Another Disaffected White Asswipe With a Rifle

The former employee who shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis was interviewed by FBI agents last year, after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop,” the bureau said Friday.
...
The shooter was identified as [Some Asswipe], 19, of Indianapolis, Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt told a news conference. Investigators searched a home in Indianapolis associated with Hole and seized evidence, including desktop computers and other electronic media, McCartt said.

It's not the fault of the press, of course, but they could do a lot by making these fuckers into nopersons by refusing to name them.
-----------------------------------
Meanwhile, in Chicago:

You've probably heard about the cop who shot a 13-year old who tossed a gun and then turned around to give up.

Three comments:

First, the kid's tossing the gun was probably inside the officer's OODA loop, in that the officer likely make the decision to shoot a few milliseconds before the kid tossed the gun. Which makes this a tragic occurrence but this ins't a George Floyd event.

Second, a kid running through the streets with a gun is no less dangerous than anyone else.

Third, what the hell was a thirteen-year old kid doing running around the streets at two-thirty in the morning?

Good Fucking Luck, Chicago

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has chosen former Dallas Police Chief David Brown as her pick for Chicago's new police superintendent Thursday.

His son shot and killed a cop. His son was apparently mentally ill and was high on PCP at the time.

That was a tragedy, but what poured salt in the wounds was that the DPD provided a motorcycle escort for the cop killer's funeral. The city threw one of Brown's underlings under the bus for it.

But, of course, there's more. Apparently, the DPD brass attended the funeral of that cop killer, in full uniform and in marked vehicles. I can understand that they felt the need to support their boss, but to do so in uniform and in official vehicles when the man being buried murdered a cop? There are also questions as to whether or not the DPD brass was there on a voluntold basis.

Whatever, the cops in Dallas seem to have not been in a forgiving mood up until the day Brown retired.

Brown retired in 2016; there seems to be scant coverage of what he's been doing since then, other than a TV consulting gig.

They Have Sharp Cops in Chicago

The Chicago police allegedly did a no-knock raid on a house to try and arrest a guy.

The guy had already been in prison for five years. A family that was not associated with the guy had moved in, and now they're suing.

The city should have to cough up a lot of money for this. The cops who, it would seem, lied on the warrant application should be disciplined. Fat chance of that happening.

Meanwhile, in Chicago

The City has been paying reparations for people who were tortured by the police.

A lawyer for the City "resigned" after the verdict in a civil suit against the City was tossed because the City's lawyers withheld evidence. The plaintiffs, who had lost at trial, are going to get a new trial, as well as their attorneys' fees, and the lawyer(s) involved may be in ethics trouble.

"It's Not the Crime, It's the Coverup"; Chicago Edition

Despite having sacked the police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, on Monday and ordered the formation of a taskforce into police accountability, questions continue to swirl about what [Mayor Rahm] Emanuel knew, and when he knew it – questions that at best raise doubts about his grip over his own city and at worst threaten to impugn his integrity.

"What did you know and when did you know it?"-- the question that has torpedoed many a political career.

Emanuel is pretty much a heartless and cold bastard when it comes to political shenanigans. He's one of those who would cook and eat puppies if it got him more votes than it'd lose him.

Covering up a murder done by a cop in order to win reelection is cold-bastard work.

Shorter Chicago: "We're Sure that We Didn't Tamper With Evidence!"

The Chicago police have diligently investigated a charge that they tampered with evidence of the execution-style murder by a Chicago cop of Mr. McDonald and, yesiree, they didn't do nothing, Boss.

In a pig's eye.

(H/T to Joe from a comment, here)

Tossing One of the Riders From the Sleigh; Chicago Edition

Rahm Emanuel sought for months to keep the public from seeing a video that shows a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.

Now, a week after the video's release, the Chicago mayor has fired the police superintendent, created a task force for police accountability and expanded the use of body cameras.

The mayor's protestations that he was waiting until the investigation was finished before releasing the video is bullshit. As I wrote last week, try to think of another situation where it would take prosecutors over a year to bring charges against a person who pumped bullets into a prostrate victim, after the prosecutors had video of the murder.

Changing the top cop in Chicago isn't going to change the police culture in that city, a culture that rivals the pre-Katrina NOPD for brutality and corruption. The Chicago PD regards itself as above the law. Zendo Deb has blogged about the Chicago cops for a long time, if you want to read a compilation of disgustingly awful authoritarian fuckery. It should be obvious, now, that if the video hadn't been released, the City and the county prosecutor would have swept the killing under the rug.

Over the last ten years, Chicago has paid out over a half a billion dollars to compensate victims of police brutality and outright torture. And that number doesn't include what the city paid its lawyers to defend the cases, estimated at over $80 million.

Six hundred million may be pocket-lint money for the Feds, but it's not for any city. Chicago pays a heavy price for its gang of brutal overseers. One wonders when they'll get tired of it.

(Note that the Chief Torturer of Chicago went to prison for perjury and impeding an investigation. He was never called to account for torturing people.)

Color Me "Cynical"; Chicago Edition

A white Chicago police officer has been charged with murder over the shooting death of a black teenager, just one day before a deadline by which a judge has ordered the city to release a squad-car video of the incident.

Veteran officer Jason Van Dyke was indicted on Tuesday on a first-degree murder charge after shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times.

The City fought like hell to keep the video under wraps, but lost.

Note that the shooter was on the "rubber gun squad" for a year before the indictment. It's hard to conceive of another situation where a gunman might shoot a person sixteen times, including shooting the victim in the back as the victim lay on the ground and then it took the prosecutors a year to file charges, unless the killer was a cop.

A cynical observer might conclude that the cop would have been left there, if not restored to full duty, if the City had been able to keep the video secret. For it sure seems like it was only when the video was going to be released that the prosecutors brought charges.

Chicago, Illinois is a "Constitution Free Zone"

Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal. ... The narcotics, vice and anti-gang units operating out of Homan Square, on Chicago’s west side, take arrestees to the nondescript warehouse from all over the city: police data obtained by the Guardian and mapped against the city grid show that 53% of disclosed arrestees come from more than 2.5 miles away from the warehouse. No contemporaneous public record of someone’s presence at Homan Square is known to exist.

Nor are any booking records generated at Homan Square, as confirmed by a sworn deposition of a police researcher in late September, further preventing relatives or attorneys from finding someone taken there.

“The reality is, no one knows where that person is at Homan Square,” said Craig Futterman, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who studies policing. “They’re disappeared at that point.”

How much harder would it be for the Chicago cops to then just kill them, like the Argentinians did during their so-called Dirty War? Nobody would know that the victims were taken there, for there would be no arrest records.

Hell, how do we know that they weren't doing that?

By the way, don't expect the self-styled constitutional protection groups, such as the Oath-Keepers, to give a shit about any of this, for reasons that should be obvious to a casual observer.

"zOMG, The Streets Will Run Red With Blood!!!1!!1!"

That's been the prediction of the Bloomberger gun-banners since the modern push to legalize concealed carry began. Most recently, of course, in Illinois.

This is a result that I can tolerate, all righty:

Authorities say no charges will be filed against an Uber driver who shot and wounded a gunman who opened fire on a crowd of people in Logan Square [Chicago] over the weekend.

Torture Nation, Chicago Edition

More allegations about the Chicago P.D.'s black-site prison.

Don't expect ol' Rahm to do anything about it anytime soon. He's too busy fighting for his political life.

Torture, Chicago Style

The Chicago cops run their own black-site prison, where they hold people without booking them, deny them access to attorneys, and torture them.

Chicago has much to answer for. Fat chance that the city ever is compelled to do so.

The mayors for the time that the Chicago cops have been operating that site, including Mayors Richard Daley, Jr. and Rahm Emanuel, should be prosecuted under the doctrine of command responsibility. Slim chance of that ever happening.

When the Torturers Come Marching Home Again, Hurrah! Hurrah!

They bring their techniques with them. For one of the more sadistic torturers at Gitmo plied his trade as a Chiago police detective.

While }Chicago detective Richard} Zuley’s brutal interrogation techniques – prolonged shackling, family threats, demands on suspects to implicate themselves and others – would get supercharged at Guantánamo for the war on terrorism, a Guardian investigation has uncovered that Zuley used similar tactics for years, behind closed police-station doors, on Chicago’s poor and non-white citizens. Multiple people in prison in Illinois insist they have been wrongly convicted on the basis of coerced confessions extracted by Zuley and his colleagues.

Apparently Zuley learned his torturing skills in the Chicago P.D., which has a long and storied history of torturing people.

Note that Zully is now assigned to the aviation unit, which the Chicago P.D. likely uses as a rubber gun squad.

Convictions will be overturned. Convicted men and women will be exonerated. The real guilty parties have walked free for decades. The taxpayers of Chicago will be dinged for millions and millions of dollars in restitution. All because the cops are lazy and brutal.

Time to Spare? Go by Air! (Especially In and Out of Chicago)

There are no IFR flights in and out of Chicago this morning because of a fire in an FAA facility, reportedly Approach Control Chicago Center.

O'Hare is a hub for American and United. Midway is a hub for Southwest.

Expect things to be seriously screwed up for a bit.

UPDATE:

The airspace arround the ARTCC is NOTAM'd:

NOTAM : 4/0256

FDC 4/0256 ZAU IL..AIRSPACE AURORA, IL..TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS WITHIN AREA DEFINED AS 2 NM RADIUS OF 414701N/0881954W (DUPAGE VOR/DME DPA171006.5) SFC-3999FT LAW ENFORCEMENT INVESTIGATION. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 91.137(A)(1) TEMPORARY FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS ARE IN EFFECT. ONLY RELIEF AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS UNDER DIRECTION OF FAA HQ DEN ARE AUTHORIZED IN THE AIRSPACE. FAA HQ DEN TELEPHONE 202-493-5107 IS IN CHARGE OF ON SCENE EMERGENCY RESPONSE ACTIVITY. FAA HQ DEN IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. 1409261330-1409271330EST

I'd look for a lot of airplanes to drop down to bugsmasher altitudes to stay out of ZAU's airspace.

And apparently, the fire was arson as part of a suicide attempt.

"Reverse Robin Hood"-- It's Not Just for Republicans Anymore

In Chicago, one of the more corrupt places north of the Rio Grande, Hizzoner da Mare Emanuel has been aggressively cutting school financing whilst, at the same time, bestowing largesse on corporations. The cash subsidies have been benefiting developments in wealthy neighborhoods, while the cuts have been hurting schools in poor neighborhoods.

And, of course, there is the usual Chicago sleaze factor:

Months after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said budget constraints forced him to push for pension cuts and mass school closures, an analysis of government documents reveals the city has $1.71 billion in special accounts often used to finance corporate subsidies. While the Emanuel administration has rejected open records requests for details of the subsidies, evidence suggests at least some of them have flowed to companies connected to Emanuel’s campaign donors. ... The report shows $412 million was diverted last year alone into the TIF accounts and out of traditional property tax funding streams, many of which are dedicated to the city's schools. In 21 of those districts, the report says 90 percent or more of all property taxes were diverted into the TIF accounts.

Over half of that tax money would have gone to the schools.

So Emanuel is robbing the kids to benefit the rich and, more importantly, to benefit those companies whose owners give his campaign hefty political donations.

Using legalized bribery to steal from kids- that's the Chicago Way.

(H/T)

Fuck You, Chicago

And Richard M. Daley, Junior, may you burn in Hell forever. Or longer.

Gun Control: Always Making the Wrong Arguments Regarding the Law

In this post, I am not referring to the lawyers who are representing the Forces of Evil.[1] I am presuming that they are all competent, even if they are almost always on the losing side. I am referring, instead, to the public arguments.[2]

The most common argument that the gun-control advocates make is that firearms ownership should at least be as controlled by the sate as motor vehicle ownership. This is a false argument because nobody has ever successfully argued (so far as I know) that anyone has a right to drive or own a car. States are usually very clear about this: The license to drive a car is a privilege that is granted by the state and, when the state so desires, can be revoked.[3]

Any discussion about gun control has to start by acknowledging this truth: In the United States (and in most individual states), citizens have a constitutionally guaranteed right to possess firearms. It it not a collective right, it is an individual right. It is a right that appears in the Bill of Rights. You have the right to publish a newsletter and you have the right to own a gun. Period.

When a government seeks to restrict the expression of a constitutional right, it has to come up with a pretty good reason. For example, you have the right to speak your mind, but if you do it by mounting a set of speakers on your car and driving through, you're probably going to end up sitting in the back of a police road car. In First Amendment jargon, those are known as "time manner and place" restrictions.

The problem, of course, is that there is a lengthy history of First Amendment litigation that has fleshed out what the government can and cannot restrict.[4] Second Amendment cases are a modern development. So what the governments, Federal and state, can do to regulate the right of the people to possess weapons will be filled out over the next few decades

It is worth noting that the Bill of Rights is largely concerned with what the Founders thought was necessary to preserve a free republic. That is why they wrote guarantees against the restriction of speech, the promotion of a state religion, searches without a judge's OK, forced interrogations, confinement without trial, trial without counsel, cruel and unusual punishment and the quartering of soldiers in private homes into the Bill of Rights.[5]

If we are going to have a meaningful discussion on gun control, the advocates of gun confiscation and banning control are going to have to confront the reality that possession of a firearm is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. And, to be blunt, they are going to have to come up with an argument more cogent than "zOMG!!!1!! Oh, the Humanity, Shootingz!!!!1!!!"[6]

Which they really haven't been doing. Their lies and fear-mongering are on full display in every debate on concealed carry laws, they've been spreading the same bilge for over 25 years and they've been proven wrong time and again.[7]

And so, they keep on losing the argument. Which is fine with me.
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[1] The Brady Campaign, The D.C. Government, the City of Chicago and the mayors Against All Guns, for starters.
[2] I am also not referring to the idiots who argue that the NRA, an organization with over four million members, represents the gun industry. They don't have to, gun makers have their own organizations.
[3] This is different from a right to travel, which seems to be generally accepted. That right does not extend to the means, which is why the lovable thugs at the DBP
[4] Which is why you get "money equals speech" rulings from the Supremes.
[5] As far as I know, there are no cases on the scope of the Third Amendment.
[6] Especially since it is easy to find cases of mass slaughter in countries that have banned firearms. The killers just resort to more primitive weaponry.
[7] If you follow the gun-banners' logic, the streets of Vermont, which has allowed carrying concealed weapons without permits for almost forever, should be running with blood.

Soviet Chicago: Why the Hell Would Anyone Want to Live There?

During the NATO Summit, the Chicago cops were crashing into people's apartments, terrorizing the residents and searching them. Without probable cause. Without warrants.

It seems that since the cops were there to search the apartment of some political activists[1], they cops took it upon themselves to go search the neighbors' apartments. For no goddamned reason whatsoever.

The Chicago police department has a long and bloody record of acting as though they were transplanted, en masse, from a police state. They often don't seem to care about fuzzy hippie concepts such as "civil rights" and "the Constitution".

One hopes that the city of Chicago is now going to have to cough up a few million dollars to settle the inevitable lawsuits.

(H/T)
________________________
[1] These days, "political activism" has become a synonym for "terrorism" in the eyes of the cops.

Stalin Would Have Had Them All Shot.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was greeted by catcalls when he stepped into the ring after a mixed martial arts fight at a Moscow arena on Sunday night.

The whistles and shouts, heard clearly on the live television broadcast, were an unprecedented rebuke as Putin prepares to return to the presidency next year.

The upcoming presidential election in Russia is even more of a sham than the `04 presidential election was here (or any number of elections in Chicago). Russians seemed to be resigned to that, but that doesn't mean that they have to like it.

Mayors Against All Guns

They are not against "illegal guns", they are against all guns. For if they were against only illegal guns, then why would Mayor Mumbles Menino care whether or not Wal-Mart resumed selling rifles and shotguns.

Note, that's rifles and shotguns, not handguns. Wal-Mart only sells handguns in Alaska. So ol' Mumbles is apparently quavering in fear from those terroristic .30-30s.

Note also that mayors are in favor of guns, at least those in their protective details. Maybe that's why outgoing Chicago Mayor Daley wants to keep his. Poor Widdle King Richie the 2nd hasn't driven a car in 30 years, and he's not about to start now.

Fucker can go hire himself a chauffeur.

(H/T1, H/T2)