After the recent loss of yet another police chief after this one admitted to stealing XBox’s, the federal and Illinois State government finally realized something: East St. Louis is a big pile of bloody shit.

“We are looking at the development of a no-man’s land in certain parts of these communities where there is a complete lack of credible law enforcement,” said St. Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly, “and the people that live there, their safety is in peril.”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks for finally noticing!” Said the prostitute laying in a pool of her own blood just feet from the podium.

“It has the highest crime rate in the nation,” [U.S. Attorney Stephen] Wigginton said, “Second place isn’t even close.”

In nearby Washington Park, population 3,000, he says seven people were recently shot and killed in a six week period.

“They had ten other people who survived gunshot wounds,” Wigginton said, “So, seventeen people shot in six weeks in a town of three thousand?  I would call that lawlessness.”

Lawlessness is cool if it also involves cowboy hats, saloons, and broads in big dresses that push their boobs all up in their face, but when it doesn’t, it’s just sad, scary and smells like a Denny’s. The question here is not whether the Feds are right, but why the hell it took so long for them to say something. It’s not like the it’s been a secret that East St. Louis is a skid mark in the middle of the “whitie tighties”, so did they just assume it would figure itself out eventually, or have they just been arguing over which one of them had to visit East St. Louis for the last 30 years?

We have obtained Illinois State’s 5 step plan to fix East St. Louis:

1. Stop hiring criminals as police chiefs.

2. Actually arrest people.

3. Begin better training for police officers.

4. …screw this. Remember the old Smallpox Blankets Trick from back in the day? You think that would still work?

5. Pizza party in Chicago.

via KMOX

Count us as extremely surprised when we heard the news that East St. Louis’ Police Chief, Ranadore Foggs, called it quits Saturday. Who the hell would have guessed that East St. Louis had a Police Chief?!

Chief Foggs told Mayor Alvin Parks Jr. about his decision Saturday.

Foggs said he had philosophical differences with the mayor on how the police department should be run. Foggs said his character and integrity were important to him and making the city safe was his No. 1 goal, and that’s why he came aboard the police department.

“I am sorry to see him leave. Chief Foggs had every intention of making the town very safe and I do too,” Parks said. “If Chief Foggs feels as if it’s time for him to go — while we’re disappointed, if it’s his decision, I respectfully accept his resignation.”

One could hardly blame anyone in the unenviable position of trying to keep East St. Louis safe for quitting all of five months after accepting the job, but as much as we’d like to imagine Foggs looking at every crime scene and whispering “I’m getting too old for this shit.” over and over again, it seems like Foggs quit because Mayor Parks was a little too bossy.

Councilman Delbert Marion, who spoke in an angry and serious tone about Foggs’ resignation, said the mayor has been trying to run the department.

“The mayor’s political influence, or attempted political influence, in the police department is unwarranted,” he said.

He said the mayor was trying to tell the chief how to schedule his manpower for patrolling the streets. Marion said some of what Parks was trying to do violates the police officers’ contract.

While city administrators bicker, East St. Louis is now left without any top-level police leadership and has plunged in to a deep darkness with the drugs, violence and fear running rampant on their now vacant city streets. Clearly something needs to be done…oh…right. It’s always like that. Scratch that. … The good news is, that despite concerns to the contrary, there has been no appreciable change in over-all crime levels despite being without a Police Chief!

Not sure what the process for East St. Louis Police Chiefs that want to quit is, but maybe it’s like that Judge Dredd movie with Stallone (trailer embedded below) where they just give you a shotgun and a trenchcoat, followed by a ceremony where they just push you out in to the vast wasteland and tell you to clean things up the best you can. That would seem a bit weird, since we’re pretty sure that’s what they do when they hire a new beat cop to go with the other three. On the other hand, pretty much everything about Judge Dredd (with the notable exception of hover-bikes) pretty much lines up perfectly with what East St. Louis has become in our mind.

via BND.com

Date: May 2009

Place: Effingham

J.J. Ward died from an overdose after purchasing some heroin from one Tavis Doyle earlier in the day at an East St. Louis crack house, or as East St. Louis resident’s call them…”a house”.

After making the deal, Ward settled in for a good ole heroin snack, but soon overdosed right there in front of Doyle who quickly sprung in to action to help his fallen customer…by placing frozen meat in his pants. We don’t want to get in to the biology of it all, but placing frozen meat in the pants of a person overdosing usually doesn’t work, and sure the hell didn’t here. Ward died. However, Doyle wasn’t done yet! He then claimed to the other crackheads that Ward was fine, and just needed to “sleep it off.” The crackheads let Ward do just that, finally taking him to a hospital some 12 hours after the overdose.

Yesterday in court, Doyle was found guilty for “non-stop” heroin dealing between 2008 to 2009 and now faces a mandatory life sentence.

No word yet if the any of the crackheads eventually ate the meat defrosted on a twitching herion overdose victim. (Who are we kidding. We both know they did.)

via STLToday

[Editor's Note: Header image is the hot and hilarious Chrissy Teigen because, seriously what other photo would you prefer with a story like this?]

East St. Louis you’re about to get that much worse.

Layoff notices have already gone out in East St. Louis, and 16 police officers could be gone as of January first.

The mayor says these layoffs are needed in order to get the city budget under control.

Budget issues are totally important, but maybe…maybe the police aren’t where we’d make the cuts seeing as though you’ve got people stealing church vans and smashing them in to ATMs the same day this all was announced.

To his credit, East St. Louis mayor Alvin Parks Jr., has said that he would be will to cut his salary in half to save some of those jobs. Other tactics taken by the mayor to keep these policemen on duty is to continually not show up for meetings between city and police officials where the budget would be talked about. Very smooth, but I think they are on to your game Mayor Parks.

“They mayor is not here, has not made a proposal to us except through the press, which I think is unprofessional. We had come to a rescheduled meeting from Friday that had been cancelled due to a lack of quorum. We were told to come to a meeting here today. This meeting got cancelled apparently without our notification,” says Fraternal Order of Police representative Bill Mehrtens.

A final decision on the matter is expected Thursday.

Frankly all of this would be a lot less important to us if we all just collectively started referring to East St. Louis as “West Chicago”.

via KSDK

Manhole covers are the lastest thing to go missing in East St. Louis following previously missing items like dignity, justice and the laughter of children.

More than 30 manhole covers have gone missing in East St. Louis in the past few months.

Their value at metal scrap yards have made them a hot commodity. But the holes they’re leaving behind are creating several issues.

The city is trying to combat the problem by installing locking covers and installing security cameras, but those solutions are too late for the several problems the open sewer hole are causing as earlier this week, an 11-year old boy fell down an open sewer when the hole was covered in snow.

Sadly unexpected holes are a common problem in East St. Louis, as many of its more “adult” visitors don’t realize that it isn’t always a mouth on the other side of the gloryhole.

via KSDK

After 2 shootings, an armed robbery, and a car chase than ended in him rolling his car in to the woods, the fiendish plot of the greatest criminal mind since Lex Luther came to an end. If you were thinking about taking over the world by getting buck naked and shooting and ramdon people, think again! Stick to the basics: Death rays or creating your own Justin Bieber to infect the minds of the young with lesbian hair and horrible music.

At 6am Tuesday morning, East St. Louis police where called to a report of shots fired. A woman had been shot once in the leg and grazed in the back. During that call, police received another report from a couple driving down 15th street that say there were fired at, but the assailant missed. Shortly after that, a garbage truck driver reported that a man pulled a gun and ordered his wallet been handed over. The driver, who is a certified bad-ass, managed to get the gun away from “Dr. No (clothes)” but in the processes, our assailant was able to escape.

He just left for a second though. He soon came back...to ask for his gun returned! See it wasn’t his gun, and he didn’t want to be that guy who borrows a gun, goes on a standard crazy shooting spree and then up and loses is. So if he could just get that back, it would be a huge favor. …ok, what about your wallet? Can he at least get that. Really only seems fair now that you have the gun. Crap the cops!

The police finally caught up to our boy which lead to a chase in a purple convertible PT cruiser, naturally, and ended when he flipped his Super Villain car in to the woods, running from the scene of the wreck. Police nabed hin a short time later.

Say what you want about his execution, but he borrowed a gun, stripped down, shot at random people, lost the gun, asked for the gun back, and then escaped in a purple convertible PT Cruiser. Awesome. If the KMOV story would have said that he recently was sprung from prison by an army of clowns led by a Harlequin, we would have totally believed them.