You’ll be denounced as an “election denier” if you dare suggest that Democrats are able to manufacture phony votes in order to “win” elections, but exactly what the hell is going on in Chicago?
The Chicago Board of Elections revealed on Saturday that more than 10,000 ballots hadn’t been included in previous vote totals by mistake, making unofficial counts lower than expected.
In a news release, a spokesperson for the CBOE explained that while adding up vote-by-mail ballots, he accidentally left out additional ballots that had been delivered by the U.S. Postal Service on Monday.
“I traded speed for accuracy in reporting out numbers this week as quickly as I could,” spokesperson Max Bever said in a statement, in part. “I truly regret this error on my part and for the confusion that it has caused the voters of Chicago.”
The 10,659 ballots in question were added to the unofficial vote count on Saturday, increasing the total of ballots cast in Chicago to 368,990. Voter turnout citywide was reported to be 24.44% out of 1,509,554 registered voters.
As of Saturday evening, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s race still had yet to be called, but judge Eileen O’Neill Burke’s lead over Clayton Harris III was narrowing slightly.
Oopsie! It was a mistake, an accident, an error!
You would be called a conspiracy theorist if you were to mention that this “accident” seems rather convenient for the State’s Attorney candidate who had been losing prior to the belated (but totally not suspicious) discovery of these 10,000 extra ballots. Both candidates are Democrats, but there is at least one important difference between them.
Can you spot the difference between Eileen O’Neill Burke and Clayton Harris III? If so, you’ll get hate-listed by the SPLC for suggesting that there is an obvious reason why Chicago officials are desperately trying to come up with enough fake votes to get Harris elected State’s Attorney.
I am in Chicago right now seeing my new grandson. While here, they had a primary election. The State’s Attorney’s race was the one to watch. It pitted a traditional liberal Democrat, Eileen Burke with a Chicago Teacher’s Union/Toni Preckwinkle socialist/communist Democrat Clayton Harris. . . .
Only about 20% of eligible voters voted, and it’s taking them at least six days past the election to count all the votes. Every single one of these people is responsible for making fraud easier.
But, the State’s Attorney’s race was closer. Lo and behold after all the ballots were practically counted they “found” another mail-in ballot dropbox full of 10,000 ballots that were not postmarked or dated. They are counting them now.
Amazingly, the lead that Eileen Burke had has shrunk to 1.8%, or 2000 votes. There are still enough ballots left to count to put her rival over the top.
The latest: “According to election officials, updated totals showed O’Neill Burke with 259,445 votes and 50.20% of ballots cast compared to Harris’ 257,430 votes and 49.80%. A total of 3,500 mail-in ballots still had yet to be counted – 2,500 in the city and 1,000 in suburban Cook County, officials said.” So now they’ve got the margin down to 0.4% of the “total,” and if the remaining ballots aren’t enough to elect Harris, I’m sure they’ll find a few thousand more. It’s the Chicago way, baby.
Everybody remembers the crazy storyline from January 2019: In the wee hours of a Tuesday morning in Chicago, actor Jussie Smollett claimed he was returning from a trip to a Subway sandwich shop when he was attacked by two white men wearing “Make America Great Again” caps, who shouted racist and homophobic slurs, poured bleach on him, tied a noose around his neck and exclaimed: “This is MAGA country!” As fake hate-crime hoaxes go, this was one of the least plausible narratives ever. Republican terrorists in Chicago? At 2 a.m.? In below-zero weather? Targeting an actor who most people never heard of?
Smollett’s tale was quickly exposed as a lie, but his hoax expressed a common belief among liberals, that “hate” is a widespread menace in America, and that Republican voters are all guilty of “hate.” It was therefore not really surprising that the mayor of Chicago — Joe Biden got 74% of the vote in Cook County — would invoke this belief when discussing his city’s illegal immigrant problem:
QUESTION: Would you want some limits placed on the flow of migrants from other cities and states?
CHICAGO MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON: It has to be better coordination. What we have seen is a raggedy form instituted by right-wing extremism. Everyone knows that the right-wing extremism in this country has targeted Democratically-ran cities and quite frankly, they’ve been very intentional about going after Democratically-ran cities that are led by people of color.
Their whole motivation is to create disruption and chaos because that’s what this particular party has been about. This is the same political party that did not want to accept that President Obama was actually an American. It’s the same Republican right-wing extremism that stormed the Capitol. It’s the same right-wing extremism that refuses to accept the results of the Civil War. It’s raggedy. It’s disrespectful. It’s mean-spirited. It’s an unclean spirit, quite frankly.
So I got you. I got you. I just want to make sure that people understand what we’re facing. That’s why it’s so important that the faith community is leaning in at this moment. And so what what I’ve said, there has to be better coordination. Look, Pastor Will Hall who’s also an Alderman of the Sixth Ward visited the border. He saw the chaos firsthand. And so part of our effort to go to the the border was to make sure that there was better coordination with the flow of migrants who are seeking asylum here but this is not unprecedented.
When the Ukrainian refugees found their way to the shores of America there were 30,000 of them right here in the city of Chicago and you don’t hear a word about it because it was coordinated. There was federal dollars that were attached to those families and so to your question, yes it has to be better coordinated. As far as limitations we have to have parameters that respect the dignity of families who want to call Chicago their home right.
It is abysmal and it’s an affront for everything that is good about this country, for the extremism in this country to use people as political tools to settle political scores for something that happened 400 years ago. They’re still mad that a black man is free in this country. This is nothing new.
Am I the only one who sees this as scapegoating, no different than Jew-haters blaming all the world’s problems on a “Zionist conspiracy”?
Instead of being distracted by the mayor’s (deliberately) divisive rhetoric, however, let’s talk about the actual policy issue involved. The subtext of the Chicago mayor’s remarks was the fact that in 2022, Texas Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott started bussing migrants to Democrat-run cities:
• Over 11,900 migrants to Washington, D.C. since April 2022
• Over 14,800 migrants to New York City since August 2022
• Over 8,700 migrants to Chicago since August 2022
• Over 3,000 migrants to Philadelphia since November 2022
• Over 1,500 migrants to Denver since May 18
• Over 610 migrants to Los Angeles since June 14
Keep in mind that these numbers are the proverbial “drop in a bucket” compared to the tsunami of “asylum seekers” who have poured into Texas as a result of Joe Biden’s policies. Abbott’s bussing program — overwhelmingly popular in Texas, of course — is an expression of a common-sense reaction to Biden’s policies: Why should Texans (most of whom vote Republican) have to bear the burden of Biden’s policies, while the liberals who voted for Biden (and who live far away from the Mexican border) are exempt from the consequences of the open-borders policy they evidently prefer? All Abbott is doing is giving Democrat voters a chance to experience what it is they’re voting for.
Once we start talking about actual policy — a discussion that Democrats wish to avoid — it behooves us to speak in terms of numbers. Most people have no idea about the actual numbers behind the immigration debate. As a matter of fact, for the past two decades or so, the United States has admitted about 1 million legal immigrants annually. Many of my conservative friends believe that number is too large, and that it would be better to reduce the number of legal immigrants admitted to the U.S., especially in terms of what’s called “chain migration.” Nevertheless, when you realize we’re legally admitting a million immigrants every year, and have been doing so since the 1990s, the problem of illegal immigration comes into sharper focus. Given our generous welcome to any immigrant willing to follow the law, why should we let ourselves be bullied into tolerating the unwelcome presence of foreign lawbreakers?
Democrats (and open-borders Republicans) don’t want to discuss the actual policies and actual numbers in regard to immigration. The open-borders lobby wants to use emotional appeals and accusations of “racism” to persuade the foolish and intimidate any potential opposition. We cannot solve policy problems by such tactics, and it behooves conservatives always to avoid mirroring the name-calling and emotionalism of the open-borders lobby. Educate the public, and tell them the actual facts. This report was just issued today:
The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) shows that the total foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal) was 49.5 million in October 2023 — a 4.5 million increase since President Biden took office and a new record high. At 15 percent, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population is also the highest ever recorded in American history. As the debate rages over the ongoing border crisis, this finding is important because administrative numbers such as border encounters or even legal immigrant arrivals do not measure the actual size of the immigrant population, which is what ultimately determines immigration’s impact on the country.
Among the findings:
• In October 2023, the CPS shows that 15 percent of the U.S. population is now foreign-born — higher than any U.S. government survey or census has ever recorded.
• The 49.5 million foreign-born residents (legal and illegal) in October 2023 is also a new record high.
• Since President Biden took office in January 2021, the foreign-born population has grown by 4.5 million — larger than the individual populations of 25 U.S. states.
• Based on our prior estimates of illegal immigrants, more than half (2.5 million) of the 4.5 million increase in the foreign-born population since January 2021 is likely due to illegal immigration. If adjusted for those missed by the survey, the increase would be larger.
• The 4.5 million increase overall and the 2.5 million increase in illegal immigrants are both net figures. The number of new arrivals was significantly higher, but was offset by outmigration and natural mortality among the foreign-born already here.
• The foreign-born population has grown on average by 137,000 a month since President Biden took office, compared to 42,000 a month during Trump’s presidency before Covid-19 hit, and 68,000 a month during President Obama’s two terms.
• The scale of immigration is so high that it appears to have made the new Census Bureau population projections, published on November 9 of this year, obsolete. The bureau projected that the foreign-born share was not supposed to hit 15 percent until 2033.
• The largest percentage increases since January 2021 are for immigrants from South America (up 28 percent); Central America (up 25 percent); Sub-Saharan Africa (up 21 percent); the Caribbean (up 20 percent); and the Middle East (up 14 percent).
• Immigrants from all of Latin America increased by 2.9 million since January 2021, accounting for 63 percent of the total increase in the foreign-born.
• While a large share of the recent foreign-born growth is due to illegal immigration, legal immigrants still account for three-fourths of the total foreign-born population.
You can read the whole thing. My point is that irresponsible demagogues like the mayor of Chicago don’t care about facts, any more than Jussie Smollett cared about facts when he perpetrated his notorious hate-crime hoax in Chicago. They are two sides of the same coin.
What kind of car do you drive? What are your monthly car payments? Excuse me for asking, but one fact that caught my eye in this story out of Chicago was that Arsenio Cooper was driving a Jaguar SUV. A quick Google search informed me that a used 2020 Jaguar SUV can be had for somewhere in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, causing me to wonder how Cooper was making his car payment while out on bail:
A seven-time convicted felon charged with shooting and trying to kill a long-time friend was on bail for a felony case in which he’s accused of having more than three pounds of pot in his car.
Arsenio Cooper, 33, is the 13th person accused of shooting, killing, or trying to shoot or kill someone in Chicago this year while awaiting trial for a felony. The cases involve at least 18 victims, seven of whom died.
Prosecutors said Cooper saw his friend of 15 years walking a dog in the 3200 block of West Washington around 5:45 a.m. on May 19, and they had a conversation. But Cooper grew upset and drove away in his Jaguar SUV, Assistant State’s Attorney Kathryn Morrissey said during Cooper’s bail hearing.
Cooper’s friend put his dog away, then came back out to speak with someone else. As they talked, Cooper returned in the Jaguar, got out, and opened fire on the victim, Morrissey alleged.
One round struck the 36-year-old victim in the face. He ran toward his home as Cooper ran after him, “firing round after round,” Morrissey continued. The victim saw bullets hitting the front door of his house as he ran inside. Morrissey said a Ring doorbell camera recorded it all.
Cooper returned to the Jaguar and drove away while the victim’s sister called 911.
Assistant Public Defender Catherine Fisher, representing Cooper during the bail hearing, claimed that the victim brandished a firearm and said Cooper had been advised that the victim was waiting for him with a gun. It’s a self-defense case, she argued.
Judge Ankur Srivastava held Cooper without bail on a charge of attempted first-degree murder.
(No bail? In Chicago? Do you realize how rare it is for anyone to be denied bail in Chicago, no matter how serious the crime?)
Cooper was on bail while awaiting trial for allegations that police found 1,600 grams of suspected marijuana inside three backpacks in his car during a traffic stop in March 2022, according to court records.
At the time of the traffic stop, Cooper was on bail for yet another felony case in which he faced charges of Class X armed habitual criminal and manufacture-delivery of cannabis, records show. He was acquitted of those charges in November.
Morrissey said his previous felony convictions include unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in 2019, possession of cannabis in 2015, manufacture-delivery of cannabis in 2012, unlawful use of a weapon with a previous conviction in 2011, and disarming a police officer and aggravated battery in 2007.
Given this information, what do you suppose Arsenio Cooper’s credit rating looks like? Yet somehow, this menace to society walks into the Jaguar dealership and walks out with the keys to a $40,000 SUV? Can someone please explain to me how this happens? Do I just need to move to Chicago and start committing felonies in order to qualify for Jaguar’s “SUVs for Criminals” program? Not that I mind driving my old Nissan clunker, but maybe it’s time for an upgrade. Just get myself a pistol and deal some dope, and I’ll be riding fine in a late-model Jag.
But I promise not to shoot any of my “long-time friends.”
Gloria: “Daddy, did you know that sixty-five percent of the people murdered in this country in the last ten years were killed by handguns?” Archie Bunker: “Would it make you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?”
That exchange from a 1972 episode of All in the Family always comes to mind when I here politicians and the media discussing “gun violence.” My guns have never perpetrated any violence, and probably your guns are equally innocent, but liberals have a quasi-religious belief that criminals are not responsible for crime. No, it would be wrong to blame the criminals and put them in prison, according to Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors™ in the Democratic Party.
At the root of this mentality is an unwillingness to accept that some people are just bad — irredeemable, a net detriment to society, genetically inferior, social failures, a waste of oxygen. In this, the attitude of liberals toward the criminal class is something akin to the attitude of abused women toward the violent men they love: “I can save him!” Or perhaps we might compare it to Victor Frankenstein who, when the enraged villagers show up, tries to defend the murderous monster he has created. Liberals who lament “mass incarceration” seem willing to ignore the victims of the crimes perpetrated by prison inmates.
Liberals do not want to deal with the reality of recidivism. Most crime is committed by repeat offenders — career criminals who, unless they are put behind bars, will continue perpetrating crime more or less continually. The consequences of the “turn ’em loose” mentality are repeatedly demonstrated in news accounts of murders committed by repeat felons, like 16-year-old Dawnta Harris of Baltimore, who killed a cop by running over her after he was caught during a spree of home invasions. When Harris was arraigned, District Court Judge Sally Chester denied bond and put the teenager in adult jail, telling his lawyer: “In the last six months, no offense, but your client is a one-man crime wave. I’m not certain any juvenile facility is secure enough to hold him.”
Protest marches against “gun violence” are not going to solve the problem, unless the protests are aimed at impeaching Soros-funded “progressive” district attorneys whose turn-’em-loose approach results in dangerous felons roaming the streets of Democrat-controlled cities.
Consider the case of Chicago. One of the tools that police use to “stop gun violence” — because that’s what liberals claim to want, right? — is ShotSpotter, a network of audio sensors that automatically alert police to locations where gunfire happens. Would it surprise you to learn that Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors™ are against this?
In July 2022, the MacArthur Justice Center brought a class action lawsuit against the City of Chicago, the Chicago Police Department, and several individual police officers for constitutional violations in connection with the use of ShotSpotter. The lawsuit alleges that more than 90% of the time police respond to a ShotSpotter alert they find no indication of a gun-related incident and instead use the alerts to justify scores of illegal stops and arrests. The lawsuit also alleges that Chicago’s ShotSpotter policy is racially discriminatory because the system was only implemented in areas with the highest concentration of Black and Latino residents.
The “racially discriminatory” location of ShotSpotter sensors might have something to do with THIS IS WHERE ALL THE SHOOTINGS KEEP HAPPENING, but Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors™ don’t care.
Meanwhile, recently-elected Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “commemorated the milestone [of his first month in office] on Twitter with a thread detailing what he has focused on thus far”:
Notably, there was only one mention of public safety — and it did not even reference a specific policy. This is significant because new data show Mayor Johnson has presided over a 38% crime spike over his first month in office when comparing it to the same period last year.
Vehicle thefts spiked by 153%, aggravated battery is up 17%, burglary jumped by 12%, and even shootings rose 5%. A few weeks ago, carjackings got so bad the Chicago Police Department had to issue a “community alert urging residents to be more vigilant about their surroundings and to always be on the lookout for suspicious activity when entering or leaving vehicles.”
Johnson is a man in serious denial bordering on delusion. He says there needs to be a better “characterization” of Chicago’s young people.
“There has been a lot of mischaracterization of our young people in the city of Chicago,” Johnson said. “Do we have individuals who have lived out their pain in the most violent ways? Of course, but the vast majority of our young people need and want opportunity.”
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) We must note Mayor Johnson’s expression of the long-held liberal belief that criminals are really victims of society, so that murderers can be said to “have lived out their pain in the most violent ways.” Again I think of Repo Man:
Toward the end of the movie, Otto is in a convenience store when one of his punk buddies, Duke, bursts through the door and tries to rob the place.
The store clerk pulls a pistol and fatally shoots Duke. As Duke is bleeding out, Otto goes to comfort him, and hears Duke speak his last words: “I know a life of crime has led me to this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am.”
Remember when President Obama got elected and America’s public schools suddenly became excellent? No, you don’t remember that, because it never happened. The guy Obama appointed as Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is a Harvard-educated liberal who had previously been appointed by the Daley machine as Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Public Schools, where he worked no miracles, and neither did he do anything during his eight-year tenure as Secretary of Education that anyone remembers as praiseworthy. In 2016, with money from Steve Jobs’ widow, Duncan started a group called Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny). Duncan has said that Chicago CRED “proceeds from the belief that the surest way to stop gun violence is engaging directly with those most at risk of shooting or being shot and giving them a reason to put down their guns”:
Said another way, we believe that the individuals we work with are not the problem — they are the solution. They are the only ones with the experience, relationships, and courage necessary to do the difficult, dangerous work of reaching out to friends, neighbors, and family members and getting them to also stop shooting. . . .
Our comprehensive approach includes street outreach, counseling, life coaching, education, and employment. . . .
Many of our outreach workers and life coaches are slightly older versions of the people caught up in gun violence, so they have their trust and respect. We also give participants a modest paycheck, starting at about $125 per week and rising to about $225 per week over the course of our 12-24-month program as long as they stay involved, attend regularly, and advance through the program. Our goal is to help them transition into the legal economy.
So they’re paying people not to shoot each other, and hey, it’s a “comprehensive approach,” which explains the excellent results!
Chicago’s 2022 homicide rate was 25.8 per 100,000, more than twice as high as Los Angeles (9.9) and five times higher than New York City (5.1). About the best you can say for Chicago is that it’s not as violent as Baltimore, Detroit or Memphis, but does that really qualify as “success”?
If Arne Duncan was just spending Laurene Jobs’ billions on this “comprehensive approach,” it would be no more than a laughable folly, but because Illinois is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party the taxpayers are now footing the bill for Chicago CRED’s “violence prevention” operation, and how’s that working out?
One of our participants was killed today as he left one of our sites. He had just written about how much achieving his HS diploma would mean to him & his family.
Devastated doesn’t describe what we are feeling- please keep his family and our @ChicagoCred family in your prayers.
CHICAGO (WLS) — A man who worked to stop gun violence was killed Wednesday in a shooting outside a community outreach center. Chicago police said they are looking for two people involved.
Police said 28-year-old Ronnie Roper was in a South Side parking lot at about 12:16 p.m. when two people walked up and shot him in the head.
The shooting occurred just outside Chicago CRED’s outreach center in the Roseland neighborhood. The victim was a member of that group that works to stop gun violence. . . .
“It has been devastating,” said CRED site manager Necole Muhammad. “The staff is in shock and traumatized. The family is traumatized.”
CRED said Roper was on track to get his high school diploma later this year.
“He was very excited about making sure he brought that into fruition for his family, and because he had individuals that were team him,” Muhammad said.
The group was founded by former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Duncan had just left the center minutes before the shooting.
Duncan released a statement saying, “We lost to gun violence a man who had been with our program for the last nine months. He came to us because he wanted a way out of his life on the streets and had made great progress toward that goal…”
He went on to say in part that this death is a reminder that, “We have so much more work to do to make Chicago a safe city with meaningful opportunities for everyone.”
Way to go, Harvard-educated genius! Maybe you can find the guys who shot Ronnie Roper in the head and pay them not to shoot anyone else — because that’s the “comprehensive approach,” am I right?
Undeterred by this incident, Chicago CRED had big plans for making the city safe this Memorial Day weekend:
If there’s unrest downtown or mass shootings elsewhere in Chicago this Memorial Day holiday — often among the year’s most violent weekends — a special team of 30 “Peacekeepers” wearing yellow vests will be mobilized to help calm things down, state officials said Tuesday.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker authorized funding the anti-violence strategy in 2021 when he signed the Reimagine Public Safety Act, creating the state Office of Firearm Violence Prevention. More than 500 people have been hired as Peacekeepers, trained to deescalate conflicts in 102 “hot spots” in 14 Chicago communities. . . .
The money for the program in the current budget year — $11 million — is set to increase to $30 million in the next year, according to state records. . . .
In addition to that larger program, the state is spending $750,000 on a “crisis prevention and response unit” of at least 30 specially trained Peacekeepers.
That unit is available 24 hours a day every week to respond to shootings in Chicago and will be active during the Memorial Day weekend, according to DHS, which funds the program.
A Chicago man wearing a neon yellow “peacekeepers” vest helped a group of people beat and rob a motorist in Little Village on Friday night, according to a Chicago Police Department report. The allegations come after city and state officials lauded the use of “peacekeepers” as a tool they would deploy over the Memorial Day weekend to tamp down violence across the city. Oscar Montes, 31, was held without bail by Judge Maryam Ahmad on charges of robbery, aggravated battery, and unlawful vehicular invasion Sunday afternoon.
The trouble began around 10:55 p.m. as Chicago police officers saw a large group fighting near 23rd Place and Washtenaw. Additional CPD units were sent to stabilize the situation.
But less than five minutes after officers cleared up from that incident, CPD surveillance officers reported that a group of people had pulled a man from a car and started beating him, a police report said.
A 37-year-old man was pulled from his vehicle by “multiple offenders,” including one wearing a neon vest, a Chicago police spokesperson said Saturday. During Montes’ bail hearing, prosecutor Charles Golaszewski said six or seven men joined Montes in pulling the victim from the driver’s seat.
The group punched and kicked him on the ground. Montes took the victim’s phone and beat the man with it, Golaszewski alleged. Another man took the victim’s wallet before everyone scattered as Chicago cops returned to the scene. A police surveillance camera recorded the entire attack, Golaszewski said, and officers who reviewed the footage identified a man wearing a yellow vest as one of the attackers.
Police officers searched the area and quickly located Montes walking away from them while removing “a neon ‘peacekeepers’ vest,” according to the CPD arrest report. No other arrests were made.
The victim was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in serious condition with significant injuries to one eye, cuts, bruises, and abrasions. Golaszewski said he suffered a facial fracture, rib fracture, and a left eye injury that has caused partial vision loss. It is unclear if the victim’s vision will fully return.
A CPD officer signed complaints on behalf of the victim, who was “not capable” of signing the papers himself “due to his injuries,” the police report said. . . .
His defense attorney on Sunday said [Montes] has a 14-year-old child and is a certified emergency medical technician. He volunteers “when he can” and goes to church, the lawyer said. But neither the public defender nor Golaszewski mentioned any peacekeeping activities that Montes might have been involved with.
Montes is on parole for a 2012 case in which he pleaded guilty to aggravated discharge of a firearm into an occupied vehicle. Golaszewski said those allegations stemmed from an incident involving a rival gang member of Montes in Little Village. Court records show Montes was originally charged with attempted murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.
He was released on May 6, 2022, after serving a little more than ten years of a 12-year sentence, according to Illinois Department of Corrections records. State officials are reviewing his parole status in light of the new allegations.
Doing a heckuva job keeping the peace. As of 10 p.m. Sunday, there had been 47 shootings in Chicago this weekend, including 11 fatal shootings, plus another homicide by stabbing. No comment from Arne Duncan.
A Cook County judge set bail at $800,000 for a Jefferson Park woman who’s accused of randomly attacking women, sometimes with a baseball bat, this week. Judge Maryam Ahmad said she viewed Denise Solorzano’s bail amount as “$100,000 for each victim… to protect women and children in the community.”
Solorzano must post 10% of the bail amount to get out of jail on electronic monitoring while her case is pending.
The attacks began around 3 p.m. Sunday when Solorzano pulled up next to a 33-year-old woman in the 4200 block of North Richmond and began yelling at her about “beating her ass,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Dale-Schmidt during Solorzano’s bail hearing.
Solorzano allegedly got out of the car and punched the woman several times in the head and face until the woman fell to the ground. She grabbed the woman by her hair and dragged her down the street, but she fled when a witness intervened, Dale-Schmidt said. The victim suffered swelling, bruises, and cuts.
Solorzano approached a 19-year-old woman in the 4000 block of West Lawrence about an hour later. “What would you do if I punched you in the face?” she allegedly asked the woman before grabbing her by the hair, slugging her in the head and face three times, and pushing her to the ground.
Solorzano stood over the woman and punched her a few more times until a witness tried to stop her, Dale-Schmidt said. Solorzano allegedly pulled the witness by her hair, tearing out a chunk as she fell to the ground. Dale-Schmidt said the woman covered her face as Solorzano tried to punch her in the face and slam her head into the sidewalk.
Chicago police officers arrived as the attack was underway. They briefly chased Solorzano’s car but terminated their efforts after she ran a stop sign, Dale-Schmidt said.
The attacks resumed on Tuesday. This time, Dale-Schmidt said, Solorzano brought a baseball bat.
“What would you do if I beat you with this bat?” Solorzano allegedly asked a woman standing with her sister and a 6-month-old baby in a stroller on the 4500 block of North Mozart around 11:27 a.m.
She stepped out of the car and attacked both women, hitting them in their hands and arms as they tried to protect themselves, according to Dale-Schmidt. A neighbor recorded part of the attack on video. Those victims, ages 27 and 31, experienced bruising and swelling.
While police were talking with the victims, a 34-year-old woman reported that a white sedan lurched toward her as she crossed the street with her dog near the 3000 block of West Cullom. A short time later, she passed Solorzano, who was standing on the sidewalk with a bat.
“What would happen if I bashed you with this bat?” Solorzano allegedly asked. She struck the woman on the back, shoulder, and arms as she tried to get past her, Dale-Schmidt said. Solorzano fled in her car when a witness approached.
Police soon learned of another attack in the 3000 block of West Belle Plaine.
A woman claimed that a white car almost hit her as she crossed an intersection before the driver lurched and reversed toward her about four times, forcing her to jump out of the way. Solorzano yelled about the woman’s ethnicity as the victim ran to another woman who was walking a dog nearby, Dale-Schmidt said.
Solorzano pulled her car into a nearby alley and threatened the women with her bat, striking one on the arm and head, according to the allegations. Both women ran away but noticed a pink bumper sticker shaped like a crown on the back of Solorzano’s car.
Chicago police later traced the car’s license plate to Solorzano’s parents and found it parked in front of the family’s home on the 4900 block of West Lawrence with a pink, crown-shaped bumper sticker.
There's been numerous random bat attacks by someone in a white sedan around the Ravenswood Manor/Albany Park area.
Victims include a woman walking a dog and a woman with a baby.
The attacks are reportedly unprovoked and random. None of the victims claim to know the offender.… pic.twitter.com/gMDCP2JKAa
— 16th & 17th District Chicago Police Scanner (@CPD1617Scanner) May 9, 2023
Through tears after the hearing, Solorzano’s mother said that her daughter was diagnosed with schizophrenia several years ago and has struggled to get medication to treat her condition and take it consistently. When she would take her daughter to a hospital for treatment, “they just kept releasing her,” Solorzano’s mother said.
Solorzano’s arrest report indicated she told Chicago police she has also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which prosecutors said her family had confirmed.
The assistant public defender said Solorzano lives with her mother and had attended some college classes, but was not employed due to “some significant mental health issues she’s dealing with.”
Now she can sit her ass in jail and, while I don’t think the quality of psychiatric care in the Cook County correctional system is ideal, at least she won’t be attacking random strangers with baseball bats.
The residents of the Windy City were offered a choice between someone who wanted to rebuild the Chicago PD and bring down the crime rates and someone who was on the record saying he wanted to defund the police. By the slimmest of margins, a bare majority of voters decided to stick with the carjacking epidemic because it’s been working out so well thus far, I suppose. “Progressive” candidate Brandon Johnson bested pro-cop Paul Vallas with a 51.4 to 48.6 margin. . . .
Chicago is well known for the “Magnificent Mile,” a formerly prosperous and productive retail district filled with high-end shops and fine dining establishments. Now it looks like a war zone. For the past year or more, it’s been the site of robberies, assaults, smash-and-grab heists, and even murders. Business owners have been fleeing the area. . . .
So how did this happen? As we discussed in the final weeks of the runoff, it really came down to a question of race. Vallas is white and Johnson is Black. Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor was making the rounds of every political rally in the city and preaching about the need to hold together “our Black and brown coalition.” And it looks like she managed that feat, if only by a slender margin.
It’s actually worse that Jazz Shaw realizes. The explicitly anti-white rhetoric about a “Black and Brown coalition” for Johnson ensured that the electorate was racially polarized, and Johnson got his highest percentage of the vote in majority-black wards where crime is the worst. Some of these wards have less than 1% white population.
Here, based on the NY Times ward-by-ward results and the City of Chicago’s official ward map, are the voting-age proportions of black and white in the wards where Johnson got the most votes:
Ward 24 … Johnson 84% …. Black 77% …. White 4%
Ward 21 … Johnson 82% …. Black 95% …. White 1%
Ward 20 … Johnson 81% …. Black 73% …. White 5%
Ward 17 … Johnson 81% …. Black 86% …. White 1%
Ward 16 … Johnson 81% …. Black 69% …. White 2%
Ward 6 ….. Johnson 81% …. Black 95% …. White 1%
The representation of 1% white voting-age population in wards 21, 17 and 6 results from rounding up fractions. The population of Chicago is 29% black, 33% white and 28% Hispanic, but the anti-white political climate in the city now means that only black candidates can be elected mayor, because black voters will never vote for a white or Hispanic candidate, and the appeal of a “Black and Brown coalition” will always persuade a certain percentage of Hispanic voters to vote for the black candidate. And this is happening, by the way, despite the fact that Chicago’s black population has declined while the Hispanic population has increased.
After the most recent census, there was a protracted fight in the city council over the Chicago ward map, which resulted in racial gerrymandering:
The map created 16 wards with a majority of Black voters and one ward with a plurality of Black voters. The map has 14 wards with a majority of Latino voters, rather than the 15 wards that the City Council’s Latino Caucus had demanded. . . .
Representatives of the Latino Policy Forum, a Chicago advocacy group, said they were “extremely disappointed that for the second consecutive decade Latinos have been shortchanged in their representation.”
Nobody in Chicago cares if whites are “shortchanged in their representation”; indeed, that is a fundamental goal of the “progressives” who control Chicago. There are 50 wards in Chicago, of which 60% are specifically carved up to ensure black or Hispanic majorities. And what this means, in terms of policy, is that Chicago seeks to avoid jailing criminals, who are turned loose to re-offend over and over again. When Jazz Shaw refers to the city’s “carjacking epidemic,” it’s no exaggeration. As recently as 2014, Chicago had barely 300 carjackings a year. Last year, there were more than 1,600 carjackings in Chicago, to go along with 737 murders and 2,937 people wounded from gunfire.
Because tonight is a gateway to a new future for our city. A city where you can thrive regardless of who you love or how much money you have in your bank account. A city that’s truly safer for everyone by investing in what actually works to prevent crime. And that means youth employment, mental health centers, ensuring that law enforcement has the resources to solve and prevent crime.
Ri-iiiight. Not a word in there about putting criminals behind bars, because Brandon Johnson is against putting criminals behind bars.
By electing Johnson, Chicago has voted for more crime, committed by repeat offenders who know they won’t be prosecuted and sent to prison by Chicago’s “Black and Brown coalition” government.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election Tuesday, ending her historic run as the city’s first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the position.
Lightfoot, a Democrat, failed to get enough votes in the nine-person race to move on to an April 4 runoff election, according to projections by The Associated Press.
Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago schools, will face Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union.
Ideologically, the choice between Vallas and Johnson is stark. Vallas ran as a moderate law-and-order candidate, while Johnson ran on an unabashedly progressive agenda.
But Chicagoans sent a message that they wanted change, rejecting both an incumbent mayor and a sitting congressman. Lightfoot is the first incumbent elected Chicago mayor to lose re-election since 1983, when Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, lost her primary.
Lightfoot conceded defeat Tuesday night at her party in downtown Chicago, saying, “Obviously we didn’t win the election today, but I stand here with my head held high.”
Frogs everywhere — to say nothing of toads, newts and salamanders — are still proud of Mayor Frogface, who inflicted the kind of vengeance on humans that amphibians have long craved, turning Chicago into a racially-divided hive of Fear and Loathing where 737 people were murdered last year and more than 3,600 were wounded by gunfire.
Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blamed racism and her gender for her landslide defeat in her re-election bid, as Chicagoans weary of the rising crime on her watch celebrated her fall from “political rock star to rock bottom.” “I’m a black woman in America. Of course,” she replied when asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly.
But she called being Chicago’s mayor “the honor of a lifetime.”
“Regardless of tonight’s outcome, we fought the right fights and we put this city on a better path,” Lightfoot said, as she urged her fellow mayors around the US not to fear being bold.
Amid heavy criticism for the crime wave, homelessness and other troubles plaguing the city, the mayor had also injected race into the run-up to the election.
“I am a black woman — let’s not forget,” Lightfoot, 60, told the New Yorker in a piece that ran Saturday. “Certain folks, frankly, don’t support us in leadership roles.”
Prior to being elected mayor in 2019, Lightfoot had never previously held elective office, but instead had been appointed to various government jobs — assistant U.S. attorney, president of the Chicago Police Board, etc. — by Democrats eager to fulfill their “diversity” quotas. And her upward ascent continued until finally, she found herself in a position where real-world consequences mattered. At which point, she became a victim of oppression, because all those RAAAAACISTS in Chicago voted against giving her another four years of letting their city go to ruin.
Read short summary here ?
¹ Diana Dejacimo was robbed at gunpoint back in December. She said after the horrifying ordeal she experienced, she did not know one single person who voted for Lightfoot. "I think this was a loud and clear message that this woke agenda is not working
