I just read a disturbing article that says Chicago Police officials are considering dropping the entrance exam in order to boost the number of minority officers in the city. Local ministers have been calling for Chicago Police Chief Jody Wiess to hire more African-American officers because although Blacks make up 36.5% of the population, 1 in 4 patrol officers are black but only 1 in 12 Lieutenants are African-American.

I’ll pause for you to think about this for a moment…

Ok are you #$%! Kidding me? The powers that be want to cultivate more cops of color and the way to do it is to get rid of testing for recruits? How then will you weed out underachievers and cultivate the cream of the crop? Unless there is some other qualifying metric not being reported, this is the craziest thing I have ever heard.

I support our local boys in blue and you better also if you know what’s good for you. Every day they face life and death decisions. I want to know that our police force is comprised of the best of the best and not selected by race to even out personnel to racial makeup of the city. There are enough idiots with guns in this city. I don’t want those types running around with a gun and a badge to boot.

What has happened to personal pride, wanting to be the best and striving for it? Nothing given is taken seriously, you have to earn it. I am African-American and I want to see minorities fill a proportionate number of leadership jobs across the spectrum of employment but I can’t get behind just hiring any guy for the job because he is black like me. If that was the case Alan Keys could have been the first black president right? Wrong! It takes the right person for the job and testing is a key component in finding that person.

If the powers that be in the CPD want to hire more officers of color keep the testing in place and begin a recruiting/ outreach program. Go into the community and build trust, echo the values of a good education, preach staying out of trouble and illustrate a clear path to a productive adult life. This would be a much better plan to stir interest in joining the force than just opening the gates and letting anyone on the force.

While enjoying a wonderful Saturday afternoon at Navy Pier’s Winterfest I failed a child.

Like dozens of other people standing in line to return skates I witnessed a woman striking a young girl who looked to be four years old repeatedly in the forehead with a tube of lock De-Icer. In a stabbing motion she hit the child repeatedly saying she would #@%% her up if she went in her purse again. She looked up to see my shocked face and said “What? What if she went in my purse and lost $400?”

Well first of all, your child should be much more important than any amount of money is what I thought but clearly I wasn’t dealing with a rational human being so I said nothing. The child did not cry which leads me to believe she felt fortunate to only receive a few lumps on her head. I can only imagine what happens to her behind closed doors. This lady was not embarrassed or worried about her actions at all.

I will never forget her standing there, a chocolate skinned woman in her late 20’s with her hair styled like a Beatles bowl cut grown out, candy striped Coogie shirt with nails meticulously done. Her arm extended for all to notice her knock off purse hanging and wearing jeans made for a woman two sizes smaller than herself while her children looked ragged as orphans.

This is not ok. I feel guilty for not reporting her but how would I report her? No one else spoke up because they were probably thinking the same thing I was “no good deed goes unpunished, take care of your own, and don’t get involved”. I am not that person, I hold myself to a higher standard but Saturday I failed that child and her siblings.

Going forward I will react to child abuse and ask you to as well. If you see someone mistreating a child, contact the proper authorities and say it is not ok.

In the wake of an attempted Christmas Day terror attack on a Detroit bound airplane I have to wonder if we are taking the right approach to the terrorist threat. Our responsibility as the world’s superpower is to set an example of level justice while protecting our citizens. This puts us at a grave disadvantage when dealing with the shadowy networks of blood thirsty killers waiting in our very midst to kill and kill again. Gitmo is closing, profiling is out, torture should is beneath us and getting to the root of the antagonists in the Middle East has proven difficult.

On holiday visiting @amyeb25′s parents my near-laws mentioned that we were fighting the terrorists over there so we would not have to fight them later on U.S. soil. I imagined marauding gangs of Al-Qaeda types running through Chicago… nonsense. I thought they were out of their minds. Notice I said I thought.

Enter Tahawwur Hussain Rana, owner of First World Immigration, an immigrant assistance agency in the West Rodgers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Rana has been charged with providing material support to a terrorism conspiracy in connection with a planned attack on a Danish newspaper and conspiring to bring foreigners to the U.S. under false pretenses.  Rana is also said to have known in advance about last year’s terror attack in Mumbai that killed 170. Is it true? That is for the courts to decide. Just the idea that a terrorist outpost existed right here in the Windy City is enough for me to begin questioning the methods of our "War on Terror".

Should we start kicking in doors and clubbing heads? Hey why not, it’s the Chicago way No, but it is obvious we need to employ tactics that give us a competitive advantage to combat their methods. They know the ins and outs of our society and have become good at using our own legal limitations against us. In that respect I say the terrorists are winning and something needs to be done before there are marauding gangs of Al-Qaeda types running through the city.

Monday January 4th is my son’s birthday (happy birthday son). It’s also the first day of parking meter rate hikes. Parking your car on street in the central business district (the area bounded by Lake Michigan to the East, Wacker Drive to the North and West, and Congress Parkway to the South) will cost you $4.25 an hour. I’ll leave the moaning commentary about the City contract that got us into this mess to others; this post is about the bottom line costs car commuters will face come Monday morning.

So, let’s say you are a commuter coming into the Loop for work every day by car. If you can park before 7 AM several garages offer all day parking for $20. After 7 AM the going rate seems to be $27 dollars. I found one garage at 120 N. LaSalle offering an Early Bird Special of only $14 dollars if you are in by 9:30 with a minimum stay of six hours. If you are willing to park west of the river all day parking can be had for as little as $10 but miss the early bird specials and you will be paying $30 – $36 to park all day in a garage.

Why the cost analysis of garage parking if this article is about the parking meter rate hike? Simple, what I use to think was highway robbery to park in a garage is now relatively affordable compared to meter parking. By the time you pay for street parking and blow your lunch hour moving your car and/or feeding the meter, the garages actually become the more practical choice. Really though, why drive in at all? Let’s say you are a commuter from la la land Oak Park coming into the loop for work, court or etc. The CTA and Metra offer reliable service for about $5 round trip.

I remember reading somewhere about a plan to make driving into the central business district so expensive that the cost would become a new and dramatically effective form of traffic control. I remember thinking the author of the plan was nuts. Apparently somebody at city hall didn’t. For more information about the new parking fees, meters or etc. you can call 877-242-7901 or 312-744-PARK or visit www.chicagometers.com.