Tag: chicago

As Chicago Crime Sends Businesses Packing, Scientists Create Algorithm To Detect In Advance

Chicago’s legendary crime has caused businesses to leave town amid the growing threat of violence.

“We would do thousands of jobs a year in the city, but as we got robbed more, my people operating rollers and pavers we got robbed, our equipment would get stolen in broad daylight and there would usually be a gun involved, and it got expensive and it got dangerous,” said Gary Rabine, who pulled his road paving company out of the city after his crews were repeatedly robbed.

Rabine told Fox News that the increased costs of security and insurance for “thousands” of jobs in the city eventually caused expenses to be “twice as much as they should be” per employee.

Billionaire Ken Griffin moved his firm, Citadel, from Chicago to Miami, after saying in October 2021 that “Chicago is like Afghanistan, on a good day, and that’s a problem,” adding that he saw “25 bullet shots in the glass window of the retail space” in the building he lives in.

“If people aren’t safe here, they’re not going to live here,” he told the Wall Street Journal in April. “I’ve had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I’ve had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that’s a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from.”

AI to the rescue?

Scientists from the University of Chicago have created a new “AI” algorithm that can predict crime a week in advance.

By learning patterns in time and geographic locations from publicly available data on violent and property crimes, the “AI” can predict crimes up to one week in advance with around 90% accuracy.

The tool was tested and validated using historical data from the City of Chicago around two broad categories of reported events: violent crimes (homicides, assaults, and batteries) and property crimes (burglaries, thefts, and motor vehicle thefts). These data were used because they were most likely to be reported to police in urban areas where there is historical distrust and lack of cooperation with law enforcement. Such crimes are also less prone to enforcement bias, as is the case with drug crimes, traffic stops, and other misdemeanor infractions.

Previous efforts at crime prediction often use an epidemic or seismic approach, where crime is depicted as emerging in “hotspots” that spread to surrounding areas. These tools miss out on the complex social environment of cities, however, and don’t consider the relationship between crime and the effects of police enforcement. –PhysOrg

The model isolates crime by analyzing time and spacial coordinates of discrete events and detecting patterns to predict future events. It worked just as well with data from seven other US cities; Atlanta, Austin, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, and San Francisco

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Says People Charged With Violent Crimes Are Guilty Because Prosecutors Say So

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has repeatedly blamed bail reforms and local judges for exacerbating gun violence by releasing defendants back onto the streets, but on Monday she took her rhetoric a step further, saying that people charged with violent crime should be kept in jail because only guilty people get charged with violent crimes.

The comments, first reported by the Chicago Tribune, were part of a longer harangue against the Cook County courts and bail reform efforts.

“We shouldn’t be locking up nonviolent individuals just because they can’t afford to pay bail. But, given the exacting standards that the state’s attorney has for charging a case, which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, when those charges are brought, these people are guilty,” Lightfoot said. “Of course they’re entitled to a presumption of innocence. Of course they’re entitled to their day in court. But residents in our community are also entitled to safety from dangerous people, so we need to keep pressing the criminal courts to lock up violent dangerous people and not put them out on bail or electronic monitoring back into the very same communities where brave souls are mustering the courage to come forward and say, ‘this is the person who is responsible.'”

The comments outraged civil liberties advocates and public defenders in Chicago, and rightly so. They should offend anyone familiar with the American criminal justice system and why it places such an emphasis on the presumption of innocence: to force the government to prove its case and shield defendants from prejudice and demagoguery. Lightfoot’s statements are particularly absurd, given the enormous amount of taxpayer money Chicago has spent settling wrongful conviction lawsuits.

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10yo Girl Calls 911 to Report Her Police Officer Dad for Sexually Abusing Her, Fellow Cops Covered It Up

In March, a 10-year-old girl called 911 and told dispatchers that her father, a veteran Chicago cop, had sexually abused her.

“The victim was scared and called 911,” responding officers would later report, according to the Chicago Sun Times, adding that the actions she described “were sexual in nature.”

The officer’s arrest started out normal and it appeared that he would be held accountable. He was taken into custody, according to the arrest report, for “aggravated criminal sexual abuse by family member” — a serious felony charge.

But after spending several hours in jail, he would be released on zero bail with new charges of “domestic battery” — a misdemeanor.

When someone with an actual conscience inside the department learned about the officer’s special treatment, a red flag was raised sparking two separate investigations. An internal investigation is now underway as well as another by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

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Degree program exclusively for Black men launched at Chicago-area college

The Chicago-area Oakton Community College has started an academy exclusively for black men in collaboration with the nearby Evanston Township High School.

The Emory Williams Academy for Black Men, which launches this fall, will provide a two-year academic program that culminates in an associate degree, assistance transferring to a four-year university, or other vocational opportunities.

The program will also offer financial aid, scholarships and “additional financial resources,” its website states. The Daily Northwestern reported it’s a “free degree program for Black, male-identifying locals.”

It will offer students academic pathways in fields such as computer science, marketing, engineering, accounting, law enforcement and criminal justice, business, and cannabis studies.

The academy’s values statement reads in part: “We advance equity by acknowledging the harm perpetrated against Black men by systemic racism in all levels of their education, and intentionally disrupting it here at the College.”

The program’s exclusion of non-Black male candidates does not run afoul of federal guidelines, according to the college.

“The development of the Emory Williams Academy does not violate any laws. Oakton Community College is an open-access institution to which all students are invited to apply, enroll and access services,” spokesman Steve Butera told The College Fix via email.

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Chicago Mayor Lightfoot Has 71-Person Police Unit To Protect Her, Blames Trump For Being In Danger

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat who proposed cutting a huge $80 million from the Chicago Police Department budget in 2020, has a personal police unit consisting of a whopping 71 officers to protect her, and blamed some of her personal need for protection on former President Trump, telling the Chicago Sun-Times, “When the president of the United States uses the world’s largest megaphone and platform to target you personally, terrible things happen. And he not only blew a dog whistle, he pointed really evil and dangerous people right at my doorstep.”

The special unit, named Unit 544, now is comprised of 65 officers, five sergeants and a lieutenant, but that’s not all; “Lightfoot also has a separate personal bodyguard detail, which includes about 20 officers, the records show,” The Sun-Times noted.

On July 7, 2020, the police department issued a memo to officers who had served for at least five years; it stated:

The unit’s mission will be to provide physical security for City Hall, the mayor’s residence and the mayor’s detail command post. … Through the coordination of intelligence and resources, officers will respond to all threats related to the mayor’s physical properties to ensure its protection.

“Around the same time the unit was being formed in the summer of 2020, residents of Humboldt Park and Logan Square were complaining that the Shakespeare district, which covers their neighborhoods, was getting stretched thin because so many patrol officers there were being assigned to keep protesters from gathering outside Lightfoot’s house in Logan Square,” The Sun-Times added.

John Catanzara, president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, commented, “While murders are soaring, while districts are barebones for manpower, all that matters is protecting her castle.”

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Mother, 32, who became face of Chicago Teachers Union’s push to keep schools closed after they claimed she died of COVID caught from student actually DRANK herself to death, medical examiner reveals

A Chicago mother who the teachers’ union claimed died when a COVID-positive student was sent home to quarantine as they rallied for more COVID protocols actually died of alcoholism, it emerged on Monday. 

Denisha Henry, the 32-year-old mother of an eighth-grade student at Jensen Elementary Scholastic Academy in the East Garfield Park district of Chicago, died on September 24.

The day before, Shenitha Curry, 44, had died of pneumonia from COVID, with diabetes and hypertension as contributing factors. She was not vaccinated.

Soon after, the Chicago Teachers’ Union claimed at a rally that both mothers caught COVID from a child at the school, where 11 out of 17 classrooms were in quarantine.

But according to a Cook County Medical Examiner’s report obtained by Chicago City Wire on Monday, Henry actually died of chronic ethanolism – a term coroners use to describe someone who died of alcoholism.

Now, parents in the Chicago Public School system say the teachers’ union should be ashamed for misrepresenting her death in an effort to deride the school system for its handling of the pandemic.

‘My God, the burden they placed on those young children who lost their mothers. Telling them basically you killed your mothers by going to school,’ one parent, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution, said.

‘Shame on them. This proves they’ll stop at nothing to get what they want.’ 

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Two Dems who support police reform carjacked less than 24 hours apart

Two Democrats who supported police reform in Philadelphia and Chicago were both carjacked at gunpoint within 24 hours of each other.

Illinois state Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) was targeted in suburban Chicago on Tuesday night, while Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) was carjacked Wednesday afternoon after an event in South Philadelphia.

Lightford was driving with her husband, Eric McKennie, in Broadview at about 9:45 p.m. when three masked suspects in a Durango SUV hijacked the couple’s black Mercedes.

Police said “multiple gunshots” were fired during the incident but Lightford and her husband weren’t physically hurt.

The suspects fled in the Mercedes and Durango, according to police.

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“Your Time Is Up”: Chicago Mayor Threatens Unvaccinated With Draconian Measures

Unvaccinated residents of the Democratic stronghold of Chicago have been put on notice by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who said in a Tuesday tweet:

“To put it simply, if you have been living vaccine-free, your time is up. If you wish to live life as w/the ease to do the things you love, you must be vax’d.”

The tweet accompanies a new order which states that beginning January 3rd, people must show proof of full vaccination to enter ‘bars, restaurants, fitness centers, and intertainment/recreational venues where food/drink are served.’

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Prosecutors in Smollett Case Lied to the Public, Special Prosecutor Finds

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and prosecutors in her office lied and misled the public about the case against Jussie Smollett, according to a special prosecutor’s case released Monday.

Foxx, a Democrat whose campaign was backed by billionaire George Soros, initially said there was a “strong case” against Smollett for faking a hate crime against himself that would have led to a conviction. But Foxx claimed days later that certain aspects of the case “would have made securing a conviction against Smollett uncertain.”

Dan Webb, a special prosecutor appointed to probe the actions of Foxx and her underlings, said the pivot was “false and misleading.”

The office also offered a series of other false and misleading statements, Webb’s report said.

Foxx recused herself from the case in 2019 because she was rumored to be related to or have a relationship with Smollett or his family. But, according to legal rules, Foxx had to recuse her entire office and ask the court to appoint a special prosecutor. Foxx instead chose to keep in place a prosecutor she appointed from within her office to oversee the case.

The office and Foxx “made the decision to ignore this major legal defect seemingly because they did not want to admit they had made such a major mistake of judgment,” Webb wrote, adding that they “then compounded the problem by making a false statement to the media” about the matter.

Foxx and/or prosecutors in her office also falsely said Smollett had no criminal background when they dismissed the initial case against him, falsely represented that $10,000 was the most Smollett could have been ordered to pay in restitution, and were misleading when they claimed the dismissal was not unusual because they could not identify any similar cases, according to the report.

Foxx’s office engaged in substantial abuses of discretion and breached obligations of honesty and transparency, Webb concluded.

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