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Reposted by Geoffrey Cubbage

lumberjack wharfie @lumberjackwharfie.bsky.social · 1d

[haunted by the looming threat of fascism] we needed this rain

Reposted by Geoffrey Cubbage

Jim Daley @jimdaleywrites.bsky.social · 1d

FRIDAY: CPD denies my FOIA for bodycam footage from 7500 South Shore because footage is only flagged if, among other things, an arrest was made.

SUNDAY: CPD spox acknowledges that they made at least one arrest at 7500 South Shore in an on-the-record statement provided for this story.

Letter on CPD Letterhead in response to FOIA request:

"The Chicago Police Department (CPD) is in receipt of your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 ILCS 140/1, et seq.,
request for the following:
All body-worn camera and in-car camera video associated with the CPD response to 7500 block of S. South Shore Dr
(and/or 2700 block of E. 75th St) the morning of September 30, 2025, during which at least five people were arrested by

federal immigration agents. (For context please see: https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-
immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated)

In regard to your request for Body Worn Camera video, please be advised that any available Body Worn Camera video is
denied pursuant to the Sec 7(1)(a), which exempts from inspection and copying the following: "Information specifically
prohibited from disclosure by federal or State law or rules and regulations adopted under federal or State law.” See 5
ILCS 140/7(1)(a). Section 10-20(b) of the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act states that officer-worn body
camera recordings are not subject to disclosure under FOIA, except where a recording has been “flagged” because of
“the filing of a complaint, discharge of a firearm, use of force, arrest or detention, or resulting death or bodily harm,” or
the requester is the subject of the video footage. 50 ILCS 706/10-20(b)(1)-(3). Moreover, where the requester is not a
subject of the video, and the subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy at the time of the recording, disclosure
pursuant to FOIA is only permissible where the subject is either a victim and/or witness, and has consented to disclosure
in writing. 50 ILCS 706/10-20(b)(2). Accordingly, FOIA is not applicable to your request for body-worn camera video."

Email from CPD spokesperson:

"Hello,
The Chicago Police Department responded to the 7500 block of S. South Shore Drive on
September 30, 2025 at approximately 2:00 a.m. after being notified by federal authorities that
they had detained an individual with an active criminal warrant. After responding to the scene
and verifying the active criminal warrant, arresting officers placed a 46-year-old male offender
into custody. This individual has been charged with an Issuance of Warrant. Please refer to the
Cook County Sheriff's Office for additional information related to the warrant.
To be clear, the Chicago Police Department only responded to the scene for criminal
enforcement related to the offender's active criminal warrant. We did not participate in or assist
with any immigration enforcement.
In accordance with the City of Chicago’s Municipal Code, which includes the Welcoming
City Ordinance, the Chicago Police Department does not assist federal immigration authorities
with enforcement action solely based on immigration status.
Additionally, CPD does not document immigration status and does not share such information
with federal authorities.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 2d

Lots more charts and analysis in the article, but big takeaway here is: city law sets minimum funding for oversight agencies, and city budgetary practices meet those minimums by applying accounting choices and calculating indirect expenses that are not used anywhere else in the budget.

Link again:

Analysis: Departmental Budgets Fall Short of Mandatory Minimums for City Oversight Agencies

Non-departmental calculated costs and accounting adjustments make up difference, BGA Policy analysis finds

www.bettergov.org

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 2d

It's not a small impact. Depending on how you calculate CPD fringe (using a citywide average salary, as OBM does, vs. averages based on the departmental salaries and benefit agreements), excluding it impacts the floor calculation by anywhere from $4.3-8.6m annually for COPA, and $1.2-2.2m for CCPSA.

Combo column and line chart showing budgets and calculated fringe for COPA and budget floors at three different levels of calculation (without fringe, with CPD fringe at citywide average rate, and with CPD fringe at a departmental average rate) annually from 2018-2025.

The gaps between COPA's funding and the calculated floor increase depending on which funding floor is used. In a calculation with no fringe, COPA's appropriations do not meet the floor but COPA's appropriations plus COPA's fringe does. For either of the other two calculations, even adding fringe to COPA's appropriations is not sufficient to meet the minimum.

Similar combo chart to COPA's, but showing CCPSA data from 2022-2025.

As with COPA, CCPSA appropriations plus fringe are sufficient to meet the budget floor without fringe (in 2024, appropriations alone just barely met the floor), but neither calculation of budget floor with CPD fringe.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 2d

Now, from an accounting standpoint, including pension/benefit costs as part of operating departments' personnel budgets makes total sense. I wish the city did it as a default practice!

But we don't -- these "fringe" calculations for purposes of meeting budget floors are the only place it happens.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 2d

Lots to read in the article, but I'll highlight what's probably the biggest impact, and the hardest in my mind to defend: "fringe" calculations of pension/benefit costs are counted towards the budget floors for COPA/CCPSA, but *not* as part of the CPD budget on which their floors are based.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 2d

The city's budget office makes its determination that the funding floors have been met through a combination of accounting adjustments that affect the calculation of the floors themselves, and counting additional estimated costs that are not contained in regular departmental budgets.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 2d

🧵 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.

Analysis: Departmental Budgets Fall Short of Mandatory Minimums for City Oversight Agencies

Non-departmental calculated costs and accounting adjustments make up difference, BGA Policy analysis finds

www.bettergov.org

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 2d

“Going Postal,” Pratchett, 2004

Alex Blechman @alexblechman.bsky.social · 3d

Asking “is the postal service profitable?” is a new thing

If you visit a 1950s post office it looks like a Greek temple. They have statues of eagles. There’s a big mural of a flying woman holding a cornucopia. They didn’t whine “is the bronze bas-relief of Prosperity profitable?”

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 3d

Name it for what it is — because Chicago is certainly occupied territory right now; not conclusively and not always effectively, yet undeniably host to hostile armed forces — and don’t let the reality of the peaceful or the beautiful or the everyday make you deny the occupation, or vice versa.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 3d

Living these contradictions makes it hard to trust one’s own perception of reality, but this is exactly what life is under occupation. It has been documented many, many times, in histories ranging from the ancient to the still-ongoing, all over the globe.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 3d

Both experiences are real! They do not even require denial of one or the other — people whose bodies are on the line in real, physical struggle in this city are also still going about their ordinary lives in beautiful, late-summer weather.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 3d

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.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Cubbage

Keezy Young🌼 @keezyyoung.bsky.social · 4d

"you seem equally mad about autocorrect and cops tonight keez" anybody who's followed me for any amount of time knows I can be mad at lots of things at once it's just. you know. funnier to be mad at autocorrect

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 4d

Did the new Taylor Swift album just rickroll me?

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Reposted by Geoffrey Cubbage

Jim Daley @jimdaleywrites.bsky.social · 5d

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

shawn @mulchy.bsky.social · 5d

moments ago: pandemonium.

a huge mass of border patrol agents, led by greg bovino, pushed the crowd of protesters and started grabbing people at random.

leading up to this, folks were just calmly standing in the grass, following isp’s orders.

multiple people detained. no clue how many.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 5d

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.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 5d

A caravan of Border Patrol and ICE vehicles driving out of the facility is met with a roar of insults. IL state troopers holding the crowd back. One masked CBP agent inside his vehicle flashes a peace sign.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 5d

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.

shawn @mulchy.bsky.social · 5d

fwiw, i asked the illinois attorney general kwame raoul’s office last week (before the addition of state police and cook county sheriffs) about broadview police helping move protesters out of the way for ice agents.

this is what they told me:

The TRUST Act does not prevent local law enforcement from taking actions to protect public safety, such as using lawful crowd control tactics (including establishing a security or traffic perimeter for public safety purposes) and enforcing criminal laws prohibiting violence and property destruction. We rely on Illinois law enforcement officers to enforce state laws, and we expect that they will comply with those laws - including the TRUST Act. The TRUST Act gives the Attorney General's office the responsibility to investigate violations where appropriate, and the Attorney General's office is committed to collaborating with our state and local law enforcement partners to ensure Illinois law is followed.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Cubbage

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 6d

fascism is make-believe at gunpoint. AI is not supplying the guns, but is supporting the make-believe. it is part of the project, and the project is fascism

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 6d

“And in this respect, I’m coming to understand the AI hype machine as part and parcel of the fascistic project. That’s not an analogy. I’m not saying AI is similar to fascism, or parallel to it. I’m saying AI is fascism.”

Mél Hogan / The Data Fix @melhogan.bsky.social · 6d

www.halifaxexaminer.ca/morning-file...

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 6d

I’m a lover, not a fighter. Gonna go up the Board of Trade and make time with my girl Ceres while y’all throwing hands.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 7d

That “Deedee Megadoodoo” news anchor.

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 8d

I grew up in Des Moines, and I am here to tell you: it is a city that takes its mock Tudors SERIOUSLY.

salisburyhouse.org

www.butlerhouseongrand.com

etc.

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Reposted by Geoffrey Cubbage

Meghan O'Keefe @megsokay.bsky.social · 10d

"But doctor...Pagliacci is booked at the Riyadh Comedy Festival."

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 10d

(Also, when I googled the specific date to double-check my citation: LOL. I dare say even, LMFAO. Just love that this slop is by default forced to the top above actual information.)

Screenshot of Google's worthless "AI Overview" search results, claiming that "there is no record of a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip published on March 22, 1986" because "Calvin and Hobbes was not created by Bill Watterson until November 18, 1985, and therefore would not have published strips in March 1986."

Further down it adds "The comic was not released on March 22, 1986: because it was still a new creation at that time."

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Geoffrey Cubbage @geoffreycubbage.bsky.social · 10d

Perhaps not coincidentally, the first "Calvin and Hobbes" appearance of the "Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs" cereal was in 1986...

Four-panel "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip from March 22, 1986, in which Calvin shares what he describes as his new favorite cereal, "chocolate frosted sugar bombs," with his tiger Hobbes.

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