The city’s top watchdog issued a scathing report Tuesday that found ShotSpotter technology used by the Chicago Police Department rarely leads to investigatory stops or evidence of gun crimes and can change the way officers interact with areas they’re charged with patrolling.

The city’s Office of the Inspector General found that CPD data it examined “does not support a conclusion that ShotSpotter is an effective tool in developing evidence of a gun-related crime.”

While the acoustic gunshot detection system had already come under heavy fire amid a recent study and other reports challenging its efficacy and accuracy, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Supt. David Brown have continued to publicly support the department’s use of the technology.

“If the Department is to continue to invest in technology which sends CPD members into potentially dangerous situations with little information — and about which there are important community concerns — it should be able to demonstrate the benefit of its use in combatting violent crime,” said Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety Deborah Witzburg.

“The data we analyzed plainly doesn’t do that. Meanwhile, the very presence of this technology is changing the way CPD members interact with members of Chicago’s communities. We hope that this analysis will equip stakeholders to make well-informed decisions about the ongoing use of ShotSpotter technology.”

The city’s three-year, $33 million contract with the Silicon Valley-based startup was initially supposed to expire last Thursday. But the deal was extended last December for two additional years at the request of the police department, according to Cathy Kwiatkowski, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Procurement Services.

The CPD’s use of ShotSpotter came under increased scrutiny following the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, who was shot and killed in March by a Chicago police officer responding to an alert from the system. Toledo’s hands were empty when the fatal shot was fired, though he was seen on the officer’s body-worn camera holding a pistol a moment earlier.

Amid the mounting criticism, some Chicagoans have rallied for an end to the ShotSpotter contract, which activist Tynetta Hill-Muhammad claimed last Thursday was stretched out “under the cover of night,” without any public comment or notification to members of City Council.

A spokesperson for ShotSpotter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did police officials. But as recently as last week, police spokesman Tom Ahern defended the technology, saying it has “detected hundreds of shootings that would have otherwise gone unreported.”

“In order to reduce gun violence, knowing where it occurs is crucial,” Ahern said.

Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, said he agrees with “some of the points made” by the inspector general and it’s a reason to look at how CPD uses ShotSpotter “with a more critical eye.”

But Taliaferro said it would be a grave mistake to get rid of the gunshot detection technology — because, he said, it saves lives.

“It’s worth the price for the lives that we are saving because ShotSpotter can be attributed to officers responding much more quickly to the scene to save lives. It’s not just about ISR’s [investigative stop reports] or arresting or reducing crime. We’re also saving lives. You cannot discount the lives being saved as a result of ShotSpotter,” said Taliaferro, a former Chicago police sergeant.

“I’m convinced because I’ve heard parents whose children have been saved that somehow attribute that to the quick response of officers in getting that particular person to the hospital. That officer got on the scene simply because ShotSpotter alerted them. … If ShotSpotter goes off and we can get officers on the scene to prevent further harm, then it saves lives. And that’s what’s important to me.”

Taliaferro noted big-city police departments are “moving toward more technology-based policing.” CPD cannot afford to be “left behind,” he said.

“L.A. uses highly advanced technology. New York uses highly advanced technology. Their crime seems to be reducing. We are starting to use high technology. We have to bring technology into policing these days. …. We’re not just in the business of arresting and reducing crime. We’re in the business of saving lives.”

Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), former longtime chairman of the Council’s Police Committee, argued the problem is not ShotSpotter technology.

It’s the “handcuffs” Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Superintendent David Brown have placed on police by overhauling CPD policies on foot pursuits and vehicular chases, Beale said.

“The ShotSpotter is extremely valuable. However, in order for the technology to work, you have to have the police be able to pursue and go after the bad guys when they see or hear that the technology has pointed in a certain direction,” Beale said.

“The problem is when the police are no longer able to chase suspects … they’re gonna speed off in the cars and the police are told not to engage. If they’re in a car and running on foot and they’re told not to pursue, the technology would not be useful.”

He added: “We’ve caught people with ShotSpotter. The cameras turned in that direction. And we saw what car [the offender] got into. But, that was before the pursuit policy was put in place. It worked. But when you tell the police not to pursue, it’s not gonna work.

Instead of getting rid of ShotSpotter, Beale advised Lightfoot and Brown to “take the handcuffs off” officers, “let them do their job in an aggressive manner” and embark on a major hiring blitz to fill an alarming number of officer vacancies caused by a tidal wave of retirements.

“I’m hearing we’re gonna be down 1,500 by the end of the year,” Beale said.

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TOKYO — The Paralympics began Tuesday in the same empty National Stadium — during the same pandemic — as the opening and closing ceremonies of the recently completed Tokyo Olympics.

Japanese Emperor Naruhito got it all started again, this time under the theme “We Have Wings.” Among the few on hand were Douglas Emhoff, husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons and International Olympic President Thomas Bach.

It was a circus-like opening with acrobats, clowns, vibrant music and fireworks atop the stadium to mark the the start of the long parade of athletes.

“I cannot believe we are finally here,” Parsons said in his opening remarks. “Many doubted this day would happen. Many thought it impossible. But thanks to the efforts many, the most transformative sport event on earth is about to begin.”

The opening ceremony featured the national flags of the 162 delegations represented, which included the refugee team. In addition, the flag of Afghanistan was carried by a volunteer despite the delegation not being on hand in Tokyo.

Comparisons to the Olympics stop with the colorful jamboree, save for the logistical and medical barriers during the pandemic, and the hollowing out of almost everything else.

Tokyo and Paralympic organizers are under pressure from soaring new infections in the capital. About 40% of the Japanese population is fully vaccinated. But daily new cases in Tokyo have increased four to five times since the Olympics opened on July 23. Tokyo is under a state of emergency until Sept. 12, with the Paralympics ending Sept. 5.

Organizers on Tuesday also announced the first positive test for an athlete living in the Paralympic Village. They gave no name or details and said the athlete had been isolated.

The Paralympics are being held without fans, although organizers are planning to let some school children attend, going against the advice of much of the medical community.

Parsons and Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the Tokyo organizing committee, say the Paralympics can be held safely. Both have tried to distance the Paralympics and Olympics from Tokyo’s rising infection rate.

“For the moment we don’t see the correlation between having the Paralympics in Tokyo with the rising number of cases in Tokyo and Japan,” Parsons told The Associated Press.

Some medical experts say even if there is no direct link, the presence of the Olympics and Paralympics promoted a false sense of security and prompted people to let down their guard, which may have helped spread the virus.

The Paralympics are about athletic prowess. The origin of the word is from “parallel” — an event running alongside the Olympics.

Markus Rehm — known as the “Blade Jumper” — lost his right leg below the knee when he was 14 in a wakeboarding accident, but earlier this year he jumped 8.62 meters, a distance that would have won the last seven Olympics, including the Tokyo Games. Tokyo’s winning long jump was 8.41 meters.

“The stigma attached to disability changes when you watch the sport,” said Craig Spence, a spokesman for the International Paralympic Committee. “These games will change your attitude toward disability.

“If you look around Japan, it’s very rare you see persons with disabilities on the street,” Spence added. “We’ve got to go from protecting people to empowering people and creating opportunities for people to flourish in society.”

Archer Matt Stutzman was born with no arms, just stumps at the shoulders. He holds a world record — for any archer, disabled or otherwise — for the longest, most accurate shot, hitting a target at 310 yards, or about 283 meters.

Wheelchair fencer Bebe Vivo contracted meningitis as a child and to save her life, doctors amputated both her forearms and both her legs at the knees.

“So many people told me that it was impossible to do fencing without any hands,” Vivo said in a recent interview. “So it was so important to me to demonstrate and show people that it doesn’t matter if you don’t have hands, or you don’t have legs or whatever. If you have a dream and you really want to achieve it, just go and take it.”

Stutzman and Vivo are both set to compete in Tokyo and have already won medals in previous games, superstars who told their stories last year in the Netflix documentary about the Paralympics called “Rising Phoenix.”

The rest of the 4,403 Paralympic athletes in Tokyo — a record number for any Paralympics — will be telling their stories until the closing ceremony.

“I feel like I’m meeting movie stars,” said 14-year-old Ugandan swimmer Husnah Kukundakwe, who is competing for the first time.

She acknowledged being a self-conscious adolescent, even more so because of a congenital impairment that left her with no lower right arm, an her left hand slightly misshapen.

“Since it’s the Paralympics and everybody else is disabled, I feel really comfortable with myself,” she said. “In Uganda, there are very few people who have disabilities who want to come out and be themselves.”

Paralympic organizers played a part last week in launching “WeThe15,” a human-rights campaign aimed at 1.2 billion people — 15% of the global population — with disabilities. They’ve also produced a 90-second video to promote the cause of social inclusion.

“Difference is a strength, it is not a weakness,” Parsons said, speaking in the largely empty stadium. “And as we build back better in the post-pandemic world, it must feature societies where opportunities exist for all.”

Shingo Katori, a member of boy band SMAP that had its roots in the 1980s, now works with Paralympic organizers. He acknowledged his early fears of working with people with disabilities.

“Frankly speaking, people in wheelchairs or people with artificial legs — I hadn’t had an opportunity to meet these people and I didn’t know how to communicate with them,” he said. “But through Paralympic sports, such hesitation faded away.”

Stutzman, known as the “Armless Archer,” has a disarming sense of humor — pardon the pun. He jokes about growing up wanting the be like former NBA star Michael Jordan.

“I gave it up,” he deadpans. “I wasn’t tall enough.”

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Want a piece of Al Capone?

His favorite pistol? Gold- and diamond-encrusted jewelry emblazoned with his initials? A letter Capone wrote from Alcatraz to his only son, Sonny?

Or, an end table or bed frame, perhaps?

They are among 174 items that will be auctioned Oct. 8 after the decision by Capone’s three surviving granddaughters to let go of a large chunk of their family’s history while they’re still alive to share the stories that go along with the items.

Diane Capone, the eldest granddaughter, said that though the world came to know him as “Scarface” and “Public Enemy Number One,” she knew him as “Papa” and wants the public to know he was not all bad.

“He was a very loving grandfatherly figure, he was somebody who played with us in the garden and I don’t think the public in general knows that this man was so completely devoted to the extended family,” she said in a video posted to the website Witherell’s, the Sacramento-based auction house that’s handling the sale.

Many of the items were from Capone’s mansion on Palm Island, a short distance from Miami Beach, Florida.

The auction — dubbed “A Century of Notoriety: The Estate of Al Capone” — will accept online bids.

The starting bid is $50,000 for Capone’s .45-caliber Colt model 1911 semi-automatic pistol, his “favorite” weapon, according to the auction house.

“There’s no question that my grandfather’s name is synonymous with Chicago gangland history, but what I found lacking as an adult looking back is there was very little information about his private life and nobody really ever knew the personal story of the man,” said Diane Capone, who authored a book about her grandfather.

Brian Witherell, who heads up the auction house that bears his name, said “the estate is like a time capsule.”

“I’ve been training my whole life for this opportunity,” he said.

On Oct. 17, 1931, a jury convicted the notorious gangster of tax evasion in a federal court in Chicago. A few days later, on Oct. 24, the judge announced his sentence: 11 years and a $50,000 fine.

Following his release after serving seven years in prison, and suffering from advanced syphilis, Capone retreated to his Florida mansion with his wife, Mae, until his death in 1947.

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INDIANAPOLIS — Former Loyola player Jerry Harkness, one of the ABA’s original Indiana Pacers and a civil rights pioneer who played in college basketball’s 1963 Game of Change, has died. He was 81.

Harkness embodied the story of America itself. He came from nothing. What he did meant everything.

He credited Jackie Robinson for changing the course of his life. He witnessed hate and tragedy, and late in life he reveled in love and ecstasy for his Loyola Ramblers.

Harkness’ life was one of firsts.

He played for Loyola, the first team to win the NCAA Tournament with as many as four Black starters. He was Quaker Oats’ first Black salesman and Indianapolis’ first Black sportscaster.

‘I think the Lord is in this’

The Ramblers’ surprise run to the 2018 Final Four gave him a platform to revisit the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“And it’s not by chance. I think the Lord is in this,” he once said in an IndyStar interview. “You get older and see, at least in my case, how my life came together.”

Harkness was one of four Black starters recruited to Loyola by George Ireland. The coach was not trying to save society. He was trying to save his job.

Ireland broke the unwritten rule of having no more than three Black players on the floor at one time. Loyola’s lineup featured four Black starters — Harkness and Ron Miller, both of New York, and Vic Rouse and Les Hunter, both of Nashville, Tennessee — along with white guard John Egan of Chicago. Loyola rose as high as No. 2 in the national polls in the 1962-63 season.

Loyola reached the Final Four by beating Big Ten champion Illinois 79-64, with Harkness scoring 33 points, and then defeated Duke 94-75 in the national semifinal. In the championship game at Louisville against No. 1 Cincinnati, the Ramblers trailed by 15 points with 14 minutes left.

A full-court press allowed Loyola to trim the deficit, and Harkness’ late basket forced overtime. His layup off the opening tip of OT gave Loyola its first lead of the game. A tip-in by Rouse at the buzzer lifted the Ramblers to a 60-58 victory and the national title.

That was March basketball. Beforehand, there was madness.

In a Feb. 23 game at Houston, Loyola won 62-58. Fans there shouted racist epithets and were menacing as the team left for the locker room.

“I was scared to death,” Harkness recalled.

It got worse.

Harkness said he received threatening letters ahead of the NCAA Tournament. He was shocked senders would have his campus address.

He said the Ramblers’ emotions were manifested in an opening 111-42 rout of Tennessee Tech, the most lopsided score in tournament history. Then Loyola was pitted against Mississippi State in the Mideast Regional at East Lansing, Michigan, in what became known as The Game of Change.

Governor tried to block game

Mississippi’s governor, Ross Barnett, filed an injunction to prohibit the team from leaving the state. Bulldogs coach Babe McCarthy had already crossed the border and could not be served. The players all wanted to go, and off they went.

Harkness said everything he knew about white people in Mississippi was negative. A Chicago 14-year-old, Emmitt Till, was lynched there in 1955. Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist, would be murdered in Mississippi three months after the Loyola/Mississippi State game.

Yet when Harkness and Joe Dan Gold, the Mississippi State captain, met at center court, it was as if all strife around them vanished. Their eyes met. They shook hands. There were so many photographers capturing the image, Harkness said, he can still hear the “pop, pop, pop” of flash bulbs.

More than a game

“I’ll never forget that feeling,” he said. “I knew at that point this was more than a game.”

Loyola won 61-51. That it was more than a game became obvious. Harkness’ son, Jerald, directed a 2008 documentary telling the story of Loyola and Mississippi State.

Harkness and Gold stayed in touch over the years, and the two found they had much in common. Education was important to Gold, a longtime school administrator in Kentucky, and Harkness. Both battled cancer. Gold died in 2011 at age 68.

Sixteen months after the game, Mississippi State enrolled its first Black student. Harkness said he learned later than 70 percent of Mississippi residents favored the team playing Loyola.

He had not planned to play such a role in the civil rights movement, but fate intervened.

“We kind of came together, sports and the movement,” Harkness said.

Tough times

He was born in Harlem before moving to the Bronx. After his father left, he said, times were so tough he placed cardboard in his shoes to cover the holes. He was more runner than basketball player, winning Bronx championships in track and cross-country.

He played basketball on teams organized by Holcombe Rucker, a New York playground director for whom Rucker Park is named, and in intramurals. Harkness did not think he was good enough to play for his DeWitt Clinton High School team. An onlooker saw him at the Harlem YMCA and thought otherwise. Harkness was star-struck.

“You’re not that bad,” was all the man said. Except the man who said it was Robinson, who in 1947 became the first black player in Major League Baseball.

Harkness became the top scorer for a championship team. He said he was a poor student because he never contemplated going to college. He could not accept scholarships to St. John’s for track or NYU for basketball because he failed entrance exams.

A local coach persuaded Loyola to accept him, and Harkness’ career path was set. He was selected in the second round of the 1963 NBA draft by his hometown New York Knicks but was released after five games.

He landed a sales job with Quaker Oats and was on track toward a management position when he took a chance on a new pro league, the ABA. At 27, he made the Pacers’ roster in 1967. He played 81 games in two seasons, long enough to make history.

On Nov. 13, 1967, his heave of 88 feet beat the Dallas Chaparrals 119-118 as time expired. It remains the longest game-winning shot in pro basketball.

‘It’s been beautiful’

Harkness is better known for his Loyola days — the team was honored at the White House by President Barack Obama and inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame, both in 2013 — and community service. When he first arrived in Indianapolis, he said, he did not know where he could live.

He said Indianapolis, like the rest of the country, changed. He would know. He played in the Game of Change.

“It’s been beautiful. Sports does that. Sports does that,” Harkness said.

Read more at usatoday.com

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On busy nights at Cooney’s Funeral Home when the parlors were all booked, the Cooney family would haul caskets up to the second floor and host wakes in their living room.

That wasn’t easy when nine Cooney kids and a beagle named Pudgie were galumphing around upstairs.

Margaret “Peggy” Cooney, the family matriarch who helped operate the funeral home at 3552 N. Southport Ave., died in her sleep Aug. 1 at her home in Park Ridge.

She was 100 and “walking till the day she died,” said her son Eugene “Geno” Cooney. “My mom loved DePaul basketball and March madness. Up to 100, she would fill out the brackets and follow every game.”

For 33 years, she was Cooney’s hair and makeup artist.

“She was the beautician,” her son said. “She would always inspect the way bodies were laid out and casketed, and she would inspect the way they were dressed.”

Mrs. Cooney also did most of the family cooking, volunteered at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church and sent out thousands of Christmas cards every year.

By 99, she’d scaled back, but last year she still sent out 150 cards.

Growing up in a family with seven brothers and sisters, she learned to be organized. Lenten Fridays meant fish sticks for dinner. Thursday was spaghetti night. That made it easy for her and her husband Thomas to get out and bowl with the St. Andrew’s church league. She’d go to Waveland Bowl from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. He’d feed the kids and bowl from 9 to 11.

They had two big kitchen tables to accommodate everybody, their son said.

“We all ate together all the time,” he said. “She cooked in bulk. My dad did a lot of cooking, too. They were a great team. Lots of times, my dad would get up in the morning and let my mom sleep. He would feed everybody and make their lunches.

“We all got along,” he said, “because we had two great examples in our mom and dad.”

With a big family, though, it could be controlled chaos at home.

“As soon as they got married, they started having children,” Geno Cooney said. “We lived above the funeral home. Telephones ringing, doorbells ringing. My dad running up and down the stairs,” sometimes to warn the kids to pipe down — or else.

“It would sound like a bowling alley upstairs,” the son said. “We were playing football.”

Mrs. Cooney was a churchgoing woman.

“During Lent,” her son said, “she would drag us all to 6:30 mass in the morning for 40 days.”

The Cooneys had a Pontiac station wagon that Mrs. Cooney would use to drive her children to the Waveland ice skating rink in Lincoln Park, the McFetridge Sports Center or the pool at the old Elks Club at 1925 W. Thome St.

When it wasn’t filled with kids, “We would put the bodies in the station wagon” and use it as a removal vehicle, Geno Cooney said.

In 1966, the Cooneys expanded the Southport Avenue location, doubling its size. They sold it about 20 years ago and opened funeral homes in Park Ridge and at 3918 W. Irving Park Rd.

One of the Cooneys’ biggest funerals, held at St. Vincent de Paul Church, was for DePaul Blue Demons basketball coach Ray Meyer.

Young Peggy grew up at Addison and Paulina. Her mother Mary and father Patrick, a CTA streetcar conductor, were Irish immigrants from Ballinameen in County Roscommon. She went to Lake View High School and worked as an operator for Illinois Bell.

She and her future husband began keeping company after her sister Eleanor threw a party, needed more chairs and asked for help from Cooney’s Funeral Home.

“My uncle and my dad brought chairs over,” Geno Cooney said.

Soon after, the couple had their first date, at a White Castle, and they were married in 1949.

The family’s funeral business has been operating for 99 years, first at Addison and Marshfield before opening on Southport. At the time, in the mid-1920s, “There were about eight funeral homes on Southport Avenue, and Southport only stretched about three miles,” Geno Cooney said.

Mrs. Cooney loved Chanel No. 5, pink roses, shopping at Marshall Field’s and the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And, her son said, “She always dressed to the nines.”

In addition to her son Geno, Mrs. Cooney is survived by her daughters Mary Lewin, Brigid Magnuson, Patrice Costello and Nancy Forrest, sons Thomas, Martin, John and Denis, 27 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. Services have been held.

“The only advice she gave us was: ‘Be good,’ ” Geno Cooney said. “I took those words to heart. It’s not that hard.”

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Bears rookie Justin Fields will start at quarterback Saturday for the Bears’ final preseason game against the Titans — but he won’t be the Week 1 starter.

Rather, the Bears plan to simply rest most of their veteran starters Saturday — with the exception of members the offensive line, which will protect Fields. The rookie will play the first half, coach Matt Nagy said Tuesday. Nick Foles will play the second half.

Andy Dalton will start Week 1 against the Rams. Nagy has maintained all camp that the veteran Dalton would begin the season as the Bears’ starter, regardless of Fields’ play in the preseason. Fields outplayed Dalton in the first preseason game against the Dolphins, though neither ere sharp in the second exhibition against the Bills.

Nagy has said that Fields’ development is ahead of schedule for a rookie.

The Bears traded up to draft Fields out of Ohio State less than two months after signing Dalton to a one-year, $10.5 million contract.

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