Ching Ching. Ching Ching

That's the sound of Chicago taxpayers being turned upside down and shaken vigorously, in order to collect every last dime they have in order to pay off millions upon millions of dollars in lawsuit judgments against their own "professional" Chicago Police Department for crimes committed against those very same taxpayers.

Here's the latest ones, all from this month alone:

A jury has awarded 2 million dollars to a military veteran who was framed on child molestation charges by two Chicago police detectives. What did he do to invite their wrath? He disarmed a drunk, rampaging off-duty Chicago police officer. Discipline to the officers for lying under oath and on official police reports? The article doesn't say, which probably means that there wasn't any.

Another jury has found two Chicago "tactical" police officers liable for assaulting a man rectally with a screwdriver during a search for drugs. Since both sides had already agreed to damages should the officers be found liable, the man will now be awarded 4 million dollars. Discipline? You know better than that:

"...the Police Department, which did not discipline the officers, Gerald Lodwich and Scott Korhonen."

We've already detailed here how off-duty, drunken Chicago officers accused of assaulting the public get special treatment, to the point that on-duty officers physically block the media from attending hearings in the cases. Now we find out that just the other week an entire unit, the Chicago force's Special Operations Division (you know, the "tactical operators" that get to carry the cool weapons that are forbidden for the peasantry) has been disbanded, now that seven officers from that unit are under federal investigation for kidnapping and robbing citizens while they were supposed to be doing their jobs. One cop, Jerome Finnigan, is even suspected of "plotting to murder a former SOS officer who had begun aiding investigators."

Even though the unit has been officially disbanded, it appears that the force merely transferred the majority of the officers into another division, the Targeted Response Unit. Ummm, Mayor Daley? Just changing the name of the unit isn't "disbanding" it, nor is your brilliant strategy solving the problem of out of control officers, as we remind you that you've already tried this tactic in the past:

"It is not the first time in recent history that a corruption scandal has led to the disbanding of a special unit. In 2000 the Gang Crimes Section was disbanded after federal authorities charged Officer Joseph Miedzianowski with using gang members to run his own drug distribution ring. The FBI called Miedzianowski, now serving life in prison, the 'most corrupt cop in Chicago history.' When Gang Crimes was disbanded many of the officers in the unit, including Finnigan, were assigned to SOS."

And around and around we go.

In a extra-special example of this type of insanity, "Starks also said he was moving some officers into the Internal Affairs Division to beef the department's ability to investigate its own officers."

I'm speechless. Let's let the problem officers investigate other problem officers. I see great things coming from that strategy.

So, we find once again that the "authorities" continually demonstrate that they never learn anything, because they're the ones in charge, and it's not their money they keep having to fork over. I figure these latest cases from the disgraced "special" division will be good for even more millions of dollars in damage payouts.

"Daley, who had staunchly defended keeping SOS after the most recent revelations in the scandal, had no comment."

For once, thankfully. Mayor, can you remind us again why you are so rabidly against private citizens carrying handguns for self-protection, when it's glaringly obvious that a lot of the time in Chicago, the self-protection needs to be from the very police that is supposed to serve and protect them? To paraphrase Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons,

"That's some quality police work there, Daley."