On the morning of September 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld ran to the fire at the Pentagon to assist the wounded and ensure the safety of survivors. For the next five years, he was in steady service as a wartime secretary of defense – a duty he carried out with strength, skill, and honor.
A period that brought unprecedented challenges to our country and to our military also brought out the best qualities in Secretary Rumsfeld. A man of intelligence, integrity, and almost inexhaustible energy, he never paled before tough decisions, and never flinched from responsibility. He brought needed and timely reforms to the Department of Defense, along with a management style that stressed original thinking and accountability. Don took his job personally and always looked out for the interests of our servicemen and women. He was a faithful steward of our armed forces, and the United States of America is safer and better off for his service.
In a busy and purposeful life, Don Rumsfeld was a Naval officer, a member of Congress, a distinguished cabinet official in several administrations, a respected business leader – and, with his beloved wife, the co-founder of a charitable foundation. Later in life, he even became an app developer. All his life, he was good-humored and big-hearted, and he treasured his family above all else. I mourn an exemplary public servant and a very good man.
Lightfoot is getting blamed for the violence. All he does is hold press conferences.
The police do not do “Stop & Frisk” anymore so everyone is carrying a gun.
The police cannot chase a car so the gang bangers do “Drive By Shootings” without worrying about police pursuit.
Now police are not supposed to chase offenders in foot. These are “Alice in Wonderland” rules put in place by lunatics.
🤦🏼♀️😡 This will include stopping at the homes of gang members in hopes of preventing violence, Brown said.
“We go to their house, knock on their door and try to intervene in some ways with social services, street outreach and violence interrupters,” he said.
Kudos to the 20 Alderman who signed a letter demanding that Alderman Taliaferro, Chairman of the Committee on Public Safety, convene a meeting to take up the issue of “escalating and ongoing violence” in the city. All 50 should have signed! They demand that it focus on at least two of the criticisms I have been leveling for almost two years in my posts. First of all, the stripping of 1,400 Police officers from already depleted local police districts, leaving too many Beats without a patrol car and officers without backup. Secondly, the scheduling and deployment strategies that are exhausting and demoralizing officers, punishing their families and driving record retirements and transfers to other police departments. This is a very good and long overdue start. I urge the Committee to also take up at least three other critical issues. Lets begin with the serious under-staffing and misuse of Detectives which is seriously impeding the closing of shooting and murder cases. The percentage of Chicago Police who serve as Detectives is half that of other major cities like New York and Los Angeles. Next, the tragic absence of any substantive program to provide protection for witnesses and victims. And thirdly, complete transparency in the number of felons being released back into the community by the States Attorney and the Courts, and the possible consequences of this action. The police cannot clear cases without community cooperation and contrary to police critics, the lack of cooperation is not because the community fears the police, but because our elected leaders have refused to provide police with the resources and support needed to protect the community.
Chicagoans: if you read something today, read this. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
The Unbearable Lightness of Lightfoot’s Chicago
Mayor Lori Lightfoot is an experienced lawyer, skilled in the great game of words. She made a good living craftily parsing words at one of the city’s top law firms.
Law firm politics, played on carpets in board rooms is one thing. But Chicago politics played on the concrete and asphalt of the blood-spattered Chicago Way is another.
And as a rookie mayor clearly overwhelmed by the job, she’s publicly proven herself to be woefully inept at leadership, crisis management and the dark arts of politics.
She has lost the city. She lost it when she failed to stop that second wave of downtown mass looting last summer. She continues to lose what’s left of it. The city is now at an historic crossroads, as people vote with their feet and flee from street violence.
People who’ve been exhausted by the pandemic and the lockdowns are overwhelmed as homicides and shootings spike here as they spike nationally. Tourists are harassed, robbed, and even killed downtown.
The difference between Chicago and the other towns is that here, the people have been conditioned to think a mayor could be seen as ruthless or corrupt, but always strong enough to maintain order.
That is not the case now. Rather than maintain order she undermines it.
The other day, a young couple was pulled from their car after the Puerto Rican Day parade, and murdered on the street in a horrific video that has gone viral.
What does the mayor do? She clings to her word games, the way someone who’d just been tossed overboard would desperately cling to a floating chunk of wood. As the Chicago City Council plays symbolic politics to rename Lake Shore Drive, Lightfoot counters by also playing to the woke, playing to the hard progressive left, playing her race card, while thrilling some media cheerleaders who are awed by what they see as her linguistic wizardry, but ignoring her incompetence.
But the people see right through it. They don’t care about political word games or excuses. They care about not becoming victims of violent crime.
Many are now afraid of going downtown or to the lakefront after sunset. They don’t want to see any more children gunned down in the street gang wars, or tourists stabbed, as the bodies pile up, as Lightfoot proclaims “systemic racism” to be a public health crisis.
Really, Lori? Really? Violent crime is the crisis. The growing sense of lawlessness in all the neighborhoods is the crisis that is killing Chicago. She’s a corporate lawyer, not a wartime consigliere. But she wanted this job. This is her city. Do something, mayor.
To boost her politics with anti-police progressives, she demonized the Chicago Police Department that she needs to keep order. She’s overworked the cops, and woefully understaffed the department. The CPD has gone for years without a contract and now exhausted and at the breaking point. And it’s not yet July.
She plays games with statistics, suggesting violent crime is going down when it is on the increase. She shifts detectives to street patrol downtown, strips the neighborhoods of cops, puts empty squad cars along Michigan Avenue and won’t let police engage in foot chases.
Tourists might be confused. But criminals aren’t. Nor are residents. Those empty parked squad cars with the blue flashing lights are the wretched beacons of City Hall’s scarecrow police policy.
Lightfoot’s latest word game involves her offer to find compromise in renaming Chicago’s iconic Lake Shore Drive after the city’s first non-native settler, the trader Jean Baptiste Point DuSable. The aldermen aren’t having it.
Fran Spielman, the savvy, longtime City Hall reporter for the Chicago Sun Times, and a friend, put it this way: “Mayor Lori Lightfoot offered Tuesday to rename Chicago’s most iconic roadway Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive to avoid her first City Council defeat, possibly followed by the city’s first mayoral veto since 2006,” she reported. Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive? Pardon me? What? Who talks like that? Lightfoot is not in favor of renaming the drive. But her word-salad compromise is a mouthful of mush speaking loudly to her weakness. The political class cares. Some in the media care.
You know who doesn’t care if Chicago politicians rename it Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive? Anat Kimchi doesn’t care. She’s beyond caring. The 31-year-old University of Maryland graduate student was killed in a random knife attack on upper Wacker Drive in the afternoon. Gyovanny Arzuaga, 24, and Yasmin Perez, 23, the mother of their two children, don’t much care either. They were the couple dragged from their car after a fender bender following the Puerto Rican Day parade, beaten to the ground, and murdered in that now-viral video seen around the world. You know who else probably doesn’t care? Those victims in other police videos you may have seen, attacked in the Loop by Divvy Bike gangs. What about that man who was stabbed in the neck on Michigan Avenue a few weeks ago because he didn’t give money to a homeless panhandler? Or the man shot in the neck in a carjacking on the Gold Coast the other night? Or the family robbed at gunpoint last week on Michigan Avenue? As I was writing this, news was breaking about another family of five women downtown, ranging in age from preteens to the elderly. They were reportedly attacked on the way to dinner and ran into a restaurant to save themselves. The details had not been confirmed, but the general outline of it is all too familiar now. They reportedly cowered in the restaurant for hours, too afraid to walk back to their hotel. Does the renaming of Lake Shore Drive matter to them?
And all the good and frightened people of the most violent neighborhoods who realize that cops from their short-staffed districts are being sent downtown.
Or Xavier Quiroz, that 13-year-old boy I told you about a few weeks ago, borderline autistic, a special needs student from the Southwest Side. He was murdered two days after Christmas last year. Xavier was a gentle boy on his way to buy a video game with his Christmas money. His family loved Chicago, but they have other young children. Now they’re voting with their feet and leaving town. The boy wasn’t a baby gangbanger. He hadn’t been shot by police, so activists and the rest of political Chicago stepped over him to play their word games elsewhere. The DuSable word salad compromise isn’t Lightfoot’s only word game. She played one with me, back when I supported and defended her. She endorsed catch-and-release Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx for re-election, the Soros-backed social justice warrior masquerading as a prosecutor. Lightfoot’s endorsement was a final and pronounced abandonment of the people, who pay the price for Foxx. Lightfoot should immediately put her legal skills to work, covering her behind as she makes a 180 degree turn on police and law and order that is now absolutely necessary to protect lives and the future of the city.
Other Democrats in other places are trying to do this now. For example, Stacy Abrams in Georgia has reversed her position on Voter ID laws after repeatedly likening them to Jim Crow racism. Is it ludicrous and embarrassing? Yes. Of course. But ultimately, politics is about practicalities. People are beyond caring about word games. For generations, the people of Chicago have been conditioned not to expect much from City Hall. They’ve been trained to shut their mouths, doff the cap, and bend the knee. And all they expect was that their mayor would keep them and their families reasonably safe. Now they can’t even expect that.
The motoring public in the Leyden Township area is being informed that Franklin Avenue will be closed to traffic starting Monday, June 14 from Williams Drive to Wolf Road through August 2. Please watch for detour signs posted in the area. Local traffic will be able to enter the businesses. This is part of the new O’Hare ring road and toll road expansion project for I 490.
The closure will allow the Illinois Tollway to install a box culvert for Silver Creek at Franklin Avenue and ComEd to relocate numerous main line telephone poles.
This is a cowardly disgusting act. These constant brazen acts will never erase our memory of our fallen heroes who gave their lives so you can freely be such fools !!!
Last month, the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation placed 66 billboards throughout the city of Chicago to honor the men and women who serve and protect this city.
In a statement, the Foundation said they were saddened to hear “several of the billboards” had been defaced, including a billboard at LeClaire and Elston that featured Officer Jimenez, a beloved father and husband who died in 2018 responding to a shooting in Mercy Hospital.
I just heard a trailer bill passed both houses to “fix” some of the horrific issues with that disaster reform Bill. Has anyone heard anything?
UPDATE- thank you, Mike Cujo Palazzo for sharing this.
Improvements in the law (SAFE-T Act)
Body cameras
Removes the provision that said an officer cannot view his or own video before writing a report. Removes the provision that makes it a felony to violate department policy on body cameras. Improves the language (in our favor) about what would be a felony for violation of state law regard to use of body cameras. Must be intentional, willing, and a clear attempt to obstruct justice. Eliminates a felony offense for inadvertent mistakes or problems with cameras. Clarifies that law enforcement agencies that are in universities, park districts, conversation districts, forest preserves, railroads, etc. (any agencies that are not municipal or county) have a mandatory date of January 1, 2025, for implementation of body cameras.
Use of force
Removes the ambiguous language about letting someone flee if they can be apprehended at a later date. The “apprehended later” idea was reinserted in a different place in the trailer bill, but in a different way that initially seems more palatable. We are continuing to review and discuss this. Addresses the concern that it was unclear what an “imminent threat” might be when it comes to using deadly force, and removes the undefined idea that a serious crime must have “just” been committed. The word “just” has been removed from the law.
Chokeholds and tasers:
Addresses the definition of chokeholds and removes the provision that says you cannot target the back with a taser. Most new training requirements: Now effective January 1, 2022, instead of July 1.
Obstructing and resisting officers:
Clarifies that you can arrest someone for obstructing without an underlying offense. Separates resisting from obstructing. Major issues deferred (some for reasons we are OK with)
Citations instead of custodial arrests for Class B and C misdemeanors.
The sponsor understand our concerns, and we expect more negotiation before the effective date of January 1, 2023. Three phone calls for person in custody. The negotiated language is improved but not part of the trailer bill. Implementation of this will be delayed until January 1, 2022, so that we can continue to discuss.
Decertification issues.
Effective January 1, 2022, so there is time to work on the outstanding critical issues.
Anonymous complaints.
We could not come to agreement with sponsors and advocates on modifying this issue, but allowing anonymous complaints is not effective until 2023, and so there is time.
Major issues not addressed
Funding for the body cameras and storage and funding for all training. Everyone knows it’s a major concern, but it is not addressed yet. AG civil penalty for officers for pattern and practice violations. We believe these investigations and penalties should be directed at agencies and municipalities, not individual officers. We will continue to discuss this.
Summary
The Illinois Chiefs support the trailer bill. It addresses many of our serious concerns with the SAFE-T Act, and law enforcement will be much better off with these changes.
We remain concerned about unresolved and unaddressed issues, but in recent months we have strengthened a process of negotiating honestly and in good faith with legislators about criminal justice reform issues.
TO ILACP members: Please send your questions and concerns to ilacp@ilchiefs.org.
Respectfully released at 2 p.m. Monday, May 31, 2021
National Donut Day, held the first Friday of June each year, was originally established in 1938 by the Chicago Salvation Army to honor women who served donuts to soldiers during World War I. According to John Costello, Chief Global Marketing & Innovation Officer at Dunkin’ Brands, Dunkin’ Donuts wants to make it easy and affordable for people to celebrate National Donut Day. “As the donut leader, we know first-hand how donuts, perhaps more than any other treat, bring smiles to people’s faces and make everyday moments at home, work and at play a little sweeter. To commemorate this occasion and celebrate this classic treat, we invite everyone to visit Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants on June 3 to enjoy a free donut with a beverage purchase,” he said.
Dunkin’ Donuts has led the donut category for more than 60 years, selling 5.3 million donuts and Munchkins® donut hole treats every day. Dunkin’ Donuts throughout the United States offers more than 70 varieties of donuts, including beloved flavors such as Boston Kreme, Glazed and Chocolate Frosted. As the brand has expanded into new markets throughout the world, Dunkin’ Donuts has extended its donut leadership and innovation by introducing new varieties created specifically to appeal to local tastes. For example, Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants in Asia currently offer Pork Floss Donuts, yeast donuts topped with dried pork and often paired with dry seaweed topping, as well as Mochi Rings, which are cake donuts indigenous to the region.
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