GREAT JOB GUYS!

SUN-TIMES
How refreshing it is to see the press find witness' that actually witnessed the shooting.

Ramon Lowe, who saw the shooting from his home on Augusta, said one officer first approached the stolen car with his hand on his hip, tapping on the windows. Then the backseat passenger raised the AK-47 and the officer jumped back, startled.
Lowe said the driver of the car was crouching as he pointed a handgun out the window. "It looked like a movie,'' Lowe said, adding that the shooting lasted for what seemed to be four to five minutes.

Had this shooting occurred at Congress & Central Park the press would be knee deep in "eye witness'" who saw the police just execute those boys. Questions would be asked "how come they just didn't shot the gun out his hands?"
Video from the hospital showed possible family members/friends of the dead offenders "falling out" in hysteria. Will tonight's news have video from grieving relatives of the dead "hit men"? Once the media learns who these guys are it will not take long for their families angry faces to be plastered on the T.V.
Our thoughts and well wishes for a speedy recovery to the officer who suffered the loss of his finger. Also our thoughts and respect go out to the fine officers who had to endure this traumatic experience. Great Job Guys!

2 Dead, Police Officer Wounded In Shootout

CHANNEL 2 CHANNEL 7
AUGUSTA & KEDZIE
One officer is in the hospital with a gun shot wound to his hand and two offenders are dead with an AK47 and a handgun recovered from their vehicle. NFI

READ THE COMPLAINT

U.S. ATTORNEY Complainant against two 22nd Distrct P.O.'s, all 73 pages.

TEST RESULTS IN

The results of the Lts test have been mailed out. Best of luck to those taking part II on saturday 06 JAN 07.

Man charged in connection with fatal shooting of Maywood officer

SUN-TIMES

WHEN WILL IT END?

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Two Chicago police officers were arrested this morning and charged with conspiring to steal cash from a storage locker they thought was being used by a drug dealer, federal authorities said.

The cash actually was placed by FBI agents and investigators with the Chicago Police Department Internal Affairs Division

The above article identifies the officers involved. We hope these two are innocent but at this point they are in deep shit. We hope this is a wake-up call for those who contemplate engaging in criminal acts.

REST IN PEACE GEORGE

Our sincerest thoughts and prayers go out to the family, and in particular the six children, of George Sullivan. At last nights wake plenty of support was shown to the Sullivan family by Illinois State Police, Cook County Sheriffs, Water Reclamation Police, Area 1/Area 2 Detectives, 4th District/11th district Officers/Supervisors and others from various units. George you will be missed dearly. May God bless You!

BE SAFE

Not much information in the media about the murder of Maywood Police Officer Thomas Wood. A press conference is expected later today by the maywood Police Department.
We wonder what similarities exist between this murder and the murder of Metra Police Officer Thomas Cook.

MAYWOOD POLICE OFFICER MURDERED

TRIBUNE

A Maywood police officer was fatally shot while on duty late Monday, authorities said this morning.

The wounded officer was transported to Loyola University Medical Center in the near west suburb following the 11 p.m. shooting at 6th Avenue and Erie Street, Maywood Fire Department Lt. L. Scott said.

The officer, identified as Thomas Wood, 37, was pronounced dead at Loyola at 11:43 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

He was shot multiple times while sitting in his squad car, the medical examiner's office said. Representatives of the Maywood Police Department were unavailable for comment, but were expected to comment later this morning.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Wood family.

20 claims from public trigger official action

"The superintendent will hold commanders accountable for knowing what is happening with their people and trying to get them help,"


When commanders and other supervisors feel the CRs and tactical response reports indicate an officer is engaging in a pattern of unacceptable behavior, the officer will receive training and counseling through the department's Behavioral Intervention System launched in 1998, Woods said.

We wonder how many Commanders will go to bat for their guys? We're betting plenty of Carhartts will be traded in for blue shirts.

The city hopes such intervention will save money: Between 2001 and 2005, Chicago has paid out $97.6 million for police misconduct claims

You want to save money? Fight the frivolous lawsuits. A couple cases where it cost these bloodsucking law firms money may make them reconsider the merits of the cases they take on.The public probably doesnt realize that their tax dollars go to settle these cases for fiscal expedience. In other words, cheaper to pay than fight.

DISPATCHER SOUNDING OFF

Not too much in the way of news today. So we thought we would turn a comment we read into a post up for discussion.

Unknown Dispatcher says:
Use those damn TMAs to fill in for absentee crossing guards. It is unreal on 2nd watch how many patrol cars have to cover these spots daily!

Anyone up to answer this question , truthfully? Why can't desk personnel do the food run for the insiders, so we dispatchers do not have to hear "Oh squad, I've got a station run to xyz , no paper , right out of roll call

Someone down at OEMC is looking for answers. Anyone out there care to take this on?

WE HAVE A MORALE PROBLEM!

Maybe we are stating the obvious but what is the root of this problem? We can point at manpower as one of the principle culprits. Just under 10 years ago when I got on this job I worked in a fast south side district. Every beat and rapid was up along with a traffic car, incident car and a wagon. Plenty of bodies in the roll call room.

Today in that same south side district the picture is completely different. The calls for service are just as frequent but the bodies to answer those calls are fewer. Obviously the beat cars are all manned and yes there is a wagon but on any given evening you would be lucky to find three or four rapids and not all are 10-4.

What happened to the manpower? Attrition? About two years ago a story was going around and it went like this....I know this Lt at personnel and he said that only 10,000 duty availability checks went out this quarter. I don’t know if that story was true or not but every time it was repeated to me the storyteller would know the source personally. We were convinced that attrition was far out pacing new hires. However, when I would attended FOP monthly meetings the announced number of current members didn’t seem to support this great dip in manpower.
The attrition rate probably was out pacing new hires but not at the clip the “duty availability” story led us to believe.

So what happened to the manpower? Take a look at any district’s A&A sheets and see how many people are detailed out. Not only are they detailed to various units at 35th St but the Area’s are draining people with saturation teams, midnight gang teams and gun teams. One of the biggest drains is TRU and the newest target team is the Targeted Traffic Unit. Jobs that were done at the district level are now being done by deployed units. That leaves district copper with only one job and that is to answer calls. Jobs are stacked two and three deep and lunches get denied on a regular basis. However, the Guys want to make street and traffic stops but, some of our colleagues actually discourage it because of the damn backlog. I have actually heard a fellow sergeant tell a couple of hard charging coppers “you want to chase guys then go to the tact team, but your job is to answer calls” Way to build up that morale sarge!

On another point our guys would like to take a night off once in awhile. Use the hours that they earned working overtime or working on a holiday. Time and time again I’m handing back time due slips at roll call with “DENIED” written across. Manpower demands! The shitty part about these denials is they are given back the night before the requested day off. These people can’t make plans to spend some time with family or friends. Do we have a morale problem? Your damn right we do and manpower is one of the main culprits. We're sure many of you have opinions as to the source of low morale on the department.....please share.

Pension Funding Ratios Decline Continues

Many of you have sent comments concerning our pension. We went on a hunt for information at Craine's Chicago business. We found an interesting article about Chicago's under funded pension funds.
The article credits its information from a particular source know asThe Civic Federation Their website states
The Civic Federation is a non-partisan government research organization working to maximize the quality and cost-effectiveness of government services in the Chicago region.
The Federation’s membership includes business and professional leaders from a wide range of Chicago-area companies and institutions.
The Federation maintains a growing archive of publications concerning local tax policies, government services, and public expenditures.

We read a publication prepared by the Civic Federation and their observation of our pensions was as followed...

For the third year, the funded ratios of all four City pension funds continued a steady decline.
The Fire Fund in FY2004 reported a funded ratio of only 42.3%, tumbling from 60.2% in
FY2001. The Police Fund’s funded ratio dropped from 61.4% in FY2003 to 55.9% a year later.
The Police Fund has declined from a 71.1% funded ratio in FY2000. The continued declines in
the funded ratios of the Fire and Police Pension Funds are a cause for concern. They are far
below levels considered financially healthy. The Municipal Fund dropped to a funded ratio of
72.0%, declining sharply from a 94.5% ratio in FY2000.
The ongoing declines in the funded ratios of the Fire and Police Pension Funds continue to be a
serious cause for concern. At this time, the City cannot afford further increases in employee
benefit levels that would continue to increase funding shortfalls. The City should consider
reductions in the benefits of new employees to reduce costs in the long-term

Don't be surprised if the City looks to implement two tiered system for pensions and benefits for future hires with the expiration of our contract Jun 07.ISP pension of 80% after 26 and a day is no where on the horizon for us. According to the Craine's article its not totally gloom and doom...not yet!

SITE COUNTER/POST

Last week we added a site counter to the blog. The counter gives us info about when we are visited and how frequently each hour. We are averaging over 140 visits a day.We will let you know whenever he hit milestones.

On another note.....if anyone has an idea for a post please send it in a comment for consideration.

BlackBerries may join cops on patrol

SUN-TIMES

Now, the Police Department is field-testing 17 BlackBerries with officers assigned to bike and Segway patrols, narcotics and Area One gun teams. At least 100 more are expected to be ordered at the end of this month and distributed to specialized units, including organized-crime squads.
The goal is to get the time-saving devices into the hands of every officer on the street.

Actually sounds like a good idea. Have been using the new PDT’s and like the system but CLEAR rarely seems to be available. When CLEAR is up it is painfully slow. Hopefully by the time the blackberries are used many of the kinks in our current system will be worked out.
I’m running out of room on my belt!
Any interest in police technology read this link on POLICE ONE.COM

2016?

The City unvieled its logo for the 2016 Olympics. Logo contingent upon landing the Olympics.

Changes

Go toSCC to view list of command changes

DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??? I WANT YOUR BADGE NUMBER!!!!!!!

Poor Alec Baldwin! Inconvenienced by a plane crash Mr. Baldwin gives one of New York’s finest an earful. The arrogance of the Hollywood elite never ceases to amaze.

SPEEDERS!

In the coming months, each district will have a LIDAR gun, which trains a laser beam on a car to determine its exact speed.

The new plan -- which also includes a unit that will deploy officers to traffic trouble spots across the city -- comes just months after a parade of aldermen complained that pedestrian safety and enforcement of the city's traffic laws were not priorities of the department.

On Tuesday, Transportation Committee Chair Tom Allen (38th) said the new plan fell short in one key way: The city doesn't just need new gadgets but more officers to use them.

we're not hiring any new police. I still feel the money should be devoted to police.''

I’m sure we can all agree that traffic enforcement at the district level is minimal at best. Districts citywide are having a hard time manning all their cars. We constantly find ourselves working in a backlog with stacked jobs in the box. When a traffic stop is done its usually because some idiot blatantly commited a violation right in front of the copper. Alderman Allen hit the nail on the head when he said “the city doesn’t just need new gadgets but more officers to use them”
We noticed on the latest transfer order that a handful of officers were going to the traffic unit. Again the department is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Allen has prodded Daley for months to hire 100 more officers exclusively for traffic enforcement with funds from the red light camera tickets.
We have been to plenty of CAPS meetings where the community not only complains about crime but the lack of traffic enforcement. Now the department has created another group of officers that are to be “deployed” from 35th st. to handle a problem that should be handled at the district level. The districts are yet again being siphoned of their manpower to create another “target” unit. That brings us to another subject regarding manpower but we’ll save that for another post.