What’s New

The Chicago Police Board voted Thursday to fire an officer for brazenly pursuing an off-duty cop before he was involved in a high-speed crash that left him and another driver dead.

In a 7-0 decision, members of the board agreed to dismiss Officer Jamie Jawor for her role in the chase that preceded the fatal collision in June 2017. One board member recused herself.

The board noted in a written decision that Jawor failed to use lights or sirens as she drove over 100 miles per hour in an unmarked police vehicle while trailing Officer Taylor Clark through the West Side.

Clark, who was 32 and had recently finished work, ran a red light during the chase and crashed into a vehicle driven by 27-year-old Chequita Adams near the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue. Both were killed.

Jawor “violated the law and Department rules and policy by driving at a very high rate of speed, at one point exceeding 100 m.p.h., on a city street on which there were other vehicular traffic and pedestrians,” the board wrote. “In so doing, [Jawor] endangered the lives of pedestrians and persons in the vehicles she passed.”

As a result, the board ruled that allowing Jawor to return to duty as a police officer would pose “an unacceptable risk to public safety.” She had been suspended without pay.

Jawor and her partner were pursuing Clark because his Jeep Cherokee matched the description of another vehicle linked to an earlier carjacking. However, that vehicle had been recovered weeks before the collision, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability found.

Jawor’s attorney, Jim McKay, declined comment.

The crash has already come at an enormous cost to taxpayers. In 2019, the city settled a lawsuit filed by Adams’ family for nearly $5 million. Another suit brought by Clark’s family is pending in Cook County court.

The case was initially sent to the Police Board after former Supt. Eddie Johnson disagreed with COPA’s assertion that Jawor should be fired, though Supt. David Brown later supported her dismissal last August.

Brown, however, suffered a loss in another high-profile case Thursday in which he disagreed with COPA’s disciplinary recommendations.

COPA previously suggested discipline for eight officers involved in the fatal police shooting of Harith Augustus in July 2018. Brown proposed lighter consequences for two officers COPA sought to have suspended.

COPA recommended a 60-day suspension for Officer Megan Fleming, charged with making physical contact with Augustus without justification, failing to activate her body-worn camera in a timely manner and failing to discuss the shooting with another police official. A 30 day-suspension was also recommended for Lt. Davina Ward in connection to allegations she failed to separate Fleming from another officer and ensure they didn’t communicate with each other.

Brown instead called for a 10-day suspension for Fleming and a reprimand for Ward. But on Thursday, board member Matthew Crowl ultimately ruled to uphold COPA’s recommendations.

Read More

It was only a matter of time before the Cubs started making moves ahead of the trade deadline after their downward spiral to end the first half. They got an early start on Thursday, trading outfielder Joc Pederson to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for minor-league first baseman Bryce Ball.

Pederson signed a one-year, $7 million deal with the Cubs this winter and was essentially the replacement for longtime outfielder Kyle Schwarber, who was non-tendered at the end of last season.

The 29-year-old outfielder served as primarily as the Cubs’ leadoff hitter in 2021, slashing .230/.300/.418 with 11 homers and 39 RBIs in 39 games this season.

Ball, 23, was a 24th round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft and the No. 12 prospect in Braves’ system according to MLB Pipeline. Ball was slashing .207/.354/.396 with six homers and 30 RBIs at Advanced-A Rome this season.

More trades are likely to follow in the coming weeks as the Cubs, who are eight games back in the NL Central, appear to be starting a long-awaited retool.

Read More

Investigators are barred from deceiving minors during police interrogations under a bill Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Thursday, one piece of legislation in a package aimed at advancing “the rights of some of our most vulnerable” in the state’s criminal justice system.

“Together, this package of initiatives moves us closer to a holistic criminal justice system, one that builds confidence and trust in a system that has done harm to too many people for too long,” Pritzker said at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law.

Terrill Swift, one of the so-called “Englewood Four” accused of the rape and murder of Nina Glover in 1994, said police lied to him and his family — first about where they were taking him, then about the crime and his connection to the three others convicted of the killing.

Swift was 17 at the time. He spent 15 1/2 years in prison before he was exonerated.

“This bill, I truly believe, could have saved my life,” Swift said, choking up. “When it was first brought to me, it touched me in the sense that it could have saved my life.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Pritzker signed three other pieces of legislation addressing parts of the criminal justice system, measures that:

o Allow state’s attorneys to petition a court to re-sentence someone whose original sentence “no longer advances the interests of justice.”

o Bar anything said or done during a restorative justice hearing — hearings between defendants and victims designed to repair the harm caused by the crime — from being used against someone in court unless that protection is waived.

o Create a re-sentencing task force to study ways to reduce the state’s prison population through re-sentencing motions.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told the Chicago Sun-Times her office collaborated with the Innocence Project and For the People to draft the legislation banning the use of deceptive practices during the interrogation of minors and the bill that would allow county prosecutors to seek new sentences for offenders.

“It’s important for us to not just have proactive policies, but to go back and look at some of the harms that were caused by the things that happened before we got here,” Foxx said of the criminal justice reforms signed into law Thursday.

“We had so many wrongful convictions, particularly of youth, that were predicated on these practices of lying to children, where the science … tells us about their susceptibility to those types of practices and the damage that can be done,” Foxx said.

“When we convict people who are not the people who have done the actual crime, it not only robs them of their lives, from their families and from their communities, it also allows the people who’ve actually committed the crimes to go free.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

State Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago, called the package of criminal justice legislation “a major step in the right direction.”

“We must not waste the potential of our fellow neighbors by locking them up and throwing away the key,” said Peters, a lead sponsor on all of the pieces of legislation signed Thursday.

“We see systemic failures over and over again. We’re promised public safety, and yet it seems like it’s something we chase over and over again,” Peters said. “Chicago sports teams have better draft records than tough-on-crime policies have on providing safety. It is time that we move towards a new era of public safety — public safety for all, public safety by the people, public safety that belongs to us.”

State Rep. Justin Slaughter, D-Chicago, who was a lead sponsor on the bills in the House. said no matter where people fall on the criminal justice reform spectrum, “we can all agree that innocent people should not be serving time in prison.”

Swift said while the new law will likely help minors avoid a situation like the one he faced, there is still work to be done to decrease wrongful convictions.

“The reality is, I can’t get what I lost back,” Swift said.

“We don’t need another Terrill Swift, Michael Saunders … this happens so much and it’s something that needs to change. Granted, this bill passing is a great step, but we still have so much work to do.”

Read More

There’s no doubt that left-wing culture warriors have done great harm to the Democratic cause. Some of it is mere foolishness. I’ve never forgotten being chided at a college talk several years ago for using the word “murderess” to describe a character in my book “Widow’s Web” who shot her husband in his sleep and later orchestrated a plot to kill her defense lawyer’s wife.

“Murderess,” one professor said, was unacceptably “gendered” language. To quibble about it would have been pointlessly distracting. Even so, I’ve wondered about it ever since. After all, is “murderer” an honorific?

But it’s when cant touches upon real-world concerns that the trouble starts. Consider the phrase “Defund the Police.” Has there ever been a dumber, more politically maladroit slogan in American political history? Worse even than Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.”

Far worse, actually. Clinton’s remark merely convinced people that she was a snob. Rhetoric about doing away with cops made voters think that liberal Democrats inhabit a different planet. In an interview with VOX, veteran political operative James Carville put it this way: “Maybe tweeting that we should abolish the police isn’t the smartest thing to do because almost … no one wants to do that.”

Words matter, Carville insists. “You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like ‘Latinx.’ … Or they use a phrase like ‘communities of color.’ I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t know anyone who lives in a ‘community of color’…. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that you’re talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language.”

In the real world, for example, people wake up to headlines like these, which arrived in my inbox as I composed the preceding paragraph: “UAMS officer kills gun-wielding man”; “Police ID man fatally shot at apartment complex”; and “15-year-old arrested in killing of Jacksonville man.”

One medium-sized southern city; one ordinary weekday in July.

Abolish the police? In which solar system, pray tell?

So no, what with homicide rates rising sharply nationwide, I was not surprised to see Eric Adams, a Black former NYPD captain who campaigned on making New Yorkers feel safe and restoring confidence in the city’s police, winning a Democratic primary that makes him the city’s de facto mayor-elect.

“The debate around policing has been reduced to a false choice,” Adams declared. “You are either with police, or you are against them. That is simply wrong because we are all for safety. We need the NYPD — we just need them to be better.”

Whether or not Adams can deliver, that’s exactly how Democrats should be talking. Also, contrary to a lot of loose rhetoric, it’s all about the guns. Property crimes — burglary and theft — are actually decreasing in many places. Gun battles between rival gangs and drive-by shootings of innocent bystanders are way up.

Although you’ve not heard about it in the national news, something else that happened in my backyard has convinced me that ordinary people are hungry for change. In the farming community of Lonoke, Arkansas, roughly 35 miles northeast of Little Rock, a sheriff’s deputy shot a 17-year-old white kid named Hunter Brittain to death during a 3 a.m. traffic stop. The boy was unarmed and had no criminal history. He’d been working late to fix his uncle’s truck transmission.

Details are scant, because the state police have kept their investigation close, although a special prosecutor has been appointed. And the deputy never turned on his body camera, for which he’s been fired. Nightly protests began outside the sheriff’s department, growing steadily more intense. His family likened young Brittain to Minneapolis murder victim George Floyd. Even Little Rock media, however, showed limited interest.

Until the Rev. Al Sharpton showed up in town to preach Hunter Brittain’s funeral, along with Ben Crump, George Floyd’s attorney — virtually the only Black faces among hundreds of mourners.

Sharpton referenced a can of antifreeze the victim held as he died. “We’ve been frozen in our race; we’ve been frozen in our own class,” he said to thunderous applause. “I believe today Hunter is calling to us. It’s time for some antifreeze.”

I’ve got my reservations about Sharpton, but the symbolism of his appearing was impossible to ignore: Americans are ready to talk.

Send letters to [email protected]

Read More

Myron Richardson lost three members of his family over the last four years — his father, his grandmother and his sister. Now, his family is mourning his loss.

Last week, the 19-year-old was found dead in the trunk of a burning car on the Far South Side with a gunshot wound to his head. That’s all his family knows about his murder.

They called a detective nearly half a dozen times to follow up on the case and were unable to reach him, they say. Another time, a supervisor hung up on them, according to the family. It was only after the Sun-Times called police that a detective visited them this week.

Still, he had nothing new to say.

“I just want to know what happened to him,” Carmela Richardson, Myron’s mother, said through tears. “They just think Myron is another Black kid who just got slain in the street, and that’s not my baby,” she said through tears.

“He was raised to be a good man,” she continued. “I talked to my son every day. I told him I love him, he was a good big brother, good boyfriend…they don’t know who Myron was … We have to let them know who my baby was.”

The body of her son was found after someone reported a car fire around 10:30 p.m. July 6. Emergency crews responded to the 12100 block of South Doty Avenue, near the Bishop Ford Expressway, and found Richardson’s burned body in the trunk of the car. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

An autopsy showed he died of a gunshot wound to his head, and his death was ruled a homicide by the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Police report no one in custody.

Richardson’s mother said she spoke with a Chicago police detective for over an hour on July 8, two days after her son’s death. The Richardson family said they tried to reach him at least five times in the days that followed, but were either left on hold for up to half an hour or were hung up on.

“I took it personal because Myron is my son,” Richardson said. “It wasn’t personal; they don’t know who Myron is.”

Richardson’s frustration came to a head on July 10 when she said she called for the detective and spoke to an official who told her, “I don’t have time for this” and hung up.

A police spokesman told the Sun-Times he would check with the detective, then later said the department would have no comment at all on Richardson’s complaint. By that evening, however, a detective showed up at Richardson’s home.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The detective had nothing new to report, she said, but acknowledged Richardson should not have had to wait so long to hear back from him.

“He (the detective) said he’d been off and the department cell phone with the number he gave me was dead,” Richardson said, “I feel like the communication could’ve been better … I just feel like even if he was off, I should’ve been notified of that…it might’ve been four days to them but it was an eternity to us.”

The Richardsons are not alone in searching for information about the death of their loved ones. Chicago police have reported 362 homicides so far this year, but arrests have only been made in 68 cases, according to public data.

“So many people get killed in Chicago, and they just don’t seem like they care,” Myron’s aunt, Jeanetta Richardson, 40, said. “I can only imagine how overwhelmed the police must be, but you got parents out here that don’t care and you got parents out here that do care, and the ones that do care, I feel like you should at least give them a little bit of peace and do your part of your job.”

Carmela Richardson’s fiance, Prince Elston, 40, said he understands that police deal with victims’ families daily, “but there’s certain levels of respect people should have for one another, especially going through a time like this.”

Carmela Richardson said she hopes detectives understand her son was a good kid and will bring his killer to justice.

“He wasn’t that person, he didn’t live that life,” she said. “So now I have to let them know who Myron was…I just want to know what happened to him.”

Richardson played basketball for Morgan Park High School and enjoyed playing video games. He was the oldest of seven and was described by his aunt as “someone who lit up whatever room he was in.”

“My nephew always had this smile on his face,” she said. “He was a very, very happy guy, very respectful…even when he was in trouble, he was smiling.”

Richardson often bought his mother roses, knowing her love for them. For his service, the family plans to have roses to honor the tradition. “He was just a joy to be around,” his aunt said.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Read More

PHOENIX – The more things change, the more they stay the same. After a rollercoaster first half that saw the Cubs go from the bottom of the bottom of the NL Central to leading the division and then falling eight games back, they are exactly where many expected them to be.

The Cubs are in a precarious position with two weeks from the trade deadline. The team’s chances of getting into the postseason took a massive plunge after an 11-game losing streak and losing 13 of their last 16 games entering the All-Star break. They now sit fully on the seller’s side of the trade market.

“We were certainly fully on the buy side of this transaction, and everyone was calling about that,” Hoyer said last week. “And obviously people are now calling to see which players are available, so it’s a very different scenario than we expected. Life comes at you fast.”

It certainly does and over the next two weeks, it’s very likely the Cubs could begin departing with several of some or all of their biggest superstars, including Kris Bryant, Javy Baez, Anthony Rizzo.

While the team’s possible “reload” won’t likely be the massive teardown that many fans fear it will be, the shocking reality that this chapter of Chicago Cubs baseball is in its final days is a tough pill for many to swallow.

President Jed Hoyer has spoken over the last two weeks about looking at the big picture in terms of where the Cubs are as an organization and where they hope to be. The next two weeks leading to the trade deadline will have a massive effect on not only what the Cubs look like the rest of 2021, but give a guide into the direction that the team will be heading down over the next few years.

“When you’re in this moment and your playoff odds get into single digits at this time of the year, you have to keep one eye on the future and think about what moves you could potentially make that could help build the next year, the next great Cubs team,” Hoyer said.

What likely comes first for Hoyer is deciding what to do with the likes of Bryant, Baez and Rizzo, All three players will become free agents at the end of the season and after being unable to sign any of them to extensions last offseason and during the spring, there are contenders likely lining up calling about the services of the three All-Stars. Closer Craig Kimbrel is also a candidate to be moved.

But those moves are also not limited to four players and if the team is willing to take calls on them, nobody is untouchable.

The Cubs have been in the middle of rumors surrounding their biggest stars being traded for the last three years and each year, those rumors never came to fruition. But this season feels different, not only from the Cubs position in relation to the standings, but also because their core players are now within arms reach of free agency.

There’s an atmosphere of finality that has now hovered over the team for the last few weeks and that feeling will continue until there’s a resolution via trades or riding off into the sunset one final time with the team as currently assembled.

The second half is going to look different than fans have seen over the last six years, especially if names like Bryant, Baez or Rizzo are no longer wearing blue pinstripes.

Hoyer’s sentiments on the Cubs last month are true. Life does come at you fast. No one could have predicted that what was once considered one of, if not the best core in baseball would be on the verge of being broken up. But in baseball, the inevitability of change catches up to everyone and for the Cubs, that time has come.

Read More

A proposal for a $60 million film studio in South Shore backed by TV producer Derek Dudley, whose credits include the Showtime series “The Chi,” got a thumbs-up Thursday from a city planning agency.

The Chicago Plan Commission unanimously backed zoning for the complex on 7 acres at 7731 S. South Chicago Ave. With investors that include James Reynolds Jr., chairman of Chicago-based Loop Capital Markets, Dudley said the project could anchor a South Side entertainment district that would include the nearby Avalon Regal Theater.

“I grew up on the South Side. This has been a dream of mine for several years,” Dudley told the plan commission. “I was fortunate to get into the entertainment business, which afforded me great opportunities” that include a chance for give back to the community, he said.

Dudley said the project would be “monumental in terms of being able to expand the film industry business and make Chicago the Hollywood of the Midwest.”

The commission’s vote was one of several it took to green-light major projects. Its packed agenda included approval of more than 400 housing units on the former site of the ABLA Homes public housing project at Roosevelt Road and Racine Avenue.

The file studio would take over an empty, triangular parcel near the Chicago Skyway. Years ago, it was the site of a Kmart.

Through his company, Regal Mile Ventures, Dudley hopes to start construction later this year. It passed an important hurdle with the plan commission vote and the project now heads to the City Council for approval.

“The community is totally excited about this project,” said Ald. Leslie Hairston (5^th), who brought it to several community meetings. City officials said the process led to several improvements in the plan, such as more trees and landscaping and the addition of a public plaza.

They said the complex could support around 300 production jobs when it’s in full use.

Zoning documents show Dudley has the support of an owner of the property, Kmart, now part of a spinoff from Sears Holdings. The city owns a portion of the land, and on Tuesday the Community Development Commission agreed to sell it to Regal Mile for $31,000.

Dudley, who works closely with the rapper and actor Common, hopes to profit from increasing demand for production space, driven by streaming services in search of original programming. In Chicago, film production is dominated by the Cinespace studios, which have been expanded and currently host Dudley’s “The Chi.”

A website for Dudley’s development cites Netflix, Disney and Amazon as having interest in doing more production work in Chicago.

The website also highlights a potential revival of the Avalon Regal, also recently called the New Regal, at 1641 E. 79^th St. With an auditorium of 2,250 seats, the theater has been little used for years. The 1927 building is a city landmark and in its heyday was a busy stage for African American performers.

Dudley could not be reached for details about that aspect of the plan.

Regal owner Jerald Gary said in 2019 that rapper Kanye West pledged $1 million to help reopen the theater. It’s not known if the contribution came through.

Other items the commission endorsed, sending them to the City Council, included:

–Related Midwest’s plan to expand mixed-income housing at the ABLA site. It calls for three new buildings and several renovated buildings, with a blend of market-rate and reduced-rent units, and others for the Chicago Housing Authority tenants. It calls for 222 new and 184 rehabbed apartments, with estimated completion in spring 2023.

–A $145 million RIU Hotel at 150 E. Ontario St., currently an empty lot. It would contain 388 rooms.

–Two new residential buildings, 19 and 9 stories, at 3636 N. Lake Shore Drive, a rare open site near the lakefront, from developer Jonathan Holtzman. The project was approved despite criticism of the architecture.

–Two projects in the Fulton Market area. They are a 34-story residential building, 20% of them classified as affordable, at 1215 W. Fulton Market, and an 11-story office building at 917 W. Fulton Market.

Read More

Rank-and-file Chicago police officers would receive a 10.5 % retroactive pay raise and 9.5% more through January 2025, under a tentative agreement on an eight-year contract that Mayor Lori Lightfoot has refused to acknowledge, a union negotiator said Thursday.

Earlier this week, the mayor told reporters Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara, her nemesis on all issues pertaining to law enforcement, “simply wasn’t correct” in a YouTube video he posted declaring the FOP had finally reached a tentative agreement with the Chicago Police Department.

But Paul Vallas, the former mayoral city budget director and mayoral challenger who has served as an unpaid member of the FOP’s negotiating team, said Thursday it is Lightfoot who was mistaken.

“It was agreed that last Thursday’s strategic bargaining session was intended to conclude the agreement for which the Mayor and the City Council would have the final sign off. If the Mayor is now saying that there is no deal, she is rejecting an agreement negotiated by her own team. Let’s hope that’s not the case,” Vallas wrote Thursday on his Facebook page.

Vallas said the new eight-year contract has two phases.

Phase One is an agreement on officer compensation that also addresses what Vallas called the mayor’s “core accountability issues.” Phase Two will “take much more time to resolve,” presumably because it includes the most controversial disciplinary changes that “may end up in arbitration,” Vallas wrote.

“The consensus was that it was important to get the financial issues resolved and have accountability provisions that mirrored the city’s agreement with the sergeants, with some clarifications,” Vallas wrote, without revealing specifics.

Vallas described the financial agreement as a 20% increase for rank-and-file police officers — 22% “when compounded.” The city also agreed to increase so-called “duty availability pay” to $950 per quarter and raise the annual uniform allowance to $1,950.

Duty availability pay will be offered “retroactively” from July 2017 to all officers whose probation period has ended after 18 months. Going forward, duty availability pay will be available after 18 months, instead of after 42 months.

On health care, Vallas said rank-and-file police officers will be asked to absorb half the increase in health care contributions imposed on police sergeants and Chicago firefighters and paramedics. The “second half” of that increase will be “postponed until July 1, 2022 to allow members to retire under under current terms: 2.2% at age 55 and 0% for those 60 and over.

In a text message to the Sun-Times, Vallas wouldn’t pinpoint the contract’s overall cost to Chicago taxpayers or reveal the average retroactive paycheck.

But his Facebook post described the cost as “reasonable” and noted the cost is “inflated by the fact that it is equivalent to TWO combined contracts. … Those who will respond to the contract cost need to remember and acknowledge this.”

The city has put money away each year, preparing to cover that eventual retro pay, he added, so the contract “should not require an increase in taxes. Nor should it delay the filling of police vacancies in order to have the needed financing,” he wrote.

The mayor’s office had no immediate comment.

Read More

Chicago taxpayers could spend $1.2 million to compensate the family of a teenager killed by a police officer after a foot chase, though an investigation of the shooting didn’t result in any disciplinary action.

The proposed legal settlement is the largest of three tied to allegations of police wrongdoing on Monday’s agenda of the City Council’s finance committee.

The payout would go to the family of 16-year-old Pierre Loury, shot to death on April 11, 2016 after he ran from a car pulled over by Chicago police officers in the 3400 block of West Grenshaw Avenue in North Lawndale, about a block away from Loury’s home.

At the time, police said the car was stopped because it matched the description of one involved in a shooting earlier that day, and the officer fired at Loury as the teen turned toward him holding a pistol.

The shooting was investigated by the now-defunct Independent Police Review Authority, which ruled the shooting was within police policy and recommended no disciplinary action for Chicago Officer Sean Hitz, who chased and shot Loury.

According to court records, Hitz was in the police academy last year to become a detective. He had taken the promotional exam in 2016 and made the hiring list for detective in 2020.

“He makes a promotion list while this case is going on?” U.S. District Judge Sharon Coleman asked the attorneys representing the city in a hearing in March 2020. “City, the optics of that look really bad. I’m glad. Good for him.”

The Loury family had demanded IPRA release official police video of the shooting, but it was withheld because he was a minor.

Days after the shooting, a law-enforcement source told the Sun-Times Loury was carrying a gun that fell from his waistband as he scaled a fence during the chase.

Videos posted to social media after the shooting appeared to show Loury’s clothing had gotten snagged on the fence.

In a deposition, Hitz said he saw a gun in Loury’s right hand while he on top of the fence. Then Loury dived off the fence and landed on the gun, Hitz said.

“He retrieved the gun and all in one motion turned around and pointed the gun at me,” Hitz added. “At that point, I fired twice.”

The medical examiner’s officer concluded Loury died from a bullet wound to the chest.

After the shooting, Loury’s mother, Tambrasha Hudson, said: “It wasn’t like him, he wouldn’t do that.”

In the hours after Loury’s death, conflicting portraits emerged.

Then-Deputy Police Supt. John Escalante told reporters Loury was a documented gang member who had “prior contact” with police, and a gun was found at the scene. In postings on Facebook and Instagram, Loury posed with what appear to be pistols or with friends brandishing guns.

Family and friends painted Loury as teen who aspired to a career as a rapper — a vocation he tried to fuel with videos posted to YouTube and Facebook under the names “Pierre Santana,” “Polo” and “Shorty Lo.”

Classmates said Loury had steady attendance at Chicago Christian Alternative Academy and was quiet and reserved at school.

In a March 18, 2016 Facebook post, Loury wrote, “Always Worried Bout Da Police . . . I’m Focused On Keepin My Life… Rather Be In Jail Than Dead Anyday.”

Two days later, he posted a link to a newspaper article about the arrest of 18-year-old Dwon Wright on charges connected to a gang-related shooting that left three men wounded. “Free My F–in Boy,” Loury captioned the post.

A month after suing the city, Loury’s family filed an amended complaint saying then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel might be called to testify about the alleged “code of silence” in the Chicago Police Department if the lawsuit ever went to trial.

The amended complaint also accused Hitz and another officer of conspiring to give a false account of the shooting to cover up their misconduct by claiming Loury “placed them in imminent fear of bodily harm.” The lawsuit said Chicago police engaged in long-standing and racist practices that “result in the unjustified deaths of people of color.”

Andrew Stroth, the attorney for Loury’s family, declined to comment on the proposed settlement.

Sun-Times file

Read More

After being the only regional sports network to send its broadcasters to road games in the first half of the MLB season, Marquee Sports Network is planning to travel for roughly half of the Cubs’ trips in the second half.

“The driver of our situation is to be safe and health-conscious wherever we can, so we can’t justify making every road trip,” Marquee general manager Mike McCarthy said. “There are some realities to some of the cities that the Cubs go to that make it difficult to contemplate traveling the announcers.

“It’s not, as some suggested, budget-related or tone-deafness about what makes or doesn’t make a good broadcast. There’s some realities that some cities are easier for our situation that we want to pull off with technology than others are.”

Marquee sent Jon “Boog” Sciambi and Jim Deshaies to Milwaukee in June and Chris Myers and Deshaies to Cincinnati in July. Both cities are home to RSNs in the Bally Sports network, owned by Sinclair, which jointly owns Marquee.

The Cubs’ road trip that starts Friday is to Phoenix and St. Louis. Both cities also are home to a Bally Sports RSN, but Marquee might travel only to St. Louis, if at all. The Chicago Department of Public Health added Missouri to its travel advisory list this week “amid an increase in COVID-19 cases.”

“Sometimes if it’s challenging, you have to make decisions,” McCarthy said. “I don’t think anybody would question whether we understand the value [of traveling]. We can only do it where we can do it. It’s a daily evolving situation. We’re going to do it as often as we can within parameters.”

Sciambi has been outspoken about his desire to travel.

“Whether fans care or not, my being at the ballpark and having access to the players enhances your viewing experience. I’m telling you it does,” he said. “I’m going to deliver and we as a network are going to deliver a better product, and ultimately the league needs to get involved because we’re delivering their product.

“So at a certain point the league needs to say to all these RSNs, ‘Hey, you need to get out on the road and start telling these stories,’ because if they keep locking people in broom closets to make the broadcasting better, it’s going to negatively impact how people experience the sports and we will feel it.”

Said McCarthy: “He knows that the passion is shared. You want guys to push the envelope. You want people to be demanding and exacting about perfection. And he is.

“As I say to Boog all the time, ‘There’s this pandemic. It’s in all the papers.’ “

Read More