Chicago Tribune

Gary Kinsler has a succinct take on the parking meter pay box that popped up one year ago in front of his car repair shop in the North Center neighborhood: “It’s not helping anybody. It’s just another form of tax, it’s just taxing people.” For years, the spots in front of his business on Lincoln Avenue, Autohaus, were free — even as motorists grumbled while feeding meters throughout the city that put money in the pockets of private investors as part of Chicago’s infamous 2008 parking meter deal

When Chicago-born R&B star R. Kelly walked out of the Cook County criminal courthouse a free man in 2008, it wasn’t just a stroke of luck. Kelly’s stunning acquittal on child pornography charges nearly a decade and a half ago was the result of a carefully crafted strategy by a team of veteran Chicago criminal defense attorneys, who employed nearly every street-fight tactic in the 26th and California legal playbook. Bury the court with paper. Delay the proceedings for years. Dirty up every witn

At least four people were struck by a vehicle — possibly intentionally — in the South Shore area Sunday morning and three of the four later died at an area hospital, Chicago police said. Authorities were called to the 7000 block of South Jeffery Boulevard around 5 a.m., according to an online statement from police. A sedan had been traveling south “when it struck four adult male pedestrians,” authorities said. A graphic video posted online by CWBChicago appears to show the crash. In it, what a

Facing complaints about safety and long wait times, the CTA is planning to change schedules, boost security efforts, and upgrade its bus and train trackers. The measures are part of a broad plan CTA President Dorval Carter laid out at a lunch for the city’s business and political elite Thursday, including efforts intended to address unpredictable wait times, crime and so-called ghost buses and trains, which show up on digital trackers but fail to arrive in real life. Parts of the plan, includin

Bally’s filed its application with the Illinois Gaming Board on Wednesday, taking a major step in the process to build Chicago’s first casino and the flagship property for its fast-growing company. The application was posted on the gaming board website Thursday morning. The clock is now running for the publicly traded Rhode Island-based company to win license approval from the state, finalize its proposal with the city’s planning department and get its casino opened on an ambitious timeline.

Former President Barack Obama’s foundation set a goal last summer of raising $1.6 billion between 2021 and 2026 to pay for construction of his presidential center and an endowment to sustain it for years to come. The foundation’s total revenue for 2021 of $160 million, almost all of it from fundraising, only gets it 10% of the way there, according to the foundation’s annual report, which is traditionally released each August. It was the second lowest revenue total the foundation has recorded s

Standing outside Terminal 2 at O’Hare International Airport, a phone in each hand, Mervyn Wright weighed the options to get to his suburban hotel. He eventually settled on a $64 Uber ride from O’Hare to St. Charles. “That’s it. It’s 64 bucks,” said Wright, a business strategist from Virginia, relieved that it wasn’t more expensive. For flyers like Wright, contending with busy airports this summer and dodging airline cancellations and delays is only part of the journey. They must also get to a

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday downplayed concerns that Chicago police Superintendent David Brown’s decision to fire the department’s director of reform will hurt the city’s efforts to comply with a federal court order aimed at reforming Chicago police. She also defended Brown’s move to reassign personnel from the reform division, saying all bureaus within the department must give up officers to fight crime. The mayor’s comments come after Brown fired Robert Boik, the Chicago Police Departm

With a community-led movement to evict big-ticket music festivals from Douglass Park gaining steam, Riot Fest management has let go its event organizer and apologized to the community for his “tone” at a neighborhood meeting last week that only seemed to exacerbate the festival’s fraught relationship with residents. The community meeting on Aug. 2 was the first of its kind by Riot Fest since the multiday punk, rock and hip-hop festival moved to Douglass Park in 2015. The meeting is now a requir

A coalition of activists aims to add a symbolic question to the November ballot about funding non-police responses to 911 calls about mental health crises. The referendum would ask if Chicago should reopen all the closed mental health clinics that were operated by the public health department, as well as whether the city should support a team of mental health professionals to be dispatched to mental health emergency calls instead of police. Residents in the 6th, 20th and 33rd wards would receiv

John Catanzara, the firebrand president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, won’t run for mayor against Lori Lightfoot. Catanzara, who retired while facing potential termination by the Chicago Police Board after a career as one of the department’s most disciplined officers, flirted with the idea of running for City Hall’s top job but told WLS-Ch. 7 Monday that he will focus instead on being reelected as union president next year. [ Who's in, who's out and who's undecided in the Chicago may

If it were up to Jacques Wallace, no Chicagoan would find a loved one dead of heat stress, without air conditioning, ever again. Wallace still remembers how hot it was a decade ago when he walked into the Near West Side building where his mother, Jacqueline, lived in a studio apartment. “It was over 100 degrees in there, in the building, period,” he said. “It was steaming.” A senior with a disability, Jacqueline Wallace’s sole income came from a monthly Social Security check that covered her r

Days before aldermen were set to vote on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s controversial plan to sue gang members as an anti-violence strategy, she texted an impassioned message to several City Council members seeking their support. “We must send a strong message to gangs that we will take away their profits which last year was over $26M. I would not press this without the appropriate checks and balances and as you know, we will have to file in court, and a judge will determine whether we have met

Three months after completing a long and challenging quest to convert the Chicago Reader to a nonprofit, Tracy Baim announced she is stepping down as publisher of the storied alternative newspaper by the end of the year. Baim, 59, a veteran Chicago journalist who has helmed the Reader since 2018, navigated an arduous journey from money-losing publication to potentially solvent nonprofit, a process that was nearly derailed this year by an existential battle between its two owners, and allegation

“Me estaba dando cuenta [...] de que, con algunas de las reglas básicas de la improvisación, realmente se simplificaba la forma de hablar con los cuidadores, ya sea un cuidador profesional o un cuidador familiar, acerca de cómo comunicarse con su ser querido con demencia”, dijo Neumann. “Fue realmente difícil para las familias entender que no se trataba de mentir (a sus seres queridos). Las familias respondían: ‘Bueno, no quiero mentirle a mamá, no quiero mentirle a papá’.

One day, Arlieta Hall’s father forgot that you don’t go to Best Buy to get chairs. On another day, he thought her brother was his younger self. That was when Arlieta realized that Alzheimer’s had hit the smartest man she knew. When Milton Hall Sr. was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and progressive dementia, he was 67.

A toddler was killed in a crash when the bike on which she was a passenger collided with a semitruck in Uptown on Thursday morning, a Chicago Fire Department spokesperson said. The 3-year-old girl was on a carrier seat on the back of a bicycle operated by her mother in the 1100 block of West Leland Avenue when the crash happened with a truck traveling in the same direction, according to Chicago police...

Two state child welfare workers were removed from their duties following the suspicious death of 8-year-old Amaria Osby late last month in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, allegedly at the hands of her mother, officials said. The workers, an investigator and a supervisor, didn’t try hard enough to see Amaria and her family after a hotline call alleged Amaria had witnessed her parents involved in a domestic violence incident at a restaurant in March, according to DCFS...

Dakota Earley, the culinary student who was shot last month during an attempted robbery in Lincoln Park, has been released from the intensive care unit, his mother announced on Twitter Wednesday. Joy Dobbs said she received a call with the news around 1 p.m. Wednesday from a nurse at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. “Praise God,” Dobbs wrote at the end of her Twitter announcement later that day after she FaceTimed Earley’s grandmother who was with him at the hospital...

Con la pandemia y la escasez de mano de obra, los trabajadores de industrias que han sido difíciles de sindicalizar se organizan cada vez más...

Last year, Brick Zurek, a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in the Loop, found working conditions at the store becoming increasingly untenable. People coming into the store threatened and screamed at baristas. One person, after being served a cup of scalding hot water, poured it on the manager, Zurek said. On top of that, the store was short-staffed, sometimes with just a few baristas tasked with serving a line out the door...

A man charged with stabbing another man at a downtown hotel over the holiday weekend was denied bail in court Tuesday, according to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Gregory Bell, 42, was charged with one felony count of attempted murder and two felony counts of aggravated battery after stabbing a 56-year-old man during a fight in the fifth-floor hallway of The Allegro Royal Sonesta Hotel about 1 a.m. Sunday, Chicago police said...

It was an early Saturday evening when the radio alarm system went off, alerting Dr. Samaa Kemal, a pediatric emergency medicine fellow at Lurie Children’s Hospital, that an ambulance had called en route to the hospital. “They had a teenager who had sustained a gunshot wound and was in critical condition,” she said. “Despite the heroic efforts of our team, we could not bring that child to life.”

Chicago moved into a “high” community level of COVID-19 Thursday evening, officials said, as the city braces for an estimated 1.4 million people to visit Chicago over Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of the summer season. The development affects areas that include Chicago, Cook County and surrounding counties in northeastern Illinois as well as counties around Peoria, according to an emailed statement from the Illinois Department of Public Health...

Police are trying to identify a man who allegedly pointed a gun toward WFLD-Ch. 32 crew members while a reporter was live on air Wednesday morning. In the Ch. 32 footage, the reporter was doing a story on gun violence in the 400 block of North Clark Street when the man passed behind her and pointed what appeared to be a gun toward the crew. He kept walking down the street with the alleged firearm...

Chicago is expected to increase to a “high” community level of COVID-19 next week as positive cases continue rising across the city and suburbs, public health officials said Friday, mirroring the surge of infections around other parts of the country. “While we remain in medium, I expect that we will reach a high level as soon as next week given ongoing COVID trends,” Chicago’s public health Commissioner Allison Arwady said in Friday’s statement...

A beach party that turned into a “large altercation” and spilled over into the streets of the Old Town neighborhood Wednesday night left one person charged with reckless conduct, police said. The event, “North Avenue Beach Takeover,” spread over social media and began about 5 p.m. at the beach...

Three musical instruments including a 1758 violin were stolen from a town home in the South Loop Wednesday morning while a family of musicians was sleeping. MingHuan Xu, a professional violinist and director of the string program at Roosevelt University, said the antique violin stolen has an immense cultural and personal value. It was made by renowned Italian violin-maker Nicolò Gagliano and was lent to Xu by a private sponsor 20 years ago...

Chicago police are questioning a “person of interest” following the fatal hit-and-run involving a 22-year-old bicyclist on Wednesday night as bike advocates sound the alarm for the number of car-related deaths to cyclists in the city this year. Nick Parlingayan, 22, of Chicago, was at least the third bicyclist fatality in 2022 when he was struck by a vehicle in the 3800 block of North Milwaukee Avenue in the Old Irving Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side around 9:20 p.m. ...

Erick Alfaro loved art, soccer and dressing up and was on the brink of graduating from junior high school. But Wednesday night, the 14-year-old was fatally gunned down while walking in the mobile home park where he lived in unincorporated Elk Grove Township, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. “He had a future building up, but it was taken away,” said his olde