Chicago Justice Podcast

Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara has officially resigned from the Chicago Police Department after his recent hearing in front of the Chicago Police Board demonstrated he was going to fired. Despite this being extremely good news as Chicago is much better off without this man having the authority and power police officers enjoy the city is not yet rid of the man as he retains his...

Chicago Contrarian is nothing more than a platform for extremist views that have been growing in Chicago and around the country for decades. In this episode we take a look at a couple recent posts that provide insight in to the mind set of the insurrectionists on January 6th. The posts from Chicago Contrarian also provide insight in to minds of far too many Chicago police officers. The first post...

The pro cop media bias in Chicago was on full display when the media failed to report appropriately on a domestic violence incident involving two police officers that resulted in one officer shooting and killing her husband. The media instead writes headlines and stories about how the two officers were involved in an altercation or argument that resulted in a struggle over one of the officer&#8217...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot flip flops on here commitment for full transparency in the Anjanette Young case despite making such a commitment publicly. Lightfoot has received a report from the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety that contains the results of their investigation of the case. An investigation that was stymied from the beginning by Lightfoot’s arranging for an external investigat...

Republicans House Leader Jim Durkin and State Senator John Curran authored a horrific OpEd in the Chicago Tribune calling for a return to the good old days of law and order Cook County style. You remember when people like Richard Daley and Dick Devine were doing their level best to wrongfully convict people as long as it served their political interests. When the Cook County State’s attorney...

Superintendent David Brown tried to prevent the city from moving forward with the firing of Sgt. William Spyker but ultimately a single Chicago Police Board member decided to allow the case against Spyker to move forward. Why did Brown do this? We don’t really know because the Chicago media allows Brown to make all these decisions without really having to explain them. Spyker was caught on v...

Democrats around the country are folding like cheap suits when it comes to defunding the police as mayors across the country move to restore funding for police departments or like in Chicago raising their budgets. As usual an increase in crime has the Democrats running for cover as if the protests of last summer after the murder of George Floyd never occurred. This ridiculous move by the Democrats...

The Chicago Tribune’s editorial board has never been a bastion of progressive ideas centered on uplifting Chicago’s under-served communities. Instead the editorial board has been a home for criticism of non-strongman candidates that they believe cannot control an incredibly corrupt city government not realizing the entire time the strong-man leaders backed by the editorial board are th...

Today’s we sit down with Deborah Witzburg, the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety. We discuss her report from June 2020 titled “Review of the CPD Management and production of records ” and her recent follow up report that looks in to what if any of the recommendations within the report the Chicago Police Department has started implement. The latest report is titled &#8220...

The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and their President John Catanzara are driving a bus filled with their membership right off the COVID cliff with their ridiculous stance on the city’s vaccine mandate. Only the in the minds of the alt right cult that has taken over the FOP could anyone believe that vaccine mandates are anything new in America. The FOP leadership has had to at one t...

Crain’s editorial jumped onboard hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s propaganda train to help him steer attention from the biggest grift in the city that also has the most detrimental impact on communities – Chicago’s tax increment financing program. This pro-business cult for some reason have absolutely no problem with the city using taxpayer funds to subsidize corporatio...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided the offices and home of the outspoken President of the New York Police Department’s Sergeants Benevolent Association Ed Mullins last week. While the motivation for the raid was not known immediately it has now been reported that the FBI raid is tied to a wide ranging investigation centering on Mullins financial dealings. In the wake of the FBI...

Social media surveillance by police departments like the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is growing steadily. In a poll conducted by the International Association of Police in 2017 70% of responding police departments said they were actively using social media to conduct surveillance and for operational awareness. In January of 2020 the Brennan Center for Justice filed open records requests w...

Facts all to often get in the way of political agendas , the exploitation of violence for political again, and just plain opportunism. Unfortunately in Chicago we have all of these in spades. The continual finger pointing and scapegoating by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown regarding violence in Chicago and who is responsible is horrific. They just cannot help themselves but do it eve...

If you are watching the news in Chicago you cannot help but be inundated with reporting on the September’s homicide numbers that are provided without the needed context to help Chicagoans makes sense of what is really going on and how it compares to previous year. The main context needed is that while we are still in the middle of a worldwide pandemic you cannot compare year to year crime nu...

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have finally moved to increase funding for research in to gun violence and the impact it has on the lives of individuals and the vibrancy of our communities. The funding of this research has been blocked for years not by the CDC but by corrupt legislators who are worried that the results of the research will spur much needed regulation of guns in America. Over...

On today’s show we examine a recent interview from WGN Radio’s Bob Sirott where he interviews a former spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police Martin Preib who has a long history of endorsing wild conspiracy theories. Preib is know for his strong support for conspiracy theories ranging from their being a massive left wing conspiracy between the media in Chicago and civil rights law...

On today’s show we discuss how Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzata may finally be reaping what he sowed with all of his extremist rhetoric and horrific social media posting history. In a recent YouTube post Catanzara informs the FOP’s membership that while he attempted to recruit the Local 2 President Jim Tracy to sit down with the FOP and other police unions with the Ma...

On today’s show our main segment we cover the sentence of probation that 47 year-old former Chicago police officer Erik Elkins received as part of plea agreement. Elkins was arrested for his role in a bar fight and charged with several felony counts. In the end the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and Elkins reached a plea agreement that includes Elkins pleading guilty to 2...

46th Ward Alderperson James Cappleman, elected in 2011, routinely walks the ward and intervenes in public disorder. Now, Cappleman’s interventions go beyond just telling people they should stop doing what they are doing to physically intervening in the event. This weekend one of those street interventions led Cappleman to physically try to throughout a table some men were using to place thei...

A recent NBC 5 Chicago interview of former Deputy Mayor Susan Lee is just another demonstration of the short comings of the Chicago media to hold powerful people’s feet to the fire. The interview by reporter Chris Hush was a total softball fest where Hush failed to ask a single meaningful question about the time Lee spent in the Mayor’s office. Lee is now working for Chicago CRED an or...

The misconduct of former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara just cost the city another $20.5 million in a settlement of the wrongful conviction case of Jose Montanez and Armando Serrano who were convicted of a 1993 murder of Rodrigo Vargas but later exonerated. Over the last several years activists and civil rights lawyers have started to chip away that the horrific history of Detective Rey...

Few politicians in Chicago attract such levels of hatred and misogyny as does Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Foxx was elected in a direct response to the murder and coverup of Laquan McDonald. While the McDonald case was definitely the catalyst for the wave of protests that forced out Chicago Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy , Chief Administrator of the Independent Police Review A...

Today on our show we feature an interview with Dr. Dave Olsen who is the Co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and Practice and a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Loyola University Chicago. Today we discuss a research brief he published in July of this y ear titled “Arrests in Illinois for Illegal Possession of a Firearm, Examining...

Today’s show features our discussion with Deborah Witzburg who is the Deputy Public Safety Inspector General in the Office of the Inspector General for the City of Chicago. Witzburg recently published a report analyzing internal Chicago Police Department data and data from the Office of Emergency Management & Communications with one basic goal – to determine if there is demonstrabl...