How stubborn can Cook County be? We’re going to learn fairly soon

We’re going to learn in coming weeks, if not days, just how stubborn our county’s court system is capable of being.

Who'd have dreamed of cellphones back in the days when Anton Cermak gave us our current Criminal Courts building?

For there is a change that took place beginning this week with regards to those people who have business bringing them to the Criminal Courts building (a.k.a., 26^th and California) when they have to comply with court orders concerning their personal cellular telephones.

BECAUSE TECHNICALLY, PEOPLE aren’t supposed to have such phones on their presence inside the courthouse.

And the storage lockers that used to be in place for people to put their phones while they’re at the courthouse are no longer in use.

So we now have a situation where someone can show up at the courthouse, be forbidden to enter because of their phone, then somehow be found in contempt (and perhaps even have a warrant issued for their arrest) because they couldn’t make it to court.

Because it seems that chief Judge Timothy Evans (the same man who once had dreams of being our city’s mayor) has no intention of easing up on the restrictions against cellphones being in one’s possession when they’re inside the courthouse.

PERSONALLY, I GET the reason for the restriction. It seems that before the ban was put in place back in 2013, people inside courtrooms were using the camera functions on their phones to take pictures of things happening inside.

It seems some of those pictures were winding up in the public amongst gang-oriented people as a way of identifying people who had the unmitigated gall to testify against them in criminal cases.

EVANS: Soon to have to make a tough decision

There also were instances where people were using text message functions to pass along information from criminal cases to people outside the courtroom who might have to testify in the future. In short, there were people using modern technology to try to undermine the legal system.

Evans came up with the outright ban on people having their phones in court as a way of countering that problem.

BUT IT CREATES a bigger problem in that cell phones are so common place these days – particularly since the ability to find a public payphone can be pretty difficult these days.

What does a person do with the phone while they have to be in court?

I know from being a reporter-type person who has covered several of the courthouses in Cook County that what the local officials always say is to leave the phone out in your car. And perhaps at the suburban-based courts, that makes sense since they all come equipped with ample parking lots and expect people to drive to court.

But court officials always like to say how every single courthouse was designed to be on a bus route so as to remove the excuse that someone without a car can’t physically get to court.

AND I ALSO know I’d never want to have to park a car near the Criminal Courts building (take the pink line el train to California Avenue, then a bus six blocks south to the front door of the courthouse). Which is the way many people get themselves to court when they have to be there.

Those storage lockers may be a pain in the butt for sheriff’s police to have to oversee (because the same gang-types who were using their cellphones to take pictures and make recordings of court proceedings allegedly are using the lockers to store drugs while in court).

But the fact is that if court officials really are going to be so absolutist in their approach to phones, they’re going to have to assume responsibility for them. And if they’re not willing to do so, then they’re going to have to lighten up.

Which is what I think will ultimately have to happen. We’ll just have to have those sheriff’s deputies who patrol each courtroom (and are already prepared to crack down on anybody who gets out of line during court proceedings) be prepared to bust anybody who thinks they’re being cute by trying to take a “selfie” with the judge in the background.

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My ‘isolation’ is over; it's great to be back in touch again w/ the masses even if much of their talk is trash

You don’t know how grateful I feel to be able to post this commentary and reconnect with the few of you who have nothing better to do than check out this weblog.

If you were reading it, you’d notice there were no updates for Tuesday or Wednesday. It’s not that I couldn’t have come up with issues to rant and rage about.

IT’S THAT I experienced a level of technical difficulties that made it complicated to try to comment to the point where I figured it wasn’t worth the while. So I’m back, and now more fully appreciate how just much we as a society have become tied in to our communications technology.

I’m trying to figure out whether that is a plus or a minus.

What happened was that my cellphone developed technical difficulties with its connections. For the past couple of days, it was just a piece of junk that couldn’t do anything other than tell me what time it was.

My ability to make phone calls on it conked out during the weekend, and my ability to receive and send e-mail messages (along with access anything on the Internet) died when I woke up Monday morning.

IT WASN’T UNTIL Wednesday morning that I was able to work out the kinks of the system and get my device fully restored to all the little services it provides that I apparently have become attached to.

Now there was one plus to my situation; I never lost access to the land line telephone at home. But for the past couple of days, that was my sole connection to the outside world.

Suddenly, I had to recall exactly what my home telephone number was, and I have to admit it took me a minute or so to do that. I’ve become too accustomed to thinking in terms of my smart phone number when I give out a contact for myself.

The inability to get on the Internet from home made it impossible for me to easily post new commentary here. Although I suppose I could have written it, stored the copy on the hard drive of this computer I’m now using, then send it all out when full service was restored.

ALTHOUGH I DOUBT anybody would care about my pre-State of the Union thoughts in this post-State time period. So I’ll spare you.

Or I could have traveled to my local public library and used one of their computers to file copy. Although that would have been a hassle, and I must admit to feeling a little more compassion for those individuals who are in situations where they have to rely on public computers in order to take care of any personal business.

I must admit that Tuesday was a particularly nerve-wracking period because the paranoid portion of my personality was starting to wonder if this lack of contact was going to stretch out indefinitely. I was wondering if I’d ever get restored, or if I was going to have to seriously adapt my daily routine.

As it turned out, I was at a restaurant Wednesday morning with my brother having breakfast when the quirks got worked out. It was something of a relief to “refresh” my cellphone and see a flood of e-mail messages come in – some 95 on my personal e-mail account and 46 on the g-mail account whose address is published on this weblog.

ALTHOUGH I MUST confess to realizing how little I had actually missed – I’d say I deleted about 90 percent of the messages unread because they were just too obsolete.

So all those political operatives who sent me their statements reacting to the State of the Union Address Tuesday night will have to learn that their attempt to influence my thoughts were unsuccessful.

I am not the least bit dizzy from their political spin, although I’m sure they will continue to try to influence me on future issues with their rhetorical junk.

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Do we really need to read text messages while riding underground the city?

I'd bet that when the subway tunnels were built in the early 1940s, no one thought they'd ever have to be upgraded for an improved communications network. You want to talk to someone? Use a payphone! Photograph provided by CTA Historical Photo Connection

Perhaps this is a generational issue, and I’m just on the wrong side of the equation. This definitely is a move being contemplated by the Chicago Transit Authority for people not like me in mind.

But I can’t really comprehend the need for an upgrade of the underground wireless network that currently exists in the tunnels that are used by elevated trains for those moments when the track drops down from being an “el” to being a “subway.”

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Thursday that CTA officials are seeking bids from telecommunications companies to see who could install an improved system the cheapest in the 12 miles of track that run as subway along the Red and Blue lines.

It seems that the current system that has been in place in recent years merely allows for someone to use their cellular telephone or smartphone while underground to actually make a telephone call.

For sending text messages or trying to read something off the Internet, it just isn’t capable of handling such tasks.

Which means people who are in the process of transporting themselves via the “el” from one point to another have to actually wait until the train pops out of the portions where it is subway.

OR, A MORE radical thought; they have to wait until they actually get to their destination and leave the underground stations before they have full access to the many services a smartphone can offer – but which all too often are wasted on such trivial tasks.

CTA officials told the Tribune that people riding an “el” train during its moments of being a subway to refresh Facebook feeds or watch podcasts.

Personally, in those moments when I ride underground on the “el,” I’m more focused on paying attention to the people who happen to be surrounding me on the train. I’d think paying too much attention to one’s little device would be a sure-fire way of making myself a target for someone who might have “robbery” on their mind.

At the very least, I’d think it would be advertising myself as someone who has a smartphone worth stealing. I’d feel more secure reaching into my wallet and waving around whatever dollar bills I happened to have in my possession at that given moment.

EVEN IF THAT weren’t the case, I can’t help but wonder what could be so important that it couldn’t wait a few minutes (because most of the “el” system is above ground, which is why we call it the “el” even when it is underground)!

There are times when I think some of my Facebook friends do little more than put narcissistic thoughts about themselves out there for all to see – although I’m sure some of them probably think I’m posting dreary, dull stuff.

Or maybe they think I’m as full of myself as I think they are of themselves.

The point being that maybe we’d all be a bit better off if there were moments when we weren’t fully accessible at all seconds of the day.

GUESS WHAT? IF you had to wait a few minutes before you could read this particular commentary, it wouldn’t change the overall stance. The point being made would remain the same!

But it seems this is the direction the CTA is headed. The Tribune reported that officials hope to have an improved system in place by next summer.

Although I should admit one potential plus to this trend – the fact that the last time I rode a subway/el (Saturday, I used a train/bus combination to get to the Criminal Courts building and back for the duties I do for a suburban daily newspaper) there were no newspapers or other paper scattered around the train cars.

I’m just not sure that litter-free railcars justify the cost of a communications upgrade.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Rooting, for once, for the inmates

This might be the one time that the ideologues of our society who like to rant and rage about us being “soft on crime” might have been rooting for the inmates at the Cook County Jail.



Beats finding a 'shiv' in a cell

Then again, maybe they think chess is too soft an activity – and they’ll still rage!

I WAS AMUSED by the Chicago Sun-Times report about how inmates at the county jail this week played inmates held in prisons across Russia. It wasn’t face-to-face. Our inmates were in the jail’s law library, while the Russian inmates were in their own prison facilities. The games were played on-line.



Not the typical chess championship setting

And it seems that the criminal element of Russian society is just as masterful at chess as their international champions – as they beat the bulk of the Cook County inmates. One inmate went so far as to tell the Sun-Times that the games felt, “like an ambush.”

Personally, I find the idea of inmates spending all their spare time (which is what they have while being incarcerated) playing a board game to be encouraging. There are worse things they could be doing.

Although I couldn’t help but notice some people using the anonymity of the Internet to complain that these inmates should have been doing something that resembles hard labor.

THEY PROBABLY WOULD only be pleased to see inmates wearing black-and-white striped uniforms and swinging big hammers. Personally, I’d be concerned that they’d use those hammers as weapons against their guards.

As Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told the Sun-Times, chess is harmless because they can’t really, “beat someone with a rook.”

And as for those who wonder about the whuppin’ the Cook County inmates received this week, there’s one encouraging factor. They have nothing but time to continue to practice and get better – should there ever be anything resembling a rematch.

What else was notable amongst the activity taking place Thursday on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan?

SOME SENSE PREVAILS?: It has been a month since the Cook County courts imposed their new ban on people being able to bring their cellular telephones into the courthouses, and a part of me is relieved to see that some semblance of sense prevails in terms of that policy’s enforcement.



Deputies showing some sense in phone enforcement

My duties as a reporter-type person took me Thursday to the courthouse in suburban Markham, where deputies were allowing people to keep their phones on their persons inside the building.

They were requiring anyone wishing to make a call to go outside to do so. But the idea of people with business before the court having to surrender the phones wasn’t quite so rigid as the “letter of the law” implies.

Although within the courtrooms, judges were saying that anybody whose phones rang during session would have them confiscated. And I did see one individual try to use his phone during court. Deputies confiscated it from him, but returned it when he left for the day.

THE YOUTH VOTE?: It’s now in the hands of Gov. Pat Quinn as to whether 17-year-olds will be able to cast ballots in elections in Illinois.



Not the favorite setting for youth

The state Senate this week gave the final legislative approval required for a bill that allows 17-year-olds to vote in primaries – IF they can document that they will be 18 by the time the general election comes around.

Yes, I’m aware there are a few youthful types already on their way toward becoming government geeks who will be all worked up about the chance to cast their first ballot a few months earlier than the law currently allows.

But those officials who say they support this as a way of bolstering the percentage of those who vote? It sounds like wishful thinking to my mindset, since the rule of thumb for political professionals trying to turn out the vote is that it is the old folks, so to speak, who are the most reliable when it comes to showing up at the polling place.

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