CWB Exposes Corruption

CWB doing some real power-lifting here with this scandal:

• Members of Chicago’s primary police oversight commission tried to push one of its own members off the workgroup searching for the city’s next police superintendent, and then fought to keep the paper trail hidden from the public.

  An 86-page email chain released last week shows four commissioners working to remove Sandra Wortham from the Superintendent Search Work Group, despite the commission president warning that the effort lacked a clear basis and could look like an attempt to settle an “interpersonal or philosophical disagreement” through a procedural maneuver. The emails also reveal that the majority was fragile from the start. It has since collapsed as one member abandoned the plan entirely.

  The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability originally gave CWB Chicago an almost completely redacted version of the emails. Last week, though, the commission released the full chain less than 48 hours after the Illinois Attorney General’s Office opened an inquiry into its handling of CWB’s FOIA request.

  The email chain began July 10, less than a week before Larry Snelling left his post as CPD’s top cop, when CCPSA Vice President Angel Rubi Navarijo sent a lengthy email to commissioners “to respectfully express my concerns regarding Commissioner Sandra Wortham on the Superintendent Search Work Group,” citing concerns about “whether she possesses the collaborative leadership style necessary for this specific responsibility.”

Their complaint against Wortham is that she didn't go along with the other commissioners, that her opinions and positions were too conservative, that she listened to all sides and came to logical conclusions backed up by facts and ::gasp:: established Law and procedures. That she was too "diverse" in her thinking it seems and didn't "go along to get along." Dumbocrats only want followers, not free thinkers. And an intelligent, well-spoken, qualified lawyer isn't someone you'd want giving input on appointing the next political tool.

Seems like the problem is led by this Navarijo, who seems like a complete Karen-asshole that ought to be removed for being a commie bitch. 

But that's only our opinion. 

CPD Political Games

Looks like the Department might be stuck with Waller for a while:

• The process of selecting Chicago’s next top cop hit another pothole Monday when four of the seven commissioners charged with finding finalists for the job skipped a meeting where they were supposed to select a firm to conduct a nationwide talent search.

  The absence of a quorum forced Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability President Remel Terry to adjourn the meeting after taking three brief comments from audience members. Exactly what will happen next is unclear as the clock ticks down on the commission’s 120-day deadline to identify three world-class candidates for the mayor to choose from.

The four no-shows were throwing a hissy fit because they weren't permitted to change the rules and remove the one person who might have conservative leanings and happens to support the police far more often than any other panel member....because her brother was a murdered CPD Officer.

And as noted before, keeping Waller around in spite of finally having a First Deputy in place to serve as an interim Supe just shows the utter uselessness of pretty much the entire upper echelon of the Department.

 

Merry Christmas Fred!

It's going to be a good Christmas at the Waller house this holiday season:

• A key member of a Chicago police oversight body urged the City Council Wednesday to postpone the search for a permanent replacement for retired Police Supt. Larry Snelling until after the mayoral election.

  As president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, Anthony Driver led the nationwide search that culminated in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s selection of Snelling. Driver stepped down as president to mount what turned out to be a losing race for Congress, but he is still a commission member involved in the search for Snelling’s replacement.

  In a letter to City Council members Wednesday, Driver asked that the Nov. 12 deadline for the commission to complete a nationwide search, interview candidates and present the names of three finalists to Johnson be put off until spring — after Chicagoans choose their next mayor.

The main reason is - of course - that no "qualified" candidates are going to hitch their wagon to an employment offer that might last five or six months depending if Conehead even runs or (god forbid) wins.

Our readers pointed that out over a month ago.

In the meantime, Waller will continue to double-dip with a six-digit salary on top of a six-digit pension while another six-digit salaried First Deputy isn't allowed to fulfill her actual job description of running the Department absent a superintendent.

Thank goodness Chicago doesn't have any money problems! 

Larry Leaves

If you're interested, here's a media link.

We can't say we had a high opinion of him. He was a tool during the COVID strippings, he had quite the reputation at the Academy during the #metoo era that was conveniently swept under the carpet, and we scored higher than he did on every promotional test we ever took.

We'd wish him luck in retirement, but we're sure he's already got something lined up politically to go along with his "Given, not Earned" gold braid pension.

See ya. 

Who Would Want That Job?

Someone noticed that the search for Snelling's replacement is about to hit a big stumbling block:

• The search for retiring Chicago police superintendent Larry Snelling’s replacement will take place against the backdrop of a highly contested mayoral race.

  Ultimately, it’s in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s hands to pick Snelling’s successor, with the City Council’s approval. Johnson has not yet declared his intent whether to seek reelection. But if he does run, a public approval rating in the low 30s has him in serious danger of becoming a one-term mayor.

  That kind of political uncertainty is likely to discourage candidates from outside Chicago — and even some insiders — from applying for the $284,016-a-year job.

The "public safety committee" or whatever its called has 120 days to find a panel of potential replacements. That means mid-November. By then the mayoral race will be in full swing and Conehead is still polling below 35% with his strongest supporters clocking in at 6%.

It's not looking like a second term is in the cards, so anyone with any real potential to be a meaningful replacement isn't going to be stepping forward for a job that might last all of five or six months.

Which probably means the Department will be stuck with Waller for a while. 

This Guy Again?

Larritorious announces his impending retirement (the day after we did) after one last round of incompetent promotions....but guess who's coming back again:

• Snelling said he plans to retire on July 15. Earlier this week, he announced broad changes to his command staff and installed a new second-in-command, putting a lasting stamp on the department.

  Police veteran Fred Waller, who has been a key aide to Snelling, will again serve as acting police superintendent during a search for a permanent replacement, Mayor Johnson said Wednesday.

Obviously, Waller is Conehead's guy. We were always surprised he didn't end up in the top spot. He was certainly connected enough, but the other baggage must have been too much to excuse. He might have made a mark on the Department.

But the thing that will mark Larry's reign more than anything is the multiple "merit" incompetence and total lack of street knowledge at every supervisory level of the Department.

A couple of those command staff picks earlier this week have never passed a promotional test high enough to actually make it based on knowledge....kind of like Larry.

And a couple others have less career arrests than they have fingers and toes. 

Knock it all you want, but being part of the arrest process, from putting handcuffs on offenders, to presenting a case at a Grand Jury, to giving evidence at Court proceedings is a pretty important part of being able to properly supervise street officers. 

Hell, reviewing Arrest Reports, approving TRRs, and even giving a deposition at a Civil trial only add to credibility in running the third (?) largest police department in the country.

Rumor Mill in High Gear (UPDATE)

Here we go:

• Sup has turned in his letter of resignation for a prearranged date shortly after the 4th of July festivities.

  We will have a new interim Sup, a permanent (female) 1st Deputy and 3 new Chiefs.

New Chiefs, filing empty spots or replacements? Because there are too many as it stands. 

Who has the rumored names?

This will likely be a further disaster. 

UPDATE: Supposedly, these are the changes:

• Ursitti - 1st Deputy
  
  Bruno - Chief BOD
  
  Rick Rivera - Deputy Chief
  
  Al Perez - Cmdr 014
  
  Mike Santos - Cmdr 010
  
  Cleggett- Cmdr 003
  
  Fraction - Cmdr 015
  Hawkins - Cmdr Area 1 Detectives 
   

New Supe on Tap

The rumor mill is kicking into high gear.

Supposedly, Larritorious has made it known he's leaving in May. 

Heiniken is following him out the door because he has no future without running cover for Larry.

Next up?

• Dana O'Malley 

Yep, a DEI civilian with zero law enforcement experience aside from running the "Consent Decree" and an innate dislike of anything police related is the front runner for the top spot. 

Conehead's biggest "fuck you" to the Department as he heads into (or bails out of) what promises to be a contentious re-election campaign. 

Love Letter to Larry

Are they grooming him to run for mayor?

• Many of Chicago’s top leaders are facing strong headwinds.

  Mayor Brandon Johnson has suffered embarrassing defeats, and he’s now trying to force out his public schools chief.

  The heads of the city’s transit and housing agencies have both faced calls to resign. And the police oversight boss is at the center of lawsuits alleging bias and whistleblower retaliation.

  Larry Snelling, meanwhile, has established himself as a steady hand over his first year as the city’s top cop, leading a historically scandal-plagued department out of a tumultuous stretch. During the Democratic National Convention — Snelling’s first big test — he emerged as the calm face of the city.

The article is extensive, covering wins, loses and somewhat even handed with criticisms, even pointing out Conehead's pathetic attempt to hitch his political wagon to the Convention success - after the fact and after all the politicians had left town. 

Go read it all, remembering that Larritorious was one of the more enthusiastic exempts stripping Officers who dared to exercise bodily autonomy. Anyone willing to deprive you of your personal Freedom can never be fully trusted in our opinion.

As to the future?

• Asked if he has any ambitions beyond policing, Snelling smiled and said, “My aspiration is to find some rest and go fishing.” “If you’re talking about politics,” he added, “absolutely not.”

Yeah, we've heard that one before.

Larritorious Must Resign?

The usual suspects are demanding Larry resign for being minimally capable at his job:

• Protesters showed up Thursday night at a Chicago Police Board meeting demanding the firing and prosecution of officers who fired 96 shots at Dexter Reed during a traffic stop last month.

Again, this is a LIE. All of the reports on the COPA website have the total number of shots fired by the Officers in the TRR's. Those add up to seventy-nine. Does no one in the media realize that these TRR's are Official Reports? And lying on an Official Report - intentionally or unintentionally - is a guaranteed Separation Charge. Anyone who would affix their signature - written or electronic - to a document containing any improper information would be foolish in the extreme.

Don't believe us? Ask the Sergeant who signed the TRRs for the McDonald case. He was ORDERED to electronically sign the forms because the Street Deputy wanted to complete his portion of the paperwork package and go home. The Sergeant did so even though he was never on the scene of the shooting. 

Guess who got fired for Falsification of Official Reports? And guess who retired with a full pension?

• Grace Patino, with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said during public comment that Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling — who was at the meeting — should be dismissed.

  “Dexter Reed should be here today,” Patino said. “The officers involved in the execution of Dexter Reed must be immediately fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.”

So....we should just lynch the Officers? With no hearings, no trial, no collection of evidence? Didn't society used to do things like that? We recall marches, lawsuits, protests, all sorts of history against this sort of behavior....and now it's suddenly acceptable again?

Can we use this against carjackers?

• Miracle Boyd, an activist with Good Kids Mad City, said Reed was “racially profiled,” and his death was detrimental to Black communities. “We demand the tactical units be banned, and Mayor Johnson, Supt. Snelling and COPA fire the officers,” she said. “We no longer need police to perform traffic stops because it’s not safe.”

Racially profiled....by a black Officer....whom Dexter shot? Evidently, Miracle didn't buy an education with her settlement money.

Larry and the COPA scumbag traded some shots:

• Snelling and Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, during the meeting sparred over transparency in the Reed case. Snelling had criticized Kersten for making public comments on the preliminary information in the investigation before interviewing officers.

  Kersten read a statement defending the sharing of preliminary information with the public as a crucial step in restoring trust between the public and the city’s institutions.

  “Given our city’s history and the lack of trust in our institutions and processes that resolve these issues, it is crucial to provide information to the public when we can,” Kersten said. “The recitation of preliminary facts that I delivered to the public last week was objective, fair, and struck the delicate balance between informing the public and maintaining the integrity of the ongoing investigations.”

We're pretty sure no one was talking about the "preliminary facts," though few if any existed. COPA still hasn't interviewed the Officers and were we providing legal advice, we'd decline any interviews and insist that Larritorious waive any Department requirements to cooperate.

COPA has proven it cannot be trusted to be impartial.She's giving interviews to....ESPN? "Revrunds"? Persons with ZERO official standing in the process?

Did everyone catch the "Libtard 101 Playbook" scumbag Kersten is using?

• write an e-mail to the administration demanding suspensions based on zero investigation;
• tip off the media to FOIA the e-mail thread from her office to Conehead and Larritorious;
• comment on the "public record" that she manufactured.

It's a typical trick used by leakers, whistleblowers (legit and not), the feds (looking at you FBI) and scumbag progressives with an agenda to push. 

And finally, they dig up a teacher with a typical sob story rooted in a long ago past life:

• During the rally before the meeting, Melina Lesus, who teaches at Westinghouse College Prep, where Reed was a standout basketball player, said teachers trusted him and were shocked to hear of his death. “I was talking to one of my colleagues who did teach him as a freshman, and she said, ‘Melina, how could this happen? He was the most respectful kid,’” Lesus said.

His high school career was eight years ago. A lot can happen in eight years. A number of arrests. A couple of felony charges. A gun arrests. An uncle shooting him for threatening the family with a knife. 

Maybe you and your colleagues were just really bad teachers.

Larritorious v COPA

A difference of opinion:

• Despite a freeze on police discipline cases, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department late Thursday issued a lengthy, stern critique of the city agency that probes police misconduct, accusing investigators of leaning on “personal opinions and speculation.”

  That leads to unfairness, Superintendent Larry Snelling said.

  “When we speculate, when we add our personal opinions, then those penalties become punitive and unfair and unfair to the officers,” Snelling said. “What we’re seeing are egregious penalties for extremely minor infractions. Now, oftentimes when I go through these reports, I agree that the infraction should have been sustained, but a 30-day (or) 90-day suspension is egregious.”

  In the last eight weeks, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability has recommended the Police Department fire 28 officers — an “unprecedented” number, CPD’s top attorney told the Chicago Police Board.

COPA is looking to clear the decks in anticipation of a shitload of work on tap for August. 

And remember, COPA is staffed by police haters and lib-tards with axes to grind because their daddy's didn't love them (when they even know who their daddy's are.) So Larry is correct to call out the obvious bias built into 99% of COPA cases.

But actions speak louder than words, and so far, we're not seeing a lot of action on the part of the top brass.

Larritorious Channels Harris

Dave took multiple suspension days for lying about easily checked crime states.

What's Larritorious going to take?

• In two separate public appearances last week, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling made a remarkable claim: The department’s detectives had already solved over 70% of 2024’s murders.

  He said it once during an appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago. He repeated it at a town hall hosted by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, the city agency that selected him last year as a finalist for the top cop job.

  Depending on which meeting you were at, he said the department had solved either 19 out of 25 or 20 out of 26. Newspapers, TV stations, and online news outlets published Snelling’s claim without an ounce of skepticism.

  And that’s too bad. Because the Chicago Police Department had not solved 19 or 20 of this year’s murders. As of January 25, it had solved three. Our source? The Chicago Police Department.

And once again, it's the Crime in Wrigleyville and Boystown blog doing the actual reporting here in Chicago. This tiny blog is beating the lamestream media outlets to the punch on any and all crime reporting along with most of the scandals occurring under the radar.

The future of reporting isn't the tools carrying Conehead's water (and Groot's, Rahm's, Shortshanks, Prickwrinkle, etc.)

True Colors

And there's the sign we were looking for, verifying that Larritorious is nothing but a political tool for Conehead and doesn't have anyone's back:

• In a surprising twist of legal action, attorneys for Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling are seeking to overturn a recent Chicago Police Board decision that acquitted Officer James Hunt of alleged misconduct during unrest in 2020. Cook County court records revealed that a complaint for administrative review was submitted in late November, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, marking a rare instance of the city's police leadership challenging the board's ruling.

Not fighting to spare an Officer excessive discipline, but to reverse the almost complete acquittal of the Officer by the actual Police Board.

Lots of cops are wondering when all of Larry's ladies start coming out of the woodwork, will he be fighting to get himself fired for #metoo violations?

Nickname?

So we were trying out a nickname for Snelling - Ol' Uncle Lar, but it's awkward to type and isn't really catchy, like Groot or 9.5 or Shortshanks was.

But one of our regular commenters (J Backstabich) used what may be the next great nickname:

• Superintendent Breath of Fresh Air (or....BOFA)
  

If you know, you know.

No idea if it'll catch on, but we're going to roll with it for now. Leisure Suit Larry might also be acceptable.

Interviewing Larry

The slobbery love letter from the Tribune is subtitled "he made his own mistakes...learned from them":

• It was around 7 a.m. on Thursday, May 12, 1994. Two officers assigned to the Chicago Police Department’s Englewood District were to take two arrestees to the neighboring Chicago Lawn District station to be photographed.

  One of the men, arrested on a domestic violence charge, tried to chat with the officers during the 2 ½-mile drive west on 63rd Street. The officer in the front passenger seat wasn’t in the mood to make friends.

  “Do you take me as a joke, m----------?” he said to the handcuffed arrestee. “Do you think you know everything?”

  The other officer pulled over the van, and both cops got out and opened the vehicle’s side door. The officer from the passenger seat — 25 years old, with two years on the job — then slapped the man twice on the left side of his face.

  He would later deny that he slapped the arrestee or cursed at him, but internal affairs investigators didn’t buy that, and the officer was handed a two-day suspension. In August, Mayor Brandon Johnson selected that officer, Larry Bernard Snelling, a native of Englewood, to be the next superintendent of the Police Department.

The REALLY amazing part isn't that he made supernintendo. It's that despite a suspension for smacking a handcuffed Black arrestee, he got a number of sweet inside spots, stayed there for years, rose above a Don Juan reputation, parlayed all of that into multiple "merit" promotions (since he couldn't actually pass a test with a promotable score), and still made supernintendo.

Show of hands - how many coppers with similar job histories, would be permitted to "learn from his/her mistakes" and rise to the top?

That's not a lot of hands.

Lead By Example

A comment in the post about Ol' Uncle Lar's "aggressive" policing demand he lead by example.

We think that's a great idea! In fact, we've even got a list of requirements for his Lead By Example Tour:

• Ol' Uncle Lar and another exempt of his choice (must be White, Hispanic or Asian - diversity you know!) will go out on patrol, preferably in 006, 015, 011. 007 is out since he lived/worked there for a while and no units. It will be 3rd or 1st Watch and they will be assigned a day off group.
  
• They will respond to in-progress calls and write their own reports. They will wear body cameras and be held to CPD policy and Illinois State Law.
  
• There will be tickets. There will be arrests, at least one every other day. And there WILL be TRR's. The TRR's will be reviewed for accuracy and completeness and approved by the Watch Operations Lieutenant (yeah, we're aware of the approval process...work around it)
• They will be required to call Detectives for any felony arrests. They will answer the ASA inquiries for the denials. Should a charge actually be approved, they will make the preliminary hearing and all subsequent court appearances, regardless of sleep deprivation and upcoming shifts.
• They will answer all COPA inquiries (with appropriate representation) and should administrative charges be filed or a Federal lawsuit materialize, they'll go to court or callback for that, too.

After a full three period training cycle, the results of Ol' Uncle Lar and his partner's activity will be posted for everyone to see on in a publicly available manner. He's talked-the-talk about "aggressive policing," but we need to see if he can actually walks-the-walk. Then, and only then, can we see if "aggressive policing" is the usual bullshit or it's actually real change.

To make it really interesting, maybe thirty or forty exempts should man a watch in one of the shittier Districts for three months. Just for fun, one of their days off will be cancelled per cycle with maybe seventy-two hours notice....screwing up previously planned family events.

And after all is said and done, HeyJackass.com can sell t-shirts.

Snelling to be Drug Tested

That's the only reason we can see for speaking this tripe out loud:

• Newly anointed Snelling takes over a depleted department – down nearly 1,500 officers from just a few years ago – and a city frustrated by frequent flashes of lawlessness. From dangerous drifting by showboats to young people taking over downtown streets, some committing crimes, and officers looking on apparently powerless to stop it does concern Snelling. 

  “There is a way to stop it and that approach is to be more aggressive and I intend to do that,” he said.

  When asked what a more aggressive approach by officers looks like, Snelling replied, “That means doing what it takes.”

Wait....they're admitting we're down 1,500? That means it's probably closer to 2,500.

But seriously Uncle Lar? (we're trying out a new nickname, based on WLS Larry Lujack and his famous "Animal Stories" radio bit). "...doing what it takes"?

• “There are onlookers who believe you can talk these people into leaving. They’re not going to leave,” Snelling added. “So it takes a little more aggressive behavior from our police officers to stop it.”

Whoa whoa whoa. What??? Now we know he's high....or drunk. We haven't talked like that in years....not without two or three whiskeys in us.

Have you seen the States Attorney's office Lar? Have you seen the malfeasance, crime coddling,  anything to avoid prosecuting an actual criminal Crimesha? Cops spit on, battered, run over with stolen squad cars fighting for a tiny measure of justice? Or how Felony Murder charges are dropped to pleas?

Or how cop killers sentenced to six-hundred years are about to be released.

And that's just the police side of it. Regular citizens know the game is rigged against the victims and they're not even bothering to make reports. All the "crime is down" bullshit should be rewritten as "reported crime is down." At least you'd be telling the truth.

• While a significant surge in carjackings is somewhat subsiding this year, car thefts are up 68% over last year and 231% higher than 2019. While several crimes captured on video may contribute to a sense of fear, Snelling admits it’s more than a perception problem. 

  “To sit here and say, ‘We don’t have a crime problem,’ I’d be lying through my teeth,” Snelling said. “I won’t do that. I believe in transparency. Let’s tell the truth. We can’t resolve any problems until we tell the truth. The truth is we have a crime problem here. Is it exacerbated through the media and social media? Absolutely.”

So....no syrup on shit pancakes? Or was that your temporary predecessor? We get so confused with the same BS being spouted by so many different tools.

You aren't impressing us Lar. And quite frankly, you're dooming us at Federal Court with this "aggressive" talk.

Snelling Era Approaches

The theater is in full swing now:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson’s choice to be Chicago’s next police superintendent sailed through a City Council committee Friday following a hearing where the South Side native and 31-year Police Department veteran delivered the progressive administration’s most strident support for cops yet.

  Chief Larry Snelling, the department’s current chief of counterterrorism and a longtime instructor at the training academy, received unanimous support from the council’s Police and Fire Committee. His confirmation now heads for a final vote Wednesday, when a special council meeting will be held.

The standard company lines about "doing better" with officers' mental well-being....after years of destroying it:

• Asked by Ald. Angela Clay, 46th, how he would support his officers’ mental health after a spate of suicides within the department, Snelling stressed: “These are human beings.”

  “I saw them through civil unrest and I saw what they dealt with. I saw the names that they were called. The yelling and screaming. I saw the 16 hours (per day) they worked, dehydrated, hungry, sleep-deprived,” Snelling continued. “They responded the way the city needed them to respond to stop the city as a whole from burning down. They were taunted, and then they went home and then got up and came back to work the next day to do it all over again.”

  He finished with: “Again, there are a lot of things that we can do better as a police department. But we have to support those people who are standing between those who will do you harm, because they’re the only ones who will stop them.”

Do you also remember when Snelling was stripping officers of their stars and credentials for refusing a "vaccine" that has turned out to have almost no curative powers, no long-term immunity benefits and countless myocardial side effects? We do. Better remember it in the upcoming months, too.

So now we have to see some actions - and the recent past history of being a chump who just followed Groot's orders is fresh in our memories. That's going to take a lot of effort to counteract.

Oh Larry

Following in a long line of shady supernintendos:

• In 1997, Larry Snelling was implicated as one of several officers who coerced a man into bringing them a gun by threatening they’d plant drugs on him if he didn’t cooperate. According to records obtained by the Weekly, a sting operation conducted by Internal Affairs as a result of a complaint the man filed snared three officers close to Snelling, including his partner at the time, in the scheme.

  Snelling is Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pick to be the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD’s) next superintendent. He was short-listed for the top position by the new Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) after a months-long search, and Johnson announced he’d be his choice on August 14. The City Council has yet to confirm him. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to the Weekly’s questions by press time.

This would follow in a long a storied tradition of a superintendent having one of more skeletons in the closet, enabling the political administration to keep a tight hold on them. Just picking over the last 30 years:

• Rodriguez hanging with Mob felons
• Cline on the periphery of the Marquette 10
• Weis ran from gunfire and was part of assorted feeb malfeasance
• McCarthy had his NYPD scandals and that thing over in Niles
  
• (interim) Escalante sidejob as Mr Six at Great America
  
• (interim) Starks - good lord!
  
• Johnson's johnson
• (interim) Beck....we don't remember a Beck scandal
• Brown's son in Texas and the Consent Decree teaching connections
• (interim) Waller...TBA, but he's a COVIDiot tool
  

Snelling was cleared of any wrong doing while his three partners took five days each. 

You know what this "scandal" tells us? That he was working the streets, same as we were. That he was making arrests, same as we were. That he may have been making deals....like almost everyone was! Little fish gives up bigger fish gives up huge fish.

It was a different time. Different rules. Different expectations. To judge yesterday's actions by the new restrictive rules, laws, decrees, whatever, is a media trick to hamstring the police, in this case, before Larry even makes his first official move. It's crap. Other realistic, more recent "scandals" may come to light in the near future, but this one was adjudicated and closed in the 90s.

It's Snelling

No surprise:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson has selected Larry Snelling, the Chicago Police Department’s chief of the bureau of counterterrorism and a longtime instructor at the training academy, to serve as the next permanent superintendent.

  A South Side native who joined the department in 1992, Snelling, 54, is considered to be CPD’s preeminent expert on firearms and use-of-force tactics. His ascent to the top position will require approval by the full City Council.

  “Chief Snelling is a proven leader who has the experience and the respect of his peers to help ensure the safety and well-being of city residents, and address the complex challenges we all face related to community safety,” Johnson said in a news release Sunday.

Experience? He spend no significant time at any rank, certainly not long enough to actually learn each job. He got moved around for another line on the resume for his skyrocketing to the top - without ever passing an exam high enough to get promoted. He was a sergeant just FIVE YEARS AGO. You're going to tell us he knows the ins-and-outs of a squad car accident investigation, TRRs, Watch Lieutenant duties, Detective protocols and running an Area?

Preeminent expert? Tell that to the guy at the Academy who actually wrote and modeled the Use of Force update. He's keeping his mouth shut, so he must have been promised something farther down the line.

And Job #1 - he's going to improve morale:

• Snelling has been the safe choice — and odds-on favorite — once the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability announced the three finalists on July 13. With police morale in the tank, Johnson is determined to improve it, and Snelling has the best chance to do just that, having already trained so many officers as a tough-love fitness instructor at the Chicago Police Training Academy.

Being a familiar face to so many younger cops will be more of a help than a hindrance - point granted. But it requires a lot more than that, and here's a helpful list:

• Manpower - yeah, it's politics, but Snelling is now the top political apparatchik. If you want to improve morale, agitate on a daily basis for manning the Districts. If that means shutting down the units (and god knows Cook County isn't prosecuting criminals hard enough), then shut down the units. If the youngsters don't want to work midnights, and you create all these bullshit little units for them to hide, the District law enforcement is going to suffer
• Time off - again, it's an offshoot of manpower, but give us back our days off. All of them. There are plenty of cops with new cars, high end habits, nice houses, that will volunteer for the OT. No need to make everyone miserable with these deployment dates.
• Get the training out of the way earlier, like in winter when we aren't needed on the street all the time. And for god's sake, trim the Academy fat. Having eight (yes EIGHT) different instructors for a single session - each "instructor" reading a slide show for an hour and then disappearing - isn't an efficient use of manpower. They could be working midnights in a Beat Car like we all did....or at least we-the-politically-unconnected did.
  
• Tell the community "No" when you have to. Yeah, you're a political pawn with political responsibilities, but what's been going on the past few years is ridiculous. How many oversight agencies do we have right now? Five? Six? It's too many and it's made cops incapable of doing anything enforcement related. 

We still remember Waller helping throw cops under the bus for the Bobby Rush Office debacle via his silence. Those cops were ordered there and no one stuck up for them. We also remember Snelling help strip cops who refused the COVID jab and he wasn't the only one we remember. Everything that has come out since those days shows cops were correct to assert their bodily autonomy. 

Institutions (and old cops) have long memories, no matter how much faster groot and BJ wanted us to leave. You'll get your wish soon enough, but in the meantime, we'll keep an open mind. 

If you do good, we'll mention it. If you step on your dick, well....we'll mention that, too.