What’s New

JoJo Siwa is opening up about coming out as a member of the LGBTQ community.

The online superstar, 17, who came out in January, discussed her sexuality in a People interview published Wednesday. Siwa said she usually refers to herself as “gay because it just kind of covers it or queer because I think the keyword is cool,” but added that she would also identify as pansexual.

“I like queer,” Siwa said. “Technically I would say that I am pansexual because that’s how I have always been my whole life… my human is my human.”

A pansexual is a person who is attracted to all gender identities, or attracted to people regardless of gender, according to GLAAD President & CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis. That means a person who identifies as pansexual may be attracted to a transgender person, someone who goes by by the gender neutral terms of “ze” or “zir,” or someone who identifies as straight or gay.

The YouTube star also talked about her relationship with girlfriend, Kylie Prew, whom she went public with on social media in February.

“I told her my whole spiel that I tell everyone when they ask me my life story,” Siwa recalled. “She goes, ‘I could have Googled that. I want to know your life story. You just told me about your career. I want to know about you.’ And I was like, No one’s ever asked me that before.”

Though Siwa has been open about her identity, she admitted that she “never wanted (my coming out) to be a big deal,” especially to her particularly young fan base.

“I’ve known since I was little,” she said, adding that she had “a lot that could have gone away because of my love life.” Siwa admitted that she was met with criticism and negativity by some of her followers when she initially came out as a member of the LGBTQ community.

“I was thinking that all the comments were going to be nice and supportive, and they weren’t,” she says. “A lot of them were, ‘I’m never buying your merch again. My daughter’s never watching you again.’ I couldn’t sleep for three days.”

However, she has a message for her followers who may not approve of her sexuality: “I don’t want people to watch my videos or buy my merchandise if they aren’t going to support not only me, but the LGBTQ community.”

Despite the occasional hate, Siwa said “this is the first time that I’ve felt so personally happy.”

“Performing has always made me super happy,” she adds. “But for the first time, personally, I am like, whoa, happiness. I am so proud to be me.”

Read more at usatoday.com

Read More

Workers staged a protest Wednesday for better wages and work rules at an Amazon distribution hub in Gage Park, applying pressure as the company awaits results of a union organizing drive in Alabama.

Employees supporting the protest outside the hub at 3507 W. 51^st St. said as many as 40 workers took part at various times in the morning walkout. Among their demands was a $2-an-hour wage increase and scheduling accommodations as the company implements 10.5-hour work shifts.

“I’m done with just accepting what the company does. I know my heart is telling me to take action. I’m willing to lead and be that example,” said Rakyle Johnson, a sorter, discussing the decision to walk off the job.

An Amazon associate, Bekim Mehmedi, said the online retailer hasn’t addressed staffing shortages, creating an intense workplace atmosphere that has led to injuries. He said some workers hired seasonally were not kept on full time as some had been promised. Longer shifts have been hard for workers who must allow for child care, Mehmedi said.

An Amazon spokeswoman, Nikki Wheeler, said only a few employees left their posts and that some at the protest were from other facilities. Operations in Gage Park were not disrupted, she said.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Wheeler declined to say if Amazon will concede some employee demands, which include covering the cost of shared rides to and from work, a benefit the company offers at some locations. “We think it’s important to hear our employees’ concerns and hear what they have to say,” she said.

However, Wheeler added: “I would not say that those [protesters] are representative of all employees.”

Asked if the company would discipline workers who left their posts, she said, “Absolutely not. That’s not our culture.”

However, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled Amazon illegally fired two workers at its Seattle headquarters for speaking out about the company’s carbon footprint and treatment of warehouse employees.

The NLRB also is counting ballots from the first union organizing campaign at an Amazon plant. About 5,800 workers in Bessemer, Alabama have been asked to approve the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union as their bargaining agent.

It’s a long process liable to bring challenges over whether certain workers were eligible to vote. But approval of the union could intensify labor pressure on Amazon in other locales.

The employee protest in Chicago is not connected to a union. The workers have adapted the name Amazonians United Chicagoland. In a Facebook post, the group cited its right to act independently, without the backing of a union or a nonprofit group that supports workers’ causes.

Mehmedi said members are open-minded about whether to ultimately affiliate with a union. But for now, he said workers prefer to organize around specific issues. He said Amazon is susceptible to public pressure and is unlikely to retaliate against workers who support the movement.

Labor experts, though, have said Amazon may see no legal obligation to bargain with an ad hoc group that hasn’t shown support from a majority of workers.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Amazon is expanding on Chicago’s South Side and shuffling some staff to new locations. It has pulled out of a leased building at 2801 S. Western Ave. and moved some of its workers to Gage Park.

“The longer shift schedules are commonly used across our operations network and as we transition sites to them, employees have a number of choices, including part-time schedules, that best support their needs,” Wheeler said.

City officials have endorsed Amazon’s plan for a shipping center at 2424 S. Halsted St. Also, applications for city sign permits show Amazon expects to occupy a new warehouse building at 3535 S. Ashland Ave., former site of a Wrigley gum factory.

Finally, Amazon reportedly is buying the 70-acre Central Steel & Wire plant at 3000 W. 51^st St.

Wheeler had no information about the new locations.

Read More

A 21-month-old boy remains in critical condition Wednesday morning after he was shot in the head in an apparent road-rage incident Tuesday on Lake Shore Drive near Grant Park.

The boy suffered a brain injury and was at Lurie Children’s Hospital, according to Dr. Marcelo Malakooti, medical director of the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit. There was no change to his condition Wednesday morning, according to the Chicago Police Department.

Lurie issued a statement confirming the boy’s condition, adding that the hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit team “is working around the clock on his care.”

Another update would be issued at 3:30 p.m., according to the hospital.

A dispute over one car not letting another car into a lane of traffic about 11 a.m. on northbound Lake Shore Drive just south of Soldier Field apparently led to the shooting, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jake Alderden said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Both cars continued north and shooting began on Lake Shore Drive just west of the Shedd Aquarium. Bullet casings were recovered over a two-block stretch as the cars proceeded north, he said.

One person was being questioned by Area Three detectives in connection with the shooting Tuesday evening, police said. Charges were not filed Wednesday morning.

Community activist Ja’Mal Green, father of a 2-year-old, is personally funding a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the gunman.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has called the shooting a case of “simple, stupid road rage.”

But, she was reminded Wednesday that the incident — in broad daylight, in the heart of the city — was just the latest in an avalanche of shootings on Chicago area expressways.

There were two on Easter and another Tuesday night. That makes 57 already this year — nearly triple last year’s total and more expressway shootings than any other big city in the nation.

Lightfoot was asked what CPD is doing to stop expressway shootings and whether motorists should be concerned about their safety.

“I’ll push back a little bit. Unfortunately, we are continuing to see — not only in Chicago, but across the country — an increase in violence in cities that we saw really, I think, arising from the pandemic,” the mayor said.

“We are constantly calibrating our deployments across the city — both based upon historic trends, but also more recent data. But the issues on the highways are real.”

The city, she said, will “have to have continued partnership” with the Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart “to make sure that we’re doing everything we can.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Still, Lightfoot said Chicago is “ultimately fighting a losing battle” without “common sense gun control” that only Congress can enact.

“A lot of the guns that end up on the streets in Chicago come from places like Indiana and other states that have very lax gun laws. Whether it’s in background checks. Whether it’s the number of guns you can buy. How they can move from one person to another. We constantly see … guns that were purchased, but end up on the street in a crime within three years,” she said.

“We are gonna continue to fight the fight here in Chicago. But we have to have help from the federal government. If you can go over the border in Indiana and literally buy military-grade weapons at any quantity that you want if you’ve got the dollars to pay for it, what does that mean for the public safety of our city? … We need some help from the federal government because there are too many people who have ill intentions that are getting access to firearms. We’ve got to have federal authorities step up starting with passing universal background checks.”

The push for universal background checks is not new. It’s simply gone nowhere in Congress. But, Lightfoot said, the political tide has turned.

“I’m hopeful now — with a Democratic president who supports it and two chambers of Congress that are controlled by Democrats — we’ll actually finally get it done. And then, we’ll be better situated to bring more peace to our city because we’re gonna stop the flow of illegal guns onto our streets,” she said.

Read More

Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.

This afternoon will be cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms and a high near 78 degrees. Tonight’s low will be around 58 degrees. More rain is in the forecast for tomorrow, mainly before 1 p.m.; the high will be near 63 degrees.

Top story

Track coach from Chicago charged with duping Boston student athletes into sharing nude pics

Federal authorities today accused a track and field coach from Chicago of trying to trick female athletes from a Boston university into sending him nude photos of themselves through sham social media accounts.

Prosecutors say they discovered more than 300 nude and semi-nude images of victims in the email accounts of Steve Waithe, 28, and that victims received more than 100 Instagram messages amid one of his schemes. The allegations revolve around Waithe’s work as a track and field coach at Boston’s Northeastern University from October 2018 until February 2019.

Waithe also worked as a track and field coach at Concordia University and the Illinois Institute of Technology, according to a 15-page criminal complaint. He is charged in federal court in Boston with one count of cyberstalking and one count of wire fraud, and he was due to appear in federal court in Chicago following his arrest here today.

Waithe’s conduct during his first semester at Northeastern led to multiple sexual harassment reports and a Title IX investigation, according to the complaint. Seven months after Waithe left the school in Boston, a September 2019 tweet from Concordia University Chicago Athletics announced that Waithe had joined the track and field staff there.

During his employment at Northeastern, Waithe routinely asked to use the cellphones of student athletes to record their form at practice and meets, the complaint stated.

However, the feds say Waithe was also spotted “scrolling through” the phones of the student athletes. And on at least one occasion, he had a female student athlete’s phone for several hours. One victim alleged that Waithe had her phone on multiple occasions for “extended periods of time.”

The feds say Waithe’s principal scam then began in February 2020, employing a basic pattern. First, he would disclose compromising photos to a victim through social media. Then, he’d claim the photos had been discovered online. Finally, in a supposed attempt to “help,” he would ask for more.

Read Jon Seidel’s full story on the case against Waithe here.

More news you need

1. A 21-month-old boy remained in critical condition as of this morning after he was shot in the head in an apparent road-rage incident yesterday on Lake Shore Drive near Grant Park. Lurie Children’s Hospital, where the boy was sent after the shooting, will have an update on his condition at 3:30 p.m.
2. More than a week after a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot by Chicago police, community members are calling for a peace talk with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Ogden District commander. “We have called on him to talk peacefully,” said Baltazar Enriquez, the president of the Little Village Community Council, about CPD Cmdr. Gilberto Calderon.
3. Illinois reported nearly 4,000 new cases of the coronavirus today, the highest one-day total for the state since late January. Numbers are even more worrisome in Chicago, where the average positivity rate has rose 21% compared to last week.
4. The Chicago Teachers Union wants the reopening of CPS high schools to be delayed over concerns about the city’s rising COVID-19 caseloads and variants of the virus. The union wants the tentative April 19 reopening date pushed back by a week.
5. Harold Winston, who chaired the U.S. Chess Trust and was a supervisor in the Cook County public defender’s office, died of heart failure at 75. The Naperville resident had been a frequent college chess opponent of future “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin.

A bright one

Mercury Theater Chicago to open again

Mercury Theater Chicago will soon be back in business.

After announcing last June that the theater would permanently close due to the financial losses suffered amid COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, executive director L. Walter Stearns announced today that the theater, a longtime fixture on North Southport Avenue, will reopen under the leadership of newly appointed artistic director Christopher Chase Carter.

Carter is no stranger to the Mercury having previously collaborated on the hit productions of “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Hair.” The dancer-choreographer’s stage credits also include Lyric Opera of Chicago and Porchlight Music Theatre, among others.

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Opened in 1920 as a silent film nickelodeon, the Mercury movie theater would undergo several retail business incarnations in the decades that followed. In 1994, it was transformed into a 300-seat live theater rental venue by veteran theater producer Michael Cullen.

It “reopened” in 2011 under Stearns’ leadership as an Equity-affiliated commercial theater house, having since produced 25 plays including four world premieres.

Read Miriam di Nunzio’s full story here.

From the press box

White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson landed on the 10-day injured list today with a strained left hamstring. The team recalled Danny Mendick from its alternate training site in Schaumburg to take Anderson’s roster spot.

The Blackhawks made official their purchase of their AHL affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs, from the city of Rockford this morning in a $11.8 million deal. In addition to a lease extension that’ll keep the IceHogs in the northern Illinois city through at least 2036, the team’s arena will also get millions in renovations.

And Bulls guard Zach LaVine has watched his scoring dip since the addition of Nikola Vucevic, but he’s fine with it if it means winning. What coach Billy Donovan wants LaVine to understand is that there will be times when he’ll have to go back in takeover mode, Joe Cowley writes.

Your daily question ?

In honor of National Beer Day, what’s your favorite local brewery? Tell us why.

Email us (please include your first name and where you live) and we might include your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.

Yesterday, we asked you: Have you gotten your COVID-19 shot yet? If so, what’s changed for you since getting vaccinated? Here’s what some of you said…

“I’ve gathered indoors with a pod of my fully vaccinated over 65-year-old friends. I feel safer around my grandchildren. I always wear a mask around people I don’t know. I’m sleeping better and have less anxiety.” — Colleen Green

“Nothing. I’m vaccinated but still wear a mask and social distancing.” — Catherine Jo Downing-King

“I’m a registered nurse, and have had a couple of dozen patients who had COVID. I worry a lot less since getting my two Pfizer doses in February. I’m looking forward to visiting my parents, who are 78 and 82, and had both of their shots, and giving them big hugs.” — Brian Peterlinz

“My husband and I have been fully vaccinated. We’re still careful around others, but are feeling much safer. We’ve even started planning our vacation!!” — Sandy Champion

“Having lost someone dear to me (my dad, 62), I’m relieved that I’m less likely to spread this virus. I’m most relieved that my loved ones are getting the vaccine.” — Alexis Marie

Thanks for reading the Chicago Afternoon Edition. Got a story you think we missed? Email us here.

Sign up here to get the Afternoon Edition in your inbox every day.

Read More

A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murdering a man in Hermosa during a crime spree that included a carjacking and robberies at local Dunkin’ Donuts.

Ricmeal King Bolden is the second teenager charged with shooting and killing 53-year-old Guillermo Antonio Quiles in the 700 block of North Trumbull Avenue.

Bolden had just been released from the Juvenile Justice Center on Tuesday for a separate pending gun and carjacking case before he was charged as an adult for the deadly shooting.

Cook County prosecutors Wednesday said they would be referring other charges related to Feb 9 case to Juvenile Court.

Taevon Abston, 18, of Austin, is currently being held at Cook County Jail for Quiles’ murder.

Bolden, who has faced many hardships during his life, was diagnosed with traumatic stress disorder after his uncle was murdered and a friend was shot in his presence, an assistant public defender told Judge John F. Lyke Wednesday.

While Lyke acknowledged Bolden’s challenging life, he said the allegations against him were “chilling to say the least” and ordered him held without bail.

Just before Quiles was killed, Bolden, Abston and another uncharged suspect, robbed a Dunkin’ Donuts, at 3310 W. Addison St., prosecutors said.

The crew — reputed members of the Beam Team gang — then drove into rival territory, where Bolden and Abston allegedly opened fire from the windows of a stolen car, striking Quiles in the head as he walked outside.

The group then went on to try and rob another Dunkin’ Donuts, at 5050 W. Grand Ave. But the trio left the business when they could not figure out how to open the cash register, prosecutors said.

Right after, Abston and Bolden allegedly stole a woman’s Kia while she was parked at a gas pump at 2001 N. Pulaski Road. Abston and Bolden then drove the Kia to a third Dunkin’ Donuts a block away where they held up workers at gunpoint, prosecutors said.

In addition to surveillance footage and witnesses who identified Bolden, a health app on the teenager’s cellphone tracked his movements throughout the day of the crime spree — matching the time and locations of the robberies and Quiles’ murder, prosecutors said.

Bolden was abandoned by his mother as a toddler and has not seen her since, his assistant public defender said. He lived with his father and was cared for by relatives until his grandmother’s death in 2016, which was followed shortly after by his uncle’s murder.

“That then sent Mr. King Bolden on a different path and the stability he had in his life was no longer there,” the defense attorney said.

Bolden, for the last several years, has been shuffled between group homes since he was placed in the care of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. He was placed in the agency’s care after he said he was abused by a relative’s boyfriend in Rockford, the defense attorney said.

Bolden is expected back at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse for his murder case on April 27.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

Read More

Thank you for the Sun-Times editorial pointing out that the 70 acres of parking lots surrounding Sox Park remain a lost opportunity for redevelopment. The White Sox would also benefit from their development, since White Sox fans would no longer face the prospect of every game being book-ended by traffic jams on the Dan Ryan. Sox fans could linger in the neighborhood to shop, eat and play, just as Cub fans do in Wrigleyville.

Let’s be honest: The difference in attendance between our two teams has more to do with their neighborhoods than with baseball.

Soon after the Chicago Journal, a now-defunct paper covering the Near West and South Sides, suggested in 2005 this vision for a “Comiskeyville” or “Soxville” on these vacant lots, the White Sox revealed plans to develop a portion of the parking lot north of 35th Street. That plan was started, and that’s when the Chisox Bar & Grill and Chicago Sports Depot were built. Those businesses were to serve as a bridge between the development and the ballpark, but then the 2008 recession hit and construction stopped.

The Sun-Times is right: it’s time to get it going again.

Jeff McMahon, Bridgeport

SEND LETTERS TO: [email protected]. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be 350 words or less.

Getting back on public transit

Thanks for Laura Washington’s column “Chicago, let’s get back on the L and do our part to save public transit” and for Satchel Price’s news story surveying Chicagoans’ views on the matter. They indicated they will go back to regularly riding transit after the pandemic.

Rest assured, CTA, Metra and PACE are working at unprecedented levels on cleaning, sanitizing and making transit safe. The average annual savings is $12,000 for a Chicagoland resident who switches his or her daily commute from driving to public transportation. Transit saves the average rush hour driver $400 a year by reducing the number of cars on the road. Transit investments reduce roadway congestion for cars and trucks, shortening commutes and improving freight delivery.

Illinois would have to add 27 more lanes to our expressways if Metra stopped running. Each Metra rider provides value to non-riders of more than $4,000 annually by reducing congestion and increasing safety. Mass transit is a magnificent “economic equalizer” and where it goes, the economy and communities grow.

Kirk Dillard, Chairman, Regional Transportation Authority

Wash your recyclables, please

It’s not easy being the recycling police, even in my own home. I diligently wash all of my recyclables to give my cart a better chance at actually making it to recycling centers. But I know I am a rarity.

Visiting people’s homes in my line of work, I know that most people will take the two seconds to separate the recyclables. But most won’t take the needed step to wash them off, and may not know they need to.

It’s very encouraging to see that Chicago has a new contract with a new recycling company, but it is doubtful Chicagoans will give them uncontaminated waste without a little guidance.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and if the city were to launch a public awareness campaign, the pathetic rate of 8 to 9% would slowly climb.

We all need to do our part. It really doesn’t take but a few seconds to do it right. But if you aren’t going to wash your recyclables, then do the rest of us a favor and throw it in the garbage instead.

Scot Sinclair, Third Lake

Read More

A majority of the City Council’s Hispanic Caucus has endorsed a civilian police oversight plan — one already rejected by Mayor Lori Lightfoot — to fix what it called a “broken” accountability system unmasked by the police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo.

Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th), chairman of the Hispanic Caucus, said Wednesday there is a “growing mistrust” of the Chicago Police Department in communities of color that can be reversed only by “robust civilian oversight and community control” over CPD.

That’s precisely what would happen under the compromise ordinance crafted by two groups that have long pushed dramatically different versions of civilian police oversight: the Civilian Police Accountability Council and the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability.

Five aldermen in the 13-member Hispanic Caucus did not participate in the vote to endorse the compromise. The vote was 7 to 1.

Under the compromise, Chicago voters would be asked to approve a binding referendum on the 2022 primary ballot empowering a civilian police oversight commission to hire and fire the police superintendent, negotiate police contracts and set CPD’s budget.

Lightfoot would lose the power to hire and fire the police superintendent. Her Law Department and hand-picked negotiators would lose the power to negotiate police contracts.

And Lightfoot and aldermen would be stripped of the power they now hold to establish the CPD budget, ceding that power as well to an 11-member civilian oversight commission composed of nine elected commissioners and two mayoral appointees.

Provided

Even if voters reject the binding referendum, the 11-member commission would have the final say in disputes over police policy unless two-thirds of the Council decides otherwise. The commission also would be empowered to take a vote of no-confidence in the superintendent and hire and fire the chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

“The Toledo family — they’ve been left in the dark, according to the reports that I have seen or read. In other instances last year and previous years, victims and families of victims — primarily families of color — they are left in the dark when a loved one is shot and killed by police. Justifiable or not. But they don’t know. They have no information. They are not providing to the families any information,” Maldonado said.

“What the [Toledo] family is asking of the police [is], ‘Give us the tape. Show us the tape. We are entitled to see that video. Why can’t you do it?’ I believe that an independent, elected commission would be responsible and, hopefully, would make sure those things would not happen and allow the community to retain trust in the police, especially communities of color.”

Lightfoot has argued she alone “wears the jacket” for Chicago violence and she’s not about to “outsource” responsibility for CPD to a civilian police oversight commission.

Ald. George Cardenas (12th), Lightfoot’s deputy floor leader, sided with the mayor. He was one of the five Hispanic Caucus members who did not participate in the vote.

“Mayors must be held accountable for both. For the crime that happens in the streets and the education that happens in the schools. My advice to the mayor is, you cannot abdicate those responsibilities to anybody,” said Cardenas, whose Southwest Side ward includes the Little Village neighborhood where Toledo was killed.

“Unless the mayor is part of that, I don’t think it’s gonna pass. I don’t think it’s gonna go anywhere because that’s what they hire the mayor for. There’s two things they must do well. That’s crime and education. The rest of it is gravy. Why would you have somebody that’s gonna make those kinds of decisions while you’re trying to run the city? What if they run it further into the ground?”

Tyler LaRiviere / Sun-Times

Earlier this week, Lightfoot vowed to hunt down and hold accountable adults responsible for “putting a gun in to the hands” of Adam Toledo.

How does she know the 13-year-old had a gun in his hands if she hasn’t seen the bodycam and security camera video of the shooting?

“While I have not seen the video, I’ve clearly gotten a significant number of briefings about the circumstances there. But I won’t say more because I don’t want to get ahead of or unduly influence the COPA investigation, the detective investigation and the state’s attorney investigation,” she said.

COPA has said “troubling video footage” from the scene of the shooting will be released a soon as possible, but only after the Toledo family has an opportunity to see it first.

Lightfoot said she has no idea when that will be and is “frustrated” it hasn’t happened.

“Ms. Toledo deserves some answers. She’s obviously expressed an interest in seeing multiple videos. And I think she has a right to. So I’m hoping that that gets scheduled sooner, rather than later,” the mayor said.

Read More

MINNEAPOLIS — Officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd’s neck — and was bearing down with most of his weight — the entire 9 1/2 minutes the Black man lay facedown with his hands cuffed behind his back, a use-of-force expert testified Wednesday at Chauvin’s murder trial.

Jody Stiger, a Los Angeles Police Department sergeant serving as a prosecution witness, said that based on his review of video evidence, Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck or neck area from the time officers put Floyd on the ground until paramedics arrived.

“That particular force did not change during the entire restraint period?” prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked as he showed the jury a composite image of five photos taken from the various videos of the arrest.

“Correct,” replied Stiger, who on Tuesday testified that the force used against Floyd was excessive.

Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson sought to point out moments in the video footage when, he said, Chauvin’s knee did not appear to be on Floyd’s neck but on his shoulder blade area or the base of his neck. Stiger did not give much ground, saying the officer’s knee in some of the contested photos still seemed to be near Floyd’s neck.

The defense attorney also asked Stiger whether video showed Floyd picked up his head and moved it at times.

“Slightly, yes. He attempted to,” Stiger said.

Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death May 25. Floyd, 46, was arrested outside a neighborhood market after being accused of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A panicky-sounding Floyd struggled and claimed to be claustrophobic as police tried to put him in a squad car, and they pinned him down on the pavement.

Bystander video of Floyd crying that he couldn’t breathe as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to get off him sparked protests and scattered violence around the U.S. and triggered a reckoning over racism and police brutality.

Nelson has argued that the now-fired white officer “did exactly what he had been trained to do over his 19-year career,” and he has suggested that the illegal drugs in Floyd’s system and his underlying health conditions are what killed him, not Chauvin’s knee.

Nelson seized on the drug angle in cross-examining Stiger, playing a snippet of then-Officer J. Kueng’s body-camera video and asking whether Stiger could hear Floyd say, “I ate too many drugs.”

Stiger said he could not make out those words in the footage.

Chauvin’s lawyer also asked Stiger about uses of force that are commonly referred to by police as “lawful but awful.” The witness conceded that “you can have a situation where by law it looks horrible to the common eye, but based on the state law, it’s lawful.”

Nelson has argued that the officers on the scene perceived the onlookers as an increasingly hostile crowd and were distracted by them.

But Stiger told the jury, “I did not perceive them as being a threat,” even though some onlookers were name-calling and using foul language. He added that most of the yelling was due to “their concern for Mr. Floyd.”

Nelson’s voice rose as he asked Stiger how a reasonable officer would be trained to view a crowd while dealing with a suspect, “and somebody else is now pacing around and watching you and watching you and calling you names and saying (expletives).” Nelson said such a situation “could be viewed by a reasonable officer as a threat.”

“As a potential threat, correct,” Stiger said.

Chauvin’s lawyer noted that dispatchers had described Floyd as between 6 feet and 6-foot-6 and possibly under the influence. Stiger agreed it was reasonable for Chauvin to come to the scene with a heightened sense of awareness.

Stiger further agreed with Nelson that an officer’s actions must be judged from the point of view of a reasonable officer on the scene, not in hindsight. Among other things, Nelson said that given typical EMS response times, it was reasonable for Chauvin to believe that paramedics would be there soon.

In other testimony, Stiger said that as Floyd lay pinned to the ground, Chauvin squeezed Floyd’s fingers and pulled one of his wrists toward his handcuffs, a technique that uses pain to get someone to comply, but Chauvin did not appear to let up while Floyd was restrained.

“Then at that point it’s just pain,” Stiger said.

Asked by prosecutors whether Chauvin had an obligation to take Floyd’s distress into account as he was considering how much force to use, Stiger replied: “Absolutely. As as the time went on, clearly in the video, you could see that Mr. Floyd’s … health was deteriorating. His breath was getting lower. His tone of voice was getting lower. His movements were starting to cease.”

“So at that point, as a officer on scene,” Stiger continued, “you have a responsibility to realize that, ‘OK, something is not right. Something has changed drastically from what was occurring earlier.’ So therefore you have a responsibility to take some type of action.”

Instead of closing ranks to protect a fellow officer behind what has been dubbed the “blue wall of silence,” some of the most experienced members of the Minneapolis force, including the police chief, have taken the stand to openly condemn Chauvin’s actions as excessive and contrary to his training and departmental policy.

According to testimony and records submitted in court, Chauvin underwent training in 2016 and 2018 in de-escalation techniques to calm down people in crisis and instruction in how officers must use the least amount of force required to get a suspect to comply.

On Stiger’s first day on the stand, on Tuesday, he said police were justified in using force while Floyd was resisting their efforts to put him in the squad car. But once Floyd was on the ground and stopped struggling, he said, officers should have eased up.

___

Webber reported from Fenton, Mich.

Read More

You might be aware of this already, but we have an NFL team in town that can’t get the quarterback position right. I don’t want to suggest that the Bears are cursed in this regard, but if they were somehow gifted with Tom Brady, there’s a good chance he’d immediately forget how to grip a football.

You might be aware of this, too, but you have to go back to Sid Luckman to find the team’s last true star quarterback. That’s a bummer because he grew up with George Washington.

So the Bears are in a very bad predicament, exacerbated by the presence of two people – general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy — whose job security is tied to their ability to solve the quarterback problem. It’s a very bad predicament because it was Pace who infamously deemed that Mitch Trubisky was better than Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson in the 2017 draft. And it’s a very bad predicament because Pace and Nagy are holding first-round picks, this year’s and future years’, that they might use to fix what Pace broke four years ago. They could cripple the franchise for a decade with another horrible decision.

So these are the guys you want deciding the Bears’ future? No. It’s why I described the predicament so eloquently as “very bad.” Let me make it worse for you. Would the Bears be willing to get down in the mud and trade for the Texans’ Watson, who can’t seem to go two hours these days without another massage therapist accusing him of either sexual assault or inappropriate behavior? The count is now 22.

The initial reaction is that there is no way the McCaskeys, who are as morally upright as a bishop’s ceremonial staff, would ever bring in a player with so much apparent baggage. And, with so much attention given to women’s rights these days, it would be public-relations suicide to trade for a man who allegedly wanted a lot more from his massage therapists than an answer to, say, tight hamstrings. It’s why Nike announced Wednesday that it has suspended its endorsement deal with Watson.

But this is the NFL, where decency is often told to take a hike when an ultra-talented player is involved. Or just a regular talented player. In 2015, the Bears signed defensive end Ray McDonald after the 49ers had waived him while he was under investigation for sexual assault. Not long after the signing, the Bears cut him after charges of domestic violence and child endangerment were filed against him.

So let’s not pretend that the franchise is above this sort of thing. Sure, it’s possible that chairman George McCaskey, who allowed Pace to talk him into signing McDonald, has learned his lesson. But it’s also possible that decades of being without a quarterback have lowered the McCaskey’s threshold for what they’re willing to ignore. It’s amazing what people are willing to explain away in the name of a potential championship.

This whole discussion is an exercise in hypotheticals – if the Texans would be willing to trade Watson, if Watson would be willing to waive his no-trade clause and if the Bears would be willing to sell their souls for a quarterback. But here’s how NFL teams think, hypothetical or not: Can we get away with this?

And how about you, dear Bears fan? Would trading for Watson be worth the stain that won’t come out in the wash? Don’t play the innocent-until-proven-guilty card, that the quarterback’s word is worth just as much as the chorus on the other side. This is about the reality of the situation. You have to make this personnel decision knowing that the public backlash against the team would be massive. For anyone who wants the Bears to trade for Watson, the question, rightly and loudly, will be, this is what you think of women?

You can say I’m dealing in make-believe, that there’s no way any team besides the Texans would take on the risk of having Watson on its roster. There’s a chance that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will put Watson on the exempt list while the league investigates him. And there’s a chance that Watson could be facing criminal charges and prison time. You know what NFL teams say about that sort of thing: “And?”

I see the Bears with little to no chance of getting one of the so-called quality quarterbacks in this month’s draft. I see a franchise worth billions of dollars that knows it can’t be disliked much more than it is right now. I see a club that can’t possibly think that the recently signed Andy Dalton is the answer. Right? Right?

But the Bears couldn’t be so tone deaf as to trade for a pariah like Watson, could they? Could they?

Before the accusations started flooding in against Watson, I wrote that he wouldn’t want to come to the Bears after the way they had treated him before the 2017 draft. They declined to wine and dine him the way they did with Trubisky. But now he’s in a mess. Perhaps he’s looking for a change of scenery, even if the scenery includes a Bears management team that didn’t seem to think much of him when he was coming out of Clemson four years ago.

These are desperate times for a number of people. How low is everyone willing to go? I fear the worst.

Read More

Police are searching for a man who allegedly exposed himself to children last month 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.

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.

Read More