Category: Chicago

Chicago Police Reportedly Have Solved the Jussie Smollett ‘Hate Crime’ Hoax

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When this story broke, there were a lot of reasons to be suspicious, as I detailed at the time (“You Haters! Stop Questioning Gay Actor’s Claim of ‘MAGA’ Hate Crime in Chicago,” Jan. 31, and “Persons of Interest,” Feb. 1). Now it is being reported that Chicago police are questioning two black men, one of whom appeared as an extra on Empire with Jussie Smollett, and once they get full confessions, we can expect the rest of the story behind this obvious hoax to emerge. The local crime site CWB Chicago has this summary:

Charlie De Mar of CBSChicago reports that police raided the home of the two “persons of interest” last night, seizing bleach, a wallet with stamps, a magazine, computers, and more. A relative of the men told De Mar that the two left for Nigeria on the day of the purported attack.
Chicago police today are questioning two persons of interest in the Jussie Smollett hate crime investigation, according to a department spokesperson. Both are African-American. Smollett, who police say “has been questioned throughout” their investigation is also being interrogated.
The persons of interest were arrested at O’Hare airport on Wednesday night, police said.
Smollett said in an interview aired on Good Morning America today that he believed the two persons of interest seen in the CPD images were the persons who attacked him. “I don’t have any doubt in my mind that that’s them. Never did.”
TMZ reported that the persons of interest are an actor who has appeared with Smollett on Fox television’s Empire and a person who was traveling with the second actor. These individuals are believed to be the “potential persons of interest” who were seen in low-quality images released by Chicago police days after the alleged attack, according to a police spokesperson.
TMZ also reported that police used “rideshare and/or taxicab records” to identify the “persons of interest” and to track their movements on the night of the purported attack.

CWB Chicago says they got an anonymous tip a week ago that police already knew who the “persons of interest” were, knew that the rope around Smollett’s neck was purchased at Ace Hardware, and had obtained phone data relevant to the investigation. So basically, the case has been solved for a week, and the police were just waiting for these two guys to return from Nigeria before taking them into custody.

It never made sense that two Trump supporters would be stalking an obscure gay actor on the streets of Chicago in the wee hours of the morning when temperatures were below zero, but you were a racist — “RAAAAACIST!” — if you suggested it looked like a hoax.

UPDATE: And now we know the motive:

Multiple sources have told ABC7 Eyewitness News that police are investigating whether Smollett and the two men staged the attack allegedly because Smollett was being written off of “Empire.”

Gay actor loses job, fakes “hate crime” against himself, blames Trump supporters. Now watch how quickly the media forget this ever happened.

UPDATE II: Tweets that have not aged well:

 

 

By the way, Chicago PD is pushing back against some of these reports as “inaccurate” or “unsubstantiated,” although officials are not being very clear about what elements of the stories are wrong, and are being close-mouthed about what they do actually know. We’ll see . . .



 

Chicago’s Zulu War: ‘The Cops Have Told Us They Aren’t Gonna Touch Them’

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A startling reality of life in Chicago is that gangs of black teenagers roam the streets randomly assaulting white people:

Chicago police today confirmed final charges filed against ten juveniles following two hours of chaos in Wrigleyville on Wednesday evening.
“It’s been a problem all summer,” a Clark Street merchant said this morning. “They’re kids. The cops have told us they aren’t gonna touch them. We can’t touch them. What can we do?” . . .
The mayhem began around 4:20 p.m. when six teens shoved boxes of candy into backpacks and ran from Walgreens, 3646 North Broadway, according to police. The boys then began selling the candy in outside of Wrigley Field as Wednesday’s afternoon game wrapped up, according to witnesses and social media video.
But the spree took a serious turn one hour later when 911 callers reported that “10 to 15 children” were surrounding and battering people in the 3500 block of North Clark Street around 5:35 p.m., police said.
One man was beaten up outside the Cubby Bear, 1060 West Addison. Police on the scene summoned an ambulance for the victim who was bleeding from his ear. Another victim was attacked by the group near Irish Oak, 3511 North Clark Street.
Around the same time, the mob stole merchandise from a smoke shop in the 3400 block of North Clark Street, according to police.
Police said a 35-year-old man who dialed 911 while following the group was threatened with physical harm by the youths. He backed off when confronted, but pressed assault charges after the teens were in custody.

These attacks took place near Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs baseball team. Click here to see videos showing some of the gang violence. In the first video, a teenager sucker-punches a woman outside a restaurant. You see that there are several muscular men — “door staff,” i.e., bouncers — outside the restaurant, as apparently this kind of security is necessary for the safety of restaurant patrons in the neighborhood. It reminded me of the British fighting off Zulus at Rourke’s Drift.

This is far from a rare occurrence in the city. The Chicago Sun-Times has spoken of “the annual summer wilding problem.” Evidently, these random attacks on white people by swarms of black teenagers happen routinely, and a Chicago police officer says department policy prohibits them from taking effective preventive measures: “All we’re allowed to do now is ‘herd’ them toward [Chicago Transit Authority] stations.”

WBBM-TV reports: “Nearby store owners and workers, who refused to talk on camera, said this type of violence is more common than people realize, adding some groups see the traffic [around] a Cubs game, not as a gathering for baseball, but as an opportunity to rob and victimize others.”

Thomas Lifson observed earlier this year at American Thinker: “A ‘good’ neighborhood is no guarantee of safety anymore in Chicago. The breakdown of civil order, in other words, is well underway in the Windy City. Bit by bit, civilization is slipping away in Chicago.” As Labor Day weekend brings summer to a close, Chicago has experienced nearly 200 homicides since Memorial Day weekend, plus more than 900 wounded, with the city’s total homicides for the year nearing 400.



 

Memorial Day Weekend in Chicago

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If you want to get shot to death, Chicago is the place to be. So far this year, 157 people have been shot to death in Chicago, and another 810 people were wounded. Violence escalates during the summer, and Memorial Day weekend has been a bloodbath in recent years. In 2016, there were 69 shootings during the three-day weekend:

In all, 27 of the 69 people hit by gunfire over the weekend were shot in or near the Harrison District, one of the city’s most violent and one of the most heavily patrolled by police.
So many people were shot there that Deputy Superintendent John Escalante promised Sunday to beef up patrols. Nine more people were shot there by early Tuesday.

About half of the deadly violence in Chicago occurs in three West Side police districts: Harrison, Austin and Ogden:

The Chicago Police Department plans to deploy more than 1,000 extra officers to contain violence over the weekend and, as in years past, hundreds of them will be sent to the West Side. . . .
The West Side has long been plagued by violence fed by feuding gangs and an infamous open-air drug market. But residents in communities like North Lawndale also point to high unemployment among young people, lack of education and turf battles that started with their fathers or grandfathers.
A recent report from the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that the percentage of black men ages 20-24 who weren’t working or in school had dropped between 2014 and 2016. But the overall percentage remained high at 37 percent.

Unemployment and “lack of education”? Are there no jobs for young people in Chicago? Are there no public schools? The city is controlled by the Democrat Party. Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is the city’s mayor. In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton got 74% of the vote in Cook County, and a much higher percentage in the West Side neighborhoods where violent crime is a way of life (and death). Trusting Democrats to find a solution to Chicago’s problems might not be a good idea, considering the likelihood that Democrats (and the liberal policies they enact) are a fundamental cause of these problems.

 

‘F–k Trump! F–k White People’ Suspects Denied Bail in Chicago Torture Case

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Left to right: Brittany Covington, Tesfaye Cooper, Jordan Hill, Tanishia Covington.

Americans were shocked last week when video was livestreamed on Facebook of four black people torturing a young white man they are accused of kidnapping. A judge on Friday denied bail to the suspects:

A judge rebuked four black people accused of beating a mentally disabled white man and broadcasting the attack on Facebook, sternly asking, “Where was your sense of decency?” before denying their attorneys’ pleas to set bail so they might be released from jail.
“I find each of you a danger to yourself and society,” Cook County Circuit Judge Maria Kuriakos Ciesil said . . .
The beating was captured on cellphone video by one of the assailants and has since been viewed millions of times on social media. The footage shows the suspects taunting the victim with profanities against white people and President-elect Donald Trump.
Prosecutors offered new details of the assault, explaining that one of the suspects demanded $300 from the mother of the victim, who is schizophrenic and has attention-deficit disorder. They also said the beating started in a van when the same attacker became angry that the mother had contacted him asking that her son be allowed to come home.
A prosecutor told the judge that the suspects forced the victim to drink toilet water, kiss the floor and then allegedly stuffed a sock into his mouth and taped it shut as they bound his hands with a belt.
The four are charged with two counts of committing a hate crime — one because of the victim’s race and the other because of his mental disabilities.
On the video, the male suspects use knives to cut the victim’s hair and his sweatshirt. One of the females can be seen laughing. A female also laughs as she punches the victim. . . .
The four suspects were identified as Brittany Covington and Tesfaye Cooper, both of Chicago, and Jordan Hill, of suburban Carpentersville. All are 18. A fourth suspect was identified as Covington’s 24-year-old sister, Tanishia Covington, also of Chicago. . . .
All four have experienced brushes with the law, some for serious and violent crimes.
Hill, for example, was arrested as a juvenile in 2015 on allegations of armed robbery, possession of a stolen vehicle and residential burglary. Chicago police said they did not know the disposition of those arrests by suburban officers.
Tanishia Covington was arrested in 2007 on attempted armed robbery and aggravated battery charges. Police records do not show any convictions as a juvenile. As an adult, she was arrested on charges of battery and aggravated assault, but those charges were dropped.

The victim’s aunt, Janet Grant, told the Daily Mail that her nephew knew Jordan Hill from school: “They went to school together, they both had problems. He adores Jordan. I don’t know Jordan but [the victim] really liked him. It’s one thing if they didn’t know each other but [the victim] idolized him. . . . His mom didn’t like him hanging out but [he] would say, ‘that’s my friend, that’s my friend.’ He looked up to Jordan.”

 

Video Shows Democrat Hate Crime in Chicago: ‘F–k Trump! F–k White People!’

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Four young supporters of Barack Obama wanted to show the world what the Democrat Party stands for, so they kidnapped a mentally disabled young white man, bound and gagged him, and tortured him in a West Side Chicago apartment, livestreaming video of their hate crime on Facebook.

Police say they have arrested four 18-year-old suspects — two black males and two black females — in connection with the incident that Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson called “sickening.”

Police document shows suspect in this week’s Chicago torture incident.

One of the suspects, Brittany Herring, a/k/a Brittany Covington, had been arrested for larceny in October. This week’s atrocity occurred in the city where Obama once worked as a “community organizer,” where Hillary Clinton got 84% of the vote on Election Day, and where Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has been mayor since 2011. Chicago is also a city where nearly 800 people were murdered in 2016, with more homicides than New York and Los Angeles combined.

 

The video torture of the young white man by black Chicago teens shouting “f–k Trump” and “f–k white people,” came in the wake of nearly two months of incitement by Democrats and their liberal media allies, after the Nov. 8 election in which Clinton lost to Donald Trump. Encouraged by sympathetic coverage from CNN and other liberal TV networks, Democrat protesters using the slogan “Not My President” have staged rallies denouncing white people as “racist” for voting Republican.

 

Chicago Democrats protested against Trump in November.

Since the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri, the Democrat-funded activist group Black Lives Matter has encouraged violence against police and against white people, inciting riots in Baltimore in April 2015 and in Charlotte, N.C., last September. In July, 11 Dallas police officers were shot by a terrorist named Micah Xavier Johnson who was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. The Dallas attack “was part of an ongoing wave of violent racial terrorism targeting American law enforcement” that included shootings of police in Tennessee, Missouri and Georgia.

In her recent book The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, Heather Mac Donald described how false narratives promoted by the Black Lives Matter movement were “amplified by the media, college presidents, and the left-wing political class.” Despite clear evidence that the group’s protests were jeopardizing public safety and inciting crimes against police, President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In their book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama, authors Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan describe how the president’s public rhetoric has shown “a tendency to use race as a wedge to divide Americans,” politically exploiting the death of Trayvon Martin and the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson.

Democrats express their hatred of the president-elect.

Despite the racial violence Democrats have incited, and despite evidence that resentment of the Obama administration’s anti-white policies factored into Clinton’s November defeat, the liberal media continue promoting the Democrats’ anti-Trump/anti-white message. John Hinderaker at Powerline observed how the Associated Press attempted to conceal the racial politics of the Chicago atrocity, while Glenn Reynolds commented on the failure of most major media outlets to connect the dots of this racial hate crime: “If the races were reversed, there would be near-unanimous media efforts to blame Trump, and they wouldn’t be waiting until all the facts were in to do it.”



 

 

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Murder City, USA: Chicago Ends 2016 With Nearly 800 Homicides for Year

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The city’s gun-control laws are so effective:

An argument between two men at an Uptown bar in the early hours of Jan. 1 ended with the two shooting at one another, leaving both dead.
Their deaths ushered in the new year, marking the first and second homicides of 2017 and keeping up 2016’s pace of violence – levels that haven’t marred the city for 20 years.
By the time police were dispatched to the double homicide at 4:30 a.m. there had already been an officer-involved shooting, according to Chicago police. A man who led police on a car chase, before physically resisting arrest, ultimately was shot by an officer before 3 a.m. That man, whose name was not released and for whom a warrant was issued, was in critical condition Sunday.
The last homicide in 2016 came before 1 p.m. Saturday when a 24-year-old, whose name has not been released, was killed in South Austin in a possible road rage act that may have been retaliation for hitting another driver’s Mercedes. According to data from the Chicago Police Department, his death became the 762nd homicide for the year – the most since 1996, when there were 796.
Data kept by the Chicago Tribune tallied at least 781 homicides for the year; the Police Department statistics do not include killings on area expressways, police-involved shootings, other homicides in which a person was killed in self-defense or death investigations.
At the double homicide scene on Broadway Street near Wilson Avenue, a fire official said first responders found a 38-year-old man with gunshot wounds to the chest and right leg, as well as a second man, 25, who had multiple gunshot wounds to his right side. Both men were taken by ambulance to Illinois Masonic Hospital, where they later were pronounced dead, officials said.

The deadly violence in Chicago escalates year after year. In 2015, there were 468 murders in Chicago, a 12.5% increase over the 416 murders in 2014. In September, it was reported that Chicago had more murders that Los Angeles and New York City combined.

This is the city where Barack Obama was a “community organizer,” a city that in 2011 elected as its mayor former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Chicago is a city where Hillary Clinton got 84% of the vote on Nov. 8 and, not coincidentally, it is also a city where hundreds of black people are murdered every year. Democrats are the Party of Death.

 

Murder City, U.S.A.

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Democrat-controlled Chicago is as dangerous as a war zone:

A bloody year for Chicago hit a new low this past weekend as 17 people were fatally shot, marking the deadliest weekend so far this year and pushing homicides past the 600 mark for the first time since 2003.
Beginning with 50 killings in January, violence has erupted in 2016 at levels unseen since the 1990s. Even with the end of summer, typically the year’s most violent stretch, no letup has occurred. Not counting Halloween, October saw 76 homicides, 2 1/2 times the 30 killings a year earlier. . . .
The violent final weekend of October pushed homicides to 614 as of midnight Sunday, in excess of 200 more than the same year-earlier period and the most at the 10-month mark since 1997, official Police Department records show.
In addition, shooting incidents for the year are closing in on 3,000, a 46 percent jump from 2,044 a year earlier, according to the department statistics. At least 3,662 people have been shot, 1,106 more than a year earlier, according to a Tribune analysis.
In addition to the 17 fatally shot between Friday afternoon and early Monday, another 42 were wounded. It was the deadliest weekend since 13 were slain and 46 were wounded over Father’s Day. The last weekend in August saw 11 killed and 56 others wounded.

Chicago is home to lots of criminals and Democrat voters.

But I repeat myself . . .

 

Murder City, U.S.A.: Chicago Has More Murders Than L.A. and N.Y.C. Combined

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The Associated Press:

Malik Causey was one of 91 homicide victims in Chicago in August, the deadliest month in the city in two decades and the latest milestone for a metropolis becoming known for its murder rate. Already, killings here have jumped 46 percent over the same period last year, climbing past the 500 mark — a total larger than Los Angeles and New York combined.
An analysis of the August toll shows more clearly than ever who’s dying in the Chicago slaughter and what’s behind it: surging violence in a handful of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods, which are riven by loosely organized street gangs.
Young African-American men are the chief victims. In a city that’s one-third black, the overwhelming majority of those murdered in August — 71 — were, like Malik, African American. Another 11 had Hispanic surnames. Almost half were in their teens or early 20s.
And more than 70 percent of those shot to death appeared on the Chicago police’s “Strategic Subject List,” which includes 1,400 people considered likely targets of violence based on gang involvement or criminal record.

(Via Memeorandum.) Read Heather Mac Donald’s The War on Cops to understand how “Black Lives Matter” is complicit in this problem.