What is going on here!?

My roommate was heroically able to remove a mouse from our apartment without harming it. They told me they like too much mouse-centric media to hurt it in any way. "Redwall, the Great Mouse Detective, Rats of Nimh, so much of my favorite media would be lost to me!"

I can't get over how whiny Hamilton sounds.

“Despite the nearly 40% decrease in the number of people incarcerated in the Cook County Jail, the Cook County Department of Corrections budget has not seen a reduction that coincides with that change in responsibility.”

NEW — Rod Johnson will never forget federal agents zip-tying his hands behind his back.

The night of the South Shore raid in Chicago, Johnson said he was detained for two hours.

“I’m an American citizen with no warrants,” Johnson said.

thetriibe.com/2025/10/sout...

Ultimately, it's impossible to set up a surveillance system and say it will only be used under specific circumstances and not used in others. Surveillance systems do one thing: survey. After that anyone with the login can use the collected data for whatever reason.
www.404media.co/police-said-...

My philosophy has been that when I just drink black coffee it's hardly different than just putting water in my mug? From, like, a cleanliness standpoint?

Are we talking a clean, or just a rinse? And do you put milk in your coffee? Cause that makes a big impact imo. I rinse it regularly, give it a proper clean every few weeks?

I'm convinced that part of the "men are less manly" panic comes from the fact that the world around you looks different when you are a literal child! It's the same reason many can't get over how much better things were during their childhood. You were a kid! Of course the world seemed different!

When I talk to people who don't do journalism/policy/law for a living, they often think that wrongful convictions are unavoidable. This is not true. They are a policy decision. A group of people made a choice, and a man spent 8 more years of his life behind bars because of it.

Those 34 years would have been 26 years if the Cook County Conviction Integrity Unit had cleared Francisco Benitez instead of denying him in 2015. He's one of at least 21 people the group rejected who were later exonerated. You can read about it in my @injusticewatch.org series Denying Innocence.

Wild how quickly @danhinkel.bsky.social's article became relevant again.

As the meeting wraps up, Commissioner Degnen asks about Superintendent Leonard Dixon — whose presence at the facility we raised questions about.

Deputy Superintendent William Steward says Dixon is present at the facility everyday, "boots on the ground."

www.injusticewatch.org/juvenile-cou...

The Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center Advisory Board meeting (so many words...) is underway at 69 W. Washington. On the agenda: updates on plans to "reimagine" the facility.

I'll be live-tweeting so make sure to follow along 👇 @injusticewatch.org

🧵 A deep dive into guaranteed funding floors for three Chicago oversight agencies -- Office of Inspector General, Civilian Office of Police Accountability, and Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability -- found actual departmental budgets well short of the minimums.

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Having a budget floor helps ensure oversight agencies are funded well enough to do their jobs! As Geoffrey describes, the budgeting practices here lead to an "apples-to-oranges comparison of COPA’s budget plus fringe to 1% of CPD’s non-grant budget without fringe." CCPSA faces the same issue.

A thing I think it’s important for USians not in currently-occupied cities to grasp is that the normal and everyday goes on alongside the violent and unprecedented.

In Chicago right now you can be forced off teargas-soaked streets in the morning and have a peaceful evening picnic on the lake.

Some context that I think gets lost by calling people here "protesters." Strictly true that they were protesting. But this was neighborhood. Almost all of it was people who came out of their houses and pleaded to stop using gas because there were kids in houses/yards in the blocks off Kedzie.

Chaos in Brighton Park. This is representative of the amount / direction of pepper and smoke sent into the neighborhood, in this case, for no reason I can discern other than because they were leaving. Feds had a clear path out in a different direction, and residents were vocal but not violent here.

NEWS: Trump is federalizing 300 National Guard troops in Illinois, Gov. Pritzker announced.

I'm just gonna say it, I don't think the Attorney General's current stated position -- that this is just good ol' crowd control and traffic safety operations, totally unrelated to helping ICE -- is sustainable.

In case you're wondering whether the TRUST Act will protect anyone: Border patrol just attacked press and protesters inside ISP's designated "free speech zone" and the state police reacted by immediately establishing a protective perimeter for the feds

When the rubber (bullets) meet the road, civilian controls like the TRUST Act mostly serve to demonstrate that civilian controls and oversight were always a fig leaf, and that the people with guns are gonna do what they want to do.

This is, to put it mildly, deeply corrosive to the civil fabric.