Chicago looted by BLM

[VIDEO] So after Mayor Lightfoot crashes a gathering of people on a north side lakefront beach we get another mass incident of looting locally. The basis for this is said to be a shooting that took place in Englewood on Sunday afternoon. From there, an organized caravan of people go into downtown Chicago and start looting not only there but also the Magnificent Mile. We already experienced some major unrest and now we got more.

Instead of showing some footage from our local news outlets, perhaps we watch someone outside of Chicago analyze what happened overnight through Monday. Anthony Brian Logan is a conservative YouTuber that has taken aim at BLM recently.

I did some posting with regards to this latest development at The Sixth Ward.

The Mayor breaks up a gathering on the north lakefront this past weekend

This tweet from over the weekend from Mayor Lori Lightfoot showed up on Instapundit. And I see a number of tweets on twitter that took her well intended post in a bad way.

It's called a pandemic, people. This reckless behavior on Montrose Beach is what will cause us to shut down the parks and lakefront. Don't make us take steps backwards. pic.twitter.com/FHxeYfH7Wf

— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) August 8, 2020

CWB Chicago shared this image of the Mayor at Montrose Beach crashing the so-called party along with her photographer on fb

Furthermore Ed Driscoll at Instapundit noted: "Curiously, none of the articles this weekend by the Chicago Sun Times, ABC’s Chicago affiliate, CBS’s Chicago affiliate, and NBC’s Chicago affiliate mention the July protests or Lightfoot’s blessings."

I admitted to an out of state friend that I miss Rahm Emanuel. He was unpopular as time went on but some of what's been going on in the city it wouldn't have been tolerated with him as mayor. However, the crisis going on he wouldn't let go to waste.

In addition, 2nd City Cop has an interesting post if you go to the bottom of the post about the various machines that exists in Chicago. In a fit of perhaps disrespect they refer to the mayor as Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, perhaps the Mayor will only have one term. We have a while before '23.

The Cook County State's Attorney Race

The above flyer I saw taped on a bus shelter on 95th Street Sunday. This is the first time I've seen such an accusation although if the State's Attorney is unpopular amongst some parts of the electorate it's due to her offices handling of the Jussie Smollett affair - Smollett formerly starred in the popular TV series Empire had allegedly engaged in a hoax claiming racists wearing a Make America Great Again ballcap had assaulted him.

Regardless Foxx easily won the Democrat primary in March even if it was affected by the coronavirus. And she does have a Republican opponent and I mentioned that in passing on Twitter as Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara noted the Republican opponent during his appearance on FOX News Channel.

#IngrahamAngle I hate to say it John Catanzara, but I doubt most of Chicago or Cook County knows who Kim Foxx's Republican opponent is. Who is he? Where is he?

— The Sixth Ward (@TheSixthWard) July 22, 2020

I found this article from March 2020 discussing the Republican opponent Pat O'Brien a former judge who was elected as such as a Democrat in 2006

After cruising through the GOP primary Tuesday, O’Brien outlined his plans to beat incumbent Democrat Kim Foxx in a live-streamed news conference, thanking his family, friends and “everyone who voted against Kim Foxx.”

“We really have to clean up the mess that she’s made,” O’Brien said, not even a minute into his remarks. “I think we have to restore justice to the community. We have to make it safer for people in all of the kinds of activities that they do, and we have to remember that the state’s attorney’s duty is to protect the victims of crime.”
...
O’Brien said he’s taken a hard look at the state’s attorneys office, and while he sees Foxx’s handling of the Jussie Smollett case as “a violation of oath and a lack of integrity” he said the office is “under producing in other areas.”

The former judge said that under Foxx’s administration, fewer than 200 jury trials have been held in 15 felony courtrooms, which works out to less than four trials per courtroom each year. He said that from the 1980s until the first decade of this century that number was much higher. He also said Foxx has “lost more trials and gun cases than she’s won in each of the three years” and called for quicker trials.

This article noted that it's been almost 25 since a Republican had been elected Cook County State's Attorney. I vaguely remember him, he was a man named Jack O'Malley. Perhaps some of you remember those "Back Jack" political ads from back in the day.

Either way, 2020 has proven to be an odd year in a variety of ways. We got this pandemic and this unrest over racial injustice. I thought Trump could be re-elected President and right now he's limping because of those two ongoing crises. Perhaps a Republican could win the State's Attorneys office this year.

However, Cook County seemed to have trended more and more Democrat over the years and since O'Brien seems to have hardly campaigned since his primary I don't see a change in Cook County. Then again who knows time will tell..

Protests in Homan Square at CPD facility on the city's west side

[VIDEO] The video you see above is from Ghetto News Network - welcome back J-Hustle - showing what happened in Homan Square last night on the west side.

You might have seen this on your local news last night, protests have converged on the west side of the city to protest a Chicago Police detention facility. It's something I have to do more research on, however, it appears there is a history of police abuse of citizens here.

That facility that exists there and it appears to be near the old Sears complex on Homan Avenue, it also doesn't appear to be a police station. At first glance seeing how the protests took up the whole streets on the news last night near this complex I automatically had concerns of a CHAZ situation here in Chicago or even what happened to that police station in Minneapolis, Minn in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd.

The Chicago Police had an interesting past week there was a shooting in Auburn-Gresham at a funeral home on 79th Street where reportedly 15 people were wounded and made national headlines. Chicago Police were successfully able to defend a Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park which was later removed by the city on early Friday morning as a slap in the face to those officer who were hurt in that standoff with the protestors rioters.

At least for the past month - aside from an uptick in shootings and homicides here in the city for most of the past month - things in the city had settled down as far as unrest. I just hope any protests remains peaceful. 

Chicago Board of Ed. continues CPD contract

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (Ward 6) discussed this issue last week and I would say he made some good points as far as why police are in CPS schools and what CPS could replace police with in their schools. It's interesting that even the 2nd City Cop blog seemed to support removing police from CPS schools at one point.

Then Wednesday's Board of Education votes and the contract continues [VIDEO]

And 2nd City Cop discusses this some more

The obvious answer is that the four votes don't want to face the political fallout when schools become uninhabitable for the good kids along with the three or four hundred teachers who would resign instantly should their last modicum of safety was removed. That makes them reasonably intelligent....for public school employees that is.

Also from the above video, Miguel del Valle noted that LSCs can make the decision as far as whether they want police officers or school resource officers in their individual schools. I suppose if each school can make that choice then so be it as opposed to making this a system wide mandate. It was noted in this article that Minneapolis' schools made their decision to end their contraction with Minneapolis police. They also voted to abolish their police department.

I wanted to show you this video of the protest on Wednesday in downtown Chicago. I drove right through it at least before Dearborn Street got shut down. Even saw a car with "Defund the police" in big letters and a huge figure of a pig on top of it - fill in the blank on that one though no need in this case I know their point. In this 1 min 30 sec video I don't see that car but we do see the protest. [VIDEO]

Tribune: CTA and Pace buses will begin collecting fares again, as riders slowly return to public transit

If you've gotten used to boarding the rear of a CTA bus during the course of this coronavirus pandemic, that time is ending. If you enjoyed avoiding paying your fare, especially for those of you who prefer to pay with cash as opposed to using a ventra card those days are about to end.

In another sign that things are getting closer to normal in the Chicago area, the CTA and Pace will start collecting bus fares again, and the CTA will end rear-door boarding.

The CTA will require customers to enter buses via the front door and pay fares starting Sunday, while the Pace suburban bus service resumes fare collections Monday.

Both agencies had waived fare collection as a way to protect operators and passengers from the coronavirus. But since the agency started rear-door boarding in April, the state and the agency have adopted other ways of keeping people safe, including providing masks for all drivers, requiring that passengers be masked, and implementing new cleaning technology, said CTA spokesman Brian Steele.

The agency limits the number of passengers on buses to no more than 15 people on a 40-foot bus and no more than 22 on a 60-foot bus. The CTA also has a ridership information dashboard on its website that shows when buses are the most crowded to help people choose a better time to travel.

Keith Hill, president of the bus drivers’ union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, said his group agreed with the resumption of front-door boarding. Hill noted the CTA had agreed to increase the “standee line,” or how far passengers have to stand back from drivers, to more than six feet.

In addition to outdoor dining, opening the lakefront, even allowing businesses that provide such services as barbers, pedicures, tatoos, etc to reopen it's a start!

Starting Sunday, rear-door boarding on CTA buses will end. As we begin to welcome people back, riders will return to boarding at the front as we’ve taken many steps to provide the healthiest environment possible for customers and employees. Learn more: https://t.co/VDccvU5ct2 pic.twitter.com/SuRgcZfCwr

— cta (@cta) June 19, 2020

Mr. Beat presents Illinois & Indiana compared

[VIDEO] As I type this the above compared video of both Illinois and Indiana is set for premiere by the edutuber Mr. Beat. This should be fascinating and I'd say in some respects Illinois and Indiana are two roughly evenly matched states even if one state is more important than the other.

Do you think Mr. Beat is correct in his comparisons.

CapFax: CTU slammed for “clearly racist” tweet

I found out about this tweet from the Chicago Teacher's Union at Capitol Fax today. He's noted what if Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police had tweeted this out. And I'm guessing the police would be universally condemned for this.

Y’all too much sometimes. 😂😂💀#DefundthePolice #PoliceFreeSchools #CopsOutCPS (IG: @electricstripe) pic.twitter.com/I4ryy3vOvM

— ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) June 18, 2020

EDIT 7:53 PM: That tweet has since been taken down so therefore I was prepared with this below screencap. 

Rich Miller further notes: "According to Chalkbeat, more than half of Chicago public school teachers are white. The CTU’s president is a wealthy white man."

Bad optics on all fronts. I get that the CTU and Mayor Lightfoot had been at odds since the strike late last year. However, this seems very incendiary. Further more I'm glad the mayor had a response to this noting what the response would've been if a right wing group had put this out. The condemnation should be no less if it was police, right-wingers, or even the teachers.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot blasts this tweet: “If that kind of tweet, which is clearly racist, had been put forward by a right-wing group, we would rightly be denouncing them. I think our scorn should be no less because it was put out by the CTU." https://t.co/VLYlwkwrXl

— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) June 18, 2020

She's been taking a beating for her response to the unrest, however, she's not wrong in her comments.

Does CPS need police officers at their schools?

[VIDEO] Alderman Roderick Sawyer (Ward 6) speaks with WGN on a proposal to remove Chicago Police from CPS schools.

A couple of things that resonate with me from this discussion. First, should students be concerned that some minor mischievous actions could quickly turn into a police situation. Ald. Sawyer noted that a student spent a night in jail for mouthing off to a police officer. One shouldn't get smart with police anyway, however, was it worth a night in jail?

Second, while police were stationed at schools initially to keep out bad influences could the schools find other resources to help students. Let's say CPD or CPS ended the contract for police at the schools, perhaps they could find a way to bring in resource officers. We've heard a lot about bringing in nurses, psychologists, social workers, etc into our schools. So let's say we do take police out of our schools, we can replace them with resources for our students.

What do you think?