How much is Chicago paying for police bodyguards to protect aldermans?

I want to know the names and positions of all of the Chicago city employees and political blowhards who have their own taxpayer-funded protection detail. Yesterday, we learned one alderman has had two officers assigned to him 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 25 years.

A quick read through the Wikipedia entry for Burke indicates no other aldermans have a taxpayer-funded protection detail, but the more I read about Chicago, the more I think episodes of Chicago Code are non-fiction.

City leaders are blaming the “problem” on a court order that mandates the protection due to some death threats that happened decades ago during some sort of city council feud. From ABC 7 News in Chicago.

Chicago Alderman Ed Burke says he will not give up his six-man bodyguard protection detail unless the courts tell him to do so.

Of course not … not his responsibility to suggest or demand a change.

The order was issued in 1986 during the so-called “Council Wars” when Burke received dozens of death threats.

Over two decades later, he still has 24-hour protection including six cops covering three eight-hour shifts at taxpayer expense.

To his credit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the protection detail could not continue. Let’s see if anybody actually does something about it.

 

Posted in

Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

4 Comments

  1. Plainvillian on June 22, 2011 at 10:40 am

    Good grief, this guy’s been an alderman for over 25 years?? Oh wait, it’s Chicago, a one party paradise of safety and security, with low crime rates and no public debt.? Voltaire would say it must be the best of all possible cities.



  2. PatRiot on June 22, 2011 at 11:58 am

    “The rules are for thee but not for me.”? You cannot protect yourself, but I will be protected – Oh yeah, and at your expense.
    The only us vs them (black vs.white, Repubs vs Dems, etc) that we really need to worry about is the elite electeds vs Real Americans.



  3. Gary J on June 22, 2011 at 7:16 pm

    ahhhhhhhhhh Chicago the land of ozzzzzzzzzzzbama



  4. johnboy111 on June 22, 2011 at 9:47 pm

    maybe if they were allowed to”carry” in obammmmaaa land they could protect themselves??????just a thought



square-ed-burke

The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.

You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.

The site is not broken.