'... there isn't any one on the Safe Passages aside from the $10 per hour folks...but no one is checking that they're actually there....most times, they aren't...' Safe Passage? Mindless publicity stunt or serious safety measure?
As everyone following closely the latest Chicago Public Schools publicity stunts knows, the cynical (and preacher supported) nonsense called "Safe Passage" was supposed to make the closing of the 50 schools in 2013 OK. The mayor and Barbara Byrd Bennett even hosted a major thank you to the Safe Passage workers (although they didn't propose raising the minimum wages paid to the Safe Passage workers, cynical as the program remains; while the big money goes to the contractors who provide the workers, as if they were queueing up at a Day Labor storefornt. Such is the way Rahm Emanuel and his minions at CPS rule Chicago today.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a typical publicity stunt at the opening of school in September 2014, but the Safe Passage workers received no pay raises, since the Safe Passage program was designed to provide patronage to the contractors who owned the workers, and the mayor's publicity stunts about raising the minimum wage did not apply, as of September 2014, to the Safe Passage people.Thanks to Second City Cop (http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/2014/11/safe-passage-not-so-safe.html), an always readable blog, for the following:
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2014
"Safe Passage" not so Safe Won't someone think of the children???
A man was killed while sitting in a vehicle in the Englewood neighborhood near the Jesse Sherwood Elementary school, one of two people injured in daytime Chicago shootings.
At about 2 p.m., police responded to the 5700 block of of South Princeton Avenue for a shots fired call, said Chicago police spokesman Thomas Sweeney.
When police arrived they found a 21-year-old man in a vehicle suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, Sweeney said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
The shooting happened along a safe passage route near the Sherwood Elementary School, 245 W. 57th St.
Evidently, no one got the memo that the supposedly "safe" passages have been abandoned after the second week of school. No one from HQ is out guarding the kids, the firefighters are warm in their houses, the Streets people are supposedly patching potholes, cleaning streets, prepping the plows for winter....there isn't any one on the Safe Passages aside from the $10 per hour folks...but no one is checking that they're actually there....most times, they aren't.
In fact, we're surprised Rahm didn't have someone out taking down the signs so something exactly like this didn't happen.
By: Rod Estvan
Safe passage workers still on Foster street
I have seen the safe passage workers on Foster Street supposedly guarding children walking from the Trumbull intake area west to a receiving school. Between Ashland and Damen there are $350,000 condos and single family homes worth more than that.
Once upon a time there were street gangs in that area, but for the most part they have been gentrified out. There are without question some gang members attending Amundsen, but they have never attacked elementary school kids. Between Ashland and Damen one afternoon I counted 6 safe passage workers with their reflective vests on. It's a mystery to me what they were being paid for.
Rod Estvan