interfere with what we do in CPD."
• Hired outside firm for performance evaluations. Should be part of promotional process;
• VRI will continue but get phased down as new recruits come out every month in 2017;

Addressing these in order:

• as expected
• more hurdles, paperwork, rules to be tagged with
• less police/public interaction, less complaints - SURPRISE!
• yeah yeah yeah
• great - half-assed investigations in half the time. More for the lawyers to get rich off of
• we'll believe this when we see it - unit people got the answers last time, didn't they?
• again, believe it when you see it - FTO has always been treated as the ass end of Patrol
• Rahm already delayed the next 100 detectives - now he's going to make sergeants?
• any clues on where to buy land? 
• and the Federal judge will promptly give it to the ACLU anyway
• seriously? so if it isn't on video it didn't happen? That better work both ways Ed
• why are activists getting our phone numbers?
• money Rahm can misspend; we agree on no National Guard
• duh, it's the media
• you talk with Rahm as often as Rahm wants to talk with you - you are a flunky Ed
• hahahahahaha
• start prepping for less VRI

Discuss.

Rush to a Consent Decree

The clock is winding down, and Obama's Justice Department want to rush things forward:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall is bracing for the Justice Department to release – before President Barack Obama leaves office Jan. 20 — findings from its Chicago Police Department probe triggered by the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.
  
  No announcement is expected before Obama delivers his farewell address in McCormick Place on Tuesday night, a speech looking at his accomplishments, coming as homicides are soaring in the president’s adopted hometown. The report is expected to be released later next week.
  
  It is highly unlikely the probe will conclude with a signed-and-completed consent decree outlining mandated changes in police practices, sources told the Sun-Times. What is on the table, given the time constraints, is a deal for the city and Justice Department to sign an “agreement in principle.” Such a pact, to be made with community input, would create a federal court-enforceable road forward addressing investigatory findings from the probe, launched in December 2015.

In other words, the DOJ wants Rahm to sign the agreement to find out what's in the agreement. Then they can claim some sort of "contract" with Rahm, and after Jeff Sessions decides to stop the wholesale dismantling of police departments across the nation, the ACLU or other such groups will sue Rahm to enforce said "contract."

If they win, Rahm will have to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars that he doesn't have and can't raise without committing political suicide. So will Rahm attempt to delay appearing to accept the "agreement in principle"? He doesn't have as much pull in DC as he might have had with Clinton. He isn't going to want to raise taxes again.

This reeks of desperation on the part of the DOJ, and when the government rushes, nothing good ever results.

Distraction Ploy Fails

This guy just blew a lot of credibility with the rank-and-file:

• Chicago Police Department Commander Kevin Duffin said, “Kids make stupid decisions — I shouldn’t call them kids, they’re legally adults. But they’re young adults and they make stupid decisions.”

We don't know who told Duffin to say this....oh, who are we kidding? Of course, Rahm told people to downplay this. But then the alternative media got a hold of it and the video hit Drudge and YouTube tried to ban it but not before it was saved and uploaded hundreds of thousands of times and a White House Petition was started demanding Federal Civil Rights charges.

And then suddenly, at the 47th-hour, charges were suddenly approved by Foxx's office, negating everything about "stupid decisions."

If you remove a mentally handicapped individual from his suburban environs, restrain him in an unknown location, taunt his parents via cell phone messages, record and post what can only be described as sub-human behavior in a 30-minute video, you aren't making a "stupid decision." You are making a concerned and conscious effort to show your disregard for another human being and recording it because you are that confident of avoiding responsibility.

Now where could they have gotten that idea?