This morning, a day of shopping turned into a day of horror in Tinley Park. The Chicago Tribune reports that violence broke out at the Lane Bryant store at the Brookside Marketplace shopping center at around 10:44 am. Four people, unidentified as of yet, were shot to death.
Police are now looking for an African American man around 5’9”, 230-260 lbs, wearing a black coat, knit cap and jeans.
Tinley Park built Brookside Marketplace around four years ago; Mayor Ed Zabrocki announced in a 2004 press release, “Brookside Marketplace is certain to become one of our Village’s most popular attractions, and we are anxious to work with the developer to create a center that residents and visitors alike will enjoy and be proud of.”
Today, the
Crime may be an art at Chicago’s Kass/Meridian gallery. The Chicago Tribune reports that U.S. postal inspectors and FBI agents stormed and raided the gallery on Thursday. No, they weren’t look for drugs and guns– as per usual in Chicago. They were searching for something much more dangerous– at least to the art collector– forgeries.
There’s no news yet on the specifics of the investigation, but the whole situation calls to mind previous master con artists. Take George Greenhalgh, 84. He and his family were charged in 2002 with laundering money from selling forged artwork. Among these fakes was a Gauguin statue that once graced the collection at the Art Institute.
Then there’s James Kennedy of Northbook, Ill., who was found guilty in 2004 after attempting to sell fake Picassos, Chagalls and Matisses.
But all these fakers pale when compared to Elmyr de Hory, who flawlessly forged the work of masters like Picasso, Monet, Matisse and Modigliani. Orson Welles even immortalized him in his 1975 film “F is For Fake.”
Now, his pieces are worth almost as much as the originals.
I guess, at least sometimes, crime pays.
Someone REALLY didn’t want to go to school on Friday. Apparently, the student body at Kaneland High School got a day off on Friday because someone deflated one tire on each of District 302’s 40 buses.
According to chatter on the Topix message board, citizens are concerned that the tire slashing may be gang-related.
Others think that the incident was merely a prank—one that backfired, since students must make up the missed day at the end of the year.
It’s hard to tell what’s cause for worry and what isn’t in schools today.
Every day there’s new stories about kids getting violent at school. Just look at Angel Facio, 16, who was indicted Friday for aggravated criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse and criminal sexual assault. This boy was not only charged with molesting an 8-year-old girl, he was also charged with stabbing his science teacher with a steak knife.
So, who’s to say that this prank doesn’t foretell more trouble? What do you think? Do you think Kaneland has cause to worry? Or were kids just being kids?
The world is full of people who profit from other people’s misfortune, a clichéd phrase but true. On Friday, Michael Spencer, 35, of Palatine was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $100,000 for paying girls cocaine to work as prostitutes. This man became a millionaire.
The Chicago Tribune quoted Shari Chandra, an assistant state’s attorney, as saying “He’s a dealer in women.”
Well, not only is he a dealer in women, he’s a dealer in drugs.
A CeaseFire outreach worker once told me that a lot of women get into prostitution because of drugs. A pimp will give them cocaine or heroin for free to get them hooked. Then, he’ll start asking for money. In order to pay for the drugs, these girls sell what they have—themselves.
The Center for Problem-Orienting Policing says that crack makes the prostitution issue even worse:
Crack cocaine markets drive down the price of street prostitution, as some prostitutes, desperate to buy drugs, sell sex cheaply. Other prostitutes resent them for driving down prices or permitting sex without condoms, and pimps punish them for withholding their earnings to buy drugs. Drug-dependent prostitutes are more vulnerable to violence and more likely to rob their clients. In summary, where drugs and street prostitution are linked, street prostitution becomes less predictable and more dangerous.
So, drugs and prostitution deal out a double blow. Take a look at this series of photos from the Hollywood Police Department showing the effects of drugs and prostitution on one woman over the years.
Women in the Victorian era became prostitutes in order to survive. This is what survival looks like today.
Today a boy was shot and wounded by a cop after he tried to bring a gun to school.
The boy fled when he set the metal detector off, and the cop shot the boy during the pursuit. The kid is still alive
The story got me wondering just exactly when metal detectors became the norm at high school, when they became necessary. I did a quick check and found that they were first introduced in 1994. Apparently, after the detectors and other measures were instituted, violent deaths decreased by 50 percent in U.S. high schools.
My high school introduced these measures the year after I left—2002. That year, they had a shooting scare. This wasn’t the first either– that one came when I still attended my old alma mater.
Someone left a message on the boy’s room wall saying that he would kill everyone the next day. One of the suspects was in my gym class. For some reason, this kid always talked to me. That day, he told me he didn’t do it.
I remember he had also recently burned stars onto the backs of his hands with red-hot cookie cutters.
He didn’t do it. But someone did. Maybe the guilty party didn’t mean it. Maybe it was a joke or an idle threat. Regardless, I stayed home the next day, because for every idle threat, there’s a kid who sets off metal detectors.
Well, some progress was made in Humboldt Park today with regard to the robbery earlier this week. Karl Smith, 30, of Chicago, was charged with home invasion and aggravated robbery after an assault on a Humboldt Park family that put a 6-year-old boy in the hospital.
Apparently, whoever broke in was after the residents’ safe. Police don’t know what was in the safe, but it is possible that the crime was drug-related.
Although police are not sure whether the boy was shot intentionally, the fact remains that a 6-year-old was shot in the head and remains in critical condition.
I was wondering what the man charged with such a deed looked like, thanks to CBS2 for the enlightenment.
This morning, a group of men wearing ski masks apparently broke into a Humboldt Park apartment and shot a 6-year-old boy in the head. They critically wounded the boy, but did not kill him.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the men also stabbed and shot one male resident and pistol-whipped another. Apparently, the ski-masked men retained some shred of humanity, and spared the life of the 1-year-old living in the house before driving away in their gold car. No deaths have been reported yet.
According to a representative from the Chicago Police Department’s news affairs bureau, there have been 20 homicides in the city this year. That’s 20 homicides in 18 days. And that’s not including atrocities like this, where murderers fail.
