The Chicago Teachers Union and a coalition of parent advocacy nonprofits held protests before Wednesday’s board meeting to call on the district to reverse the cuts. “School communities will be thrown into turmoil and there will be lots of turnover,” union president Jesse Sharkey said.

The study from Professor Robert Vargas, director of the UChicago Justice Project, noted that very few carjacked vehicles are ever recovered by Chicago police and concluded that the cars are most likely being sold on the black market, either whole or in parts. Vargas concluded that most carjackings are likely done by adults with economic motivations.

The $31.5 million program has enough funding to send just 5,000 Chicago families $500 per month for 12 months, officials said.

Chicago Public Schools said it expects to begin publishing student discipline and safety data in the coming weeks, a year after dozens of high schools voted to reduce or eliminate their school resource officer programs.

Within minutes of the city council approving Deborah Witzburg as the new Chicago Inspector General, Alderwoman Silvana Tabares sent a letter to Witzburg alleging Valencia “inappropriately used her position as an elected citywide office holder to benefit the business interests of her lobbyist husband.”

“Let’s take Chicago where … we haven’t made any inroads in stopping the killing. Chicago is now the world’s largest outdoor shooting range. We know that a lot of the shootings come from gangs. Why wouldn’t you want to call the police chief and the mayor in Chicago and say, ‘Look, you know who these gang members are. When you have a reasonable suspicion under Terry v. Ohio … why don’t you aggressively stop, question and frisk these gang members?” Sen. John Kennedy asked, arguing guns, drugs and gang members would be pulled from the streets.

His plan never got a hearing in committee, and in September he unsuccessfully tried to force a vote by the full City Council, but his request was ruled out of order because he hadn’t filed his motion with the City Clerk’s office by the proper deadline. Beale tried again Wednesday, but had made the same mistake by waiting until Monday to file his motion with the clerk’s office, when the deadline for such a motion was last Wednesday.

“I respect the interest in historic preservation. But the Dirksen Courthouse and those who work in it have been targeted before, and security vulnerabilities around the courthouse must be addressed.”

Speaking from the rostrum, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the independence of the inspector general is “sacrosanct. Period. Full stop. The integrity of the work has to speak for itself. It’s not about any individual. It’s not about personality. It’s not about ego. It’s the integrity of the work.” With a fundamental mandate to “root out fraud, waste and abuse, “the audit function is critical, the mayor said.

A 2019 investigation found that the cost of water tripled in Chicago over the previous decade. The investigation also found that water shutoffs were disproportionately concentrated in the city’s majority-Black and majority-Latino neighborhoods. Since then Lightfoot implemented a temporary moratorium on water shutoffs.

“Some of our neighborhoods have intentionally been starved for no other reason than systemic racism,” Lightfoot said Wednesday before the City Council vote. “Should we not address that problem, solve it? We are a city. A city of neighbors.”

A Monterrey guard said police officers have recently joined them for routine patrols in 10-minute intervals at connecting stations like the Jackson Blue Line stop, “where the white folks be traveling at the most.” Another unarmed guard at Jackson said they still feel outmatched when dealing with hostile commuters. “They call us the ‘toy cops.’ The money is good, but I’m going to quit, too. If I have nothing to protect me, I can’t stay on the job.”

Chicago set almost a 34 year record with a 13.1% gain, which put us near the bottom of the list of 20 metro areas. But the good news is that at least another metro area fell behind us. We are now 4th from the bottom, ahead of Minneapolis, New York, and DC.

Authorities said Charles Sikanich, Ald. Jim Gardiner’s ward superintendent, arranged to sell an MP-40 fully automatic machine gun to an undercover ATF agent while on the job. ATF agents staking out the prearranged meeting spot saw Sikanich arriving in a city Department of Streets and Sanitation vehicle.During the meeting, Sikanich said “he would have his mother complete the illegal transaction, as he hoped to avoid complications” to his ward job, according to the attorney general’s office.

Ald. Brian Hopkins said the neighbors in his ward are worried. “It’s the sense that criminals are taking over, they’re emboldened and they don’t fear any consequences right now. That has to change.”