Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Friday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“The security company employing state Sen. Donne Trotter has been paid more than $350,000 as a subcontractor on a City of Chicago security deal and is represented by a politically powerful lobbying firm run by a onetime top aide to former Mayor Richard M. Daley,” the Sun-Times reports.
That doesn’t necessarily mean anything unless the firm is employing Trotter as a political favor. But if Trotter is to be believed, it’s not a ghost job – he said he worked as a security guard until midnight the night before he was arrested for having a gun in his carry-on luggage at O’Hare.
Still, it’s his job that might pose a larger political problem than the gun if it turns out to be hinky.


I checked Trotter’s last economic statement of interest yesterday – from May 2011 – and found he didn’t list the security firm job, but that would apparently be explained by the Sun-Times’s reporting that he took the job (presumably later) that same month.
And it’s his business, I suppose, if he wants to add income onto his already sweet deal as a legislator – as majority caucus chair, he gets $20,649 on top of his regular $67,836 legislative salary.
If it turns out be just a bonehead move, candidates have done a lot worse without being disqualified to run for Congress. But if there’s a drip-drip of revelations, that’s a different story. He certainly didn’t help his cause on Thursday by responding to a reporter who asked if he was still running by saying in a petulant tone, “From you.” (Actually he said a bit more than that according to Bill Cameron of WLS-AM.)
Why not just say, “Hey, I did a stupid thing. I certainly didn’t intend to bring a gun on a plane. I’m cooperating with police and I hope we resolve this soon so I can begin campaigning”?
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It also doesn’t help that the gun was not registered – though whether that is required of security guards and detectives under city ordinance is in question.
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But what’s the deal with doing security work with a .25 Beretta?
“The weapon he was carrying is certainly not a standard-issue type of handgun for security guards, who normally are required to carry 9 mm or .40-caliber semiautomatics that have more stopping power,” Phil Kadner reports for the SouthtownStar.
“It’s just a crap gun,” Sean Morrison, the head of Morrison Security Inc., in Alsip, told him.
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“Well, we almost got there,” the Tribune says in an editorial that sets the table nicely. “We got tantalizingly close to a full week without the arrest or indictment of a Chicago politician. One whole week!”
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Governor Gumby Squeezy
Working night and day.
Preck Pricks Pricks
“Clearly this mayor and this police chief have decided the way in which they are going to deal with the terrible violence that faces our community is just arrest everybody,” Toni Preckwinkle said Thursday. “I don’t think in the long term that’s going to be successful.
“We’re going to have to figure out how to have interventions that are more comprehensive than just police interventions in the communities where we have the highest rates of crime. And they’re almost all in African-American and Latino communities.”


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Bait & Switch
QT: A Rose Bowl By Any Other Name . . .
Musical Chairs
The College Football Report: Musical Cheers.
Defining Federal Communications Down
FCC Clams Up On Its Own Transparency Initiative.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Define down.

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Posted on December 7, 2012