A pickup truck driven by an off-duty Chicago police officer struck and killed a 9-year-old boy riding a bicycle Wednesday evening in West Rogers Park.

The officer said he didn’t see Hershel Weinberger before hitting him around 8 p.m. in the 7300 block of North Sacramento Avenue, according to Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara Jr.

The officer was driving north and struck Hershel in a crosswalk, Chicago police said. Hershel, who lived nearby, was taken to Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston where he died, according to police.

The family told police he was heading home after playing at a friend’s house. The boy’s father rushed to the scene and held him until paramedics arrived, a family friend said.

The officer, 48, took a Breathalyzer test that was negative, according to Catanzara.

“It’s just a tragedy. And any person could be in his shoes. This just happens to be a Chicago police officer,” Catanzara told the Sun-Times. “Our hearts go out to the family. This officer is certainly never going to forget that. It’s sad all-around.”

Police said no citations or charges have been filed.

Hershel was a twin and had two other brothers. Baruch Hertz, a rabbi at Congregation B’nei Ruven, said Hershel “was a loved kid. He was a very nice boy, had a smile on his face at all times … It’s a huge shock for the community.”

Ruth Lee, a close friend of the Weinberger family, said the boy had a “sweet energy.”

“He was bright…kind looking, he had very vibrant blue eyes,” Lee, who taught Hershel in various subjects from music to religion, told the Sun-Times.

An online fundraiser for Hershel’s family had raised more than $87,000 by Thursday afternoon.

Read More

Acknowledging that law-abiding Chicagoans are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being gunned down on the streets, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday announced a $1 million reward fund for information that leads to the seizure of illegal firearms.

The mayor described the reward fund as the first in a series of steps she plans to unveil over the next week to “think creatively” about ways to stop the unrelenting bloodbath on Chicago streets fueled by gang violence and street justice retaliations.

Lightfoot has long decried the pipeline of illegal guns pouring into Chicago from other states, including Indiana, and demanded that Congress pass, what she calls, “common sense gun laws” to cut off that pipeline.

But on Thursday, she took matters into her own hands.

“We need to think creatively about other tools. That’s why today I’m announcing a million-dollar reward fund … for information that leads to the seizure of illegal firearms. We’re setting up a structure for people to provide tips — anonymous, if you so desire — to point us to the presence of illegal firearms,” the mayor said before breaking ground on the Chicago Park District’s new headquarters campus in Brighton Park.

“If they are in a house, down the block, in a car, in a secret stash, we are calling on our residents to overcome your fears. To no longer be hesitant to report the presence of illegal firearms. This moment that we are in demands each of us to dig down deeper. To step up. … We need everyone’s help to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to address this horrible plague of illegal firearms. And my hope is that this million-dollar reward fund incentivizes people to step up, to speak out and to help us to reclaim our streets from the shooters and the violence.”

Although she claimed the Chicago Police Department was making progress, Lightfoot acknowledged that’s “cold comfort” to Chicagoans “living in daily fear” — so frightened, in fact, that they won’t even come out of their homes and enjoy a summer day or evening because they don’t want to become the next innocent victim of a gang shooting.

She said the bloodbath on Chicago streets is the first and last thing she thinks about and the worry that wakes her up in the middle of the night.

She further acknowledged “too many people are just plain scared” and until she gets the violence under control, “nothing else matters.” The “cloud of violence that hangs over our heads blocks out the sunshine” that Chicagoans should be feeling after enduring the hardships and sacrifices of the coronavirus pandemic, she said.

“The point is this: This crisis demands bold and creative action. It demands more of each of us. And as your mayor, it demands more of me. I willingly and unapologetically accept this challenge,” the mayor said.

“And I hope and certainly pray, with God’s grace, we will work through and lead ourselves to a better place to get through this challenge, just as we have led and gotten through COVID. And I will repeat, until our residents feel safe, nothing else matters. It has been and will remain my highest priority.”

After the groundbreaking, Lightfoot said the $1 million reward fund would come from the city’s corporate fund.

“I called the budget director and said, `OK, here’s what I need,’ ” the mayor said.

“It’s gonna run through the CPD tip line. We’ll get specific details out as to when it will be active. Yes, we will be giving out individual amounts. But we’re gonna work through those details and let you know.”

Read More

BERLIN — More than 40 people have died and dozens were missing Thursday in Germany and Belgium as heavy flooding turned streams and streets into raging torrents that swept away cars and caused houses to collapse.

Recent storms across parts of western Europe made rivers and reservoirs burst their banks, triggering flash floods overnight after the saturated soil couldn’t absorb any more water.

“I grieve for those who have lost their lives in this disaster,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during a visit to Washington, expressing shock at the scope of the flooding. “We still don’t know the number. But it will be many.”

She pledged that everything would be done to find those still missing, adding: “‘Heavy rain and flooding’ doesn’t capture what happened.”

Police said 18 people died in Ahrweiler county, 15 in Euskirchen, three in Rheinbach and two in Cologne. Belgian media reported four deaths in that country.

Among the worst-hit German villages was Schuld, where several homes collapsed and dozens of people remained unaccounted for.

Rescue operations were hampered by blocked roads and phone and internet outages across the Eifel, a volcanic region of rolling hills and small valleys. Some villages were reduced to rubble as old brick and timber houses couldn’t withstand the sudden rush of water, often carrying trees and other debris as it gushed through narrow streets.

Karl-Heinz Grimm, who had come to help his parents in Schuld, said he had never seen the small Ahr River surge in such a deadly torrent.

“This night, it was like madness,” he said.

Dozens of people had to be rescued from the roofs of their houses with inflatable boats and helicopters. Germany deployed hundreds of soldiers to assist.

“There are people dead, there are people missing, there are many who are still in danger,” the governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state, Malu Dreyer, told the regional parliament. “We have never seen such a disaster. It’s really devastating.”

In Belgium, the Vesdre River spilled over its banks and sent water churning through the streets of Pepinster, near Liege.

“Several homes have collapsed,” Mayor Philippe Godin told RTBF network. It was unclear whether everyone had been able to escape unhurt.

Major highways were inundated in southern and eastern parts of the country, and the railway said all trains were halted.

In Liege, a city of 200,000, the Meuse River overflowed its banks Thursday and the mayor asked people living nearby to move to higher ground.

European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pledged to help, tweeting: “My thoughts are with the families of the victims of the devastating floods in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and those who have lost their homes.”

The full extent of the damage was still unclear, with many villages cut off by floods and landslides that made roads impassable. Videos on social media showed cars floating down streets and houses partially collapsed.

Many of the dead were only discovered after floodwaters receded.

Authorities in the Rhine-Sieg county south of Cologne ordered the evacuation of several villages below the Steinbachtal reservoir amid fears a dam could break.

Two firefighters died in rescue operations in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state.

Gov. Armin Laschet paid tribute to them and pledged swift help for those affected.

“We don’t know the extent of the damage yet, but we won’t leave the communities, the people affected alone,” he said during a visit to the flood-hit city of Hagen.

Laschet, a conservative who is running to succeed Merkel as chancellor in this fall’s election, said the unusually heavy storms and an earlier heat wave could be linked to climate change.

Political opponents have criticized Laschet, the son of a miner, for supporting the region’s coal industry and hampering the expansion of wind power during his tenure.

Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of ocean physics at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said it was unclear whether the extreme rainfall seen in Germany was a direct result of planetary warming.

“But one can state that such events are becoming more frequent due to global warming,” he told The Associated Press, noting that warmer air can absorb more water vapor that eventually falls as rain.

“The increase in heavy rain and decrease in days with weak rain is now also clearly seen in observational data, especially in the mid-northern latitudes, which includes Germany,” Rahmstorf said.

The weakening of the summer circulation of the atmosphere, causing longer-lasting weather patterns such as heat waves or continuous rain, might also play a role, he added.

Rainfall eased later Thursday across Germany, although water levels on the Mosel and Rhine rivers were expected to continue rising.

Authorities in the southern Dutch town of Valkenburg, near the German and Belgian borders, evacuated a care home and a hospice overnight amid flooding that turned the tourist town’s main street into a river, Dutch media reported.

The Dutch government sent about 70 troops to the southern province of Limburg late Wednesday to help with evacuations and filling sandbags.

A section of one of the country’s busiest highways was closed due to rising water and Dutch media showed a group of tourists being rescued from a hotel window with the help of an earth mover.

In northeastern France, heavy rains flooded vegetable fields, many homes and a World War I museum in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon. Firefighters evacuated people from campgrounds around the town of Fresnes-en-Woevre, according to the local firefighter service. Bastille Day fireworks were canceled in some small towns.

The Aire River rose to its highest levels in 30 years in some areas, according to local newspaper L’Est Republicain.

The equivalent of two months of rain has fallen in some areas over two days, according to the French national weather service, with flood warnings issued for 10 regions. No injuries or deaths have been reported, but forecasters warned of mudslides and more rain on Friday.

A train route to Luxembourg was disrupted, and firefighters evacuated dozens of people near the Luxembourg-German border and in the Marne region, according to broadcaster France Bleu.

—

Associated Press writers Raf Casert in Brussels, Angela Charlton in Paris and Mike Corder in The Hague contributed.

Read More

A pick-up truck driven by an off-duty Chicago police officer struck and killed a 9-year-old boy riding a bicycle Wednesday evening in West Rogers Park.

The officer said he didn’t see Hershel Weinberger before hitting him around 8 p.m. on a sidewalk in the 7300 Block of North Sacramento, according to Chicago Fraternal Order of Police president John Catanzara Jr.

Hershel, who lived nearby, was taken to Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston where he died, according to Chicago police. The family told police he was heading home after playing at a friend’s house.

The officer, 48, took a Breathalyzer test that was negative, Catanzara said.

“It’s just a tragedy. And any person could be in his shoes. This just happens to be a Chicago police officer,” Catanzara told the Sun-Times. “Our hearts go out to the family. This officer is certainly never going to forget that. It’s sad all-around.”

Police said no citations or charges have been filed.

Baruch Hertz, a rabbi at Congregation B’nei Ruven, said Hershel “was a loved kid. He was a very nice boy, had a smile on his face at all times … It’s a huge shock for the community.”

Ruth Lee, a close friend of the Weinberger family, said the boy had a “sweet energy.”

“He was bright…kind looking, he had very vibrant blue eyes,” Lee, who taught Hershel in various subjects from music to religion, told the Sun-Times.

Rabbi Hertz described the Weinberger family as “very charitable people who always have guests in their home.

Read More

The morning after the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, Jason Narducy got a call. It was Metro owner Joe Shanahan. The venue was hosting a party for the team the next day and needed a band. Narducy frantically wrangled musicians and performed two sets of covers with a group that had never rehearsed together. He even persuaded Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin to join in on a Pretenders song and got the whole crowd singing to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “The Waiting.” “I needed to deliver rock for extremely drunk athletes,” Narducy recalls, laughing. “It was a moment in history.”

Narducy has dozens of stories like this, thanks to his almost four decades — and many roles — in the music scene. The Evanston lifer, 50, is perhaps best known as the cofounder of the rock band Verbow and the bassist for Bob Mould’s band and the touring version of Superchunk. But before any of that, as a preteen in 1982, he and his friends started Verböten, a punk-rock band that Dave Grohl has credited with inspiring him to pursue music. Narducy’s experience with that group spawned an excellent musical of the same name that ran at the House Theatre of Chicago last year. He wrote the songs for the show, which was nominated for an American Theatre Critics Association Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. It’s no wonder one of his friends calls him a Swiss Army knife: “I do a lot,” Narducy says with a shrug.

His personal passion these days, though, is Split Single, the side project he’s been fronting for nearly 10 years with a rotating cast of musicians. In June, it released its long-awaited third album, Amplificado, a radiant burst of power pop that showers listeners in sanguine vocal harmonies and fireworks-like guitar riffs. This time around, Narducy, who handles lead vocals and guitar, is accompanied by R.E.M.’s Mike Mills on bass and Superchunk’s Jon Wurster on drums. The album captures the energy of a live performance, and songs like “Adrift” reveal a more unguarded side of Narducy. “To be as vulnerable as possible? It’s never easy,” he says. “The first few times I listened to it [‘Adrift’] back, I was shaking, because it’s just right there.” Narducy will perform that song and others from the album on his solo tour. He’s playing an outdoor concert in Beverly on August 7 and at Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights on August 25.

Political pushback, too, features prominently on Amplificado, like in the deceptively cheerful “95 Percent.” That shouldn’t come as a surprise considering what Narducy has been up to between albums. The last Split Single LP dropped days after Donald Trump was elected, and Narducy soon found himself creatively drained. “Because of the political weight I felt, anytime I picked up a guitar, I couldn’t write songs. So I got involved.”

He began working with Sister District Project, a San Francisco–based group that helps drum up support for Democrats in purple states. What started with six friends at SPACE in Evanston ballooned into weekly events with 180 people penning 4,000 postcards to voters a night. “It was awesome, and all of our candidates won,” Narducy says. It also solved his writer’s block. Shortly afterward, he started drafting ideas that would eventually become the backbone of Amplificado.

After our conversation, Narducy and I walk around an empty Metro, which at one point he feared would not reopen after the pandemic. “It might sound like hyperbole, but this is our church,” he says. “This is where I come to celebrate life.” Now, with the club scheduling acts again and his own tour calendar filling up, Narducy feels a sense of relief. But he will never take his busy schedule for granted again. That much is clear when he climbs onto the stage to pose for a photo. Narducy looks right at home.

Read More

Chicago Bears: 3 things Anthony Miller must prove in training camp by Dominique Blanton

The Minnesota Wild made major headlines earlier in the week when they bought out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. They have been great players for a long time but the Wild felt that it was time to move on. When they both signed with the Wild on July 4th, 2012, they instantly became Stanley Cup contenders. They were never able to get over the hump, however, and the Chicago Blackhawks were a big reason why.

The Chicago Blackhawks might consider adding a free agent this summer.

Now, could Parise or Suter consider the team that beat them so much in the playoffs? One of them is a better fit than the other on the current Blackhawks. Parise is still a decent player that could contribute some offense in a middle-six left-wing role but Suter would really be a fit on the team right now. He is still a good defenseman than could really help.

The Hawks just traded Duncan Keith for Caleb Jones and a draft pick. Suter was always in the shadow of Keith in terms of great NHL defenseman because Keith was just a little bit better there for a while. In the year 2021, Suter has a lot more to give so he could be that veteran replacement.

Now, this would all only be applicable if the Hawks actually think they have a chance at the playoffs next season. There are rumors that they are involved in Jack Eichel, Seth Jones, and even Dougie Hamilton as a free agent. If they added one of those three and then Ryan Suter, they would have a pretty formidable looking team if Jonathan Toews comes back fully healthy.

Suter might be a package deal with Parise at this point but you never know what they decide to do. Both of them would help the Hawks’ bad roster but the need lies on defense pretty badly. Suter would be able to provide a steady boost to the back end. In fact, he would probably step right in and be their number one for a little bit (if they didn’t land someone like Seth Jones or Dougie Hamilton).

Related Story: One OHL prospect is worth rebuilding for

As far as a contract, the Wild just bought him out and are going to pay a pretty nice cap penalty for that for a while. Whichever team that signs him is going to get him for pretty cheap at this point. He still has some good hockey left in that stick and would provide plenty of skills and veteran leadership to the Blackhawks’ young defense.

Read More

Michael Halberstam, who helped build Writers Theatre to artistic prominence in the Chicago area but also drew criticism for his conduct in the workplace, has stepped down as the theater’s artistic director.

A co-founder of the theater, he had held the position since its launch in 1992.

“Both Halberstam and Writers Theatre leadership agree that now is the time to look forward, to create pathways for new voices and stories, and to build for the next 30 years,” the company said in a statement.

Bobby Kennedy, Writers’ director of new work and dramaturgy, will serve as interim artistic director during a national search for a permanent replacement.

In his long run at the helm of Writers Theatre, Halberstam received widespread praise for his work, and in 2016 he was honored at Joseph Jefferson Awards for his “outstanding theatrical accomplishments and contributions to Chicagoland theater for the past 25 years.” That year the company moved to a new permanent home in downtown Glencoe, designed by Studio Gang Architects.

In 2017, Halberstam was accused of harassment by Tom Robson, who detailed several alleged incidents in a series of tweets. Robson said they occurred when he was 23 and assistant director of Writers’ 2003 production of “Crime & Punishment,” directed by Halberstam.

Halberstam cooperated with a subsequent investigation, and the theater’s Board of Trustees announced its conclusions several weeks later: that Halberstam “made inappropriate and insensitive comments in the workplace. [But] the investigation did not support a finding of other inappropriate sexual behavior.”

Halberstam agreed to participate in “compliance training and executive coaching sessions” and said, “I understand that statements and comments I have made have caused distress and discomfort for members of our theater community. I would like to unequivocally express my sincere and deep regret.”

In an unusual move, Writers Theatre acknowledged the complaints in its resignation announcement and added, “The timing of Halberstam’s departure signals Halberstam’s and Writers Theatre’s desire to preserve the goodwill of the theatre and to continue to ensure a respectful workplace for all.”

In his statement acccompanying the resignation announcement, Halberstam praised his collaborators and the theater’s audiences, donors, staff and board but did not address the issue of his conduct.

Read More

MIAMI — For the owner of a small private security company with a history of avoiding paying debts and declaring bankruptcy, it looked like a good opportunity: Find people with military experience for a job in Haiti.

Antonio “Tony” Intriago, owner of Miami-based CTU Security, seems to have jumped at the chance, hiring more than 20 former soldiers from Colombia for the mission. Now the Colombians have been killed or captured in the aftermath of the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, and Intriago’s business faces questions about its role in the killing.

On Wednesday evening, Leon Charles, head of the Haiti’s National Police, accused Intriago of traveling to Haiti numerous times as part of the assassination plot and of signing a contract while there, but provided no other details and offered no evidence.

“The investigation is very advanced,” Charles said.

A Miami security professional believes Intriago was too eager to take the job and did not push to learn details, leaving his contractors in the lurch. Some of their family members back in Colombia have said the men understood the mission was to provide protection for VIPs.

Three Colombians were killed and 18 are behind bars in Haiti, Colombia’s national police chief, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, told reporters in Bogota. Colombian diplomats in Haiti have not had access to them.

Vargas has said that CTU Security used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects allegedly involved in the killing. One of the Colombians who was killed, Duberney Capador, photographed himself wearing a black CTU Security polo shirt.

Nelson Romero Velasquez, an ex-soldier and attorney who is advising 16 families of the Colombians held in Haiti, said Wednesday that the men had all served in the Colombian military’s elite special forces and could operate without being detected, if they had desired. He said their behavior made it clear they did not go to Haiti to assassinate the president.

“They have the ability to be like shadows,” Romero Velasquez said.

The predawn attack took place at the president’s private home. He was shot to death and his wife wounded. It’s not clear who pulled the trigger. The latest suspects identified in the sweeping investigation included a former Haitian senator, a fired government official and an informant for the U.S. government.

Miami has become a focus of the probe. The city has long been a nest of intrigue, from being a CIA recruitment center for the failed Bay of Pigs operation to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to being a key shipment point for Colombian cocaine in the 1980s. Its palm-fringed shores have also been a place of exile for people from Latin American and Caribbean countries when political winds blew against them at home, and where some plotted their returns.

Homeland Security Investigations, a U.S. agency responsible for investigating crimes that cross international borders, is also investigating the assassination, said a Department of Homeland Security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the case. He declined to provide details.

The FBI says it is “providing investigative assistance” to Haitian authorities.

Intriago, who immigrated from Venezuela over a decade ago and participated in activities in Miami opposing the leftist regime in his homeland, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

He likes to be around powerful people and has posted photos on social media showing himself with them, including Colombian President Ivan Duque.

Duque’s office on Monday disavowed any knowledge of Intriago, saying Duque was in Miami while campaigning for the presidency in February 2018. He posed for photographs with some of those in attendance, but Duque did not have any meeting or any ties with Intriago, the Colombian president’s office said.

Florida state records show Intriago’s company has changed names in the past dozen years: CTU Security to CS Security Solutions to Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy LLC.

CTU lists two Miami addresses on its website. One is a shuttered warehouse with no signage. The other is a small office suite under a different name. A receptionist said the CTU owner stops by once a week to collect mail.

The company website says it offers “first-class personalized products and services to law enforcement and military units, as well as industrial customers.”

But it ducked paying some of those wholesale companies for their products. Florida records show Intriago’s company was ordered by a court to pay a $64,791 debt in 2018 to a weapons and tactical gear supply company, RSR Group. Propper, a military apparel manufacturer, also sued for nonpayment.

Alexis Ortiz, a writer who worked with Intriago organizing meetings of expatriate Venezuelans in the United States, described him as a “very active, skilled collaborator.”

“He seemed nice,” Ortiz said.

Richard Noriega, who runs International Security Consulting in Miami, said he does not know Intriago personally but has been observing the developing situation. Noriega, who is also originally from Venezuela, believes Intriago was lured by the prospect of fast money and did not perform due diligence.

Putting himself in Intriago’s shoes, Noriega said: “I’m coming out of a complicated situation — of work, of income, of money. An opportunity arises. I don’t want to lose it.”

Normally, a security company would seek all the details of an operation, to determine how many people to use and what level of insurance they would need. A priority would be to plan an escape route in case things go awry, he said.

“The first thing we (security professionals) have to take into account is the evacuation. Where will they exit? That’s the first thing I do,” Noriega said.

But apparently that planning never happened, perhaps because the Colombians, or at least some of them, thought their mission was benign.

He said it does not seem logical that if the highly trained Colombians were there to kill the president, that they would not have had an escape route. Instead they were caught, some hiding in bushes, by the local population and police.

“It is very murky,” Noriega said.

___

Selsky, a former Associated Press bureau chief in the Caribbean and Colombia, reported from Salem, Oregon. AP writers Joshua Goodman in Miami, Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Manuel Rueda and Astrid Suarez in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.

Read More

ZHANGJIAKOU, China — With the postponed Summer Olympics set to open in Tokyo next week, Beijing has made moves to show its preparations for the Winter Games are well on track for February despite the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journalists taken on a tour of snow event venues in the outlying city of Zhangjiakou this week were shown the locations for ski jumping, snowboarding and Nordic events.

While China has largely eliminated local transmission of the coronavirus, it has maintained strict quarantine regulations. Organizers have not announced what rules will be in place for athletes, officials and coaches at the 2022 Winter Olympics, or if fans will be allowed.

Jia Maoting, general manager of the company overseeing construction of the venues, told reporters that the “pandemic situation is uncertain, we cannot guess how it will develop.”

“We have solid determination to face the changing world,” Jia added. “We built good venues in any case and then we wait and expect a good result.”

China has also faced calls for a boycott of the games from foreign politicians and human rights groups over the country’s detention of more than 1 million members of the Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic groups in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Beijing says it provided voluntary job training and anti-radicalization classes and has denounced boycott calls as a politicization of sports based on false evidence.

The Chinese capital hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and is the first city to be given rights to host the Winter Games as well.

Chen Rongqin, an official with the planning committee’s construction department, said work was largely completed apart from construction on temporary facilities that can’t be built too early.

“We still need to build some more facilities and houses in the next few months, and those are our major work now,” Chen said.

The National Ski Jumping Center was one of the major venues for the tour, highlighted with an evening light show. It is has been nicknamed Snow Ruyi, after an ancient ski slope-shaped jade ornament symbolizing good fortune. As well as its two ski jumping tracks, it has a football pitch at its base.

Zhangjiakou is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) to the west of Beijing in Hebei province, connected by highway and a high-speed rail line.

It is due to host ski jumping, snowboarding, freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, and Nordic combined and biathlon competitions during the Games.

The 2020 Summer Games were last year postponed for 12 months because of the pandemic.

There’ll be heavy restrictions on all participants at the Games, which open July 23. And with Tokyo in a state of emergency and rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in the city, there’ll be no fans allowed at most of the Olympic venues.

Read More

Deceptive practices during the interrogation of minors would be barred under a bill Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Thursday, one piece of legislation aimed at advancing “the rights of some of our most vulnerable” in the state’s criminal justice system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

o Bars anything said or done during a restorative justice hearing from being used against someone in court unless that protection is waived.

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

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

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

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

“We had so many wrongful convictions, particularly of youth, that were predicated on these practices of lying to children, where the science … tells us about their susceptibility to those types of practices and the damage that can be done,” Foxx said. “When we convict people who are not the people who have done the actual crime, it not only robs them of their lives, from their families and from their communities, it also allows the people who’ve actually committed the crimes to go free.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More