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THE WATCHDOGS: Rahm’s spin vs. City Hall’s plea for federal help
For five years, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials hewed to the same script, maintaining to the public that Chicago has enough cops. And the mayor and police brass proclaimed that they were...
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THE WATCHDOGS: After 10 years, a cop’s killing remains unsolved
Shortly before 11 p.m. on Oct. 23, 2006, Tom Wood, a Maywood Police Department K-9 officer, responded to one last call before the end of his shift — a problem of some sort by a storefront parking lot....
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THE WATCHDOGS: Despite damning audio, cop fights to keep his job
Working a midnight shift on Jan. 18, 2015, Denis Lawlor was showing a new colleague around the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago’s sprawling Stickney wastewater-treatment...
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WATCHDOGS: After decades on disability, cops are put back to work
Twenty-six years ago, Officer John F. Tolley Jr. injured his back searching the front seat of a car that he and his partner had pulled over in connection with a suspected battery. Tolley eventually...
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Foul-mouthed cop dumped from Metropolitan Sanitary District job
Denis Lawlor, a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago cop whose crude, racially charged rant was somehow picked up by his police radio and broadcast over a recorded frequency, was...
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THE WATCHDOGS: Residential tax cheats cost Cook County millions
A suspended Harvey police officer is among at least 8,171 Cook County property owners who wrongly received tax breaks over the past decade on homes they didn’t live in — costing more than $24 million,...
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Ex-Outlaws biker boss speaks out, sees trouble with Hells Angels
“God Forgives, Outlaws Don’t.” That’s the menacing motto of the Outlaws motorcycle club, formed in the Chicago area in 1935, now with chapters and thousands of members around the world. But in an...
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WATCHDOGS: Political insiders cashed in on failed O’Hare project
He was a twenty-something wannabe developer, the son of immigrants from India, and he dreamed of building a $900 million hotel and convention complex near O’Hare Airport. He assembled a team of...
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WATCHDOGS: Chicago’s deadliest neighborhoods get greenest cops
Faced with a surge in killings and a breakdown of trust in law enforcement, the Chicago Police Department is sending its least experienced cops to neighborhoods that see the most violence. The six...
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THE WATCHDOGS: Taxpayers paying for UNO schools — again
The bitter divorce between the once-powerful United Neighborhood Organization and the vast, government-funded charter-school network it created has been settled — at a cost to taxpayers of $4.5...
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Inspector general blasts CPS for impeding investigation
In an unusually public and blunt airing of a grievance, the Chicago Public Schools’ inspector general blasted CPS officials for impeding his investigation into “possible ethics violations” by the...
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2 Chicago cops seen in beating video quit in the face of firing
Two Chicago cops who were caught on video beating an ex-con at a late-night restaurant on the Northwest Side in 2006 have resigned a week before they faced the prospect of being fired. Officers Jason...
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Ex-water rec. dist. cop taped using slurs sues to overturn firing
A former police officer for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago who was recorded using a racial slur is suing to overturn his termination. Denis Lawlor, fired in November,...
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THE WATCHDOGS: Rahm’s police hiring will barely make up for drop
Even if Mayor Rahm Emanuel manages to add nearly 1,000 cops in the next couple years, his promised surge of new hires would barely make up for the decline in the Chicago Police Department’s ranks on...
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Cop who shot, killed Kajuan Raye was under investigation in 2004
Chicago Police Officer John Poulos was cleared of the fatal shooting of an unarmed burglary suspect in 2013, and he is under investigation in the fatal shooting last month of an unarmed teenager in...
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Mihalopoulos: Council charity’s black-tie gala nets little green
The first-ever gala fund-raiser for the Chicago City Council’s Latino Caucus not-for-profit foundation was, by all accounts, a classy event. With Mayor Rahm Emanuel as honorary chairman, the foundation...
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Most food trucks in Chicago not facing spot health checks
Most of Chicago’s food trucks have never faced the same type of surprise health inspections that restaurants often face, an analysis of city data by the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago’s I-Team has...
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WATCHDOGS: More tax money for Chicago’s booming TV, movie studio
Chicago’s busiest TV and film studio is getting another hand from the government: a property-tax cut that will shift an estimated $4 million burden onto other taxpayers over the next dozen years,...
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Restaurant industry gets behind relaxed rules for food trucks
Calling food trucks a pivotal part of Chicago’s “culinary scene,” Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia on Monday threw his formidable support behind a plan to allow Chicago food trucks to...
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3 Noble charter staffers OK’d using CPS student data to recruit
Three officials with the Noble Network of Charter Schools signed off on using an improperly obtained list of Chicago Public School students’ names, addresses, current schools and grade levels to send...
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