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After having his criminal case dropped ahead of trial, a Chicago police officer now faces dismissal for allegedly beating a teenage boy after he crashed a stolen car during a chase in Woodlawn in January 2021.Police Supt. Larry Snelling filed formal disciplinary charges against Officer Jeffery Shafer last month, alleging that Shafer had engaged in an improper pursuit, attacked the 17-year-old driver, verbally assaulted another person and failed to turn on his body camera.Shafer and his partner, Officer Victor Guebara, were previously charged criminally, but Guebara hasn’t faced similar disciplinary charges filed with the Chicago Police Board, records show. Their criminal charges were dropped roughly three years after the alleged beating, just as a bench trial was set to begin. Prosecutors said the alleged victim had stopped cooperating.Shafer and Guebara were patrolling on the morning of Jan. 10, 2021, when they saw the teen driving a Chevrolet Camaro and learned it had been reported stolen, prosecutors previously said. The Camaro drove onto a sidewalk, lightly struck the officers’ squad car and ultimately crashed into a brick garage in the 6400 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue.Another officer detained the boy in a vacant lot, and Guebara punched him in his face as he “laid on his stomach with his left arm behind his back and his right arm under his chin,” prosecutors said.When Guebara walked away, Shafer punched the teen four times in his head while he laid on the sidewalk, then pushed his face into the concrete, prosecutors said. After the teen was handcuffed, Shafer allegedly brought him to his feet and pushed him “face-first into a metal fence.”Shafer and Guebara failed to activate their body cameras, prosecutors said, but the incident was recorded by other officers and police surveillance cameras nearby.After a gun was found in the Camaro’s glove box, the two officers claimed the teen had aimed at them during the pursuit, prosecutors said. But they hadn’t reported the gun-pointing over police radio or mentioned it during the arrest.The boy’s charges were dropped earlier in 2021, prosecutors said.Shafer’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.Shafer was previously named in a lawsuit alleging that he and other officers executed a “bad search warrant” as an infant slept in her crib and the mother and her other children got ready for bed. No contraband was found during the 2019 raid, and the target of the warrant didn’t live at the apartment that was searched, the suit stated. It was settled for $325,000.Shafer has been the subject of at least eight other complaints, including a sustained allegation for unintentionally firing his gun, according to city records. Four of those cases involved allegations of excessive force.In one case, Shafer was accused of punching a protester in July 2018 in South Shore, near the scene of a fatal police shooting days earlier. A commander told investigators that he saw video footage that showed Shafer was punched first.Shafer wasn’t interviewed because he was “on an extended leave of absence from the Department due to an unrelated criminal matter,” according to a report by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.He has elected to have his case heard by an independent arbitrator, instead of the police board, records show. The state Supreme Court will soon decide whether such cases can be heard behind closed doors after the Fraternal Order of Police appealed an appellate court ruling that required the most serious police disciplinary cases to be arbitrated in public.

Mayor Brandon Johnson said Tuesday City Hall has dropped out of the competition to take back Chicago parking meters after determining that the $3 billion asking price “would have made a bad deal even worse.”“The price is too high and requires debt service payments that extend too far and impose too much risk. Chicagoans would most likely end up footing the bill, yet again… The more we looked into it, the more problems emerged,” Johnson said Tuesday.“The City would have been required to debt-finance the entire purchase," Johnson continued. "This would eliminate the flexibility to… remove parking meters to make way for pedestrian ways and bike lanes. Instead, we would be locked into ever rising debt payments that would require City Council to consistently vote to raise parking rates year after year.”Johnson said it “would have been deeply irresponsible” not to “run the numbers and look at every variation of a potential deal” for the 57 years that remain on the parking deal that Chicagoans love to hate.The window opened last summer when Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital Partners and the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi signaled their desire to unload Chicago parking meters and started inviting potential bids.But after submitting an undisclosed bid, the mayor quickly learned that the asking price would have been nearly triple the $1.15 billion that Chicago received from the 75-year lease in 2008. Johnson decided that the risk wasn’t worth the reward, either financially or politically.The leveraged buyout would have pledged parking meter revenues as collateral, requiring a steep schedule of rate hikes even higher than the ones built into the lopsided deal signed in 2008 by former Mayor Richard M. Daley.Whether the math even worked would have depended on the interest rate on the borrowing, and the annual growth in parking meter revenues amid a fast-changing landscape for parking demand that includes everything from self-driving vehicles and robot deliveries to congestion fees that discourage people from driving downtown.“If for whatever reason parking habits shifted and revenues were significantly reduced due to changes in user behavior, the City would still be responsible for 100% of the debt repayments. That represents an even greater level of risk than what we face with the current contract,” the mayor said.Ald. Bill Conway (34th), vice chair of the City Council’s Finance Committee, was relieved that Johnson ultimately decided not to reopen the political can of worms.“If we were to have bid $3.4 billion, that would have been a bad choice, a bad investment for the taxpayers of Chicago,” said Conway, a former investment banker who still teaches college finance.“At a time when we face billion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, a $40 billion unfunded pension liability and $25 billion in debt, we cannot afford to make a terrible financial decision or make what is already a disastrous deal for the taxpayers even a bigger disaster by throwing good money after bad.”Conway urged Johnson to use the required city approval of an ownership transfer to exact changes benefiting the city, like reclaiming control of city streets and reducing payments due investors when meters are taken out of service.Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel similarly managed to make the best of a bad situation by reducing the city’s liability via increasing the hours and days motorists pay for parking.“When Mayor Emanuel faced this exact same situation in 2013, the contract got amended… We were able to make the deal a little bit better for the city,” Conway said. “We do have a bit of leverage here. And I hope that more rigorous analysis is done into how to negotiate that leverage as opposed to the initial bid we put in.”Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) cast one of only five “no” votes against the parking meter deal in 2008.As much as he would like to use the required city approval of an ownership transfer to exact changes benefiting the city, Waguespack said he does not…

An estimated 100,000 ride-hailing app drivers with Uber and Lyft could be allowed to unionize in Illinois under a new bill filed Tuesday in Springfield.If passed, the Illinois Transportation Network Driver Labor Relations Act would allow gig workers to bargain with the rideshare companies for better pay, benefits and working conditions.Under federal law, rideshare drivers are considered independent contractors — not employees — and are not allowed to unionize. Under the bill, drivers would still be considered independent contractors, but would have the right to unionize and bargain for a contract.Bill sponsor, state Sen. Ram Villivalam, thanked a coalition of drivers under the Illinois Drivers Alliance who have been pushing for years for better working conditions."We want to make sure that we are a state that continues our record of standing with workers," Villivalam said Tuesday at a news conference announcing Senate Bill 2906 at SEIU Local 1's office in the Aon Center. Villivalam is co-sponsoring the bill with state Rep. Yolonda Morris, also a Chicago Democrat. Illinois Drivers Alliance members cheer during a news conference Tuesday at the SEIU Local 1 office in the Loop.Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times Last year, the Illinois Drivers Alliance struck a deal with Uber to stop its push for better pay and working conditions in Chicago's City Council in exchange for the company agreeing not to oppose a state bill to allow unionization.That bill, filed at noon Tuesday, would allow drivers to negotiate with Uber and Lyft over a number of areas: pay, benefits, the ability to create an appeals process over deactivations, paid leave and a driver's right to specific trip information.The bill follows similar ones passed in Massachusetts in 2024 and last fall in California.Uber spokesman Josh Gold said he had not seen the bill and could not comment on it."In general we expect to be able to work with the legislature and other stakeholders on a bill that sets up a pathway to organizing for independent contractors," Gold said in an email.Lyft did not immediately reply to a request for comment.Rideshare drivers associated with the alliance said they hope that unionization grants them the power to address inequities they say the apps perpetuate. Several of them said they plan to travel to Springfield Wednesday to advocate for the bill during the opening days of this year's legislative session.David Crane, a rideshare driver for eight years, said he has been locked out of ride-hailing apps without warning in an opaque, computer- driven process without the right to appeal. He said the apps drive down pay by using algorithms to pit drivers against each other in what amounts to a reverse auction."Multiple drivers are offered the same ride, and whoever accepts the lowest pay wins," Crane said. "Drivers are told this is flexibility. But in fact, it is unilateral control without accountability."SEIU Local 1, one of the unions behind the bill and the driver's alliance, explained how unionization could play out:If the bill becomes law, the Illinois Drivers Alliance would be required to get 10% of active rideshare drivers to sign union cards.An active driver will be defined 90 days after the bill passes, when the companies provide a list of all drivers who had at least five rides in the past six months. A driver with at least the median number of rides, derived from that list, will be considered active.Once that bar is reached, the alliance must obtain signatures from 30% of all rideshare drivers — from a "full list" provided by the rideshare companies — for a union to be recognized. Bargaining will be done statewide, and paying dues to the union will be voluntary, according to SEIU Local 1.The bill would protect drivers from retaliation for organizing, and would create a rideshare fee to cover representation and education.

A mother of five children was shot to death Sunday morning in Woodlawn, authorities said.Kiara Jenkins, 36, was found in an alley in the 6400 block of South Drexel Avenue about 4:30 a.m., according to Chicago police and the Cook County medical examiner's office. She suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the body and was pronounced dead at the scene.Jenkins lived near where her body was found, according to the medical examiner.Jenkins has five children, according to Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th). Jenkins' home and the alley where she was shot are in Taylor's district. "Her children are now left without their mother," Taylor said in a statement. "No words can lessen that pain, but it is important to say clearly that her life had value and her family deserves support, compassion and justice. Our children and families deserve protection, stability and the chance to live without fear."No one is in custody, and detectives are investigating.