Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Garry McCarthy tips his hand

     So let's say I'm planning to rob a bank—I'm not, so don't be alarmed.  
     But hypothetically, say I'm going to. I don't want to pull the heist alone, and risk straining my back, lugging all that loot. So I recruit my pals, Bugs and Ox. We case the joint, as we criminals like to call locations we're going to rob, we divvy up roles. Bugs and Ox go into the bank, and since I'm the mastermind, l reserve for myself the task of driving the getaway car. Seems safer.
     But inside the bank, things go wrong. Ox trips over a free toaster display, falls on a security guard and crushes him. The poor guard dies. The law says that not only can Ox be found guilty of the guard's death, but so can Bugs and even me, outside in the idling car, because I'm a participant in the crime that caused the death.
     That makes sense. When you're robbing banks. What about lesser crimes? Out on bail, awaiting my trial for the bank heist, I carelessly jaywalk. A police officer heads in my direction to give me a ticket and is killed by a bus. Also murder? The basic facts are the same: a lesser crime that results in the death of someone.
     You see where I'm going with this.
     Edward R. Brown is accused of discharging a gun into the air on Dec. 17. Responding to the gunshot, officers Conrad Gary and Eduardo Marmolejo were struck by a South shore Line commuter train and killed. Their deaths cast a pall of public grief over Chicago's holiday season.
     Brown, who has no criminal record, was charged with felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and reckless discharge of a firearm.
     This was not enough, speaking of reckless, for former police superintendent Garry McCarthy. He went on right wing talk radio Sunday to demand that the 24-year-old, who has no criminal record, be charged with more serious crimes "up to felony murder," though how doing that either brings the dead officers back or reduces the future occurrence of stupid acts that draw attention of the police is a mystery, one perhaps answered by the fact that McCarthy is in the scrum of candidates running for mayor. He personally condemned his mayoral opponent, in the scrum of 21 candidates now and perhaps one-on-one after February, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and her protege/state's attorney, Kim Foxx.

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8 comments:

  1. If I " found" a firearm would the first thing I did be : discharge it? You know just to see if it functions properly? Peoples misuse of firearms are an epidemic. in this case resulting in the death of two people that would be alive today but for this reckless act, that as you say easily could have resulted in the death of a random innocent.

    Politics and elderly white anger aside for a moment, responsible use of firearms is the only solution for the epidemic of death and injury happening in our communities nationwide. I think this could be a teaching moment and the government should make an example of this young man and prosecute him to the full extent of the law .

    Then chicagoans should elect an inexperienced vigorous, youthful member of a couple different minorities to be our next mayor . someone not already deep in the sewer of local politics.

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    1. I wonder why the two officers were running on the tracks instead of besideit. I am not familiar with the area as I am living in Wisconsin. Is there some there that would have kept the officers from running on the tracks.

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    2. He certainly did act irresponsibly and should be punished. But "The full extent of the law" would be a charge that could gain a conviction. You --or, I suspect, the forces the Mr. McCarthy speaks for -- might not find that sufficient.

      Tom

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  2. As Mayoral Candidate Garry McCarthy becomes worse and worse in my eyes, I have to suppose that he gets better and better in the eyes of the mob, those wild, irrational, passionate people, eager for vengeance, who from time to time represent a majority of any group. We shall see if he has killed all hope of becoming mayor or stoked the fires of enough Chicagoans looking for someone to punish for the deaths of two innocent policemen.

    john

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    1. A Mayor McCarthy would bring to Chicago what a President Trump has brought to America. But then, what do I know? I'm currently living in an even more distressed city, whose mush-mouthed mayor is now entering his 14th year of stumbling, bumbling, and fumbling, after being a city councilman (what Cleveland calls its aldermen) for many years. I'm speaking my piece about Chicago's mayoral morass only because I lived through both Daley Eras...grew up with the Elder and even voted for the Younger...so that should count for something.

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  3. If Brown had been running away and those cops were chasing him, I maybe could see a felony murder charge, and even then it would be very tenuous and tendentious IMO. But by all accounts he didn't attempt to flee or offer any kind of resistance. Those officers just failed to look where they were going. It certainly is tragic and regrettable that they died, but charging Brown with their deaths just looks like vengefulness. McCarthy's biggest obstacle in the election will be his perceived laxity in the Laquan McDonald case, and he's not doing himself any favors by advocating for something like this.

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  4. There's a concept in the law called contributory negligence & those two cops certainly contributed to their own deaths through blatant foolishness!
    I'm sure that's going to make most cops mad, but I had a grandfather who worked for the railroad & I was taught first to stay off of the tracks & second to follow Rule M: A train can move on any track at any time in any direction.
    And to sanford, they were on the IC Mainline, once the widest rail mainline on Earth, it used to have ten tracks, but now is down to just six. But on top of that, because four of those tracks are under the catenary that supplies power to the commuter trains, there are hundreds on gantries holding up those wires, which leaves wide spaces between some tracks for employees to work on the electric wires that power the trains. Why the cops weren't in those spaces would be baffling, but a day after their deaths, a CPD spokesman stated that Chicago doesn't give cops any training on how to act when on live railroad rights of way!

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