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The suspect was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the largest county in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County sheriff’s authorities said.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — An employee opened fire Wednesday at a California rail yard serving Silicon Valley, killing eight people before ending his own life, authorities said.

The suspect was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the most populated county in the Bay Area, authorities said.

The attacker was identified as 57-year-old Sam Cassidy, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators offered no immediate word on a possible motive.

The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. at a light rail facility that includes a transit-control center, parking for trains and a maintenance yard.

Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said the attack also resulted in “multiple major injuries.” He did not know the type of weapon used. He said the victims included VTA employees. Authorities did not release any of the victims’ names.

“These folks were heroes during COVID-19. The buses never stopped running, VTA didn’t stop running. They just kept at work, and now we’re really calling on them to be heroes a second time to survive such a terrible, terrible tragedy,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.

It was not clear exactly where the shooting happened. VTA Chairman Glenn Hendricks said it took place in the rail yard but not in operations control center. Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said it was his understanding the shooting happened inside the VTA building during a morning meeting.

Victims’ grief-stricken families sat huddled together, holding hands and crying, after learning they had lost a loved one, Rosen told reporters, describing the scene inside a county building.

“They’re just sitting and holding hands and crying,” Rosen said. “It’s terrible. It’s awful. It’s raw. People are learning they lost their husband, their son, their brother.” He said about 100 people were inside the family reunification center.

Police vehicles and orange crime-scene tape blocked off the area, and reporters were kept at a distance The rail yard is in the city’s administrative neighborhood, near the sheriff’s office and city and county offices.

Bomb squads were searching the rail complex after receiving information about possible explosive devices inside the building, Davis said.

Officials were also investigating a house fire that broke out shortly before the shooting, Davis said. Public records show Cassidy owned a two-story home where firefighters responded Wednesday morning. Fire crews found a fast-moving blaze after being notified by a passer-by. A neighboring house also caught fire, authorities said.

Cassidy had worked for the VTA since at least 2012, according to the public payroll and pension database known as Transparent California. His position from 2012 to 2014 was listed as a mechanic. After that, he was a substation maintainer, the records said.

VTA trains were already out on morning runs when the shooting occurred. Light rail service was to be suspended at noon and replaced with bus bridges, Hendricks told a news conference.

“It’s just very difficult for everyone to be able try to wrap their heads around and understand what has happened,” Hendricks said.

Outside the scene, Michael Hawkins told The Mercury News that he was waiting for his mother, Rochelle Hawkins, who had called him from a co-worker’s phone to assure him that she was safe.

When the shooting started, “she got down with the rest of her coworkers” and dropped her cellphone, Michael Hawkins told the newspaper. Rochelle Hawkins did not see the shooter, and she was not sure how close she had been to the attacker, her son said.

The bloodshed comes in a year that has seen a sharp increase in mass killings as the nation emerges from pandemic restrictions that closed many public places and kept people confined to their homes.

A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks every mass killing over the last 15 years shows that the San Jose attack is the 15th mass killing so far in 2021, all of them shootings.

Eighty-six people have died in the shootings, compared with 106 for all of 2020. It is the sixth mass killing in a public place in 2021. The database defines mass killings as four people dead, not including the shooter, meaning the overall toll of gun violence is much higher when adding in smaller incidents.

White House deputy press secretary Karine Jeane-Pierre said the administration was monitoring the situation in San Jose. She reiterated President Joe Biden’s call for Congress to pass gun control measures.

“What’s clear, as the President has said, is that we are suffering from an epidemic of gun violence in this country, both in mass shootings and in the lives that are being taken in daily gun violence that doesn’t make national headlines,” she said.

San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the U.S. with more than a million people, is about 50 miles south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley.

In the city itself, the most recent mass shooting occurred in 2019 at a private home, according to The Mercury News. Police said it was a quadruple murder and suicide precipitated by family conflict.

Wednesday’s attack was the county’s second shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people before killing himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.

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Associated Press writers Martha Mendoza in San Jose, Janie Har in San Francisco, John Antczak and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles, and Michael Balsamo and Colleen Long in Washington also contributed to this report.

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By ranking him 39th out of 40 quarterbacks, the NBC Sports analyst is saying is that he just doesn’t know about the team’s top pick yet.

More than a few people called me “old’’ for writing that Chicago never learns when it comes to falling head over heels for the Bears’ next can’t-miss quarterback. And “old” again for writing that the most recent model, Justin Fields, might be better served by watching and learning from veteran Andy Dalton in 2021.

I have, of course, retained counsel and will be suing everyone for ageism. Do I pay by check or S&H Green Stamps?

The Bears traded up to take Fields with the 11^th overall pick in the April draft. The giddy public reaction to the selection was reminiscent of the day World War II ended, with crowds partying on downtown streets and complete strangers kissing nurses, who have also hired lawyers. The savior had finally arrived for Bears fans. They were sure he would be unlike all those other saviors over all those other years.

I hope Fields turns out to be The One, but I suggested in a recent column that pumping the brakes just a tad on the Bears’ quarterback clown car might soften the emotional impact if he turns out to be like all the franchise’s other disappointments at the position. He’s extremely athletic, and he was very successful at Ohio State. But he did have some rough games, including a poor effort against Northwestern last season, when he completed 12 of 27 passes for 114 yards, and threw two interceptions and no touchdowns. For pointing this out, I was told that if joy ever died, I would be the natural choice for presider at its funeral.

It’s not easy being alone. But, as it turns out, I’m not. NBC Sports analyst Chris Simms, who spent seven seasons playing quarterback in the NFL, annually ranks the top 40 QBs in the league. He has started releasing this year’s list in spurts, and he has Fields ranked — cover your eyes, children — 39^th. It’s not all bad news. Fields did beat out Browns backup Case Keenum, who is ranked 40^th.

Gulp.

Simms is 40. Is that old? Is he having age-related cognitive issues? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. Where did I put my dentures?

What Simms is saying, in the face of a massive, ongoing Chicago pep rally for Fields, is that he just doesn’t know about the kid yet. Is that so wrong?

“Special running ability,” Simms tweeted. “Arm is top notch. Could be a top 20 QB halfway through the season. But his bad mechanics scare me a lot … led to bad incompletions on routine NFL throws. I am rooting for him, hope he makes me eat my words this season.”

Simms went into more detail on his podcast, “Chris Simms Unbuttoned.’’

“The throwing mechanics are really my biggest issues — the inconsistencies there,’’ he said. “Too many slam-dunk NFL completions that were left as incomplete in the college game. That bothered me. He is a little bit of a boom-or-bust prospect. … There’s got to be things he has to clean up, and I have to see (that) first before I can put him in front of some other guys.”

Simms raised another point that should concern Bears fans: Does coach Matt Nagy and his staff have the expertise to correct Fields’ flaws? They couldn’t get it done when it came to former Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky, though that might have had more to do with the student than the teachers. Fields would seem to have a much higher ceiling than Trubisky. Right? RIGHT?

Simms said he has heard from angry Bears fans about his evaluation of Fields. The reaction is much like the grief that former Browns general manager Mike Lombardi received from Bears fans in 2018 for his criticism of Trubisky.

“You couldn’t get me to buy Mitchell Trubisky if you had him on a discount rack at Filene’s Basement,” he said on a SiriusXM radio show. “There’s no chance. He can’t throw the ball inbounds half the time.

“It’s a joke. I was in Chicago this week and all I saw were Trubisky jerseys. And I’m thinking, ‘You people are crazy. You’re going to be selling them in three years.’ There’s no way.”

How dare he rip our young, freshly-scrubbed, eager-to-please Mitch!

Except … he was right.

Last year, Simms had Tua Tagovailoa ranked 40th, and the jury is still very much out on him after his rookie season with the Dolphins. In brighter news for Bears fans, Simms had the Chargers’ Justin Herbert ranked 37th. Herbert went on to win the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year award.

And then there’s this: Simms seemed to imply Wednesday on “The Dan Patrick Show’’ that Dalton, No. 1 on the team’s depth chart at quarterback, didn’t even make his top 40 for 2021.

Hey, don’t shoot me, folks. I’m just the toothless, wrinkled, hairy-eared messenger.

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In one video post that has been liked more than 1.3 million times, the caption says results can be seen in a month if done for five minutes a day.

There’s a wacky workout that has taken TikTok by storm, but is it worth the hype?

A user known only as @janny14906 has gained more than 4.2 million followers for videos she posts of a trusting, dance-like workout class in which she claims is “absolutely 100% effective in reducing belly fat.”

In one video post that has been liked more than 1.3 million times, the caption says results can be seen in a month if done for five minutes a day. Other accounts like @sporttothin have popped up sharing videos of the technique to their nearly 1 million followers.

But the move likely isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, say fitness experts.

Morit Summers, personal trainer and founder of Form Fitness Brooklyn, describes the move as a “very aggressive hip thrust” that could be dangerous, especially to the lower back.

“I actually think that if you do that too much you could potentially cause some real spinal and nerve pain,” she said. “I would just want people to be careful and maybe change it up a little bit.”

Erin Schirack, fitness instructor and co-founder of streaming fitness platform CHI-SOCIETY, says there is some validity in the sense of the move itself, which she describes as a “pelvic tuck,” which can ”help loosen up the lower back and find engagement in the lower abs.”

The way it’s done in this viral class, she says, is not proper form.

“That format is so wild and out of control that it causes it to actually be completely ineffective,” she said. “(It’s) not done in a safe manner.”

Schirack also says the claims about targeting the stomach area need to be busted.

“If anybody ever tells you that a move or an exercise is designed to target something, they’re using it as a marketing tool,” she said.

While there are moves that can help strengthen a certain area, she says it’s a “complete myth” that someone can minimize the size of a certain body part with just one move.

Some people who have tried out the movement have posted about seeing results themselves, though. User @melofficial97 shared a video that compared her progress after a month, where she showed off a more toned tummy. In another video, she writes, “this workout is legit.”

Summers explains this is likely overall weight loss in the body due to increased movement, not stomach fat being specifically reduced as a direct result of this workout.

“If you’re someone that’s been very sedentary, and you are motivated by this trend to get up and move, then yes, you’re going to see a change in your body, because you’re suddenly adding activity,” she explained.

Summers says the seeming simplicity of the move could have attracted people who haven’t been working out much throughout the past year.

“It looks rather easy, right? She’s more or less standing in place and just kind of moving her hips. So I think if you haven’t been doing much and you’re like, ‘Oh that looks like something I can do.’ That’s one piece of it,” she explains.

Schirack thinks the workout has also gained traction due to “the ridiculousness of the move.”

“People think the more ridiculous an exercise is and more complex or silly it looks, they think it must be that secret target to effectiveness,” she said.

Users obsession with the workout may also be amplified from a desire to get in shape for post-pandemic life.

As vaccines have rolled out across the country, trainers say they’ve seen significant increases in clients aiming to look their best by the time the world fully reopens.

Though fitness and mental health professionals agree a healthy lifestyle is a worthy goal, they caution against quick physical transformations – especially after a year that was traumatic for so many.

“You can’t just jump right back into working out six, seven days a week like you did in the beginning,” Noam Tamir, founder and CEO of the New York City gym TS Fitness, told USA TODAY in March. “You’ll burn yourself out, you can get injured, you can stunt your progress because you’re just doing too much.”

Contributing: Charles Trepany

Read more at usatoday.com

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The suspect was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the largest county in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County sheriff’s authorities said.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — An employee opened fire Wednesday at a California rail yard serving Silicon Valley, killing eight people before ending his own life, authorities said.

The suspect was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the largest county in the Bay Area, Santa Clara County sheriff’s authorities said.

The attacker was identified as 57-year-old Sam Cassidy, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators offered no immediate word on a possible motive.

The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. at a light rail facility in San Jose next door to the sheriff’s department and across a freeway from the airport. The facility is a transit control center that stores trains and has a maintenance yard.

Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said the attack resulted in “multiple major injuries.” He did not know the type of weapon used or whether the gunfire happened indoors or outdoors. He said the victims included VTA employees. Authorities did not release any of the victims’ names.

“These folks were heroes during COVID 19, the buses never stopped running, VTA didn’t stop running. They just kept at work, and now we’re really calling on them to be heroes a second time to survive such a terrible, terrible tragedy,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said it was his understanding the shooting happened indoors, inside the VTA building.

Police vehicles and orange crime-scene tape blocked off the area, and reporters were kept at a distance The rail yard is in the city’s administrative neighborhood, near the sheriff’s office and city and county offices.

Bomb squads were searching the rail complex after receiving information about possible explosive devices inside the building, Davis said.

VTA trains were already out on morning runs when the shooting occurred. Light rail service was to be suspended at noon and replaced with bus bridges, agency Chairman Glenn Hendricks told a news conference.

“It’s just very difficult for everyone to be able try to wrap their heads around and understand what has happened,” Hendricks said.

Two patients were transported to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, according to spokesperson Joy Alexiou. One person was pronounced dead upon arrival, and the other was in critical condition.

Outside the scene, Michael Hawkins told The Mercury News that he was waiting for his mother, Rochelle Hawkins, who had called him from a co-worker’s phone to assure him that she was safe.

When the shooting started, “she got down with the rest of her coworkers” and dropped her cellphone, Michael Hawkins told the newspaper. Rochelle Hawkins did not see the shooter, and she was not sure how close she had been to the attacker, her son said.

The attack was the county’s second shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people before killing himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.

At a news conference, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo lamented the “horrific day for our city.” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a tweet that his office was “in close contact with local law enforcement and monitoring this situation closely.”

Agents from the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were responding to the crime scene, officials said.

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Associated Press writers Martha Mendoza in San Jose, Janie Har in San Francisco, John Antczak and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles, and Michael Balsamo and Colleen Long in Washington also contributed to this report.

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TULSA, Okla. — In the early days of Oklahoma’s statehood, an angry white mob fanned by rumors of a Black uprising burned a thriving African American community in the oil boomtown of Tulsa. Although the area was quietly rebuilt and enjoyed a renaissance in the years after the 1921 Race Massacre, the struggle among Black people over their place in the city didn’t end.

This month, local and state leaders will formally recognize and atone for the massacre, which claimed up to several hundred lives, with a series of ceremonies that includes a keynote address by national voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams. President Joe Biden is also coming to the city, the White House announced. But Black Tulsans say that, amid the kind words, efforts both direct and subtle still aim to curb their influence and withhold their fair share of power.

OKLAHOMA HISTORY

Before statehood in 1907, Oklahoma was home to Native American tribes pushed out of other regions by white expansion. Then the government decided to open up this land, too, and it became attractive to former slaves who were fleeing persecution in the South. It was also home to Black people who had been brought to the territory by slave-holding tribes.

Some African Americans participated in the land runs in the late 1800s. They included E.P. McCabe, the leader of a movement who hoped to make Oklahoma a majority-Black state free from white oppression.

“(McCabe) actually recruited Black people to come to Oklahoma on the theory that Oklahoma was the new promised land for these folks,” said Oklahoma historian Hannibal Johnson, author of several books about Oklahoma’s Black history. “Oklahoma didn’t really live up to its billing, obviously.”

Instead, white settlers, many from surrounding Confederate states, poured into the territory, bringing with them views of Black people as inferiors who had to be kept in check. After Oklahoma became a state, the first law approved was a Jim Crow statute requiring segregation of rail cars and depots.

“Oklahoma, in many ways although arguably not a Southern state in terms of racial policy, began to mimic the Deep South,” Johnson said.

THE TULSA RACE MASSACRE

In the 1920s, during the so-called Harlem Renaissance when African Americans were migrating from the South, Tulsa had a Black community of close to 10,000 people on the north side of the Frisco railroad tracks. The city was flush with money from the booming oilfields, and Black residents held jobs as hotel porters, car mechanics, laborers and domestic workers. The Greenwood district, known as Black Wall Street, was the wealthiest Black community in the United States, with its own stores, restaurants and other Black-owned businesses.

On May 31, 1921, carloads of Black residents, some of them armed, rushed to the sheriff’s office downtown to confront white men who were gathering apparently to abduct and lynch a Black prisoner in the jail. Gunfire broke out, and over the next 24 hours, a white mob inflamed by rumors of a Black insurrection stormed the Greenwood district and burned it, destroying all 35 square blocks. Estimates of those killed ranged from 50 to 300.

THE BLACK COMMUNITY NOW

A hundred years later, African Americans still live on the city’s north side and account for about 16% of Tulsa’s population of 400,000, or double the proportion found in Oklahoma overall. The median income of black households is $25,979, about half that of white households in Tulsa County.

For decades after the massacre, doctors, ministers and lawyers, along with the faculty of Booker T. Washington High School and the publishers of the Oklahoma Eagle newspaper, provided leadership. But Black residents had little say in the city’s government because Tulsa had at-large voting for its city commission. A Black person wasn’t elected to the council until 1990, after a ward system was introduced.

Tulsa’s Black community is now more politically engaged than it once was, according to community activists. In 2020, a 34-year-old Black man who came to Tulsa through the Teach for America program won the Democratic nomination in the race for Tulsa’s congressional seat, and a 30-year-old Black community organizer finished second in the city’s mayoral race.

The killings of two unarmed Black men by white Tulsa law enforcement officers in recent years energized some young Black voters, said Charles Wilkes, a 27-year-old community organizer.

In 2015, a white reserve sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Eric Harris, 44, during an arrest. A year later, police officer, Betty Shelby fatally shot Terence Crutcher, who had his hands raised. Shelby said she thought he was reaching for a weapon.

“We’ve seen shootings time and time and time again,” Wilkes said.

Tulsa’s Black community has seen an influx of foundation and nonprofit funding, much of it for improving public schools and fighting poverty. In 2018, the city was dubbed tops in the nation for philanthropy by the readers of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Black community organizations have multiplied.

State Rep. Monroe Nichols, a Democrat from Tulsa, said the Black community must now focus on boosting voter turnout — Oklahoma overall had the lowest voter turnout in the nation in 2020.

“I think the interest is there,” he said. “I just think the engagement isn’t there yet.”

CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION

Oklahoma’s leadership, overwhelmingly white and conservative, is no longer in denial about the race massacre, which for decades received only brief mention in state history books.

State and local officials have supported the observance of the anniversary. A new multi-media museum has been embraced as a step toward recognizing the lessons of the incident. Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford is a member of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission.

But atonement for the past hasn’t meant an end to hostile moves in the present, Black community members say. They cite Oklahoma Republicans’ support for national GOP efforts to limit voting opportunities, and especially Lankford’s plan to challenge the certification of the 2020 presidential election over ballots cast in cities with large Black populations.

Lankford backed off those plans after insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol and later issued an apology to Black Tulsans.

“I can assure you, my intent to give a voice to Oklahomans who had questions was never also an intent to diminish the voice of any Black American,” he said.

Oklahoma’s Gov. Kevin Stitt also was a member of the commission, but was removed after he signed a bill to prohibit the teaching of certain concepts of race and racism in public schools.

Meanwhile, the GOP-dominated Legislature has responded to Black Lives Matter protests over social injustice by cracking down on protesters. One new law makes blocking a street a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. The measure also provides legal immunity in some cases to motorists who run into demonstrators on the road.

“If rioters are surrounding someone’s car, threatening that person, they have a right to protect their family,” said Stitt, who was criticized on Twitter by Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter for signing the measure.

Oklahoma’s voting laws are also among the most restrictive in the nation, with only 3 1/2 days of early in-person voting. Mailed-in absentee ballots must be notarized, which Nichols said can be particularly difficult for poor people.

Though wielding less political clout than Black people in Old South states with large Black populations, African Americans in Oklahoma are showing more potential as they combine with higher educated white voters to elect more Democrats in the big cities. Tulsa and Oklahoma City are now increasingly Democratic, with seven African American legislators.

But the Legislature’s conservative Republican leadership keeps this group on the margins. Seventy-two of the 81 bills introduced by Black legislators this year never received a committee hearing, according to an Associated Press analysis. Only two made it to the governor’s desk.

“There’s just not respect for the Black experience or Black voices,” Nichols said.

House Majority Floor Leader Rep. Jon Echols, a Republican, said Black members may be deflected because they’re pushing more liberal bills in a conservative Legislature.

“It’s not a function of race,” he said.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — An assailant opened fire Wednesday at a California railyard serving Silicon Valley, killing eight people. The suspect was also dead, authorities said.

Santa Clara County sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said the suspect was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the largest county in the Bay Area.

Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said it was “undetermined” how the shooter died.

The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. at a light rail facility in San Jose next door to the sheriff’s department and across a freeway from the airport. The facility is a transit control center that stores trains and has a maintenance yard.

Davis said he did not know the type of weapon used or whether the gunfire happened indoors or outdoors. He said the victims include VTA employees. Authorities did not release any of the victims’ names.

“A horrible tragedy has happened today, and our thoughts and love go out to the VTA family,” VTA Chairman Glenn Hendricks told a news conference.

VTA trains were already out on morning runs when the shooting occurred. Light rail service was to be suspended at noon and replaced with bus bridges, Hendricks said.

Two patients were transported to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, according to spokesperson Joy Alexiou. One person was pronounced dead upon arrival, and the other was in critical condition.

Outside the scene, Michael Hawkins told The Mercury News that he was waiting for his mother, Rochelle Hawkins, who had called him from a co-worker’s phone to assure him that she was safe.

When the shooting started, “she got down with the rest of her coworkers” and dropped her cellphone, Michael Hawkins told the newspaper. Rochelle Hawkins did not see the shooter, and she was not sure how close she had been to the attacker, her son said.

The attack was the county’s second shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people before killing himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.

At a news conference, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo lamented the “horrific day for our city.” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a tweet that his office was “in close contact with local law enforcement and monitoring this situation closely.”

Agents from the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were responding to the crime scene, officials said.

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The City Council agreed Wednesday to end what one alderman called a “public safety nightmare”: rogue tow truck drivers who rush to accident scenes, snare damaged vehicles and hold them hostage until rattled motorists pay exorbitant fees.

At the behest of Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), the Council approved a revised ordinance that calls for the city to establish a first-ever license for tow truck operators, require a $250 license for every truck they use and license the locations where vehicles they tow are stored.

Last month, the towing crackdown stalled in committee amid concern about the impact on city contractors.

Villegas salvaged the ordinance he championed, in part, by exempting city vendors, provided that vehicles not working on city contracts purchase annual city licenses.

On Wednesday, Villegas took a victory lap.

“This has been a public safety nightmare. … Whatever is currently in place is not working,” Villegas said, referring to current regulations by the Illinois Commerce Commission.

“This license … will create accountability for both the good and bad actors and life-changing protections for all communities. … Today is the beginning of a safer and more accountable tomorrow.”

Sgt. Keith Blair of the Chicago Police Department’s Major Auto Theft Unit has called towing abuses a “very serious problem” that has “overloaded” CPD and hampered its ability to investigate the number of vehicles towed illegally from crash scenes.

“They’re using any method necessary to try and obtain control of an unsuspecting victim’s vehicle. Promising them free rental and [making] other promises that they never fulfill. And they end up holding these cars hostage,” Blair told aldermen during a committee hearing last month.

“They’re closely aligned in some areas with gangs. … Much like we see gang conflicts, we see gang conflicts among tow drivers as well.”

The ordinance also would prohibit certain acts, such as:

o Stopping “at or near” an accident scene or near a damaged or disabled vehicle to solicit the vehicle owner unless summoned to the scene by law enforcement, other city or state agencies or the vehicle owner or his or her representative.

o Making any false, misleading or threatening statements to the vehicle owner for the purpose of coercing the owner to engage the operator’s towing services, such as claiming to be affiliated with a government agency or insurance company that would cover the towing cost.

o Holding a towed vehicle against the owner’s will until the motorist agrees to pay a “ransom” fee amounting to thousands of dollars.

Extra Cubs night game

Also on Wednesday, the Cubs got the go-ahead to play a rare Friday night game on June 18 against the Miami Marlins because the team returns to Chicago late the night before after playing the Mets in New York.

Normally, Friday and Saturday night games are off limits because they exacerbate parking and congestion problems in Wrigleyville on a night restaurants and nightclubs draw their biggest crowds.

But at the behest of local Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), the City Council’s Committee on License and Consumer Protection agreed to make the one-time exception due to the Cubs’ travel schedule, hoping a better-rested home team would be more likely to defeat the Miami Marlins.

“It’s a pretty simple ask. This is to move a day game that was scheduled for Friday, June 18 to a night game. … We’ve done it in the past on a very limited basis to help accommodate tight travel schedules in the hopes that a well-rested team might get us in the playoffs,” Tunney said.

“The Cubs, traditionally by the night game ordinance, were not allowed Friday or Saturday night games without this kind of exception. … This was done historically because generally, in Lake View and other communities, Friday and Saturday night are the busiest nights for restaurants, theater and other uses that really are necessary to keep these businesses alive. When there’s a game around Wrigley Field, there’s too much congestion and parking issues for other businesses to really survive.”

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Chris Simms annual quarterback rankings are out and he has Justin Fields as the 39th best quarterback in the NFL.

The post Chris Simms ranks Chicago Bears QB Justin Fields near bottom of list at position first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More

The artist’s new solo exhibition explores the impact and imperfections of the South Side Community Art Center.

If you talk to the artist Faheem Majeed for more than a few minutes, it’s likely that he’ll mention the South Side Community Art Center, the storied cultural institution where he served as executive director from 2005 to 2011. In some ways, he’s never left, as his art practice continues to explore the institution’s legacy and contemporary significance.…Read More