Quick Hits (Lengthy)

Too many stories to cover at one time. That means another Quick Hits to get the word out:

• A Midlothian teen accused of punching two Chicago cops during the South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day Parade says "don't blame me" for killing the parade.

  Speaking Thursday - as the commander in charge of policing 310,000 revelers at the parade detailed a nightmarishly "rough day" for his officers - 17-year-old Gonzalo Vasquez said he plans to attend whatever celebration South Side organizers have next year.

  "I was wasted," Vasquez said outside his home in the 14800 block of Lawndale Avenue on Thursday afternoon.

Our old friend Kim Janssen covers the parade spectacle in the South Town Star. A drunk 17-year-old from out of town attacking not one, but two officers. Vasquez...that's Irish, right? Every day, it sure seems it was the correct decision to end the parade.
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OEMC problems getting worse:

• Stacked-up calls to Chicago's 911 emergency center are "disappearing completely" from computer screens because of glitches in a $6 million upgrade to the dispatch system, call takers complained Thursday.

  Just last month, Mayor Daley showcased the upgrade, which lets call takers and dispatchers see real-time video from surveillance cameras within 150 feet of any 911 call.
  

  But then problems started cropping up, apparently tied to the servers installed three weeks ago as part of the upgrade. Calls that are "stacked" because police officers are responding to higher-priority calls have been "disappearing completely" from computer screens, sources said.

We aren't going to complain too much about stacked dope jobs disappearing, but knowing the City's propensity for truth telling (i.e. none whatsoever), we're more worried about actual legit calls getting lost in cyberspace. Add this to the ongoing under staffing prevalent at OEMC and the taxpayers are going to get stuck with another multimillion dollar preventable lawsuit.
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Another CPS casualty - one year later:

• A 15-year-old boy died Thursday after being shot last May on Chicago's South Side, officials said today.

  Rakeem Robinson was shot May 30 in the 5200 block of South Calumet Avenue, said Monique Bond, a Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman. Robinson, of the 5700 block of South Indiana Avenue, was pronounced dead at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

  At the time of the shooting, Robinson was 14 and a student at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy High School on the South Side, Bond said.

If counted properly, that will push the CPS stats somewhere over thirty for the school year. A new record maybe?
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A nonsense threat from the Feds:

• Newsradio 780 has learned the federal government is threatening to take action against the University of Chicago Medical Center now that investigators have found deficiencies in the emergency room.

  This follows the death of an elderly man in the emergency room waiting room last month.

  What the federal government is threatening to do is take away the University of Chicago Medical Center's Medicare certification.

Ok, let's just review some of Illinois pay-to-play history:

• An individual we'll call "Michelle O" is hired by the U of C hospitals for a job so important, that when she leaves it, it sits vacant for a year and is cut from the budget in 2009. For this job, she gets over $100,000 to figure out how to increase minority outreach;
• An individual we'll call "Barack O" is elected to the US Senate and gets a committee assignment that will allow him to direct a number of earmarks totaling over $1 million to the U of C hospitals for all sorts of stuff.
• The U of C, in a completely voluntary sort of way, gives "Michelle O" a raise that triples her salary in a job that is so important, they eliminate it a year later.
• "Barack O" moves on to a better job in charge of all sorts of cool stuff, including the people threatening to take away the U of C Medicare Certification.

We'll lay even money on a bunch of apologies, maybe a letter of reprimand and a bunch of promises to never let anything like what just happened to happen ever again - and by the way, it wasn't our fault. Anyone want to bet against us?