Tag: chicago

Two Chicago Men Accused of Luring Children for Sexual Abuse Released Thanks to No-Bail, SAFE-T Act

Two men arrested for allegedly trying to lure children into a van were let go after a Chicago area judge released them under the impression that the recently posted no-bail SAFE-T Act prevented the men from being held.

The two men detained by police in Cicero were also charged with violating parole and probation, according to CWB Chicago.

The two suspects, Kenchi Edwards, 60, and Kraig McCauley, 55, allegedly tried to lure several 14-year-old children into their van with promises of “games” and the promise of meeting a “famous athlete.”

The children did not get in the van, and the police were called by a parent.

The police soon detained the two men and reportedly found a mattress in the van along with a used crack pipe, “numerous condoms, lubricant and binoculars,” and several open bottles of alcohol.

Then men were arrested and charged with two counts of child luring by a person older than 21 and two counts of attempted child abduction. They are also in trouble over their parole and probation violations.

During their first hearing, though, Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Dale-Schmidt mistakenly advised Judge Susana Ortiz that the offenses were not detainable.

The judge wanted to make special note of the situation.

“I want to note for the record that as to each of these defendants, child luring and attempted child abduction are not enumerated offenses on which the People can seek detention,” Ortiz said, according to court records. “I want to note that attempted animal cruelty is one where detention can be sought but not attempted child abduction, for whatever that’s worth, I want that to be reflected on the record.”

Ortiz then ordered both men to go on electronic ankle monitoring so they could be released. She did, however, bar the men from “free movement” days, which most people on ankle monitors are allowed to have so they can leave their home two times a week.

CWB Chicago asked several sponsors of the law if the SAFE-T Act should have allowed these men to be assigned ankle monitoring and release based on their offenses.

Democrat Rep. Kam Buckner insisted that attempted child abduction is a detainable offense and the two suspects should have been held on those charges.

“Child abduction and attempted child abduction are 100% detention eligible,” Buckner told CWB. “It’s both named in the statute, and even if it wasn’t, there’s a catch all that makes detention eligible for any felony that includes the threat or infliction of great bodily harm or disability or disfigurement.”

Democrat Sen. Elgie Sims, another SAFE-T Act sponsor, agreed that the court was wrong about the case.

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Chicago health department confirms multiple cases of tuberculosis in migrant shelters

The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) has confirmed multiple cases of tuberculosis (TB) among illegal immigrants who recently arrived in the city. 

According to Fox 23 Chicago, CDPH stated that cases of TB have been reported in multiple migrant shelters across the city. The department also explained to the public that between 10 to 20 percent of Central and South Americans arriving in the city have latent TB infections, which are asymptomatic and not contagious. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for CDPH addressed the situation, stating, “CDPH is aware of a small number of cases of TB among new arrivals in a few different shelters since the beginning of the response.” The spokesperson highlighted that active cases of TB disease are managed by assigning a nurse case manager to each individual and conducting contact tracing investigations.

The statement further assured the public that TB is curable with antibiotics and is not highly infectious, typically requiring prolonged close contact between individuals for transmission to occur. 

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Undocumented workers, long in the U.S., demand same work permits granted to new arrivals

Dozens of undocumented workers rallied Saturday afternoon at Chicago’s Federal Plaza, where they called on city and federal leaders to provide them with the same work permits that have been granted to many newly arrived migrants and asylum workers.

“Work permits now,” they chanted.

Generations of undocumented workers showed up to the demonstration. Many were individuals who have lived and worked in the city for decades without the proper authorization — having paid taxes, raised children and otherwise assimilated in communities across the city and United States.

“We not only pay taxes, but we contribute so much to this country’s economy,” said Eduardo Rivero Burjos, a student at a local university.

He told WBBM that many people, including his mother, who worked as a lawyer in her home country of Honduras, have been putting their skills to waste. In his mother’s case, Rivero Burjos said she’s been working as a cashier at Dunkin’ Donuts for the past 18 years.

Even worse, he said many undocumented individuals are forced to work for cash under the table, which has left them vulnerable to unfair wages, among other challenges.

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Northwestern students face criminal charges for pro-Palestinian newspaper parody

Students at Northwestern University, in the Chicago suburbs, woke up on October 25 to face an unexpected allegation. “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians,” declared the school’s venerable student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, in a front-page story.

The students, however, weren’t really looking at the Daily Northwestern. Instead, they had found the Northwestern Daily, a parody newspaper attacking the school’s stance on Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

The mock front page featured fake quotes from school officials, accusations of Israeli war crimes, and a fake ad for Birthright Israel — the travel abroad program that sends young American Jews to Israel — with the tagline “One man’s home is another man’s former home!” Overnight, someone had pinned the mock papers on bulletin boards, spread them on desks in lecture halls, and even wrapped the false front pages around roughly 300 copies of the Daily Northwestern itself.

The stunt quickly sparked a furor among Israel’s supporters online. One writer, at the conservative National Review, said the fake newspaper included an antisemitic “blood libel.” The university itself said the spoof “included images and language about Israel that many in our community found offensive.”

The parent company of the school paper, Students Publishing Company, or SPC, announced that it had “engaged law enforcement to investigate and find those responsible.” The results of the inquiry are just now coming to light.

Following the investigation, local prosecutors brought charges against two students for theft of advertising services. The little-known statute appears to only exist in Illinois and California, where it was originally passed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from distributing recruitment materials in newspapers. The statute makes it illegal to insert an “unauthorized advertisement in a newspaper or periodical.” The students, both of whom are Black, now face up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

“I have never seen anyone charged with theft of advertising,” said Elaine Odeh, a lawyer who formerly supervised public defenders in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Evanston, where Northwestern is based.

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson calls for reparations funding to reduce violent crime

Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson insisted to CNN that funding for reparations in his new budget will help get to the root of the city’s record violent crime epidemic.

While speaking to network anchor Poppy Harlow on “CNN This Morning” Wednesday, Johnson acknowledged the high crime rate in Chicago and declared that the “full force of government” is required to solve it, including the city throwing $500,000 at reparations programs. 

Harlow prompted his answer by citing Chicago Police Department statistics revealing that although “the murder rate is down from 2022,” “all other forms of violent crime, Mr. Mayor, are up from a year ago, up 17% overall.”

“Are Chicagoans going to be safer in 2024?” the anchor asked. 

Johnson, who has been mayor of the Democrat-run city for about seven months, claimed the solution to the problem lies with a major government response, and the “full out community safety plan,” he claimed, “not only gets at the root causes of violence in the city of Chicago,” but makes “critical investments.”

He listed the investments: “A quarter of a billion dollars to address homelessness, $100 million for violence prevention. We added 80 million more dollars to our youth employment program of which we hired 25,000 young people just this summer. That’s a 20% increase from the previous year.”

Johnson also touted his proposal “to hire 4,000 additional young people this summer,” adding, “We have stood up an entire office dedicated to re-entry. So individuals who are returning to our communities who have been incarcerated because of failed policies will have a welcoming space for them.”

He then spoke about city funds being diverted to providing reparations for its African American community. “I’ve added a half a million dollars for restoration and reparations to address, again, the cycle of violence, which looks like school closings, closing of mental health facilities, of which I’ve invested in now. We’re going to open up two mental health clinics that were closed from two previous administrations ago.”

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Chicago man has murder conviction overturned after nine years behind bars when key witness who put him away admitted that he is BLIND

A Chicago man spent close to a decade behind bars for murder – thanks to the eyewitness testimony of a witness who’s since admitted to being blind.  

Darien Harris was locked up in 2011 aged 18, just a week before he graduated high school, and accused of shooting dead a man at a Chicago petrol station.

He now has a chance at freedom after star witness Dexter Saffold was revealed to be legally blind, and will get a new trial with his conviction vacated. 

Harris, now 30, was jailed for 76 years for the murder of Rondell Moore after a trial in 2014 despite there being no physical evidence tying him to the crime.

All prosecutors had was Saffold’s claim that Harris was the man seen in CCTV from the BP station in South Side Chicago, who then fired the fatal shots off-camera.

‘I was trying to tell the people all this time he’s lying… and here’s what came about. He was really lying,’ Harris told CBS.

Saffold was asked about his eyesight during the trial and told the court he had no vision problems and could see clearly.

But in a 2019 CBS interview he admitted he was legally blind, though still insisted he saw Harris pull the trigger.

‘I got glaucoma due to an eye disease,’ he said.

‘They didn’t do anything wrong, because they didn’t know. I didn’t have to tell nobody about my medical history.’ 

Saffold also filed a federal disability lawsuit in 2003 in which two doctors confirmed he was legally blind.

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Chicago’s progressive Mayor Brandon Johnson announces plans to ax Windy City’s high-achieving selective-enrollment high schools to boost ‘equity’ despite promising not to during election campaign

Chicago’s progressive mayor has announced plans to axe the Windy City’s high-achieving selective-enrollment schools to boost ‘equity.’  

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Board of Education has proposed shifting back toward neighborhood schools – away from the system where kids compete for selective programs.

But when he was campaigning to become Mayor, Johnson put out a statement saying that he would not get rid of Chicago‘s selective-enrollment schools. 

According to the Chicago Tribune, woke Johnson specifically said: ‘A Johnson administration would not end selective enrollment at CPS schools.’

Now, he is seen to be back peddling – by allowing a vote to stop gifted children from lower income backgrounds from academically competing to get into high-performing schools. 

Selective schools cause a ‘stratification and inequity in Chicago Public Schools,’ according to the board’s CEO. 

Chicago has 11 selective-enrollment high schools — Northside College Prep, Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, John Hancock College Prep, Jones College Prep, Lane Tech, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School.

Walter Payton College Prep, South Shore International College Prep, Westinghouse College Prep and Whitney M. Young Magnet School are also on the list. 

The schools are not just the best in Chicago – but rank among the top high schools in the entire country. 

Walter Payton College Prep is ranked 10th best school in the US. Northside College Prep is 37th. Jones College Prep ranks 60th. 

Now, a resolution is up for a vote by the school board on Thursday.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez has prepared a resolution for ‘a transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.’

It would lay out a five-year ‘transformation’ to effectively get rid of selective schools in Chicago – which have been heralded as the gems of the city’s education system. 

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Government-Run Grocery Store Is Predictably Losing Money

Chicago’s city government is infamously corrupt and unable to provide basic services like education and public safety consistently, but Mayor Brandon Johnson is pushing for the city to also try running a grocery store.

It wouldn’t be the first government-run grocery store—and not even the first one in the United States. For some context about what Chicago is planning, The Wall Street Journal dispatched a reporter to check out the municipal-owned grocery store in Erie, Kansas, which opened in 2021.

How’s it going there? Uh, not great.

“Erie Market, which the city took over in 2021, is losing money almost every month amid stiff competition from a Walmart 15 miles away and a Dollar General across the street,” reports the Journal‘s Joe Barrett. Erie Market posted just a single profitable month during 2022 and lost $132,000.

Maybe Erie’s erstwhile government grocers didn’t realize that—unlike with other government services—grocery stores are subject to competition. Bummer.

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Why Halloween’s ‘Poison Candy’ Myth Endures

IN THE FALL OF 1982, an unfounded fear haunted almost every house in Chicago. As area children prepared to “trick” their neighbors with their impressions of werewolves, vampires, and zombies, their parents were much more terrified of the “treats” their kids were eager to devour.

Candy was a potential murder weapon. Apples might contain carefully concealed razor blades. Twizzlers might be laced with rat or ant poison. Mayor of Chicago Jane Byrne urged extreme caution and vigilance on Halloween, adding that if she had children, she would not allow them to accept any food items.

As the fear crept across the nation, towns nowhere near Chicago began to sound the alarm. In Trenton, governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean signed a bill imposing a mandatory six-month jail sentence on anyone convicted of handing out contaminated Halloween candy. In Vineland, a southern New Jersey city, Mayor Patrick Fiorilli imposed an outright ban on trick-or-treating, noting “what an opportunity this was for some nut to do something.” Local hospitals offered to X-ray children’s Halloween candy hauls.

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Biological Men Take Gold AND Silver At Chicago Women’s Cycle Races

Two transgender individuals who were born as men came first and second in a women’s cycling event in Chicago last week, prompting calls for stricter rules on such events to be implemented.

The Daily Mail reports that Tessa Johnson, 25, won first place in the Women’s SingleSpeed and Cat Half categories of the Chicago CrossCup, while Evelyn Williamson, 30, placed second in the SingleSpeed at the October 7 contest.

The pair, who are clearly biologically male, continue to dominate at women’s cycling events, with Williamson winning 18 titles in the women’s category in the past six years, and Johnson also winning several after previously competing, and failing to succeed, in men’s categories.

Rubbing it in the faces of female athletes even further, the pair compete under the team name ‘TS-ESTRODOLLS’, referring to the female hormone estrogen.

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