Afternoon Briefing: Trump administration cuts jobs at Lovell health care center
Good afternoon, Chicago.
Joseph Czuba has been convicted of murdering 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, a hate crime fueled by the Plainfield landlord's hostility toward Palestinians and his anger over the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
A Will County jury deliberated for for just over an hour before reaching a verdict of guilty. Czuba did not display any visible signs of emotion when the verdict was read.
The panel also found him guilty of attempted murder of the boy's mother, two counts of aggravated battery and two counts of committing a hate crime.
Here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit chicagotribune.com/latest-headlines and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices.
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The James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago is the only facility in the country that cares for both veterans and active-duty personnel simultaneously. Read more here.
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Yahoo
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- Yahoo
Freeport man charged with armed violence in Officer Krystal Rivera's ‘mistaken' fatal shooting
Authorities have charged a 25-year-old Freeport man with armed violence in connection with the fatal shooting of Officer Krystal Rivera. Charged is Adrian Rucker, the department announced said early Sunday. The charges came two days after he allegedly pointed a rifle at Officer Krystal Rivera and other tactical officers from the Gresham (6th) District, who had chased a person into a Chatham apartment while trying to conduct an investigatory stop. Rivera, 36, was mistakenly shot and killed by another officer during the confrontation, police have said. Department investigators are still probing the attempted investigative stop near 82nd and Drexel that led up to the shooting Rucker also faces felony counts of use of a firearm without a FOID card, possession of a fake ID and drug possession, police said. He was set to appear in bond court Sunday morning, according to a news release. Rivera had been a police officer for four years and leaves behind a young daughter. A resident of the Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side, she was the first city police officer to be killed in the line of duty this year. City leaders, police brass and friends described her as a hard worker with an independent streak who loved her job. Around 10:08 p.m. Thursday, officers found and detained Rucker, 25, and a 26-year-old woman, also from Freeport, in a gated yard near an apartment building at 8215 S. Maryland Ave., according to police sources and court records. Authorities had previously issued six arrest warrants for Rucker. According to police sources, those warrants are for criminal damage to property, theft under $500, and two alleged instances of domestic battery, all out of Stephenson County in northwestern Illinois. He also had a warrant for aggravated identity theft out of northwest suburban Rolling Meadows and another for possession of fake identification out of Winnebago County, court records show. The woman had one active warrant, according to police sources. According to Cook County Court records, Rucker was first arrested in April 2024 for alleged aggravated identity theft in Rolling Meadows. He was released pending trial, records show, but failed to appear for a June court date and Judge Ellen Beth Mandeltort issued an arrest warrant in July 2024. The woman has not been charged with anything related to Rivera's death, but appeared in Cook County bond court Saturday regarding her arrest warrant out of Stephenson County, court records show. Her next court date is scheduled for Thursday.
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
The global intifada is here. Hamas-aligned networks brought terror to US soil and we need to stop it
For decades, "Globalize the Intifada" chants have rung throughout Europe and the Middle East, a blatant and unmistakable call for violence and terrorism against Israelis and Jews. But over the past two years, those chants have only intensified and multiplied, now making their way west to our United States. What started with campus protests has now turned to vigilante violence. This week in Boulder, Colorado, a man yelling "free Palestine" threw Molotov cocktails at peaceful protestors hosting an event to bring home the Israeli hostages, setting them ablaze. Two young staff members of the Israeli Embassy were murdered outside the Jewish museum, after which the shooter said, "I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza." Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's home was set on fire with his family inside because of "what [Shapiro] wants to do to the Palestinian people," given that he's Jewish. These are not isolated incidents. They are all organized and linked to one group: Hamas. The same terrorist ideology behind these attacks was on display on college campuses over the past two years in the form of violent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic encampments. Let's be clear, these are not the protests of the 1960s. Contrary to what the media may have reported, these were not student-driven "protests" at all. New lawsuits, filed by my organization, expose how the violent takeover of Columbia University's Hamilton Hall and the weeks-long encampments at UCLA were part of an organized, choreographed effort by career professionals to carry out Hamas' plans of violence, terror, and the eradication of Jews and Israelis. At UCLA, a rabbi, a doctor, and a law student sued National Students for Justice in Palestine and other anti-Zionist groups over encampments that were manned with a sword and "human phalanxes." Designated teams of security personnel surrounded the area armed with wooden planks, makeshift shields, pepper spray and tasers. Members of the groups involved in the lawsuit coordinated via social media and Google Docs ways in which to plan, fund, execute, and reinforce the encampment. And just a few days after the first encampment was dispersed by police, more than 40 protestors were found with metal pipes, bolt cutters, chains and padlocks, and manuals for "occupying" campus buildings. At Columbia University, a highly coordinated mob used violent, masked tactics reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan to storm the campus' Hamilton Hall. Armed with rope, zip ties, and crow bars, the masked invaders smashed their way through the doors and windows, and when they came across two people in their way – janitors, neither of whom were Jewish – they terrorized them, battered them, and mocked them. These two janitors sued the group behind the occupation, the People's Forum, for the assault, during which the assailants berated the janitors as "Jew lovers" for their employment. These aren't doe-eyed kids with signs calling for a more loving and peaceful world. These protestors are part of an expansive terrorist network taking advantage of those same doe-eyed students, using them to stoke violence and create chaos. This is an attempt to legitimize the terrorization of an entire group of people. This is the use of guerrilla warfare tactics against students and faculty in an environment that is supposed to be safe. What we are dealing with now is a highly organized, generously-funded, professionally managed campaign that has all the attributes of a military engagement – from detailed planning to careful mapping to precise logistical elements. This new realization requires a shift in strategy in how we fight back against these attacks. Up until now, most cases against universities were based on a single strategy: to hold taxpayer-funded colleges accountable for the hate that they allowed to become pervasive at their institutions. The goal of this strategy is two-fold. First, colleges should not be permitted to use taxpayer money to fund discrimination, especially when that discrimination prevents students from attending classes. Second, colleges should be incentivized to deal appropriately with the problems on their own campuses, so that neither the government nor lawyers have to handle them one-by-one. These previous cases that held universities accountable for their deliberate indifference to anti-Semitism have worked when they have forced these schools to admit to and confront the rampant anti-Semitism on their campuses. I developed this strategy during my time as the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education twenty years ago. It underlies the ongoing congressional investigations and enforcement activities by the Office for Civil Rights, and it's similar to the strategy used by the Trump Task Force on Anti-Semitism to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools. But a lot can change in twenty years, and this is no longer enough. To address this current reality, it is necessary to adopt new strategies to deal with it. We must hold perpetrators accountable for their criminal actions on campus, including both criminal prosecution and civil litigation. But that alone won't be enough. We must also disrupt the perpetrators' support and resources that are helping them to carry out these calculated, coordinated campaigns. In other words, we were previously addressing the symptoms of anti-Semitism by holding universities accountable. Now, we're also getting to the root of the problem by addressing those who fund, support, plan, and enable the anti-Semitic activity. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Colorado attacker supported; the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who praised the October 7th attacks; and Students for Justice in Palestine, who continually promote violence on campus and incite "the student intifada." 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Editorial: Eileen O'Neill Burke is a marvel so far as state's attorney. Her office needs more resources.
As last week ended, two events in Chicago underscored the deep challenges still facing this city when it comes to the most basic of human needs — our safety and security. Crosetti Brand on Thursday was found guilty by a jury (after just 90 minutes of deliberation) of stabbing 11-year-old Jayden Perkins to death as the boy tried to protect his mother from ex-boyfriend Brand, who was knifing her as well. Just hours later, Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera, 36, was shot dead as she and other officers investigated a person believed to have a gun in Chatham on the city's South Side. The trauma and tragedy inherent in both stories was on our minds as we recalled our meeting earlier in the week with Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke. O'Neill Burke discussed her first six months on the job. She has wasted no time beginning to whip the nation's third-largest district attorney's office into shape after years of diminishment. Recruiting of new prosecutors has gone so well that the office has surpassed its salary allocation, she told us. But she told us something else during our conversation that was bracing indeed. As she was running for the office last year, O'Neill Burke said, 'I thought guns were the biggest problem. But it turns out domestic violence is.' In Cook County, 23 women have died allegedly at the hands of abusers just since O'Neill Burke took office in December. Twenty-three. Let that number sink in. Even as Laterria Smith, Jayden's mother, saw Brand face justice a little over a year after that horrific day, women aren't being adequately protected from the men in their lives who abuse them. Under O'Neill Burke, prosecutors already are making some progress on this front. The rate at which Cook County judges now are detaining those accused of domestic violence while they await trial has increased to 81% from around 50% before she took office, she told us. Part of the reason for the increase is a change in procedure. At O'Neill Burke's request, Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans granted her prosecutors rapid access to a far broader range of records on criminal defendants than had long been the case. So when assistant state's attorneys now stand before judges and request pretrial confinement, they have at their disposal records on defendants providing crucial context for judicial decisions that can mean life or death for victims. An example: Just after O'Neill Burke took office, one of her young prosecutors sought detention for a man accused of leaving gifts for his children at the doorstep of the mother, who'd obtained an order of protection against him. That by itself seemed innocuous, and thus the prosecutor (who did not have easy access to the explanatory data) was unable to explain to the judge why the office had decided to seek confinement. It turned out the father had previously abducted the children, taking them to Indiana, and they'd been traumatized, O'Neill Burke told us. But the prosecutor didn't know that while standing before the judge, who to his credit took it upon the court to look up the back story. O'Neill Burke said she's fixed that problem by improving prosecutors' access to the information they need. The change in procedure was a relatively straightforward fix, but far more needs to be done to give O'Neill Burke the tools to keep turning her office around. And for those items, funding will be needed. We were surprised to learn that the state's attorney's office has no automated case-management system to speak of. For felonies, there's a system created in-house more than a decade ago on a platform that no longer is tech-supported. Assistant state's attorneys must input into spreadsheets procedural developments in each of their many cases — something prosecutors themselves don't have the time to do and paralegals ought to be handling. Oh, except the office has no paralegals. An opinion piece we published recently took O'Neill Burke to task for removing information the office had been posting online under her predecessor, Kim Foxx, on the status of felony cases. O'Neill Burke said she did so because much of the information was incomplete, incorrect or unverifiable due to the technology deficiencies. Transparency, of course, remains important. The state's attorney's office, which has a current-year budget of $187 million, badly needs a bona fide case-management system, and that will cost millions. Money well spent, we say, because the public would have access to this important information, and the office itself could make better decisions about resource allocation and — critically — move criminal cases through the process much faster than the current woefully slow pace of prosecutions. But that's not all. If anything, we were more shocked to hear that our local prosecutor's office essentially has no internal forensics unit. Cook County is virtually the only major urban local prosecution office in the nation without one. In this day and age, DNA analysis, drug content analysis and of course fingerprint analysis are integral components of most felony cases. The office currently has a single scientist handling its forensics needs. Veteran lawyers with significant forensics-evidence experience left during the previous administration, we're told. An effective forensics team needs to be established as soon as possible. O'Neill Burke will submit her first budget request in July to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. The two have a less-than-warm relationship; Preckwinkle staunchly backed O'Neill Burke's Democratic primary opponent last year. O'Neill Burke acknowledged the friction to us, but also expressed admiration for Preckwinkle's administrative skills and professionalism. For the sake of the well-being of all Cook County residents, Preckwinkle should do her part to help O'Neill Burke modernize the office. That returns us to the tragic killing of Officer Rivera, who'd been on the Chicago police force for four years and is survived by a young daughter. Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters that Rivera had processed two guns she'd removed from Chicago's streets on Thursday before yet another gun took her life that night. O'Neill Burke pledged during her campaign to seek pretrial detention for anyone caught with an assault weapon, and that includes handguns with contraptions converting them to automatic firearms. She's been true to her word. And anecdotally, she says, word is reaching the streets. There's no statistic that definitively captures the deterrent effect of believing consequences will be severe for violating gun laws, and O'Neill Burke doesn't toot her own horn like other local politicians when it comes to the current improving crime stats. But she deserves her share of the credit. Now Cook County should get her what she needs to be even more effective. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
