Judgement day

For the police superintendant from the Sun-Times:

Embattled Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis will face the music this morning about the surge in homicides and other violent crime that boiled over at Taste of Chicago -- and it probably won't be pretty.

Aldermen and their constituents are angry about the gang and gun violence that has killed and injured so many young people. They want answers from a rookie superintendent who, they fear, has spent more time fighting police corruption than fighting crime.

"There is a price to pay when you go outside and get a person with no experience. That might have worked if he had kept someone with experience. But he got rid of most of the experienced people," said Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th), who summoned Weis to appear before his committee today.

Ald. Danny Solis (25th) said he won't mince words about Weis' unprecedented housecleaning that swept out 21 of 25 district commanders and nearly all of the department's top brass.

"I have been disappointed in some of the people he's let go, like [former deputy Supt.] Hiram Grau. That's one of the questions I'm gonna ask him: What was his basis for putting his team together? Why were the people let go not qualified?" Solis said.

Last week, Weis met privately with aldermen to take the sting out of today's public inquisition.

He opened the door to realigning police beats or districts to get more officers into high-crime areas and raised the possibility of resurrecting a "better trained, better supervised" version of the Special Operations Section, which was disbanded after a cops-as-robbers scandal.

Read the whole thing. He seems to be taking a lot of flak these days. Wednesday is just around the corner. I should try to follow that.