Wrigley’s week of infamy?

The image of Wrigley Field as “the Friendly Confines” took a hit this week, what with the sexual assault that occurred during a concert held at the stadium, and the fact that the Cubs feel compelled to re-assure people they’ll be safe if they try to come out to Thursday’s game.

How long until Wrigley Scene becomes just about baseball again?

Not that there’s anything about the game against the San Diego Padres that is interesting or threatening.

BUT THAT’S THE day protesters upset about the amount of urban violence in Chicago say they’re going to do some serious disruption.

As in they’re going to march along Lake Shore Drive north to the Lake View neighborhood – hoping to disrupt traffic. Then, they say they’ll march to the ball park.

Whether they plan to picket outside in the hours prior to the ball game’s 7:20 p.m. starting time, or plan to try to force their way past ballpark security to get into the game? We’ll have to wait and see just how raucous the scene will be.

And whether a group of people claiming to be high-minded and concerned about violence devolves into a group of gate crashers – we’ll have to see how ugly the scene becomes on Thursday.

WHICH WILL BE just four days following the sexual assault – which involved a woman who got groped while waiting in line for concessions. Then, when she went to a portable toilet to try to get away from the guy, he followed her into the port-a-potty and before she could lock the door, he grabbed her by the neck and made his “moves,” so to speak.

Personally, what I find most repulsive about this incident is that there’s a guy out there (police on Tuesday made public a picture of the suspect taken by ballpark security cameras) who thinks that a portable toilet is a place to have thoughts of intimacy with another human being.

Eww!

Suspect being sought by Chgo police in Sunday Wrigley incident

I suppose something like that could happen anywhere there’s a public event that requires mass amounts of toilets being added on to accommodate crowds.

IN THE OVERALL scheme of things, these incidents don’t really make Wrigley Field some sort of hell hole that ought to be avoided at all costs.

But you just know some people are going to feel irrational enough to want to connect them, and most likely will have horrid thoughts in their heads about going anywhere near Clark and Addison streets as a result.

My own thoughts are the only reason people should feel a negative aura about Wrigley is the generations of bad baseball that were played there. The past few seasons of sort-of-respectable ball don’t erase memories of guys like Karl Pagel taking to the field all those years ago.

But on a serious note, one can’t help but wonder about the timing of this week’s activity, and how long people will remember what occurred this week. Similar to the way some want to think Chicago White Sox games are risky because of that night some 39 years ago when the rock ‘n’ rollers took over the ballpark to blow up the disco records.

OR MORE INTERESTING, to speculate on how well the Cubs’ security can handle the situation around the ballpark come Thursday.

Because I don’t doubt the protesting types want to make a scene – thinking that too many people who go to Cubs games are inclined to ignore the portions of the city where violent outbursts are likely to occur.

What the Cubbie talent pool was once like

They will want to spin anything that happens is that irrational Cubbie fans are showing disrespect to the protesters. While I also expect Cubs fans will claim the protest’s point is irrelevant at the ballpark and that the protesters are merely trying to cause trouble.

I’d like to think that Thursday ultimately will be a forgettable moment in our city’s history. A large part of that is going to be determined by just how rational the Wrigley Scene is capable of being in the face of people who could care less about Cubs baseball.

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EXTRA: Is United Airlines the Wizard of Oz in telling us to 'Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain?'

This is the image that we’re all expected to forget about.

Should we pretend it didn't happen?

The sight of David Dao, a Kentucky doctor, who didn’t want to be removed from the Chicago-to-Louisville flight he paid in full for, thereby causing the flight crew to call in the cops to have him forcibly removed.

MANY PEOPLE ON board that flight felt compelled to pull out the cheap video cameras installed on their portable telephones to record the moment back on April 9. Which is the only reason we have so much visual evidence of the way the doctor was roughed up. Although I wonder how many thought they were merely shooting some “crazy video” they could share with friends for a laugh.

Otherwise, I suspect that United Airlines, which had an agreement with the subcarrier that was actually running that particular flight from O’Hare International Airport to a lesser aviation market would not be so eager to “pay up.”

Dao suffered a broken nose, a concussion and had two teeth knocked out from the incident, but there are those people who want to believe he somehow brought this incident on himself. They are the ones who are going to be ranting and raging that it’s an injustice the airline paid Dao a cent and they should have fought for their “good name.”

Although I have trouble accepting that line of logic, largely because of the reality of the way these cases are settled.

FOR SURE ENOUGH, it was announced Thursday that the airline reached a legal settlement with Dao. His threat of a lawsuit will go away. He promises to not take any action that would be perceived as negative against United Airlines. In fact, he promises not to talk about the incident any more.

The airline won’t say how much money they wound up paying to him, and, of course, there is the obligatory statement by which the airline says it admits to no wrongdoing with regards to its conduct from the incident.

That really is what is most important to the airline. They don’t want any kind of written record being built up indicating they screwed up or did anything wrong.

They probably want the impression being created that Dao (or anyone who files a lawsuit) is just out for money, and that if they were really wronged, they would not have been so quick to take a cash settlement.

IF ANYTHING, THE most significant action out of this whole affair is that people now have a better idea of what airline policies are with regards to kicking people off of flights – which apparently is something they believe is their right to do.

You don’t have to be a threat or misbehaving to get the boot. I still think I’d probably react in a similar manner to Dao if I had been in his situation – needing to get somewhere by a certain time and paying good money for my ticket!

But I’m sure the airline thinks they are buying silence on the issue – which I’m sure they hope now fades away into the depths of our memories so that by year’s end, we’ll have forgotten that United ever did anything so crass. They’ll regard him the way the mighty Wizard of Oz wanted us to view that man behind the green curtain.

And if anybody takes the time to look up Dao, they’re more likely to find those sordid stories about his questionable practices as a doctor or his gambling habits than about anything that actually happened to him on board United Express flight 3411.

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When is an ID not an ID?

I’m sure that to the general public in Illinois, an identification card is an identification card.

Not necessary yet!

A name, a picture (probably depicting you in a bad light)? What more do you need?

BUT THE ILLINOIS driver’s license that many of us carry about in our wallets and tend to think of as the be-all of end-all in terms of identification in any situation came ever so close to being inadequate for those of us who travel to any degree of frequency.

For Sunday was supposed to be the day that the federal government would quit allowing people entering federal facilities to do so using an Illinois driver’s license as their basic identification.

As it turns out, the Federal Aviation Administration backed down, saying they’ll extend the amount of time for Illinois to amend its license operations to make them acceptable as proper ID until 2018.

Jan. 22 of 2018, to be exact.

AFTER THAT DATE, if Illinois and the secretary of state’s office has not made changes, people trying to get through airport security would not only have to show up an hour-and-a-half prior to their scheduled flight time (then grumble about what a massive waste of their time it is), they also would have to have a passport.

Even if the trip in question is just a short jaunt from O’Hare International to Lambrecht airport in St Louis. Although personally, I can’t envision anyone seriously making that flight – it would just be less of a hassle to drive an automobile to get there.

Now I’m not about to explain exactly why the Illinois license is so inadequate that the federal government questions its legitimacy. Something about how we don’t require enough verification measures in gathering up information about the people we legally permit to drive automobiles on our roadways.

Yet another headache to be added to use of O'Hare International Airport?

Although the bottom line could be a factual tidbit from the Illinois Policy Institute, which says that to fully create an Illinois driver’s license or state ID card (for those people who don’t drive) would cost the state about $100 per license issued – compared to the $30 it now costs.

WHICH I’M SURE will tick off enough local people into questioning whether or not they ever need to fly again. I can already envision the griping that would have occurred if the federal government had maintained a hard line on this issue.

Instead, they backed off for two years, as they have every few years for the past decade whenever this issue comes up.

Who’s to say when, if ever, Illinois will be in compliance with the REALID Act that was meant to bolster the level of national security, and quite possibly be a step toward creating a national identification card?

Which is a step that would truly tick off the ideologues of our society who would worry about having so much personal information in the hands of a federal government agency.

ALTHOUGH IF YOU think objectively about all the information that the Internal Revenue Service or the Federal Bureau of Investigation is capable of getting about any individual with a few strokes of computer keyboard keys, you’d have to wonder what the real difference is.

Do we really think more highly of Homeland Security than we do the IRS?

There’s also the fact that in my own case, I actually have a father and step-mother who left town for a Las Vegas weekend, and weren’t set to come back until after the Sunday cut-off.

It would be just my luck that they would win big at the casinos to make the family independently wealthy, only to make it impossible for them to return to Chicago next week. Or maybe that’s just their way of keeping the cash and telling the rest of us, “See ya!”

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Hiding police violence out in the open

It seems that law enforcement has learned a lesson from computer geeks and conspiracy theorists the world over – if you really want to hide something, do it out in the open.

Literally put all the raw data concerning your biggest secret onto a website so poorly designed and unpromoted that most people don’t even realize it exists – or perhaps don’t realize its significance if they happen to stumble into the site.

AND IF BY chance people do happen to find out what is going on, you can claim to have been fully honest about your information the whole time!

You’d be amazed at some of the stuff you find if you scour the Internet’s depths (and not just using Google to search for “naked cheerleaders” or stuff like that).

That same attitude seems to prevail with law enforcement and their attitude toward technology meant to record their activity – which theoretically is supposed to show that our police officers behave in completely professional manners at all times.

Those recordings are supposed to show how guilty those perpetrators truly are; and those are the videos we get to see freely.

BUT THE CHICAGO Tribune reported this week how there are many other instances of videos that aren’t quite so easy to find, and those are the ones where there are questions.

And in many cases, what turns up in those videos really isn’t so clear-cut. Or maybe there’s no audio to go along with the video. So what you really get is an out-of-context mess of fact that no one truly understands.

Yet the police will claim that the video cameras mean everything is being done on the up-and-up. Even though I have stumbled across reports of how the reason there is so little audio to go with video is because of police officers who, on their own initiative, wound up losing the microphones that would have recorded what was actually being said.

We’ll get the official pronouncements from law enforcement officials claiming that it is a crime to knowingly tamper with the recordings. Yet I’m sure proving criminal intent becomes difficult to do.

JUST LIKE PROVING that a law enforcement officer’s use of physical force (sometimes deadly) elevates to the level of criminal – considering that we give police the legal power to hurt people at times.

So all those people who want to file lawsuits against Chicago and the police department thinking that there’s a video in existence that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what happened are fooling themselves.

What they’re more likely to find out is that the video is vague and open to interpretation.

Even that now-internationally renowned video of the death of Laquan McDonald is much more vague than was originally thought – the only sight of a police officer is the one who kicked the knife out of Laquan’s cold, dead hand and the shots fired into his body come from off-screen.

WHICH IS WHY I still wonder how solid the criminal case is against the police officer who now faces multiple murder counts for McDonald’s death. And think the ultimate tragedy would be if people (including Rahm Emanuel) were to suffer politically while officer Jason Van Dyke were to be acquitted!

That might be the result that would cause rioting in Chicago – an outcome that our city has managed to avoid thus far, unlike places like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., to name a few.

And all those police videos?

For all we know, they’ll wind up taking up space on YouTube someday – going largely unwatched except by people who are looking for something stupid to view after watching video of kids on skateboards deliberately crashing their bodies into inanimate objects.

  -30-

We’ve come a long way, security-wise, when it comes to victory parades

It seems like such an innocent time – the Chicago Bears won the Super Bowl and fans turned out in downtown near the Picasso statue to publicly celebrate.

How packed will this space be on Friday?

Then-Mayor Harold Washington braved the wintry January day with his Bears stocking cap, and the fans rejoiced on that day 27 years ago.

FAST-FORWARD TO EIGHT years ago – in the days after the Chicago White Sox won the first World Series title for a Chicago ball club since 1917. The ball club boarded a bus at U.S. Cellular Field, then drove along a parade route through the Near South Side neighborhoods and wound up in the downtown area for the public celebration.

But when sports fans gather downtown on Friday to celebrate the Chicago Blackhawks’ victory this week, taking the Stanley Cup with a 4-games to 2 victory over the Boston Bruins, they’re going to see a more intense level of security on hand than any other athletic victory celebration this city has ever thrown.

Even compared to the 2010 celebration when the Blackhawks managed to win their first Stanley Cup championship in 49 years.

The Friday festivities will have the feel of that White Sox celebration (which considering the ball club’s dreadful play this year feels like a dream, maybe it never happened?) in that there will be the parade with hockey players on board a bus and assorted puck-heads lined up along Washington Street to watch the players pass by.

BUT THEY’RE BEING led into Grant Park, where the fans who persist in sticking around for a victory rally will be spread around a huge area.

Law enforcement officials say that spreading them out – rather than having them crammed into the canyon-lake space of a downtown street – makes it easier for them to maintain order.

Which in the wake of the explosions that killed a few and injured many at the Boston Marathon earlier this year is something that officials want.

The Chicago Tribune reported that there haven’t been specific threats or any evidence to indicate anyone is planning to do anything on Friday at a Blackhawks victory rally. But they claim to want to be extra-careful.

THE LAST THING that Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants is for his victory party (the first in which he will preside over as mayor) to be thrown awry by someone thinking they can use it to cause mayhem.

Noting the fact that the bombs used at the Boston Marathon were small devices brought into the area in backpacks, officials have made it clear anyone bringing any kind of bag into Grant Park for the rally will be searched.

It would be easy to just tell people to ditch the bags. But then again, there is a whole generation that relies on their overstuffed backpacks to haul around their possessions.

Telling people to ditch the backpacks would be as practical as the current orders that prohibit people from bringing cellular telephones into courthouses.

BUT IT ALSO means that the hundreds of thousands of people who will be estimated to attend Friday’s rally will largely be so far from the hockey players that they’re going to appear to be nothing but red blobs.

This is a closer view than you'll get Friday

The PA system had better work flawlessly, or else no one is going to be capable of hearing anything anybody has to say. Not that the athletes are all that eloquent! But the aura of the Cup will mean that nobody will particularly care.

Personally, I don’t plan to attend.

The distance will take away any sense that we’re actually seeing the Blackhawks. The security will make it feel like we’re in a generic crowd-scene – and not one of the rare moments when a Chicago sports team actually manages to win something!

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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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Government meddling in other people’s business way too headache-inducing!

One of the reasons why I personally would never contemplate running for electoral office is the fact that I’d get stuck taking the blame for the screw-ups of other officials beneath me.

OBAMA: Does the president feel ...

While it may well be true that a public official is responsible for those who answer to him, I can’t help but wonder how much of the Tylenol Barack Obama is consuming these days.

FOR ONE RIGHT on top of the other, a pair of stories have cropped up that would have us think that Obama deserves to be thought of in the same class of people as J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon – if not Joe McCarthy (not the Yankees manager version) himself.

The ideologues are getting all worked up over recent Washington Post reports about how the Internal Revenue Service was giving extra scrutiny to certain groups claiming tax-exempt status.

None of the groups ultimately was denied that status, but it seems they resented having so much attention paid to them. Particularly since many are politically-motivated groups whose desire is to promote candidates who push their conservative ideological thoughts on issues.

We’re hearing the screaming that the government is out to get them – although coming from these ideologues, I wonder if what they’re really upset about is that anyone would have the nerve to “scrooten” them (remember Mayor Daley, the second?).

MAYBE IT’S ONLY okay when their opposition is the one facing the scrutiny from the government?

Now I don’t mean to downplay the concept of the government turning into “big brother” and deciding to meddle into the private affairs of people. It is a serious problem, and Obama himself quickly joined in the gaggle of people criticizing the IRS.

Although I suspect he’s more upset about the fact that everybody on the ideological spectrum against him is going to blame this on him. He’s going to have to take the heat for this – particularly when the sympathetic leadership of the House of Representatives decides to hold hearings to give those voices a microphone and television camera to amplify their thoughts all the moreso.

... something more like this these days?

But what makes it worse is that this has to crop up in the public ear at the same time that the Justice Department decides it has to resort to reporter-harassment in order to advance its criminal investigations.

THAT’S WHAT IS usually behind any incident where prosecutors decide they need to go after a reporter-type person’s notes or telephone records – they are unable to figure out a case by themselves, even though they have subpoena power.

In this case, the Associated Press learned that federal prosecutors had managed to get records of about 20 telephone lines – both at AP offices and, in some cases, the home telephone and personal cellphone lines of reporters.

It seems that a Central Intelligence Agency disruption of a plot to bomb an airliner became known, and someone was upset enough to want to punish someone – most likely whoever let it be known to reporter-types that this was going on.

Personally, I can appreciate how someone might be offended by having prosecutorial-minded people wading through lists of places one called on their telephone. Although if anyone tried subpoenaing my home phone records, all they’d really get is a list of which restaurants I patronize for carryout food.

BUT THERE’S THE greater principle at stake about some respect for privacy – which I suspect the ideologues facing what they see as harassment from the IRS oftentimes are not willing to respect for others.

It is why I am less than sympathetic – even though we may well have IRS agents who stepped across the line of decency in their investigatorial behavior. And a president wondering what he ever did so bad in life to deserve all the harassment he gets dumped on him on a daily basis!

  -30-

How public is our cellphone use?

The whole point of cellular telephones being so readily accessible  is that we’re supposed to be capable of using them from anywhere at a moment’s notice.

So a part of me wonders how the whole concept of restricting the cellphone access at the buildings that serve as courthouses in Cook County is going to work.

FOR THE PAST month, there have been big signs at the entrances to those courthouses – telling us of all the types of items that people will no longer be able to bring inside the buildings with them.

Those include portable telephones. And the signs have told us that the restrictions will take effect as of Monday.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported this weekend that there will be some leeway used during the next few weeks – a grace-period during which people will be allowed to keep their phones on them provided they keep them turned off.

Which ought to be the common-sense approach to handling this particular issue.

EXCEPT THAT THERE are always those who will figure some people can be pushed around at will. Including many of the people who are among those who have business at the courthouses.

For many of them are criminals – in that they have committed some act worthy of a criminal charge that they may well plead guilty toward in the near future.

Yet too much of this is being done by people who seem to think their lives are lacking unless there’s someone whom they can abuse.

If it means they think they can pick on people by taking away their telephones, it just strikes me as an act of bullying by our county court system.

ALTHOUGH I DON’T doubt there is some semblance of a problem that court officials are trying to take care of.

For the stated reason for the tougher regulations is that some people are persisting in using the camera functions on their cellphones in order to take pictures during court hearings.

In some cases, these pictures are being posted as ways of publicly identifying those who have the temerity to testify in court against people who have street gang connections.

In others, they are being put on the Internet as ways of trying to embarrass judges for their professional conduct. Be honest, any video clip can be edited into something that can make someone else stupid!

SO YES, COURT officials may have a legitimate beef with the way people are using their cellphones.

But I’m all for allowing the sheriff’s deputies stationed inside each court room to rule over their domain with an iron fist on this issue. Let them confiscate the phones of people who can’t use them properly.

Let those people who get caught have to face the prospect of a serious criminal charge! It would be totally appropriate.

The hassle, however, that will be caused by banning them from the buildings outright is just ridiculous – particularly since the logical expectation of not permitting people to bring their phones into the building is that there will be some place where people can store them.

AND I’M VERY sure that there’s no way the sheriff’s police (who patrol all these buildings) want to be responsible in any way for someone else’s portable phone.

I do know that other court systems restrict the public from bringing phones in to the building – in Will County court in Joliet, only people who purchase a special license (a couple of hundred bucks for the year) from the county can have their phones.

Which means attorneys who work there can walk around with their phones, while everyone else gives them the “evil eye” of resentment. Is that really what we want at the Criminal Courts building – giving those defendants yet another reason to think they’re being “abused” in life.

The cellphone restrictions just strike me as being petty and vindictive – and I’m sure there will be many outbursts in coming weeks at the courthouses both in Chicago or the surrounding suburbs.

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Are rigidly-secure schools really safer?

It never fails to amaze me just what has become of our school facilities these days.

The layers of security that are in place to ensure that all movement in the building is monitored and that no one who doesn’t have to be there is in there for any longer than necessary creates such an oppressive atmosphere.

IT REALLY MAKES me thankful that I don’t have to go to school any longer (I’m coming up on 30 years since high school come May). Because I wonder how current students manage to cope with the nonsense.

Except that they’re all so young they don’t know anything different. They probably presume that this is the way things are supposed to be. It all makes me wonder what view of life we’re giving them!

Just this week (in my duties for one of the suburban daily newspapers) I had to visit a high school, where I managed to create a minor security scare.

For a school board session that was scheduled to have the doors open at 6 p.m., I arrived at 5:50 p.m. I asked one security officer exactly which building on the campus the session was being held in, and when I went there, I found one unlocked door (out of six).

SO I WENT in.

But it seems that another security guard (it was a private security firm hired by that high school district) wasn’t aware that the one door was unlocked.

So I wound up having to explain myself, and ultimately had to go back outside for a few minutes UNTIL the hour of 6 O’Clock (as they’d say in the Illinois Legislature) actually arrived according to that guard’s watch.

I have been in enough school buildings to know the “check-in” procedures – which usually involve letting the principal’s staff know you’re there. Although sometimes, schools want to make it a little tougher to conduct business with them on their grounds.

I KNOW THE two high schools I attended (I transferred when my family moved after my first year) have all these checkpoints for outside visitors. One literally has to keep following the path of security people in order to get to where one needs to go.

It’s almost enough to make me detest school buildings in a way that I never did when I was actually a student. Perhaps all this is meant to make me more thankful that portion of my life is complete.

Now I know some people are going to argue with me that all this is somehow essential – and perhaps should have been in place when I was a student some four decades ago – in order to ensure safety.

They’re going to cite the sporadic incidents where someone manages to get a weapon (or a few) into a school building and manages to inflict significant amounts of bodily harm.

ALTHOUGH THOSE INCIDENTS usually turn into events where flaws in other laws manage to come out into the open. Whether it is too-easy access to the firearms or too-loose monitoring of people with potential mental health problems, the idea of a school building as a fortress is usually a secondary (if not irrelevant) factor.

It would almost be like saying that the Chicago White Sox failed as an organization on the field because the quality of the pizza they serve at concessions stands is mediocre-to-lousy. True enough, but not the reason they played so badly the last month of the season.

Although having stated that, I must recall one moment from when I was in high school.

It was my final year and I was in the “newsroom” of the student newspaper along with other “staffers” when an adult male showed up, sat down at a desk and refused to say much of anything – except to tell us to mind our own business.

SOMEONE MANAGED TO call for security, and a guard did come to take him away – only for him to return shortly with a pass from the principal allowing him to be with us. The image I have of a guy with hair in a mullet and disco-like clothes – about six years after they were stylish – ought to be enough to give anybody the creeps.

It took about an hour for us to find out what he wanted – to place advertising in the paper for his “product,” a hollowed-out tube meant to look like a pen. The theory was that you could hide your “crib notes” in the tube while cheating on tests.

When we wouldn’t take his money (if I recall correctly, the ad would have cost about $10), he got huffy, but left without further incident.

An awkward moment, to be sure. But I’m really not sure that having all the modern-day checkpoints would have prevented it from happening, or made me any safer on a daily basis back then.

  -30-

Bring out the video cameras!

I’m wondering how many people are going to feel a smart-aleck attitude and start whipping out their cell phones or whatever other portable device they happen to carry when they find themselves in the presence of a police officer.

Although I’m also wondering how many cops are going to start pulling out similar recording devices to take pictures of people whom they think are paying a little too close attention to them.

THERE HAVE BEEN several stories in recent years concerning the laws that make it a felony criminal offense to take pictures of police while they’re on duty.

Ever since Rodney King got beaten by police in Los Angeles, there have been those who view the “problem” as the fact that anyone would think it appropriate to photograph or videorecord police officers while they work.

Because invariably one can easily capture “evidence” indicating they were less than professional in the performance of their duties.

But the American Civil Liberties Union, which occasionally does its own random recording of police just to remind them that somebody’s watching, has filed lawsuits that culminated in a Monday ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States.

THE NATION’S HIGH court upheld a federal appeals court that ruled the laws against taping were improper. That lower court said it impinged on a person’s right to freedom of expression by saying that police were off-limits.

Of course, what really outraged people was the fact that the lawmakers who put a restriction on photographing police officers made it one of the more severe categories of felonies – one that can carry a prison term of up to 15 years.

In short, one had the potential (until Monday) to spend a significant portion of their lives in incarceration if a police officer got it in his (or her) head that he/she was being watched too closely.

It doesn’t surprise me to learn that police officers feel that way about themselves.

I’M JUST PLEASED to learn that the Supreme Court issued a ruling that tried to bring some semblance of sense to our law.

Because the honest truth is that there are so many cameras being erected by so many interests in so many public places that it probably is unrealistic for us to think that somebody isn’t watching us somewhere.

Even the police often have those cameras erected on poles around the city and even in many suburbs. I recently heard of a case where an alderman seriously believes a newly-erected police video camera was positioned to look into his campaign office's windows. Why should police get to watch us closer than we can watch them?

After all, the police are supposed to work for us and protect us? The people who would support such laws are the ones using questionable judgment – which the Supreme Court knocked down.

COULD IT BE that the police were more interested in controlling the images of themselves in action? Because with all the cameras, it is impossible to avoid capturing them in some form.

I was just waiting for the moment when some tourist decided to take a picture of their relatives/friends on State Street with the Chicago Theater marquee in the background – along with an unintended image of some police officer being forced to use restraint on someone.

Just think of the black eye it would have given our city for that person to be prosecuted – particularly if that video had somehow shown the officer to be using legally-questionable tactics in the performance of his/her duties.

Which means what the Supreme Court of the United States actually accomplished by their action on Monday was to ensure that a law that was completely impractical to enforce is now off our statutes! We’re all spared some headaches.

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Shouldn’t we be more offended if the police weren’t at the Jarrett wedding?

I had so desperately wanted this weblog to be a Jarrett wedding-free zone on the Internet.

JARRETT: Plans wedding w/ world watching



I was determined not to get all excited about the idea of the daughter of White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett (a long-time Obama ally with her own ties to Richard M. Daley) getting married on Saturday.

EVEN IF IT means that President Barack Obama will be back in Chicago. Or we have the prospects of Jarrett snubbing Mayor Rahm Emanuel (the two didn’t like each other much when they both worked at the White House) by not inviting him to the wedding (Rahm’s out-of-town this weekend).

Or any of the other nonsense that is going to involve a couple of hundred politically-connected people from the scene in which Chicago and Washington are intertwined these days.

It’s cute. It’s fluff. But personally, I have never met Laura Jarrett or fiancé Tony Balkissoon. I’m not wishing her ill-will by any means. I just don’t care about them getting married. It’s their business.

Yet it seems that the ideologues are using Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist these days to spread nasty little tidbits that are supposed to get us all offended at the Obamas for being a part of this “elitist” scene and think that we should punish them with a ballot cast for Mitt Romney come Nov. 6.

OF COURSE, THE truth of the matter is that the people who really feel this way are probably more jealous of the fact that they weren’t invited and aren’t a part of this scene. Which strikes me as being petty and absurd.

But now, we’re getting those infamous Sneed scoops picked up and turned from dung to news – particularly the report she had on Friday in the Sun-Times that had somewhere in the area of 200 police officers being assigned to duty in the Kenwood neighborhood to maintain security.

OBAMA: What gift did he give?



Which means they’ll being doing tasks meant to ensure that this wedding doesn’t get out of hand and get out of control – or more realistically that some nut case doesn’t decide for himself that he can “make his bones,” so to speak, by crashing the wedding and making a scene.

Which would be easy to do if not handled properly. Because this is going to be a backyard wedding at Jarrett’s home, followed up with a barbecue at another neighbor’s house.

AND LET’S NOT forget that the Obamas’ Chicago residence is on the same block.

Sneed (actually, the people who are feeding her tidbits of information) are trying to create the image of taxpayer dollars being used to reduce police officers to the level of private security.

Or maybe valets! Can’t you envision Superintendent Garry McCarthy in full dress uniform, being reduced to the role of parking cars?

Sorry. But I just can’t share the outrage. I think this type of rhetoric is just too nonsensical to take seriously. A part of me is critical of anyone who pays it any mind for even one moment.

IT’S NOT THAT I care much about the Obamas personally. It’s just that this is a very unusual event for a U.S. president to attend. But that means it is an event at which a U.S. president will be present.

Which means the security measures are going to be extreme. Personally, 200 police officers sounds light. But if that’s all officials think will be needed to supplement the security measures of the Secret Service, then so be it.

I’ll trust the law enforcement types to be experts on such matters.

EMANUEL: Rare when mayor not invited



Seriously, though. What would you find to be more outrageous?

THE CONCEPT OF police officers in the Kenwood neighborhood or nearby Hyde Park keeping an eye open for any suspicious activity that happens to occur in the area?

Or the idea that someone slipped into the wedding and was able to make a threat on a U.S. president’s life or well-being, all because somebody has ideological hang-ups and would have preferred to have those officers assigned elsewhere?

Like it or not, this is the president. Anywhere he goes brings about a certain level of insanity that must be accommodated. If that concept bothers you, then I think we have to wonder more about your state of mind than anything else!

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): What makes place historic? Helps if old

It seems Chicago has a new site on the National Register of Historic Places – although my guess is that it won’t be one that comes to most peoples’ minds.

The National Park Service has created the Cermak Road Bridge Historic District fto help influence future development of the blocks around the bridge that crosses over the South branch of the Chicago River.

I DON’T KNOW of anybody who lives in that district, or of any businesses in that area that I patronize on a regular basis. In fact, when I think of the area, all I envision are some warehouses.

Yet that is what federal and state officials (the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency helps administer the historic sites program) are hoping to pay tribute to. Because it seems that all of the buildings within the district date back to the first few years of the 20^th Century, and the bridge also was constructed back in the same time period.

In short, it is a place that has changed very little despite the passage of time. It still looks much the same. So it gets the historic designation – even though any events that actually occurred in that area during the past century likely wouldn’t trigger any memories in the minds of the average person.

The desire to preserve the “feel” of Chicago from those old days is what will be behind the historic designation. I’m just wondering how long will it be before some developer tries to come up with ideas for “revitalizing” the area that he complains are being interfered with by these “history zealots” the way that some people rant and rage about environmentalists somehow interfering with business?

YES, I HAVE to admit to getting a kick out of this newest historic site designation. Because I realize that our society has to keep some sense of where we’ve been, if we’re to fully appreciate what direction we ought to be heading in.

It would be easy for one new development to crop up to something of significance and ruin the effect. To me, the best example of that is the National Park that was created out of the blocks immediately surrounding the Abraham Lincoln home in Springfield, Ill.

Federal officials try to make the neighborhood look like it did when the Lincoln family actually lived there in the 1850s. But because officials didn’t get control of all the property in the area until the 1940s, some of the neighborhood houses have advanced beyond the desired time period. It can have a jarring effect.

What else is notable these days about life along the shores of the southwestern portions of Lake Michigan?

NOW WE KNOW WHAT HE WON’T DO:  I got my chuckles from listening to soon-to-be former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who told us he won’t run for political office and won’t become a criminal defense attorney.

He claims not to know what he’s going to do with his life once his “summer break” is complete. It seems he did make a recommendation to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., as to who he thinks should succeed him. But it seems that Durbin is honoring Fitzgerald’s desire not to publicly name that person at this point.

So we really don’t know at this point what’s going to become of the man, except for one thing.

He’s not planning to go back to his native New York City; he’s come to love living in Chicago. He says he’s staying. Which means on some level, he has some sense!

YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN:  Author Thomas Wolfe could have written the headline for the reports this week about the disappointment felt by Barack Obama for the couple of days he was in town during the NATO Summit held at McCormick Place.

The president publicly said that he couldn’t be at Wrigley Field to watch his fan favorite White Sox beat up on the Cubs because he’s not allowed to have much fun built into his working schedule.

But on a more serious note, he wasn’t even allowed to stop by the family residence in the Hyde Park neighborhood for a quickie visit. Which was something he had hoped to do.

Security was so tight that the roads leading up to his home were shut down for the duration. Even the president got inconvenienced by the NATO-related security.

SOMETHING FOR SOX FANS TO LOOK FORWARD TO?:  Could the big story of Chicago baseball in 2012 turn out to be a battle for who gets to be Comeback Player of the Year?

The annual award to the player who showed the most improvement compared to the prior year is something that could wind up being won by a White Sox – although whether it would be the “Big Donkey” or the man some fans try to call “Joliet Jake” is arguable.

The “Donkey,” of course, is Adam Dunn, who has wisecracked about how he expects to win the award this year because of how awful his 2011 season was.  Going into Friday, Dunn had hit 14 home runs and had a .568 slugging percentage – although the one category he was leading the American League in was strikeouts (68 in 155 at-bats).

But then there is Jake Peavy – the one-time National League Cy Young Award winner who has been truly mediocre pitching in Chicago. Thus far this year, he has a 5-1 won/loss record with a 2.39 earned run average and has a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 5-1 – which is overpowering.

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