Good Thing It Wasn’t A Hate Crime: Raymond Harris Just Tortures Women and Sets Them On Fire

November 11, 2011 10 Comments

He’s not a hate criminal, just a guy who likes to rape women and stab them and beat them to death or near-death while torturing them by setting them on fire.   Second City Cop has the only real coverage — nobody else is outraged by the fact that Illinois let this guy go, not once, but twice, after he raped and tortured and set a woman on fire, and tried to get another one, and now he’s attacked a third woman (surely there were more).  This time, the victim, a 73-year old nurse, died.

Raymond Harris, serial torturer and rapist of women.  But not a hate criminal. ... 

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Chicago Weekend: Is Crime Down, Or Are Neighborhoods Emptying?

July 11, 2011 1 Comment

Is crime really dropping in Chicago? Not long ago, the public would have been forced to rely on some pretty unreliable sources for an answer:

  • academicians who worship at the ‘the public’s crime fears are overblown‘ altar
  • mainstream reporters who worship at the “academicians who worship at the ‘the public’s crime fears are overblown’ altar” altar
  • Chicago politicians

From sources like that, you get contradictory numbers like this, in the Chicago Sun-Times: ... 

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Remember Police on May 13: A Sister’s Eulogy

May 12, 2011 1 Comment

May 13 is the Annual Candlelight Vigil for Fallen Police Officers in Washington D.C.

Last May, Chicago Police Officer and Army National Guard Lieutenant Thomas E. Wortham IV, 30, was gunned down outside his parents’ home just after returning from a trip to Washington to honor other fallen officers.  This year, it is his turn to be honored at the memorial along with the 157 other officers who died in the line of duty in 2010. ... 

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The Coming Year of Prisoner “Re-Entry”: Attempted Murder in Chicago, Then Back on the Streets in a Fortnight

December 31, 2009 4 Comments

As the Justice Department and everybody else barrel forward with plans to get as many violent offenders back on the streets as quickly as possible (to save money, you know, and aid those poor benighted, imprisoned souls), here’s a reminder of the inevitable consequences of anti-incarceration-early-re-entry-alternative-sentencing-community-control chic, from the Chicago Sun-Times, via Second-City Cop:

She lost 20 teeth. She suffered a brain injury and seizures. And she struggled to pay her medical bills because she didn’t have insurance.  Jen Hall was the victim of a brutal, disfiguring beating outside a Jewel store in the South Loop in August 2008. ... 

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Some Preliminary Observations About Walter Ellis, the Milwaukee Serial Killer

September 11, 2009 1 Comment

The Walter Ellis case is still unfolding, but there are already lessons to be learned.

One of those lessons is that police agencies around the country are on the verge of connecting serial rapists and killers to many unsolved crimes, thanks to DNA and re-opening cold cases.  The picture that is emerging of these men will change what we know about serial offenders. ... 

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Gang Outreach or Just Enforcing the Law: Chicago, LA, Atlanta

August 28, 2009 1 Comment

Will Atlanta be the next Chicago or L.A.? Those cities have been shelling out big bucks to “ex-gang members” and holding summits and negotiating with gangsters rather than prosecuting them.

Imagine the impact this must have in communities where these thugs live, where they now draw paychecks because they are/were thugs, and walk the streets empowered by their special relationships to certain politicians.  How does that not teach children the value of going bad? ... 

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Blogging Crime Versus “Disappearing” It: Chicago and Atlanta

July 9, 2009 Leave a comment

Chicago:

In Chicago, something interesting is happening as “twittering” and blogging and e-mail bring in first-hand reports that deviate from official versions.  It is hard to whitewash incidents of violence and rioting when people are reporting them in real time and police are going back over their incident reports to compare notes later. ... 

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The New Normal: Chicago

July 8, 2009 1 Comment

Only 199 homicides in Chicago by midnight, June 30.  This is, according to a police spokesman, the first time the city has dipped under the magical number of 200 homicides by June 30 in “recent memory.”  By one less head of hair, but they did it.

199 homicides is actually two less than the 201 dead by June 30, 2007.  So, last week, the city was briefly on track to having fewer than 400 murders by year’s end, before the holiday weekend, that is.  “Only” 400 murders is a celebration, these days.  But then came the 4th of July, and the Taste of Chicago street festival. ... 

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