Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Last year, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said it objected to 1,130 applications for concealed carry licenses, mostly filed by residents in suburban Chicago. Most of those objections were for domestic violence or gun arrests. Despite the objections, a state review board ruled 90 percent of those people eligible to legally carry a gun, according to the sheriff’s office,” WBEZ reports.
“This system of object-and-review started when Illinois lawmakers were forced to hastily craft a concealed carry law after a federal court threw out the state’s concealed carry ban in 2012. What they came up with is unlike any other system in the country. It’s meant to provide concealed carry licenses expediently to those who qualify, while keeping licenses from potentially dangerous people. But both Chicago-area police and residents said the law is doing neither of those things.”
Here’s where a bad situation is made unconscionably worse:
“State officials, who are the only ones who have access to comprehensive concealed carry objection information, have refused to make almost any of it available – and the monthly data they send to Gov. Bruce Rauner’s office is misleading.”


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Political implications:

State Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), who helped negotiate Illinois’ concealed carry law and is currently running for Illinois attorney general, defended the legislation’s goals of balancing the interests of gun control and gun rights. But he admitted the bill isn’t perfect.
“We were – pardon the pun – negotiating this under the gun,” Raoul said. “And we had to do that in the context of a legislature with a diversity of views.”
When presented with the high rate at which the board issued a license despite objections by local police and the long wait times some applicants have suffered, Raoul said he was open to reconsidering the law.
“Reviewing things is always smart,” Raoul said. “I think if we got everything perfectly right in the legislature the first time, there would probably be no need for a legislature by now.”

That’s a – pardon the pun – cop out. It’s one thing to pass a flawed bill that can always be tweaked later, it’s another to pass a bill that doesn’t actually come close to doing what it’s supposed to do. That’s arguably worse than having not passed a bill at all, because we’ve all been led to believe that something has been done.
A better answer would be to sincerely pledge a vigorous effort if elected state attorney general to fix the problem. I didn’t hear that.
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Why is Raoul running for AG? Here’s what he told ‘BEZ:
“I’ve been serving in the legislature since 2004. I’ve had an opportunity to advance legislation in a wide variety of areas: law enforcement reform, criminal justice reform, victims rights, voting rights, access to healthcare. But all I can do is advance policy. I can’t enforce that policy . . . In the AG’s office you can do both. You can advocate for the enactment of policy, and you can use the power of prosecution and civil litigation to enforce that policy.”
This was your chance to press that case!
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Dart Board
“Cook County is making strides in reducing its jail population by reducing the number of people detained solely because they can’t afford bond. Now Sheriff Tom Dart, who has been a proponent of bail reform, thinks the pendulum may have swung too far,” Curtis Black writes for the Chicago Reporter.
“Dart issued a letter Feb. 22 saying the increase in electronic monitoring assignments for individuals charged with gun crimes raises public safety concerns. The letter also announced that his office would begin an additional review of judicial orders of release, referring them back to court if individuals are deemed a security risk.
“Dart wrote that since an order by Chief Judge Timothy Evans (requiring that bonds be set at amounts that defendants can afford) went into effect in September, the number of individuals facing gun charges and assigned to electronic monitoring has risen from 2 percent to 22 percent. ‘This population calls for additional community supervision to ensure safety,’ Dart wrote.”
Black dissects Dart’s move nicely – with some assistance from a couple of Dart frenemies (at best).
“Evans’ office noted that ‘the population we are talking about [consists of] pretrial defendants who are presumed innocent until proven guilty.’ [Cook County Board President] Preckwinkle noted that gun possession is not an inherently ‘violent’ offense: ‘Many possession cases do not involve a victim.’
“Preckwinkle added that only five of 195 individuals facing gun charges who were released since Evans’ order went into effect have been rearrested on gun charges. The numbers provide no evidence of an increased public safety threat from the new policy, she said. Preckwinkle gently reminded Dart of ‘our responsibility to keep these stories in perspective and not contribute to sensationalizing them.'”
Ouch.
“Pushback, less gentle, also came from Cook County Public Defender Amy P. Campanelli. ‘This is outrageous,’ she wrote Dart, accusing him of ‘usurping the power of the judiciary.’ ‘Sheriff Dart is violating the constitutional right of all these clients to have bail set and court orders followed according to law,’ she wrote.”
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Cock Rock Block

Comment from discussion Chicago rock station WLUP to switch formats to Christian music Saturday under new owners.


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New on the Beachwood today . . .
Exclusive! Inside The Bears’ New Downtown Office
Another Beachwood Special Report.
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Wisconsin Vs. Chicago Cont’d
Ramen, washing machines and the El.
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NRA TV Is Way Worse Than You Think It Is
“As a researcher of online extremism . . . ”
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14 Ways To Keep Youth With Mental Health Conditions Out Of Jail
“Of the nearly 30,000 youth arrests and 11,000 youth admissions to local jails in Illinois each year, research consistently suggests that approximately 70 percent meet the diagnostic criteria for having a mental health condition.” Here’s what to do about that.
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The Autobiography Of Classic TV Director Jerry London
His resume includes Hogan’s Heroes, Rockford Files, Happy Days, Brady Bunch, Six Million Dollar Man, Mary Tyler Moore Show, more than 40 Movies-of-the-Week and 11 blockbuster miniseries. He promises “unflinching candor and wit” about “the closed-door deals [and the] absurd antics of the famous and near disasters on exotic locations and film sets all over the world.”
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El Rancho Grande
Meet Cielito Lindo Family Music.
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On This Day In . . .
A sampling.
2011: The Beachwood Celebrity Death Watch.
Seriously thinking of bringing this back. This one featured Patrick Kane, Billy Corgan, Richard M. Daley, Ed Burke, Charlie Sheen, Jay Cutler – you know, the usual suspects.
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2012: The [G8] Papers.
Right. The weather.
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2013: Rahm’s Class Size Wars.
CPS steps in it.
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2014: Tweeting Chicagoland | Episode 1: Oh My Lord, I Hate It Already.
“The next #Chicagoland segment shows a shirtless Rahm riding a grizzly bear through the Loop singing ‘Here Come the Hawks!'”
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2016: Tribune Logic: Elected School board Would Lead To The Status Quo.
“You might think, based on a rare, overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in the Illinois House on Thursday, that creating an elected Chicago Board of Education is a terrific idea. After all, what else would get a landslide 110-4 vote in the usually fractious House?” the Tribune editorial page asks.
Impeaching Blago?
In other words, a no-brainer so no-brainery that even the Illinois General Assembly in almost near-unanimity thinks it’s a terrific idea.
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ChicagoGram


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ChicagoTube
Chicago History Fair 2018: The Black Arts Movement.

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BeachBook
Another Haley Bennett Joint.

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Follow The Money.

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TweetWood
A sampling.


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He’s not wrong.


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A Rockford professor.


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Maybe they have their hands full with the anti-Semites in the White House that you are so quiet about.


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The Beachwood Tronc Line: Con carne.

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Posted on March 7, 2018