What’s New

The children were taken to Stroger Hospital, where two were in serious-to-critical condition and the others were in fair-to-serious condition, officials said.

Five people, including four children, were hurt in a crash Monday night in Lawndale on the West Side.

The incident happened in the 1200 block of South Central Park Avenue, according to Chicago fire officials.

The children were taken to Stroger Hospital, where two were in serious-to-critical condition and the others were in fair-to-serious condition, officials said.

An adult was also taken to the same hospital in fair-to-serious condition, officials said.

Details on the crash were not immediately released.

Read More

A 22-year-old man is facing charges nearly three years after allegedly shooting and robbing another man in West Englewood on the South Side.

Derieon Thomas was arrested Sunday after he was identified as the person who allegedly shot a 29-year-old man August 3, 2018, in the 5500 block of South Marshfield Avenue, Chicago police said.

That day, Thomas allegedly fired shots at the man and struck him in the hip, police said. He was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in serious condition at the time.

Thomas was charged with one felony count each of armed robbery and aggravated battery, police said.

He is due in court Tuesday.

Read More

Is the Cubs’ Kris Bryant really an underrated player? Teammate Anthony Rizzo thinks so.

Before the Cubs’ game Monday against the Dodgers at Wrigley Field was postponed because of the forecast of inclement weather, Rizzo was asked about Bryant’s hot start to the season. Bryant, who was named the National League player of the week Monday, has looked like the player who became a household name after being voted the NL Rookie of the Year in 2015 and the NL MVP in 2016.

Since those first two years, Bryant has accumulated 5.7 wins above replacement (according to Baseball Reference) in 2017 and 4.5 WAR in 2019, but he had an injury-plagued 2018 and struggled badly when he was in the lineup in the shortened 2020 season.

Rizzo has been connected with Bryant for more than a half-decade. He said Bryant is underrated and implied his consistency has gotten him overshadowed by other players.

”In this league, when you come on and you don’t continue to somehow ‘wow’ and you just stay consistent, the next guy comes up and wows or someone breaks out,” Rizzo said. ”Meanwhile, KB’s just been Steady Eddie. He’s had a couple of injuries, but he’s a really good baseball player, and it’s really nice to see him have this start of success because he’s enjoying it a lot more now and it’s contagious.”

The struggling Cubs hope it will prove to be contagious when they actually begin their series against the Dodgers. The Cubs will send right-hander Kyle Hendricks against Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw in Game 1 of a doubleheader Tuesday. Dodgers right-hander Trevor Bauer will oppose a to-be-determined Cubs starter in the nightcap.

On Monday, Bryant was going to show off another hallmark of his game: versatility. For only the second time in the majors, Bryant was set to start in center field. He has spent most of his career at third base but also has played left and right field to go with a handful of appearances at first base.

And it’s not as though Bryant looks lost when he leaves third. A strong athlete, he gets good jumps on the ball because he can read it well off the bat, giving the Cubs another viable outfield option when they need to juggle the lineup.

”His ability to do that is huge for our team,” Rizzo said. ”It gives us so much flexibility for him to jump around, and I don’t think he seems to mind it, either.”

None of this is news to Cubs manager David Ross, who was there as a teammate for Bryant’s first two seasons. He has started Bryant in the outfield 12 times this season and hasn’t noticed a drop-off at the plate despite moving him around the diamond.

”To me, it just says how good of a baseball player he is,” Ross said. ”He’s showing that. It doesn’t matter what he does, where you move him to, he’s going to go out and do his best.”

NOTES: Manager David Ross said outfielder Ian Happ and second baseman Nico Hoerner were both pretty sore after their collision Sunday in Cincinnati. Both went through a series of tests to see how they were doing. Neither was in the lineup posted before the postponement.

o Outfielder Joc Pederson (tendinitis in his left wrist) was activated from the 10-day injured list, and right-hander Keegan Thompson was optioned to the Cubs’ alternate site in South Bend, Indiana. By optioning Thompson, the Cubs are going with a five-man bench and keeping Hoerner in the majors.

o Ross said he hopes reliever Pedro Strop, who is on a personal leave, returns to the Cubs but indicated he doesn’t know when that will be.

Read More

All I’ve seen for analysis of the Bears 2021 draft are grades of A to A++ to ”The Rapture.”

The previously reviled Ryan Pace, once a dunce as a general manager, is now a genius.

Amazing what a quarterback named Justin Fields can do for a franchise.

Well, so.

Sports columnists are skeptical by nature, even cynical. Some people might say we’re a herd of Negative Nancies.

Then there is my colleague Rick Morrissey. If a water glass is half-full, I’ll instinctively say it’s half empty. Rick M. will say its three-quarters full of pesticide.

Indeed, upon hearing the Bears’ draft news, that human rain cloud wrote that he wished he ”had slept in” and did it ”for a month.” He said that all the ”salivating” deeply troubled him, that the main outcome of this choosing of a star quarterback from Ohio State in the first round was that Pace ”will likely gain another year or two of employment.”

I am a cheerful tulip compared to that crabgrass.

And yet . . . even I have doubts.

Small ones, true. But they lurk.

For example, why was Fields, who was predicted to go way up in the draft, as high as No. 2 or No. 3, available all the way down at No. 11?

I mean, there was a time when Fields was considered an equal or better quarterback than first overall pick, Trevor Lawrence.

Big-haired Mel Kiper called Fields his ”second-ranked quarterback, who would be in the discussion at No. 1 overall in any other year.”

So three quarterbacks went before Fields? At one, two, and three?

Then nothing for seven picks? The Bears traded up for Fields, so who knows when he would have gone if they hadn’t taken him.

A tight end, an offensive tackle, two cornerbacks, three wide receivers — all better picks than Fields?

Yes, I’ve heard the justifications, the ”logic.”

Those teams didn’t need quarterbacks. They needed help elsewhere.

So the Panthers are happy with Sam Darnold? The Falcons love Matt Ryan, who turns 36 in a week?

The Lions like their swap with the Rams for Jared Goff?

The Broncos are good with Teddy Bridgewater or Drew Lock?

The Eagles — serious? — will hand the controls to 22-year old Jalen Hurts? And then there’s the 49ers, who took virtually untested North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance at No. 3.

All those teams passed on Fields. Maybe they’re right. In fact, they might be absolutely right.

Which troubles me.

Very little has been made of Fields having epilepsy. He had one seizure in ninth grade, woke up in an ambulance, and that was pretty much the extent of it, he has said. It’s under control, with medication, and he claims it has had ”zero effect on football.”

I’m sure he’s right. But it’s hard not to worry about possible exacerbating head trauma in a league where head blows are fast and furious.

Indeed, according to the Epilepsy Foundation, traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are themselves potential causes of epilepsy.

”TBI is a well-recognized cause of seizures and epilepsy” says the foundation’s website. ”TBI can occur as a result of the head suddenly and violently hitting an object (falls, car accidents, sports injuries).”

”We’re completely fine with it,” Pace said of Fields’ condition.

I guess we should be too.

Yet I’m reminded here of former Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, and his Type 1 diabetes, and his need to maintain precise sugar/insulin balancing for optimum performance.

Cutler almost never talked about his condition. But it was hard not to wonder if late in tough games in hot, humid conditions, he didn’t fade a bit either mentally or physically because of it.

There was some idle gossip among NFL ”insiders” that Fields was not a hard worker. A big no-no. But that stuff got blasted out of the water by, among others, Fields’ college coach, Ryan Day, who called it ”reckless.”

But did some of it stick?

I don’t know. In this year-plus of COVID, we know so little about so many athletes.

I also wonder if Pace isn’t trying to make up for his 2017 blunder of taking bust Mitch Trubisky when the transcendent Patrick Mahomes was staring him in the face. Let’s hope this isn’t Pace-ian payback, or even the Bears’ way of proving they will take a black quarterback as their premier player.

One last thing. Ohio State is not known as the cradle of quarterbacks, unless Art Schlichter from 30 years ago floats your boat.

Call me concerned. Not Morrissey-level, of course. Just garden-variety concerned.

Read More

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday the state has met some metrics that could allow Illinois to enter the “bridge” stage between restrictions now in place and a full reopening, cracking the door to higher capacity limits at museums, zoos and meetings potentially as early as next week.

At an unrelated news conference, Pritzker said he couldn’t provide the exact date the state could move into the stage between Phases 4 and 5 because he hadn’t yet looked at data from Sunday and Monday about hospital admissions, but he said it looks like the state is in “decent shape” to advance to the bridge phase.

“I think the common view is that Illinois has weathered the storm well, that we’ve seen what’s happened in in Michigan, and that hasn’t happened in Illinois — thank God,” Pritzker said. “This virus is sometimes unpredictable. We’ve seen new variants that arise. The UK variant is the one, of course, that is most prevalent.”

Screen image

“That’s why we’ve been very careful not to move to the bridge phase while we watch that variant in Illinois, but it looks very good so far. We look at all of those variants — I talked to the experts about this — I think everybody feels like we’re in a decent position — again, following the metrics — we believe that we’ll be able to move to the bridge phase.”

As for when the state will cross that bridge, the governor said, “I can’t say exactly what day that is. … I believe that it may be next week, and it’s only because I haven’t looked at today’s data or the data from yesterday with regard to hospital admissions.”

Statewide reopening metrics from the Illinois Department of Public Health show the state is largely trending in the right direction.

Nearly 80% of those 65 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while roughly 55% of those 16 and older have received the inoculation. Both figures surpass the benchmarks Pritzker set in March when unveiling guidelines for his newly created “bridge” phase.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file

Metrics for available, and staffed, beds in intensive care units have hovered near 20% since late April.

The department’s data also show new daily COVID-19 cases on the decline and no significant changes in the state’s daily mortality rate or new hospital admissions for COVID-19 or similar illnesses.

But the department’s data does show an increase in the overall trend of patients hospitalized with the deadly virus, a figure that’s been on the decline over the past four days.

Pritzker said he’s been “amazed” at Illinois residents’ willingness to follow the mitigations, including those who’ve been vaccinated but continue to wear masks while outdoors. He encouraged those who haven’t yet been vaccinated to do so, saying “one of the rewards is that we can all enjoy the summer without a mask on if you’ve gotten vaccinated, and you’re also doing what’s right for your family and your community.”

The governor announced the 28-day “bridge” phase of his reopening plan in March, nearly a year after issuing his first stay-at-home order.

To reach that phase, 70% of those 65 and over must have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. A full reopening comes when 50% of the state’s 16 and over population have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file

The state must also maintain a 20% or lower intensive-care-unit bed availability rate and hold steady on COVID-19 and COVID-like illness hospital admissions, mortality rate, and case rate over a 28-day monitoring period.

Less than two weeks after Pritzker announced that new plan, rising case numbers and hospitalizations pushed back any reopening plans.

In the intermediate bridge stage between Phases 4 and 5, museums will see their capacity limitations increase from 25% to 60%. The same limitations will apply to zoos.

Brian Rich/Archivo Sun-Times file

Amusement parks will be able to increase capacity from the 25% restriction in Phase 4 to 60% in the intermediate stage. Festivals and general admission outdoor, spectator events can seat 30 people per 1,000 square feet in the bridge phase.

Amusement parks will be able to increase capacity from the 25% restriction in Phase 4 to 60% in the intermediate stage. Festivals and general admission outdoor, spectator events can seat 30 people per 1,000 square feet in the bridge phase.

Meetings, conferences and conventions will see their capacity limit increase to either 1,000 people or 60%, whichever is less. The limitations around meetings also apply to theaters and performing arts venues.

Read More

A man was killed in a shooting Monday in South Shore, police said.

About 5:50 p.m., the 31-year-old was in the 7800 block of South South Shore Drive when someone opened fire, striking him in the hand, groin and leg, Chicago police said.

The man was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead, police said.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office hasn’t released details.

Area Two detectives are investigating.

Read More

Baseball by the numbers: MLB again seeing lots of strikeouts and home runs, low averages.

The way baseball is played today, the White Sox are almost an anomaly.

Stringing together enough hits to produce runs has become more difficult in an age of hard-throwing pitchers and defensive shifts. Rosters have been constructed to favor home-run hitters and quick-strike offenses.

With the caution that April is always tough on hitters, we’ve seen a continuation of the trends toward fewer balls in play and offenses dominated by the three true outcomes of strikeouts, walks and homers.

Yet the Sox, who rank fourth in the majors at 4.96 runs per game (through Sunday), are 26th with 24 homers, eight fewer than the major-league average. Their 236 strikeouts represent 23.3% of their plate appearances, lower than the major-league average of 24.4%.

The Sox’ .257 batting average ranks third and is 23 points above the major-league average of .234. Augmented by 101 walks — 10.1% of their plate appearances — the Sox have a .340 on-base percentage that trails only the Dodgers’ .346.

The Cubs are more in line with trends. They’re hitting for a low average (.224, 10 points below the major-league average), striking out (282 times for 26.9% of their plate appearances, sixth in the majors), walking (104 times for 9.9% of their plate appearances) and hitting homers (37 for 3.5% of their plate appearances vs. the major-league average of 3.1). Their 4.61 runs per game are 14th in the majors but .28 above average.

Let’s take a look at major-league averages:

• Strikeouts: In 2020, strikeouts per game dropped after 14 consecutive seasons of year-to-year increases.

But strikeouts weren’t really down. That was just a statistical oddity created by shorter games with seven-inning doubleheaders and extra innings shortened by the man-on-second rule.

Strikeouts per game fell from a record 8.81 per team in 2019 to 8.68 in 2020, but strikeouts increased to 23.4% of plate appearances in 2020 after 23% in 2019. The long-term rise in strikeouts continued, masked by shorter games.

Through Sunday, teams are striking out an average of 9.05 times per game, a record pace if it continues.

• Walks: Bases on balls are down to 3.29 per team per game after 3.39 last season, which was up from 3.27 in 2019. Walks crested with an expansion-era high of 3.75 in 2000 but settled down to a recent low of 2.88 in 2014.

• Home runs: At 1.16 per team per game, homers are down from 1.28 last season and a record 1.39 in 2019, but they’re still at the fifth-highest level in history. Expect a power increase in warmer weather.

• Batting average: The current .234 average would be the lowest in history, even below the .237 in the Year of the Pitcher in 1968. That’s down from .245 in 2020, the lowest since .244 in 1972.

Roster construction plays a part in the trends. If execs thought the best way to score was to have contact hitters spray the ball, you’d see prospects with thick-handled, thick-barreled bats learning to hit to the opposite field. But power is what puts runs on the board these days, and more homers, more strikeouts and lower batting averages are what you get.

Read More

The Microsoft co-founder and his wife, who launched the world’s largest charitable foundation, said they would continue to work together at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

SEATTLE — Bill and Melinda Gates said Monday that they are divorcing but would keep working together at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest charitable foundations in the world.

In identical tweets, the Microsoft co-founder and his wife said they had made the decision to end their marriage of 27 years.

“We have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives,” they said in a statement. “We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.”

Bill Gates was formerly the world’s richest person and his fortune is estimated at well over $100 billion. How the couple end up settling their estate and any impact on the foundation will be closely watched, especially after another high-profile Seattle-area billionaire couple recently ended their marriage.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos finalized their divorce in 2019. MacKenzie Scott has since remarried and now focuses on her own philanthropy after receiving a 4% stake in Amazon, worth more than $36 billion.

The Gateses were married in 1994 in Hawaii. They met after she began working at Microsoft as a product manager in 1987.

In her 2019 memoir, “The Moment of Lift,” Melinda Gates wrote about her childhood, life and private struggles as the wife of a public icon and stay-at-home mom with three kids. She won Bill Gates’ heart after meeting at a work dinner, sharing a mutual love of puzzles and beating him at a math game.

She also detailed the ways they navigated imbalances in their marriage and parenting journey and noted how working together at the foundation made their relationship better.

“Bill and I are equal partners,” Melinda Gates said in a 2019 interview with The Associated Press. “Men and women should be equal at work.”

The Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the most influential private foundation in the world, with an endowment worth nearly $50 billion. It has focused on global health and development and U.S. education issues since incorporating in 2000.

While both are global figures, Melinda Gates has increasingly built her profile as a champion of women and girls. The former tech business executive launched her private Pivotal Ventures investment and incubation company in 2015 and recently partnered with Scott for a newly announced equity challenge.

David Callahan, founder of the Insider Philanthropy website and author of “The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age” says it’s too early to know how the divorce will affect the Gates foundation and the wider philanthropic community.

Although the couple say they will continue to work together at their foundation, Callahan suggests Melinda Gates could still pursue her own philanthropic work.

“You can imagine two separate tracks where they’re both working together at the foundation, and each is pursuing their own independent philanthropy outside the foundation,” Callahan said.

He said the possibility of Melinda Gates opening another philanthropic foundation would have a dramatic impact.

“Nobody knows what the terms are of their divorce agreement. But if Melinda Gates ends up with just some portion of that wealth and turns to creating her own foundation, it would be among one of the biggest foundations probably in America,” Callahan said.

As the public face of the foundation’s COVID-19 grants and advocacy work, Bill Gates has come under fire for being a staunch supporter of intellectual property rights for vaccine makers. While the tech icon says protecting the shots’ recipes will ensure incentives for research and development, critics claim that mentality hampers supply in favor of drug company profits.

Last year, Bill Gates said he was stepping down from Microsoft’s board to focus on philanthropy.

He was Microsoft’s CEO until 2000 and since then has gradually scaled back his involvement in the company he started with Paul Allen in 1975. He transitioned out of a day-to-day role in Microsoft in 2008 and served as chairman of the board until 2014.

___

Associated Press reporter Haleluya Hadero contributed from New York. Follow Sally Ho at https://twitter.com/_sallyho.

Read More

More than 40,000 ShotSpotter alerts prompted no formal reports of any crime over a 21-month stretch — amounting to an average of 61 unfounded deployments each day.

An analysis of the city’s gunshot detection system released Monday found that nearly 86% of police deployments to alerts of gunfire prompted no formal reports of any crime.

The research, conducted by the MacArthur Justice Center at the Northwestern University School of Law, shows there were more that 40,000 “dead-end deployments” to gunshot alerts recorded between July 2019 and mid-April — an average of 61 each day.

Just 10% of the alerts over that period sent officers on calls that likely involved guns, the researchers found after analyzing records kept by the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

ShotSpotter, the publicly traded company that provides its acoustic gunshot detection technology to Chicago and 110 other cities across the country, claims its system is a “highly effective technology” that’s 97% accurate. During a news conference Monday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot called ShotSpotter “an incredibly important tool in our crime-fighting arsenal” and questioned whether the new research is “actually accurate.”

Meanwhile, activists continue to raise concerns about ShotSpotter’s ability to distinguish between gunfire and other loud noises like fireworks. In addition, alarms are being sounded over the technology’s potential to increase the number of highly charged law enforcement interactions in police districts with large minority populations.

“It sends police racing into communities searching, often in vain, for gunfire,” said Jessey Neves, a spokeswoman for the MacArthur Justice Center. “Any resident in the area will be a target of police suspicion or worse. These volatile deployments can go wrong in an instant.”

Lissa Druss, a spokeswoman for ShotSpotter, defended the technology but acknowledged that the company hasn’t reviewed the findings of the new study.

“ShotSpotter technology is incredibly accurate, alerting officers to the exact location of gunfire incidents in less than 60 seconds, finding victims who need assistance, getting them medical aid faster [and] saving lives,” Druss said.

The Chicago Police Department’s relationship with ShotSpotter began in 2012 when the technology was implemented to cover a small portion of the city. That reach expanded to over 100 square miles when the department entered into a new $33 million contract in 2018, at which point ShotSpotter described the city as its “largest customer.”

With the current contract set to expire in August, Lightfoot said CPD officials have continued to evaluate the arrangement to ensure the city is “getting the best bang for our buck.”

The mayor told reporters that ShotSpotter is a “life-saver” when paired with other technology at the CPD’s Strategic Decision Support Centers, crediting the combination with helping raise this year’s homicide clearance rate.

“In an environment where people are fearful sometimes of calling 911 for a variety of reasons, ShotSpotter allows us to understand that … those challenges exist that are out there,” she said. “So where the calls for service don’t come, we still are able to respond.”

The Police Department’s use of the gunshot detection technology has drawn increased attention after the death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, who was fatally shot by an officer responding to ShotSpotter alerts in late March. Freddy Martinez, executive director of the transparency nonprofit Lucy Parsons Labs, penned an op-ed last week in South Side Weekly calling for an end to the city’s deal with ShotSpotter in the wake of his killing.

“We must work to abolish the use of surveillance technologies to bring justice for Adam Toledo and others like him,” Martinez wrote.

On Monday morning, Martinez’s group and two other nonprofits filed an amicus brief in a pending murder case in Cook County court that relies on ShotSpotter evidence. The MacArthur Justice Center is representing the organizations behind the filing, which draws on the new findings about ShotSpotter.

The defendant, 64-year-old Michael Williams, has pleaded not guilty to six counts of murder stemming from a fatal shooting on the South Side that happened amid a wave of looting late last May. Williams, who was denied bail, already filed a motion April 22 to exclude the ShotSpotter evidence, court records show.

Spokespeople for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment on the pending case. So did officials in the Cook County public defender’s office, which is handling Williams’ defense.

Monday’s filing piggybacks on Williams’ motion and urges the court to scrutinize ShotSpotter’s reliability given that the technology has “far-reaching consequences beyond this single case.” They note that other cities have dropped ShotSpotter “because the system sent their officers out on too many wild goose chases.”

Citing the technology’s “significant, cross-cutting consequences for the legal rights of Chicagoans” and the lack of any “meaningful judicial scrutiny” in Illinois, the groups asked the court “to take seriously its duty to investigate and ascertain the reliability of reports of gunfire that ShotSpotter generates.”

Read More

Brandon Corbin, 24, was fatally shot while driving a vehicle with his wife in the passenger seat, police said.

A driver crashed his vehicle after being fatally shot Sunday in suburban Berwyn.

Officers responded to a call of shots fired about 2:35 a.m. in the area of 13th Street and Wenonah Avenue and found a rolled over vehicle, Berwyn police said.

Brandon Corbin, 24, who was driving the vehicle, had been shot in the head, police said. He was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood where he was pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

His wife, who was riding in the vehicle, was also taken to a hospital, police said.

Investigators found that several males approached Corbin’s vehicle in an alley on Roosevelt Road and engaged him in conversation, police said.

When Corbin drove away, shots were fired in the direction of his vehicle, striking him in the head, police said. Corbin hit several parked cars after being shot, causing his car to overturn.

Berwyn police are investigating.

Read More