Down the Rabbit Hole

Some days when we're bored, we venture down assorted rabbit holes on the internet just to see what's brewing in the background. You can usually disregard ninety-to-ninety-five percent of what appears there, but sometimes, there are stories out there on the edges.

• A walking tour of the soon-to-be illegal alien camp at 38th and California. This thing is huge, fenced off and a flashpoint for the neighborhood. You want to see where a few hundred million of your tax dollars are going to go? Watch this video. the walking tour starts at 1:51.
• Job fair!  But not for Chicago citizens.....for illegals. The black community is shocked to learn that since they showed they were willing to listen to Donald Trump instead of voting blindly for the democrats, they're now in danger of being replaced by the illegals. The host of this video is awesome (/sarc).
  
• The First High Court case against a vaccine manufacturer.....in Britain. Remember, Big Pharma was granted blanket immunity from lawsuits here in the US. Now that the science is proving a higher incidents of heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, spontaneous miscarriages, etc., well....they're sorry about that. But it was for your own good!

Open post in the meantime.

Corruption

One video perspective of Chicago corruption:

Some of this is pure nonsense, but some is on point.

More Video Clips

Hopefully, we'll be able to figure out how to embed links here from other platforms so you don't have to maneuver back here after going to a link:

• Instagram Link

A car doing donuts at night in front of the iconic Chicago Theater. We're thinking a still shot of this would make an excellent Christmas card for our friends.

This one is a bit darker:

• 16th 17th District Scanner page
  

An attempted carjacking/robbery at rifle point caught by POD cameras. Cops pull up just after it started and the offenders jump back in their car to escape. The pursuit begins, but is almost immediately called off because PH1 was on the job and.....

Sorry, it was called off because if there was a crash or someone got ran over, the cops would be unemployed, bankrupt and in jail, so it was terminated before it could get that far. The victim turns his car around, but we don't know if he was fleeing himself or following the cops.

Don't F@#$ with Gary

Another entertaining video clip:

• ChicagoFails on X (twitter)
  

Gary should tell his girl to not wander into his line of fire.

UPDATE: Link fixed....we hope....fingers crossed

Video Clips

The 16th and 17th District Police Scannere site has a bunch of interesting material up.

A selection:

• https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1684556745564098562?t=Zzfj3meexxV8o3IpyXB2ag&s=19 (31/Michigan)
  
  https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1684294484207583233?t=LJj85QNha2TsskUrRMFTWw&s=19 (South :Loop)
  
  https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1683978740043333632?t=Kc2RfDN-heWBVTD4FrIbZA&s=19 (Jefferson Park)
  
  https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1668391651323117568?t=Mgd69519xDnznOb0gvSoZw&s=19 (north side)
  

We don't use social media aside from this site, but these are open source clips meaning you don't need the app to view.

Chiraq Video

We're going to see if video posting works:

If that didn't work, we'll just post a link below:

• Link
  

Chiraq is still a punchline for a lot of conservative media voices.

"You Go Home"

Hilarious. Groot and the brass finish up their press conference in 011 yesterday afternoon after threatening everyone with arrests and jailing, then decide to walk over to a nearby school and tell the people there to go home.

In front of the press and exempts, the one kid tells Groot:

• "Y’all need to find a cure, you’re talking about go home. You go home."

And Groot turns tail and pulls a J-Fled "gotta run" moment.

This was your opportunity Groot. This was your moment! You bragged about breaking up an underage drinking party the other day, scaring everyone out of an alley, but there were no witnesses to that one. Plus it was a reasonably quiet neighborhood. This was Ground Zero right there, the epicenter of homicides and mayhem for all of Chicago. 

• You had your bodyguards right there (hi Marnie!)
• You had the press there to record your righteous zeal
• You were surrounded by your "merit" white shirts
• You had a huge dude from Streets there in yellow
• You had your handpicked superintendent from Dallas

No one laid hands on this kid? No one chased him out of sight? No one had a robot armed with a tear gas grenade or something?

But you're going to send the police in to "break up" house parties across the city and arrest everyone in sight?

This must be that "leading from behind" that Sparkelfarts perfected. You learned it well.

Empty Streets

The music is a bit of overkill, but seriously, how often has anyone seen the streets of Chicago this empty?

Video from the people at Illinois Policy.

Where's the Video?

A reader makes a good point:

• Where the hell are the videos? The internet if full of videos on every damn thing under the sun but rarely of this crap. I don't expect the media to show them but I am surprised they are not showing up elsewhere. We must have 634 videos of "Saint Harish" the barber but nothing on wildings on Chicago's premier shopping area? Unreal

Here's a little secret. Videos exist.

In fact, there are tens of thousands of videos that exist, totaling hundreds of hours, all filed and categorized - body cameras, blue light cameras, private security cameras, all showing not only wildings, but gun handoffs, street shootings, more than a couple gang executions, all sorts of stuff.

But the public will never see it. Neither will most cops...unless you happen to work in one of the many SDSC rooms or downtown at records, and even then, access is restricted.

Can anyone guess why the videos will never been seen? The media copuld probably get quite a few filing FOIA requests, but they won't ever ask to see it - no doubt Rahm has ordered them not to....and it runs counter to their slanted world view.

Body Cam Footage

This is a picture of a gun, holster and magazine rig:

And this is a picture of an OFFENDER with a shooting grip on said pistol:

Here's a link to the body cam footage over at the Tribune:

• CLICK HERE

Anyone know when the community is going to start lining up to offer apologies to the Officers and the Chicago Police Department for their lies, slanders, assaults, batteries, and generally being assholes flying off the handle based on incomplete and pretty much wrong information?

And more than a few reporters need to be in line to apologize, too.

UPDATE: We know the media isn't going to apologize - they have an agenda to push. So we'll settle for them re-interviewing each of the assholes they broadcast and printed yesterday and today with the people (or folks) who said the offender was unarmed, a concealed carried licensee or just minding his own business before he went and cured cancer or something.

Interesting Video Series

This was e-mailed to us yesterday:

So far, parts 10 (Back of the Yards) and 9 (Greater Grand Crossing) have been released, with the remaining coming out over the next few weeks. The videos we've seen so far give a short historical background of the neighborhood before delving into how and why it headed downhill. There is also extensive crime scene footage.

It will certainly be an interesting series to say the least.

Talk Shit, Get Shot

One of those Facebook Live shootings:



Hilarious.

Dashcam Video

We suppose this type of video is going to be the norm nowadays. One upside (of very few) is showing an unaware public just how quickly (and messily) situations unfold:

• Police oversight officials released case files Thursday from their investigation of an officer who fatally shot a 19-year-old man after being pinned against his police SUV earlier this year in Hanson Park on the Northwest Side.
  
  The cache of documents provided by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability includes dashcam footage of Juan Flores backing an SUV into the officer, who then opens fire.

The video is disturbing to say the least. The Officer ended up with a broken leg, the assailant ended up dead and COPA couldn't think of anything to charge the Officer with yet, though they have years to go over the tape as opposed to the Officer who had barely half-a-second.

Greatest Video of 2017

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

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

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

Captured Video

A whole bunch of readers have downloaded, saved, Google Drive the video, so we imagine it's safely stored any number of places, which is exactly what is needed in this atmosphere. We're going to try out a few of the links and make sure it's accessible to anyone who wants it.

Thanks to everyone.

(Reference: Yesterday's video from Lemon Record alleging payoffs by Kimesh Foxx)

Kim Foxx Payoffs?

Lemon Record makes the allegation that the then-candidate for States Attorney was in negotiations with Jamal Green for a $20,000 contract for organizing and protesting last year or earlier this year.

Don't believe us? Go to Lemon's Facebook page. You can see it there for a limited time only...before Kim and her people make Lemon take it down or they sue him. The fun starts after the 4:00 minute mark.

Amusingly, Lemon also makes a number of threats to "shoot" someone over this Facebook feud, something that seems to occur with astonishing regularity in the circle these assholes run in. That's after the 6:00 minute mark.

So after all things come to pass and one of these jagoffs shoots the other, who's going to take the blame? And why is a States Attorney candidate entering into contractual agreements with known agitators/criminals/assholes?

And if someone who knows Facebook tech could figure out how to save the video, it would always have a home here if you get it to us.

Video Review - Wrapping it Up

If you've been reading the past few days, you have seen the State Law and Department Policy addressed in what we think is a straightforward and direct manner. You may have been enlightened, bored, noncommittal, thankful. We're glad to have helped in any way we did.

You might not like this part as much.

While the most serious violations are Departmental in nature and not criminal, that isn't going to save certain members from administrative action. What we have seen here, we consider a monumental failure in training and preparing officers for street duty. Leaving aside the violation of General Orders we outlined in the past few days, in what world is this tactically sound?

Gun out in the car? Pointing where exactly? If the driver brakes hard, if you wreck, does anyone even teach "startle response"? How about "sympathetic muscle response"? What if you lose the gun during a collision?

This was tactically unsound:

Getting out of the car into the path on an onrushing automobile? We think everyone can agree, why are you placing yourself in harms way, when you have a perfectly suitable 4,000 pound safe spot to take shielding inside of - your squad car. Taking a day or three along with driving school for something some boss thinks is preventable is a better option that not having a job.

Then these:

Crossfire!

See that squad in the distance? Beyond a distance we might fire three shots a year at qualification time?

This one chilled us to the bone:

Boosting another copper over the fence....with his gun in his hand. We can't see where his finger was, but What the Fuck? You perform as you train, and we're sorry, this appears to be an absolute failure of training.

Some people aren't going to happy we did this last post. The Department is getting it from all sides, politically at all levels, in the media, from the community. We're going to be accused of piling on, or pitting old against new, cops against cops, siding with them against us. You couldn't be more wrong. These videos are all out there. The politicians are already against us, beholden to the mob. Those who support the police will continue to do so, those who don't probably never did. We didn't put any of this out there, so don't blame us. Comments that do so will be deleted and forgotten in short order.

But these videos, believe it or not, can help, even if it's not the way we'd prefer - showing exactly where the shortfalls in training are, the things cameras record (visual and audio), where mistakes are made (and yes, mistakes were made). We're guessing that two guys are going to lose their jobs, and a third is going to carry around a burden no one wants.

Video Review - The Department

Yesterday, we covered State Law. You may or may not agree, but we think we laid out a very good case that no sustainable criminal charges would be filed against the involved officers. That isn't to say some political attempt might not be made by an incompetent ambitious prosecutor, such as in Baltimore. But the likelihood is less than average.

Department policy though, is a different animal altogether. First is the prohibition on chasing hot cars:

• General Order 03-03-01
  
  Section III - Prohibitions
  
  Subsection C: The continuation of a motor vehicle pursuit is prohibited whenever
  
  Item 2a: the most serious offense for which the pursued vehicle is wanted is [...] a theft

And if you go to the Glossary, the definition of a Theft is as follows:

• Theft - Any violation of any subsection of 625 ILCS 5/4, including Possession of a Stolen Motor Vehicle, or 720 ILCS 5/16.
  

We haven't heard the complete audio tape, so we have no idea if the chase was terminated at any point, but the moment that it was determined the car was stolen, without some sort of extenuating circumstance, termination is a given, including self-termination by the officers. That item has been in effect for many years now.

However, there is a bigger order in play here. The Department's Use of Force is deliberately written as a "preservation of life" policy and has been taught for years as being "more restrictive than state law." The Department is going to hang one or both officers on the following violation:

• General Order 03-02-02 - Deadly Force
  
  Section III - Department Prohibitions for Use of Deadly Force
  
  Use of firearms in the following way is prohibited:
  
  (E) Firing at or into a moving vehicle when the vehicle is the only force being used against the sworn member or another person.

As we pointed out a few days ago, this policy, as written, would allow the Truck Terrorist in Nice, France free rein to drive up and down a venue like Michigan Avenue, or Navy Pier or the lakefront bike paths running over anything in his path and the Chicago Police Department would not be able to do a procedurally correct thing to stop him.

In reality, would we? We can't tell you what to do, but we (and 99.9% of other coppers) would be out of ammo long before we considered turning our backs on fellow citizens in that situation. Hopefully, the public acclaim would be enough to protect us from the politics, but who knows in Rahm's Chicago.

But why have a policy that is as narrow as this one is if we can cite even one example where it's just not based in reality? The fact is, sometimes cops are going to make tactical mistakes and get caught where they shouldn't be (in the line of travel). That's a training issue. It's already illegal to deliberately place yourself in harm's way to provoke a Deadly Force situation, but we're supposed to let an unfortunate cop pay for a mistake with their body? Or their lives?

That seems counter-productive, but given the political climate at the moment, we don't see a good outcome Administratively for the involved parties.

Tomorrow - wrapping it up.

Video Review - The Law

Lots of ignorant comments going on. The family and their "spokes-asshole" who is facing numerous felony counts himself, along with their bottom-feeding lawyer, who is looking to pollute a potential jury pool and provoke some sort of racial incident to scare the city into settling, are throwing a lot of brickbats around without any regard for actual law.

So let's read the actual relevant portion of the Illinois Compiled Statute:

• (720 ILCS 5/7-5)(from Ch. 38, par. 7-5)
  
  Sec. 7-5. Peace officer's use of force in making arrest.
  
  (a) A peace officer, or any person whom he has summoned or directed to assist him, need not retreat or desist from efforts to make a lawful arrest because of resistance or threatened resistance to the arrest. He is justified in the use of any force which he reasonably believes to be necessary to effect the arrest and of any force which he reasonably believes to be necessary to defend himself or another from bodily harm while making the arrest. However, he is justified in using force likely to cause death or great bodily harm only when he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or such other person, or when he reasonably believes both that:
  
  (1) Such force is necessary to prevent the arrest from being defeated by resistance or escape; and
  
  (2) The person to be arrested has committed or attempted a forcible felony which involves the infliction or threatened infliction of great bodily harm or is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates that he will endanger human life or inflict great bodily harm unless arrested without delay.

Notice, there are two parts to the law. This is an important distinction. They are separated by the word "or." The first part is pretty straightforward:

• he is justified in using force likely to cause death or great bodily harm only when he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or such other person

This is what we would refer to as "defense of self or another." Someone points a gun at you, you can shoot them. Someone points a gun at someone else, you can shoot them, regardless (and this is important) of where you are standing. This part alone justifies the initial shots. He was defending his partner in the path of danger (we're discussing State Law)

The second part of the law is a bit more complicated, because the situation has to fulfill two separate distinctions (we have highlighted the words "both" and "and"):

• he reasonably believes both that:
  
  (1) Such force is necessary to prevent the arrest from being defeated by resistance or escape; and
  
  (2) The person to be arrested has committed or attempted a forcible felony which involves the infliction or threatened infliction of great bodily harm or is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates that he will endanger human life or inflict great bodily harm unless arrested without delay.

This is a freeze frame of what the first two officers saw (driver body camera):

So the question becomes, "Does this fulfill the requirements of State Law?"

• Is the car thief attempting to defeat the arrest by resistance or escape?

Sure looks like it. He's in a 3,000 pound hunk of metal, plastic and rubber moving at a speed that will defeat any attempt at arrest.

• Is the person committing or attempting to commit a forcible felony which involves the infliction or threatened infliction of great bodily harm or attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates that he will endanger human life or inflict great bodily harm unless arrested without delay?

That's a big "yes." A car is a deadly weapon. He's using it as a ram. He just missed hitting the driver. That's Aggravated Assault. See all that underlining we did there? That's where the actions of the car thief meet or exceed the threshold for the use of deadly force per State Law to a reasonable person. The thief had already been taunting the officers in Area South by pulling over, fleeing, then returning to be chased again. There's no reason to think he'd stop before he ran into someone - maybe a cyclist riding a Divvy bike, a grandmother walking home from grocery shopping, a child crossing the street.

Again, it was his actions that provoked the response.

Tomorrow, we'll go over Department Policy.

Video Review (UPDATE)

We've been seeing a bit of criticism in the comment sections, ripping coppers for "Monday morning quarterbacking" and "you weren't there..." and everything in between. This isn't 1970 any more. This isn't the 80's or the 90's. This isn't even the 00's when personal cell phone cameras were just coming into widespread usage. This is 2016, and in-car cameras along with body-worn cameras are fast becoming the norm along with every single person on the street with a digital photo studio at their fingertips.

Policing is under a harsh spotlight and police work, especial hands-on police work, isn't pretty. But a even-handed, unemotional critique of the actions captured on video can be a benefit. It can educate the public, media and our critics. If the only voice being heard is the voice of the assholes shutting down reasoned discourse, then we are going to be backed into a corner that there is no coming out from. Some here feel we're already at that point. Reasonable men and women can disagree as to how far gone it is. And sometimes that involves taking a look inward.

That being said, we have a series of posts to address the videos over the next few days. And the first one is to rebut some of the more outrageous "sanctification" promulgated by the media and the protestors. We want to take you back in time to 03 August, to the Naperville Sun newspaper:

• Naperville and Bolingbrook police are investigating a possible link between two incidents of multiple vehicle thefts that occurred within two days of one another, and in which one suspect was later shot to death by Chicago police.
  
  Five vehicles were stolen during the early-morning hours of July 26 in Naperville, while four were taken around 3 a.m. July 28 in Bolingbrook, authorities in both communities confirmed. Additionally, more than 30 vehicles were burglarized that same morning in Naperville.
  
  A suspect in the Bolingbrook thefts, 18-year-old Paul O'Neal, of Chicago, was fatally shot by police around 7:30 p.m. July 28 behind a house in the 7300 block of South Merrill Avenue in Chicago.
  
  Bolingbrook police Lt. Carter Larry on Wednesday said O'Neal was "clearly seen on video" at a service station where six suspects regrouped following the thefts in that village.

This is the "hero" of the media and "community" narrative - a car thief and a credit card thief. Does anyone know what his record looks like? And why is it all of these "heroes" seem to have social media pages with them holding guns?

And the early onset arthritis - we forgot about that.

Then there's the family, weeping, saying "He had goals." Um, what goals? Stealing a Bugatti maybe? Ferrari? How about a Lamborghini? Unfortunately, he'll always be remembered as only achieving a Jaguar. How sad.

Here's the thing - all of this, every single bit of it, could have been avoided if he didn't take something that didn't belong to him. Blame is on the parent(s), family, whomever - someone didn't install a moral compass on this thief and in the process, set him on the road to destruction, taking who knows how many others with him.

And there were plenty of opportunities to stop him - his first arrest, his second, the judge(s) who gave him how many additional chances, the parent who didn't better monitor his associations, maybe a clergy person, a social worker, the list is endless. But the cops are going to take the final hit because all of these other misses led to:

• Theft of Auto
• PSMV
• Aggravated Assault (with the auto)
• Aggravated Battery (with the same auto)

If he had survived, how many felonies is that right there? All committed in the span of sixteen hours? Let's not lose sight of that, even though the media and story-tellers already have. He began, continued and ended with bad decisions he made, all on his own.

More tomorrow.

UPDATE: More today actually - we're finally hearing reports that this wasn't the first time 004 saw and called out this vehicle. In fact, 004 had stopped and approached the vehicle on other occasions during the day and the car thief waited, and then accelerated away from them each time. He was playing a stupid ghetto game because (we assume) he knew CPD wouldn't chase for more than a block or two before being called off. And he returned to the general area where he was spotted, knowing that the police were looking for the specific car he was driving to do it again. And again.

Guess what? Every time you do something stupid, the odds shorten. Ask any insurance company. Ask an actuary. Ask any gambler. Eventually, the odds approach 1-to-1....and you are going to hit something, hit someone, get caught.

And this just reinforces everything we posted above - the person initially and solely responsible for everything that followed, is the car thief.