GLENDALE, ARIZONA – FEBRUARY 25: Aaron Bummer #39 of the Chicago White Sox pitches against the San Francisco Giants on February 25, 2020 at Camelback Ranch in Glendale Arizona. (Photo by Ron Vesely/Getty Images)
The 3-4 start is probably not what Chicago White Sox fans hoped for heading into the home opener, which is the first time the Sox have had fans at Guaranteed Rate Field since 2019. Especially with the team being a hot pick to win the American League or even the World Series in 2021.
Indeed, judging by the reactions of fans on Twitter, the word “letdown” is an understatement. Twitter is obviously not a representative sample of all Sox fans but there certainly was an undercurrent of “oh man, this team is actually bad” sentiment on the platform.
I am here to tell concerned Sox fans, and given my reaction to Wednesday’s sixth-inning meltdown, I am one of them, to relax. It will all be okay.
There is no reason for the Chicago White Sox fans to be worried so early.
The bullpen’s bad week wasn’t that bad: Some of the problems sprung not from poor pitching but poor defense. Yes, untimely homers and hits hurt. That said, the bullpen didn’t look completely disastrous, rather key hits/home runs overshadowed otherwise decent if not great performances.
The Los Angeles Angels, who took three of four from the Sox, are good. They have a lineup that includes the game’s best player in Mike Trout, an aging slugger who can still mash (Albert Pujols), and the dangerous player from both sides in Shohei Ohtani. To expect the Sox to go into Anaheim and wipe the floor with a solid Angels club was to buy into the hype.
It’s hard to sweep, especially on the road. I think a lot of Sox fans thought the good guys would sweep a subpar Seattle time right out of Safeco Field T-Mobile Park. The Sox took two of three and probably would’ve had the sweep if not for another defensive miscue (this time an errant throw after a bloop hit) that opened up the floodgates for a big inning.
Yes, there were concerns about Matt Foster’s outing, and his failure to finish off Ty France when France was 0-2 led to Kyle Seager’s crushing blow, but the whole fiasco might have been avoided if Adam Eaton hadn’t misfired his throw into the infield on Dylan Moore’s bloop single.
The injuries are scary but perhaps not as bad as one might think. Yes, Eloy Jimenez is out for the bulk of the regular season and that is bad but Tim Anderson’s injury doesn’t seem quite as bad. Same with Billy Hamilton. We could see both back sooner rather than later.
The Sox didn’t hit in Anaheim. This team will hit and the offense was better in Seattle but save for 12 runs in game two against the Angels, the Sox mostly struggled to score. Nothing looks good when a team built around offense isn’t hitting. That said, Jose Abreu has two grand slams already and as noted, the Sox looked much better against the Mariners. There are signs of life, even with Jimenez’s and Anderson’s bats unavailable.
The Sox will be playing some bad teams this year. The Sox should mostly roll over the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers. Those teams will be pesky, possibly, and they may steal a few wins but the Sox should mostly feast on two bad teams that happen to be in their division.
The defense probably won’t be this bad the entire year. It’s true the Sox defense isn’t considered a strength of the team but it hasn’t been thought of as terrible either. Yet, it’s been the biggest problem and much more so than the bullpen or inconsistent hitting in this author’s opinion, so far this season. I do expect the Sox will start making more routine plays. That will also help the pitching, especially the bullpen, since giving away outs puts a lot of pressure on pitchers.
Finally, the biggest reason not to panic is it’s not 2020 any longer. We have a full 162-game schedule to play. Being 3-4, just one game under .500, after seven of those games is not really that big a deal. Take two of three from KC this weekend and the Sox are suddenly 5-4. Sweep and they’re 6-3.
Even if they drop two of three and fall to 4-6, there’s no reason to panic. I might get concerned if they get swept and find themselves 3-7, especially if they play poorly as opposed to losing close well-played games. Even then, there would be plenty of time to catch up. So Sox fans, sit back, relax, and strap it down. It’s going to be a long six months. Don’t fret about one week.
Police on Thursday released a new photo of a man who allegedly exposed himself to children in Lawndale and was recently seen following girls in a minivan.
On March 23, two girls were walking about 11:45 a.m. in the 1300 block of South Homan Avenue when a man called them over to the vehicle he was sitting in, Chicago police said.
The man exposed himself to the girls and touched himself inappropriately, police said. He was driving a dark gray Chevrolet Equinox with Illinois license plate CG14976.
A photo of the back of the man’s carChicago Police Department
Police said the same vehicle was seen following girls Monday near 13th Street and St. Louis Avenue.
The suspect was about 40 years old with a short afro-style haircut and was last seen wearing a black baseball hat, white T-shirt and light blue jeans, police said.
Anyone with information was asked to call Area Four detectives at (312) 746-8251.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden, in his first gun control measures since taking office, announced a half-dozen executive actions Thursday aimed at addressing a proliferation of gun violence across the nation that he called an “epidemic and an international embarrassment.”
“The idea that we have so many people dying every single day from gun violence in America is a blemish on our character as a nation,” Biden said during remarks at the White House.
He announced he is tightening regulations for buyers of “ghost guns” — homemade firearms that usually are assembled from parts and often lack serial numbers used to trace them. Also, a proposed rule, expected within 60 days, will tighten regulations on pistol-stabilizing braces like the one used in Boulder, Colorado, in a shooting last month that left 10 dead.
On Thursday, family members whose children were killed at the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, school massacre in 2012 and the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 attended the hearing. Biden thanked them for attending, saying he understood it would remind them of the awful days when they got the calls.
He assured them, “We’re absolutely determined to make change.”
Biden’s Thursday announcement delivers on a pledge the president made last month to take what he termed immediate “common-sense steps” to address gun violence, after a series of mass shootings drew renewed attention to the issue. His announcement came the same day as yet another, this one in South Carolina, where five people were killed.
Biden emphasized the scope of the problem: Between the mass killings in Atlanta massage businesses and the Colorado grocery store shooting last month, there were more than 850 additional shootings that killed 250 and injured 500 in the U.S., he said.
But Thursday’s announcement underscores the limitations of Biden’s executive power to act on guns. His orders tighten regulations on homemade guns and provide more resources for gun-violence prevention but fall far short of the sweeping gun-control agenda he laid out on the campaign trail.
Indeed, Biden again urged Congress to act, calling on the Senate to take up House-passed measures closing background check loopholes. He also said Congress should pass the Violence Against Women Act, eliminate legal exemptions for gun manufacturers and ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. Biden said
“This is not a partisan issue among the American people,” Biden insisted.
While Biden asserted that he’s “willing to work with anyone to get it done,” gun control measures face slim prospects in an evenly divided Senate, where Republicans remain near-unified against most proposals.
Biden was joined at the event by Vice President Kamala Harris and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland said he was “under no illusions about how hard it is to solve the problem of gun violence” and emphasized a need for a “collective effort to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and save lives.”
The Justice Department cannot solve the problem by itself, he said, but “there is work for the department to do, and we intend to do it.”
It is currently legal to build a “ghost gun” in a home or a workshop, and there is no federal requirement for a background check.
The Justice Department will issue a proposed rule requiring such gun kits be treated as firearms under the Gun Control Act, which would require that the parts be made with serial numbers and that buyers receive background checks.
Months before Biden was elected, the federal government had already been working on a proposed rule that would change the definition of a firearm to include lower receivers, the essential piece of a semiautomatic rifle, in an effort to combat the proliferation of ghost guns and to stave off losing court battles over the issue.
The process had been in the works in the waning months of the Trump administration, according to four people familiar with the matter. Justice Department leaders and officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been working on language for a proposed rule since at least the summer of 2020, the people said.
Another change announced Thursday concerns a proposed rule that will designate pistols used with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, which require a federal license to own and are subject to a more thorough application process and a $200 tax.
The department also is publishing model legislation within 60 days that is intended to make it easier for states to adopt their own “red flag” laws. Such laws allow for individuals to petition a court to allow the police to confiscate weapons from a person deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.
The department also will begin to provide more data on firearms trafficking, starting with a new comprehensive report on the issue. The administration says that hasn’t been done in more than two decades.
The Biden administration will also make investments in community violence intervention programs, which are aimed at reducing gun violence in urban communities, across five federal agencies.
The president argued that gun violence was also a massive economic strain, citing the costs from hospital visits, legal fees, and the cost of keeping people in prison and providing therapy to victims and others. A majority of firearm deaths are from suicides.
David Chipman speaks at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on assault weapons on Capitol Hill in Washington Sept. 25, 2019.Andrew Harnik/AP
Biden is also nominating David Chipman, a former federal agent and adviser at the gun control group Giffords, to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The ATF is currently run by an acting director, Regina Lombardo. Gun-control advocates have emphasized the significance of this position in enforcing gun laws, and Chipman is certain to win praise from this group. During his time as a senior policy adviser with Giffords, he spent considerable effort pushing for greater regulation and enforcement on ghost guns, changes to the background check system and measures to reduce the trafficking of illegal firearms.
Chipman spent 25 years as an agent at the ATF, where he worked on stopping a trafficking ring that sent illegal firearms from Virginia to New York, and served on the ATF’s SWAT team. Chipman is a gun owner.
He is an explosives expert and was among the team involved in investigating the Oklahoma City bombing and the first World Trade Center bombing. He also was involved in investigating a series of church bombings in Alabama in the 1990s. He retired from the ATF in 2012.
During his campaign, Biden promised to prioritize new gun control measures as president, including enacting universal background check legislation, banning online sales of firearms and the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But gun-control advocates have said that while they were heartened by signs from the White House that they took the issue seriously, they’ve been disappointed by the lack of early action.
With the announcement of the new measures, advocates did laud Biden’s first moves.
“Each of these executive actions will start to address the epidemic of gun violence that has raged throughout the pandemic, and begin to make good on President Biden’s promise to be the strongest gun safety president in history,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
Associated Press writer Lisa Marie Pane in Boise, Idaho, contributed to this report.
First came the announcement that James Taylor is kicking off his world tour in July at the United Center.
Now comes word that Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli is bringing his 2021 arena trek to the Allstate Arena in Rosemont for an Oct. 14 concert.
The 21-date “Believe” tour, in support of Bocelli’s new album of the same name, kicks off Oct. 13 in Milwaukee. Tickets for the U.S. dates go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. May 3 at gelbproductions.com.
The two arena tours are the among the first to include 2021 Chicago dates amid pandemic restrictions that still have not called for the reopening of major concert venues and theaters in Illinois.
“It will be like going home, in each of the 21 cities,” said Bocelli, via statement. “It will be exciting to meet again with the public of my beloved and great homeland who adopted me over 20 years ago. I await that moment with the joy and trepidation I felt at the beginning of my career. Because those arenas we meet in have a glimpse of the sun after such a storm. Because I will sing for the life that wins, and thanks to music, we will celebrate beauty and faith in the future together.”
In addition, the Andrea Bocelli Foundation announced that $1 from every ticket sale throughout the tour “will go towards empowering people and communities in situations of poverty, illiteracy and distress due to illness and social exclusion,” Thursday’s announcement said.
NOTE: Kane Brown brings his Blessed & Free tour to the United Center on Jan. 22, 2022. Tickets will go on sale to the general public at noon April 16 at kanebrownlive.com.
ROCK HILL, S.C. — Former NFL player Phillip Adams fatally shot five people including a prominent doctor, his wife and their two grandchildren before later killing himself, authorities said Thursday.
York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson told a news conference that investigators had not yet determined a motive in the mass shooting Wednesday.
“There’s nothing right now that makes sense to any of us,” Tolson told a news conference.
Dr. Robert Lesslie, 70, and his wife, Barbara, 69, were pronounced dead at the scene Wednesday along with grandchildren Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5, the York County coroner’s office said.
A man who had been working at the Lesslie home, James Lewis, 38, from Gaston, was found shot to death outside, and a sixth person, who was not identified, was hospitalized with “serious gunshot wounds,” authorities said.
Tolson said evidence left at the scene of the shooting led them to Adams as a suspect. He said they went to Adams’ parents’ home, evacuated them and then tried to talk Adams out of the house. Eventually, they found him dead of a single gunshot wound to the head in a bedroom, he said.
Tolson said both a .45-caliber and 9mm weapon were used in Wednesday’s shooting.
A person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press earlier Thursday that Adams had been treated by Lesslie, who lived near his parents’ home in Rock Hill. Adams killed himself after midnight with a .45-caliber weapon, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
However, Tolson would not confirm that Adams had been the doctor’s patient.
Adams, 33, played in 78 NFL games over five seasons for six teams. He joined the 49ers in 2010 as a seventh-round draft pick out of South Carolina State, and though he rarely started, he went on to play for New England, Seattle, Oakland and the New York Jets before finishing his career with the Atlanta Falcons in 2015.
As a rookie late in the 2010 season, Adams suffered a severe ankle injury that required surgery that included several screws being inserted into his leg. He never played for the 49ers again, getting released just before the 2011 season began. Later, with the Raiders, he had two concussions over three games in 2012.
Whether he suffered long-lasting concussion-related injuries wasn’t immediately clear. Adams would not have been eligible for testing as part of a broad settlement between the league and its former players over such injuries, because he hadn’t retired by 2014.
Adams’ father told a Charlotte television station that he blamed football for problems his son had, and which might have led him to commit Wednesday’s violence.
“I can say he’s a good kid — he was a good kid, and I think the football messed him up,” Alonzo Adams told WCNC-TV. “He didn’t talk much and he didn’t bother nobody.”
Dr. Robert Lesslie in Rock Hill, S.C in March 12, 2009.John D. Simmons/The Charlotte Observer via AP
Deputies were called around 4:45 p.m. Wednesday to the Lesslies’ home, which is not visible from the road. They evacuated the neighbors as they spent hours searching for a suspect with police dogs.
Allison Hope, who lives across from Adams’ parents’ modest one-story brick home, about a mile from the Lesslies, said police allowed her to return home around 9 p.m. Wednesday. Moments later, a vehicle pulled into the Adams’ driveway and law enforcement quickly surrounded the property.
She said they spent hours negotiating with Phillip Adams, using a loudspeaker and sending in a robot to scan the house. She said authorities repeatedly asked Adams to come out, and promised to get his disabled mother out safely, before Adams shot himself.
“This is something I can’t grasp yet. I can’t put it all together and I’m trying to, and I witnessed it,” Hope said. “I feel bad for him because if it was mental or something going on in his life or whatever, you know, he needed help, and that’s the sad part.”
Adams often isolated himself, even as a player, his agent, Scott Casterline, told the AP. Casterline said he spoke regularly with Adams’ father, who left him a voicemail Wednesday morning.
“He was part of my family. I loved him. He’s a great kid, a great guy. This is so unlike him. He had to not be in his right mind, obviously,” Casterline said.
“All of us who knew Phillip are shaking our heads. He struggled away from the game. I tried to get him to come to Texas. I was going to find him a job, but he wouldn’t leave South Carolina because he had a son. He was a good father.”
“Seeing Phillip shoot two kids, it’s not him. I can’t fathom it. It’s devastating for the victims and the families,” Casterline said.
Former Cowboys cornerback Kevin Smith, who trained Adams leading up to the 2010 draft and after he entered the league, said he was a hard worker. He and Casterline both said Adams had opened a shop selling smoothies and juice before COVID-19 hit, and emphasized he didn’t drink or do drugs.
“He didn’t drink not one bit of alcohol,” Smith said. “He was a bit of a neat freak. In his house, everything was precisely placed.”
Lesslie had worked for decades as an emergency room doctor, board-certified in both emergency medicine and occupational medicine and serving as emergency department medical director for nearly 15 years at Rock Hill General Hospital, according to his website.
He founded two urgent care centers, wrote a weekly medical column for The Charlotte Observer, and also wrote a book, “Angels in the ER,” collecting what he termed “inspiring true stories” from his work. A biography page said he and his wife raised four children.
“I know without a doubt that life is fragile,” Lesslie wrote in his book. “I have come to understand that humility may be the greatest virtue. And I am convinced we need to take the time to say the things we deeply feel to the people we deeply care about.”
Contributors include AP Pro Football Writer Barry Wilner in New York; Josh Dubow in Alameda, Calif.; Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia and Nell Redmond in Rock Hill.
Starting this Friday, The Loyalist in West Loop is reopening their dining room for the first time since the last round of indoor dining closures. Yes, that means beginning April 9th, you’ll be able to enjoy the basement vibes, an ice cold High Life, and the world-famous Dirty Burg Loyalist cheeseburger all while sitting inside at The Loyalist.
Find me better news. I’ll wait.
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Here are the details: guests can indulge in The Loyalist’s a la carte menu Thursdays through Sundays and reservations can be made now for parties of 2 to 4, available via Tock. Inspired by Paris brasseries, the menu is casual French and looks to see just how light and satisfying that beloved fare can be. It is the kind of honest, pleasure-inducing food that Chef Shields has looked to offer since opening. The Loyalist’s famous cheeseburgers are still available: including The Loyalist Original (aka. “The Dirty Burg”) and The Loyalist Classic.
Also, in true summertime Chicago fashion, The Loyalist will also be opening a season sidewalk patio on Ada street as soon as the weather warms up for good. The Loyalist sits at 177 N Ada St #001 below two-Michelin-starred restaurants, Smyth. Chef John Shields opened the two as a juxtaposition between menus and experiences. Smyth reopened for indoor business in March with a special tasting menu experience. Additionally, Smyth’s experience will also be available on the patio as soon as the weather allows.
The Loyalist follows suit as more and more of Chicago’s prominent restaurants reopen as the city turns corners in the fight against COVID-19. According to Gov. Pritzker, all people over the age of 16 will be eligible to receive the vaccine in the hopes to get every Illinoisan vaccinated before the summer.
A driver opened fire during a traffic stop Thursday morning, wounding an Oak Park police officer before being shot in return.
They were both hospitalized with serious injuries but were expected to survive, according to Oak Park spokesman David Powers.
The shooting started after the Oak Park officer showed up to assist Forest Park police with a traffic stop about 7 a.m. on Harlem Avenue over Interstate 290, Powers said in an email.
Illinois State Police investigates on Harlem Avenue over I-290 after an Oak Park police officer was involved in a shooting, Thursday morning, April 8, 2021. Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Preliminary information showed the driver of the vehicle exited and began firing, Powers said. The Oak Park officer returned fire and shot the driver, he said.
The officer and driver were taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Powers said.
A witness told ABC7 that the driver got out of the car with his hands in the air and “just went in his waist… he got a gun and just started dumping. Shot the police window out, shot the police and everything.”
The wounded officer was able to walk to an ambulance with an apparent gunshot wound to the arm, the witness told ABC7.
Illinois State Police said they were investigating the officer’s use of force. In a statement Thursday afternoon, state police said the driver’s condition stabilized, while the officer was in “serious but stable” condition.
A United States Postal Service employee and vehicle were in the area of the shooting, but the employee was not wounded nor the intended target, according to a statement from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
State police closed interstate ramps at Harlem Avenue until noon as authorities investigated the shooting.
Barring natural disasters or unforeseen health crises, chances are I’ll watch around 150 Red Sox games during the 2021 season, along with parts of other contests as the pennant races advance.
And I would have done so, it’s important to emphasize, whether deposed strongman Donald J. Trump likes it or not.
Boycott baseball? I literally can’t remember not being a baseball fan. Home movies exist of me imitating the home run trot of Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman Howie Schultz, whom I’ve otherwise forgotten. One of my epic childhood memories is holding my father’s hand and walking up a darkened stadium ramp at New York’s Polo Grounds into the astonishing green of the playing field and the actual, physical presence of Willie Mays — a mythic figure in my boyish imagination.
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As for the All-Star Game, I normally take a pass for the same reason I skip spring training games. They’re a relic of the radio era, when American League fans got to see National League standouts only at All-Star time. Apart from the honor, most players would rather have the day off. They’re strictly exhibitions, not real contests.
Selfishly, I’d have preferred that the Major League Baseball avoid political controversy altogether. To me, the game’s a refuge, a few blessed hours when the daily ruck and moil of politics simply doesn’t exist. But that could be my white privilege talking, to employ a phrase that also makes my feet itch.
Problem is, certain realities can’t be avoided.
You can tell by the blundering, characteristically ungrammatical way former Boss Trump jumped into the controversy over Major League Baseball’s pulling the 2021 All-Star Game out of Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new voting law, hyperbolically characterized by President Joe Biden as “Jim Crow on steroids.”
Continuing to whine about the 2021 presidential election that he lost by 7 million votes, Trump complained in a statement: “For years the Radical Left Democrats have played dirty by boycotting products when anything from that company is done or stated in any way that offends them. Now they are going big time with WOKE CANCEL CULTURE and our sacred elections.”
He produced a list of major corporations, including the MLB, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup and Merck, and demanded his supporters boycott their products.
“We can play the game better than them,” Trump boasted. “The Radical Left will destroy our Country if we let them. We will not become a Socialist Nation.” Then came the punchline: “Happy Easter!”
(Last Easter, it will be recalled, Trump was doing PR for COVID-19, urging parishioners to crowd into churches in defiance of social distancing.)
As usual, this is upside-down. It’s mainly the political right in the United States that has long practiced shunning those with whom they disagree. Think Dixie Chicks. Think Colin Kaepernick.
Even french fries became “freedom fries” after France’s U.N. ambassador warned President George W. Bush against the folly of invading Iraq.
So don’t “cancel culture” me; Republicans invented it.
As for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s phony victimization, there was nothing subtle about the staged iconography of his signing ceremony. Seven middle-aged white men posing in front of an idealized painting of a pre-Civil War plantation. The only thing missing was a rebel flag.
Arresting a Black woman legislator for having the temerity to knock on the office door was an added touch.
Kemp, see, had incurred Trumpist wrath by defending the integrity of Georgia’s presidential vote and its subsequent Senate runoff — all narrowly won by Democrats. The purpose of the new law is to cover his political butt by making it marginally harder to vote, thereby suppressing Black turnout.
What other reason could there be for reducing the number of electoral drop boxes in Metro Atlanta from 94 to 23 and moving them inside government buildings shuttered after normal working hours?
For making it much harder to vote absentee?
For giving a legislative committee power to move precincts around and make it difficult for voters who show up at the wrong place to file provisional ballots?
For making it illegal to give water to voters waiting in long lines? As if Black voters don’t cherish their hard-won right to vote and would give up and go home.
Yes, the amazing Stacey Abrams can probably overcome such cynical ploys all over again. So just in case, the new law takes election supervision away from honorable Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and gives it to a GOP-dominated legislative committee that is also empowered — get this — to remove county election officials for replacements of their own choosing.
Jim Crow? Not really. This is basically election reform Kremlin-style.
Meanwhile, play ball! Because if Trump is fighting MLB and Coca-Cola, much less Citigroup and CBS, then Trump is losing.
A pair of teenage boys were arrested hours after allegedly carjacking a woman in the Bronzeville neighborhood.
The teens, 16 and 17, carjacked a 23-year-old woman at gunpoint at 1 a.m. Wednesday morning in the 3500 block of South King Drive, Chicago police said in a statement.
Officers located the car hours later at 10 a.m. and arrested the teens in the 1500 block of E. 65th Street, police said.
Both are charged as juveniles with possession of a stolen vehicle. The 16-year-old was also charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm.
The teens, who weren’t named because they’re charged as juveniles, were expected in court Thursday.
An elementary school cafeteria worker said she suffered persistent headaches for months and was eventually diagnosed with a brain aneurysm after her ex-principal, who faces a criminal trial next month, threw a water bottle at her head last spring.
The Chicago Public Schools lunchroom manager is now suing over her injuries, accusing the school district of failing to protect her from the former principal despite a series of past misconduct complaints.
Kurt Jones, the former leader of Franklin Fine Arts Center in Old Town, was charged with a felony last June, three months after the incident that left cafeteria worker Faye Jenkins with a bloody cut above her eye.
During the first week of pandemic school closures in March 2020, Jenkins and other workers were cleaning up after their meal distribution program wrapped for the day when Jones — who later said he and the staff was “horsing around” and “playing dodgeball” — threw a hard, reusable plastic water bottle at Jenkins, striking her in the face.
Faye Jenkins’ injuries after the March 2020 bottle-throwing incident.Provided
Given these previous complaints, the school district “knew, or reasonably should have known, that [Jones] was demonstrating a pattern of inappropriate and improper conduct towards both his students and employees,” Jenkins alleged in a nine-page, four-count complaint filed in Cook County Circuit Court last month against Jones, CPS and the Board of Education.
Schools officials “did nothing to thwart his behavior or otherwise investigate its nature prior to the aforementioned battery,” the suit said, accusing the district of “a willful and conscious decision to ignore ongoing complaints and allegations.”
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary relief, accused Jones and CPS — as his employer at the time — of battery, and the school district of failing to remove him from his position based on previous allegations before Jenkins was hurt.
A person jogs past the Franklin Fine Arts Center in the Near North Side on June 23, 2020.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Jenkins said in an interview she’s “not sure, basically, if I’ll ever be 100% again.” She hasn’t been back to work since last spring because of her nagging headaches and concussion, and in January Jenkins underwent surgery for her aneurysm, she said.
“I miss work. I’ve been working at that school for 17 years. I just feel this is something that should never have happened,” Jenkins said. “The kids were who I was there for. I miss Franklin, I really miss being there because it was about the kids.”
Jenkins’ attorney, Peter Tarpey, said he’s seen “a lot of egregious conduct” in his 30 years as a civil trial lawyer but was surprised to read the “outrageous” allegations against Jones when he took the case.
“At first, I thought this has got to be a joke,” Tarpey said. “It was so shocking to see that any adult, let alone a principal, would be acting like this at the school, during school hours, with teachers who he’s basically their supervisor and with children who he’s hired to oversee.”
Jones and his attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment. Jones’ criminal case is set for a bench trial May 6. He faces a felony charge of aggravated battery of a school employee.
Kurt JonesChicago police
Jones files own suit
Jones filed his own lawsuit against CPS in August 2020, accusing the district of breaching his contract, violating his due process rights and wrongfully terminating him.
In April last year, two weeks after the incident with Jenkins, Jones “received assurances from CPS senior management via text and phone calls stating that ‘you’ll get through it, you’ll take an optics hit, but you ain’t losing your job’ and ‘hang in there Kurt, definitely wanted to let you know I support you,” according to the complaint.
Yet at a disciplinary meeting in June, with no previous indication he could be terminated, CPS officials gave Jones the opportunity to resign or be fired two days later, according to the lawsuit.
Later that afternoon, Jones was told he actually had until 4 p.m. to resign or CPS would send a letter to the school community and respond to a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry announcing his termination, the suit said.He submitted his resignation within the hour, according to the complaint, which alleged Jones was “coerced” into a quitting while “under duress” and without a lawyer present. He retained an attorney the next day and tried to rescind his resignation, but his attempt was denied. The district placed a “do not hire” designation on his file the next week.
In court filings in the case, CPS said it decided to speed up the process because the Sun-Times asked about Jones’ status that afternoon and the district wanted parents and staff to hear the news from officials before a newspaper article. The district said Jones was told from the start of the pre-discipline process that one potential result could be termination, and he was told he could have an attorney all along, court records show. Even if he had not resigned, the result would have been termination, CPS told the court.
A federal judge in September denied Jones’ request for a restraining order and injunction to reinstate him as principal, writing in her ruling that there was a “less than minimal likelihood of success” in Jones’ lawsuit, and “there are other stakeholders in this dispute — Franklin teachers and staff, students, parents, and the Local School Council — many of whom would likely be distressed to have Jones at the school while criminal charges are pending against him.” Jones unsuccessfully tried to settle the lawsuit in December.
The case, which started in the local circuit court, was moved to U.S. District Court because one of the complaints, a due process violation, fell under federal jurisdiction in CPS’ view. A federal judge dismissed the federal due process charge late last month and returned the rest of the suit to circuit court.
CPS spokeswoman Emily Bolton didn’t answer questions about either lawsuit, including which officials sent Jones the supportive messages last year, saying the district doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
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