No More Practice Ammo?

Are we really this hard up?

• More cut backs. Say good bye to your free 100 rounds a year for practice. Order just came out Wednesday. Pretty soon we'll get slingshots because ammo is too much money. Rocks are free.

Next year's qualifying is supposed to be with an empty gun and you yell, "Bang! Bang!" at a piece of newsprint (targets are too expensive you know) and then you walk downrange and poke holes in the paper where you think the bullets might have gone.

Captains Moved?

Who's got a copy of the order?

We were told a whole bunch of surgical appointments were made for next Wednesday so shoulders, knees, elbows, and arterial stents could be prepared for longer and healthier retirements.

Captains to Stay?

From the comments:

• FINALLY someone who has the stones to stick up to Masters/Weis. Thats right, Dan Dugan took a stand against the dynamic duo on the issue of moving Captains around to spread around the workoload. He told Weis that if he cant run the Patrol Division then expect him to drop papers and leave. (and go to the media about manpower shortages). low and behold, J-fled backed down (once again) and now the Captains will stay put. Way to go Dugan.

Of course, if the Department doesn't make any captains, J-Fled, Masters and Shortshanks win by default. And that certainly seems to be the way they're going at the moment.

Salsa Dancing?

If there is a god, please let this be untrue.

Someone related in a comment section that recruits were spending time down at Daley Center on some sort of "cultural awareness" training that involved them participating in salsa dancing?

Unfortunately, the other banter in the comment necessitated it being flushed. But seriously, salsa dancing? Whatever happened to the foxtrot?

TRU Counting Buildings?

Is this true? We had a comment or three over the past day that said TRU is being pulled out of Districts and sent to check on abandoned buildings across the city? Is this really an efficient use of manpower?

Isn't there a District Abandoned Building officer assigned to do this? Aren't there Area-wide "Troubled Building Teams" out there rousting squatters, dope dealers, prostitutes and generating all sorts of business for connected Board-Up companies?

Or has the foreclosure crisis completely inundated the District/Area teams to the point where the Department can't do the job?

And does this data collection contribute to the "Indoor/Outdoor" number crunching?

Mette Screwed Again? (UPDATED)

We've gotten three e-mails and a bunch of comments suddenly.

Supposedly, Mike Mette was notified he's taking a 90 day suspension for being intoxicated and arrested in Iowa.

So we're assuming there was a breath test performed on an individual who wasn't driving in Iowa that's in the public record somewhere?

And the arrest, which was ruled unlawful by an Iowa court, somehow has bearing on a CPD suspension?

And didn't J-Fled and Shortshanks brag how they had backed Mike Mette all the way, even promising him his job back, once they realized the direction the Courts were about to rule?

This better be a bullshit rumor.

UPDATE: Mike is on the Memorial Bike Ride on the East Coast right now. We've received an e-mail from one of his fellow riders and Mike has asked that speculation cease as to his being served with papers. We're going to close the comments here and conceal the existing ones for now until we hear from Mike or his people as to a course of action. We know which way we'd like to see it go, but that's Mike's call.

No More Code 049?

Firstly, comments are popping up that the Springfield Memorial Service was sparsely attended, at least as compared to years past. We did notice significantly less publicity leading up to the event, but as the largest law enforcement agency in Illinois and an agency that lost officers in recent years, the Chicago contingent ought to be well represented every year.

Second, we've heard from a number of people that someone downtown has decided that the bands will not be carried Code 049 anymore for Department and/or Memorial events. These officers donate generously of their time and talents to honor those taken from us, not only from this Department, but departments across the state and even the country occasionally. They also appear at various functions and graduations.

Anyone from the bands want to comment? Are they taking this away from the Honor Guard, too?

Sunday Rumors

Again, these are rumors:

• Absolutely no hiring and no promotions for 2010 and 2011. The Department will intentionally go under 10,000 cops and keep it there. Timekeepers and all other secretaries will be civilian jobs. All able-bodied inside folk are out on the street June 1. NO Sgts or Lts will have permanent inside jobs (other than district desk Sgts), all will be on the street. Lts not assigned to districts will go to any district and watch the department designates at any time (its about to go from the best job in the department to the worst). Inside people will report directly to the commander. All sick and injured officers will be sent inside or forced onto disability. The department hopes that forcing people on the street will give them an additional 500-1000 retirements.
  
  And my favorite:
  
  EVERYBODY in uniform starting June 1, including dicks.

The "no hiring" part of the rumor is wrong as there are 60 recruits poised to start the Academy before the end of April. The rest of it though....

We've been getting a lot in e-mails about full duty people being launched from HQ. With the contract approval coming up shortly, the City is looking to empty the medical rolls and that means either Return to Duty or Forced Disability. There's going to be a ceiling on the number of people allowed to be on extended light/limited duty and it's going to be political. It's also has the potential to be very ugly.

A Republican, eh?

Vengeance for Shortshanks? For daring to run for office? Or for making noise about running for aldercreature?

• It appears J-fed got to chop the heads off two hispanic bosses, Capt Morado sent to 007th district and Lt Garrido sent to 21

At least this time, no one got demoted, just exiled.

Exempt Troubles Again

Another change in the offing?

• Hey SCC,
  get your ears to the ground in the 011th District. Seems Henny Penny was named as an offender in a case report on Thursday night. Get going on this and give us the scoop.
  
  
• Earthquake to hit the 011th district soon. After shocks in 007.

Amazing.

And the rumors continue that the Elton John fan, after dodging a supposed recommendation of termination, is headed back to Captain, but the beneficiaries of her largesse continue to hold high ranking positions in the exempt staff.

What the heck is wrong with this Department? Was it really this dysfunctional all the time? Or is the incompetency of the feebs and Harvard lawyers really bringing it to the fore?

CYA Politics

Evidently, the political game is heating up behind the scenes:

• OUCH AUNT BEA!
  
  It seems that Aunt Bea is driving the bus and it's D/S DD in her path. There was a meeting Friday with some community leaders, not sure of the topic but I assume it had to do with the slaying of 025 Cmdr BL. Aunt Bea has been scrambling to tell her "people" she tried to stop DD but he wouldn't listen.
  
  She said she "warned him not to do it" and "It's not right". She added that it makes her sick what he (J-Fed) is "doing to our people."
  
  Is this the push to eliminate DD from consideration for the Top Spot?

When the reign of J-Fed comes to an end, there is going to be a rush to settle old scores. It seems like certain factions are setting up to do just that already.

Interesting Rumor

We have no idea how to track this one down, but it would explain a lot about Shortshank's attitude:

• The sad thing is is that the Mayor is slowly but surely downsizing our department. Now, with drops in stats, this justifies him not hiring any more police or moving forward to do anything for us. This is the most important thing; the Mayor is not worried about us because he spent well over $1 million dollars for a firm to verify how many registered voters were from CPD. They also looked for the historical voting numbers. Guess what, less than 1 out of every 4 police officers of any rank are registered voters. Less than that voted in the last two Mayoral elections. This is fact! So why would he really care what you think?

We had never heard this one before, and we hear a lot of rumors because of where we're at. We asked around yesterday and we were unpleasantly surprised to discover this person might be onto something - 4 of the 7 cops we asked weren't even registered to vote. Have our readers discovered one of the root causes of why Shortshanks treats us with such disregard?

More Ticket Follies

Anyone care to confirm this rumor regarding the State Police supervisors coming in to attend to their injured Trooper?

• ISP supervisors called in from home drove their personal cars to Stroger and parked on Ogden. Dept of Revenue ticketed the cars for not feeding the parking meters and then came back after midnight and put a second ticket on the cars for no parking on Ogden after midnight.

This would truly be a crying shame if confirmed.

Headquarter Rumors

HQ rumors abound!

• The summer festival season must be upon the horizon. HQ has started switching the day off groups of the weekenders to cover the non-existent manpower shortages;
• Informational Services is going to be disbanded and the work farmed out to a connected Shortshanks relative. Just what we need;
• Direct from the fans in the Patrol Division - Special Employment revamp on the way - all based on activity numbers.

Hey, it's rumors. What do you expect?

Rumors Rumors Everywhere

Definitely one of the better rumors we've seen in recent weeks just appeared in our comment section:

• It's been confirmed, yet not yet made common knowledge:
  
  All the goofs finally assigned to the area gun/gang teams will be sent to districts either starting the 6th or 7th period (still to be determined).
  
  There is a MAJOR reshuffling of manpower coming. Unfortunately for those that signed-up for the glory of being on an "elite" area team will have NO say-so as to where they'll be assigned. EXPECT TO WIND UP ANYWHERE MANPOWER IS SHORT, BOYS AND GIRLS. And that means any watch, also. Since you are no longer "detailed", but "assigned" to the area teams, you have given up your rights to get back to your district of origin.
  
  Initiative "Clean Slate" (that's one of the names the brass is kicking around) will end the existence of MSF, TRU, Area Gang/Gun Teams, etc., and ship the patrolmen from these units back to the districts. Only after all manpower in the districts is brought up to snuff will they consider re-forming SOME variation of the disbanded units, but in much smaller numbers.
  
  All you clout babies better start making your calls now. Midnights in the Deuce may be your next assignment.
  
  There's going to be a lot of disgruntled "hard chargers" coming to a district near you in the near future.
  
  And now the bombshell: All this reshuffling is in the works courtesy of a certain boss that resembles a wrestler.
  
  You heard it here first folks.

This tracks with a couple of stories we've been hearing around town. It's the first instance of all of the stories appearing in a single form. That either means (A) it's the source of all rumor, (B) someone is taking a whole lot of effort to cobble together all the rumors or (C) there's something to it all and this is the reality.

Seeing as how the upcoming retirement wave is going to run into almost 2.5 years of non-hiring, choice (C) seems more and more likely.

Now how does this affect the Captains only being assigned to 1st and 3rd watches? Someone else said they heard that 10 Captains were going to be assigned as Inspectors, and seeing as how that was what was agreed to in the recently ratified Captains' Contract, no surprises there. That will make us short almost 20 Captains citywide - enough to remove 2nd Watch from the equation. Are we really headed down this slope again?

Imposter Arrested Again?

From the comments, a couple people are claiming the police impersonator has been locked up again. Can anyone verify and what the hell for this time?

And if true, someone get us the name of the Juvenile Court judge, because we are going to go to town.

"Relationship" Meeting

E-mails that make you go, "Hmmmm:"

• Word is News Affairs is having some big pow wow today at 35th with the media to examine the CPD/Media "relationship." Don't know what that means or whats to be discussed. And don't know if Weis is sitting in (no doubt a Policy Group member will be tho)...but figured you'd want to know.

Any word on what was decided? How many bad stories are going to be run as opposed to ones that make the police look human? Because word on the street is there are a number of bad stories about to break loose, including a continuing scandal that doesn't involve SOS.

We heard a rumor that item #1 on the agenda was Fran and Frank have to stop quoting people who use the word, "J-Fed." Item #2 was that whenever referring to the Chief of Staff, they had to say, "Masters of the Universe" at least once.

Federal Misbehavior?

From the Hoffman Estates post:

• Hey guys, I got a little more info to add to this article. They failed to mention that Hoffman Estates employs a few Federal Agents (homeland security) to receive federal funds (higher than usual) with this money and other funds, they are close to completion on a $10 million dollar new facility.
  On top of this Sunday Dec 6th, 1 of these federal agents took a newly seized car for a joy ride and totaled it. The cars estimated value?? $400,000!!!
  That would cover the salary for the 4 officers and this story wasn't reported on anywhere.

A pro golfer or a Chicago Bear wreck a luxury car that they own and it's big news. Feebs wreck a car that they have no claim to aside from an un-adjudicated court case and no one says a word. Can anyone confirm?

RDO Swap

This is a good rumor and we've heard it discussed in a couple of different forums. Does this sound like a good idea? We're curious.

• RDO swapping has been approved between the City and Department to settle all FLSA suits.
  
  
• An officer denied time off (Comp Time only) can swap the day with another officer who is RDO on the day in question. Officers on furlough get to swap days only they are regularly scheduled to be RDO, not any day during their furlough.
  
  
• This is NOT an overtime opportunity. No time-and-one-half. It's a straight up trade so seniority will not come into play at all as it's an arrangement between two officers of the same rank. Swaps can only be done within the unit of assignment and watch.
  
  
• Once the swap is done, the officer that worked their day off has 28 days (we assume this covers the overtime cycle) to take the missed day off. You cannot save it up for extending a weekend or furlough or whatever, but if it happens to land within the 28 day cycle that way, that's your good luck.

We might have a detail or two wrong, but it seems like a decent tool to give people time off who need the day. Opinions?

Burger Queen Returns?

Rumor has it that retired former Commander is on the verge of filing a federal discrimination lawsuit against the Department and certain exempts.

It is truly amazing that you can be an incompetent hack your entire career, get a gold star, drive an entire district into a crater, then find a bottom-feeding lawyer who would even look at a case like this.

We'll bet she clears a cool million easily.