In some Illinois cities, shoplifting, calling 911 too many times or even being a victim of a crime can get you kicked out of your home.
Archives
Posted inInvestigating Responses
Six Ways Cities Are Trying to Keep Rental Properties and Tenants Safe
In some places with crime-free housing laws, landlords must kick out tenants who have had too much contact with the police.
Posted inInvestigating Responses
Amid Budget Tensions, City Council Members Push to Bring Some Sunshine to City Spending
Other big city governments have robust watchdogs, paid for by taxpayers, to analyze city budgets and financial deals. The City Council’s anemic office could use some brawn, some alderpeople argue.
Posted inFollow-Up
Gun Stolen From a Room Full of Chicago Cops Ended Up Being Used in a Series of Shootings
That’s what records obtained by the Illinois Answers Project and the Sun-Times found. The Glock handgun should have been destroyed after it was turned in to police at a buyback at St. Sabina Church in late 2023.
Posted inOpinion
Greising: State action on pension reform is slow. That may prove auspicious in the end.
Not so long ago, there was hope that major pension reform could happen sometime this year, possibly by the end of the spring legislative session. But events are not playing […]
Posted inStatewide Investigations
Cook County Jail restrained people in chairs 874 times — and never reported it to the state
State standards require jails to report the use of restraint chairs on incarcerated people. Cook County Jail never did.
Posted inOpinion
Greising: A better way to achieve ethics reform in Chicago
After city Inspector General Deborah Witzburg complained publicly last month about City Hall interference with her investigations, the city’s top lawyer countered with a rebuke. Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry at a […]
Posted inGovernment Finance & Accountability
Quiet Use of Bonuses for City Council Aides on the Rise
Alderpeople defend the practice, saying the aides deserve the extra money for their hard work, but critics decry the process as arbitrary.
Posted inInvestigations
‘Where is the Glock?’ Gun Turned Over to Chicago Police Wound up in the Hands of a Teenager
The Chicago Police Department has used gun buybacks to get thousands of guns off the street, but at least two of them have resurfaced at crime scenes. In November, a 16-year-old boy was found with a Glock handgun that went missing after it was handed in at a buyback.
Posted inInvestigations
Chicago Cops Did Little to Investigate How a Gun a Judge Turned in to be Destroyed Ended up at a Crime Scene
The revolver that Cook County Judge William Stewart Boyd turned in at a Chicago police gun buyback resurfaced at the scene of a fatal police shooting in Cicero in 2012. Police said it would be “difficult and unwise” to interview anyone involved in the buyback and closed the investigation.
