Free Republic

A top Chicago police official’s car was stopped on the West Side during a drug arrest earlier this month, a police spokesman confirmed Wednesday. A Lexus registered to Yolanda Talley, chief of internal affairs, was pulled over Feb. 1 in the 500 block of North St. Louis Avenue and officers arrested Kenneth Miles, 34, on drug charges, according to an arrest report and police sources. Talley wasn’t in the car. Her niece was driving the Lexus, said Don Terry, a spokesman for the police department. According to a police report, officers in a gang investigations squad were targeting drug sales...

The Chicago Police Department is losing cops at an “almost alarming” rate, and the city is having a hard time finding replacements. That’s the word from John O’Malley, the deputy mayor for public safety. O’Malley, other CPD leaders, and local politicians spoke Wednesday evening on a Zoom meeting organized by East Lakeview Neighbors (ELVN). In another highlight, State Sen. Sara Feigenholtz (6th) told participants that she is working on a “pack of bills” to address concerns with the state’s year-old, 600-plus page justice reform legislation.

When TMZ first reported that actor Jussie Smollett was the victim of a vicious hate crime, it sounded almost impossible to believe. Upon leaving a Chicago Subway sandwich shop circa 2 AM one sub-zero night in late January, two masked men recognized him as the openly gay black actor starring in Fox’s ‘Empire,’ hurled racist and homophobic slurs at him, beat him to the point of breaking his ribs, doused him with bleach, tied a noose around his neck, before pronouncing “This is MAGA Country!” and fleeing. Making such astonishing claims, the national media owed it to their viewers to...