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

The President spun through our little metropolis yesterday and, as usual we’re sure, had quite a busy day.

He started off by touching down at Lambert Airport at 5:35pm and was greeted by Governor Jay Nixon and Mayor Francis Slay, who both blew him until climax welcomed him to our fine city. “What the f*ck?! You still haven’t fixed this shit? Didn’t we give you money for this? Jesus.” we’re assuming the President said after leaving the airport on his way to…

…shutting down I-170 and any other road his motorcade took to get downtown. Oh you wanted to get home last night to watch the second half of the Cardinals game? Well you missed it and  it’s your fault for possibly being a terrorist. We can’t just allow you to drive on a road or overpass! We need room for the full motorcade! (…actually, while we’re on the subject, why do we need to both close the roads and give the President 17 cop cars, 7 military transports, 5 limos and an ambulance? If you’re going to close all the roads anyway, you could probably get away with a single Popemobile-type car or some sort of Presidential Segway.) The President needed to hurry though because he really had to go to…

…his first fundraiser of the night where Governor Nixon used an interesting introduction technique where he started to talk, motion and do the voice inflection usually reserved for saying something funny, but instead just said regular stuff.

“We are here to talk about re-elections, but if we can sign Albert Pujols for four more years,” said Nixon, referring to the Cardinals’ star first baseman, “that would be good, too.”

Great stuff. Halfway through Obama’s remarks a person interrupted the President by abruptly asking if he would “stop the pipeline.” Not sure why he had to interrupt him to say that, as there was probably ample time afterwards, but yelling makes for a better Facebook post about it afterwards we guess. The President didn’t talk too long to the roughly 100 people that paid a cool $25k a plate though because he had to use his mouth for…

…all the Pi Pizza that the event was catered with. Yup, the Pres. still loves him the Pi and even suggested that they com to the White House for a meal sometime soon. Probably real soon, like at least before the end of next year. After that, Obama, knocked back a few Schlafly “Baracktoberfest” beers and then asked the crowed if anyone else wanted to publicly fellate him with gifts, but no one did. So he…

…closed down 170 again to drive back to the airport, settled in to Air Force One, looked out the window at Lambert mumbling to himself: “Plywood where the windows were 6 months later?! It’s like someone had an ugly dog and then a car hit it, but instead of taking the dog to the hospital or just getting a new dog, they just let the fugly little useless thing hobble around on two and a half legs and one of those cone things on it’s neck.”

via STLToday

In honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon proclaimed that you should let all people in uniform cut in front of you in line…but just like for one week. After that you and you alone will be first in line for the new issue of Jugs.

Nixon has proclaimed this week as “Put the Uniform First Week” in Missouri. He says it’s intended to show respect to people who wear uniforms as police officers, firefighters, emergency responders and military personnel.

Here’s what will happen:

Guy: “Oh officer, go ahead of me. The Governor said it was cool.”

Policeman: “Oh, no thank you. Go right ahead.”

Guy: “Seriously, please go ahead of me.”

Policeman: “No, really. It’s ok.”

…and that goes on for five minutes easy. Here’s why this is a nice idea, but might not work in practice: Not everyone is in a hurry. Sometimes someone pops in to a gas station for a coffee and standing there in line is part of their break. Sure you may not think standing in line is fun, but when you’re, say a member of STLPD, standing in line is a freaking tropical vacation compared to dodging bullets or picking parts of the latest prison escapee’s shank out of your ass.

Once again, we don’t want to come down too hard on the Gov’s little idea here, but the worst part about it is that this was the best he could come up with. We can just see him and his aides racking their brains trying to figure out something slightly less stupid than the previous idea: “Double Cheek Kiss Uniformed People Week”, If You See Them Watching You Undress…Don’t Stop Week”, ”When You Walk Past Them On A Plane or Bus and You Have to Decide to Give Them Your Butt or Your Crotch, Go With the Crotch Week”

Here’s another idea: Lets just all try to not be dicks to them, maybe say hello and smile when you see them on the street. We could probably even keep that up for longer than a week if we really tried.

via STLToday

“Oh officer, thank god you’re here! I’ve been shot three times in the leg and the guy left about 30 minutes ago in my car but my daughter is still in the car so at least I didn’t have to deal with her while I was bleeding all over the sidew…oh now don’t you look nice!”

The St. Louis Police department is dropping some change on a new set of “formal” uniforms for each officer. How much? Just 80,000. “Hey everyone! Let me know what you want me to buy before the state makes the mayor our boss again!”

The St. Louis police department is spending $80,000 on new formal uniforms. The new jackets are supposed to boost morale and make officers proud. but some officers have raised concerns about the cost.

Don’t worry officer, you’re new formal duds are bullet-proof…as long as they hit one of the gold buttons directly…and the gun miss-fires. Actually just trust us.

Police Chief Dan Isom said his officers are among the few large departments that don’t have formal attire to wear when they honor their fallen.

This is a great sentence if you think about it. So you’re the Police Chief of St. Louis and you have some of your officers dying. What do you do with your “spare” 80 grand? Well get fancy clothes to wear to the funerals of course! This is like a fat guy deciding to spend his Jenny Craig money on a new fancy fork.

“One of the small things that they ask for was a dress uniform that really would give honor to our fallen officers and really make it special when we went to our special ceremonies.” said Chief Daniel Isom of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Dept.

We think $80,000 worth of security cameras would make things a lot more “special”.

“The money could go to a bunch of different things. Any time you make a decision to spend money you could find 20 different things to spend it on.” said said Chief Daniel Isom.

…but we’re guessing that if you would have dropped 80 large on policing equipment no one would be saying “Wait, shouldn’t we be spending this on fancy coats?! Won’t someone think of the coats?!”

Isom admits cutting other perks, like take home cars from some bomb squad and homicide detectives. Chief Isom said, he was making that decision regardless to spread out vehicle for more officers to use. that’s why he likes the new uniform. It’s something for all of his men and women.

So is a big ass TV in the lounge, and a nice Christmas party totaling $10,000, leaving you with $70,000 to do something nice for all the citizens that are too scared to take the damn trash out to the curb after dark.

What STLPD officers we have work hard, and our dealings with them have always been great. The battle their losing to the city’s crime rate isn’t because they’re good people trying, it’s because they don’t have the resources to do what needs to be done in a situation this bad. Meaning, when Police Chief Tonedeaf tries to buy everyone fancy uniforms it just looks bad. The officers should be rewarded for their hard work, but there’s better ways to spend $80,000 of public funds and another $100,000 of private funds as the year you spent the first half complaining about your budget comes to a close.

The least he could do is buy the force some better cellphones so the next leaked photo of a bloody crime scene isn’t so damn grainy.

via Fox2

The United States government is having a rough go of it lately and someone needed to do something! Someone needed to step up, be a leader and fill that emptiness we all seem to be carrying around these days! Who’s it going to be? Show us a sign!

At about 11:30 AM on Tuesday, a plane flew by the S&P offices in New York dragging a banner behind it saying: ”THANKS FOR THE DOWNGRADE. YOU SHOULD ALL BE FIRED.”

…anything else? No? So this is the only thing we have huh? A banner flapping behind a plane. Wow, you sure showed them what’s up! Nothing says “Take that you assholes!” like delivering your message by the same means that also utilized by guys trying to be cute with their marriage proposals.

So who was this anonymous hero that took all our pain, wrote it on a banner and tied to to the back of a plane?

After much speculation it turns out that the brainchild behind the plane that flew by the S&P office with a banner, is Lucy Nobbe, a Wedbush Securities broker and self described Midwestern ”mom.”

…who lives in Kirkwood, Missouri (That’s supposedly her, to the left of who appears to be the hunter from Jumanji after he really let himself go.)

Great. Mystery solved…with the exception of a couple of questions:

1. How much does something like that cost?

$895.

2. Why?

“I felt like I had to do something,” Nobbe, 51, explains. ”I thought,” she says, “it was an important thing to do.”

So we all agree that this was a stupid, unimportant thing to do that cost too much money right? What was so damn important about it? What did this solve? What was the goal for this? Did we not all know that our government sucks? Every media outlet is wagging polls in our faces about how low approval rates are across the board, but Lucy here thought that we’d somehow all missed this news? Oh and $895?! At even $10 a meal, you could have feed nearly 100 homeless or poor people, but instead you blew it on a banner that added nothing at best and was confusing at worst as despite the initial thought that Nobbe was attacking S&P for downgrading the US government,  she was actually taking a shot at the US politicians. She wanted to fly the banner over DC, but you can’t, so she just picked New York. The correct location to support your vague message is unimportant when you’ve got a thousand bucks burning a hole in your pocket!

Nobbe’s now spent the last day telling interviewer after interviewer that she wanted to remain anonymous, and absorbing more pointless back slaps than the special kid working the door at Wal-Mart. The irony that this Kirkwood woman completely wasted money on something that will make no appreciable difference on any situation, only to oppose the careless way our government uses it’s money is astounding, and yet people are propping this woman up like she cured cancer or actually has the power to “fire” anyone in the government. Insane! All the while, not a single person has congratulated us on our ability to revive many of dead homeless guys every morning by simply whipping it out and peeing on them. Most of them come back to life and start calling me “f*cking Jesus Christ!” which is of course flattering. We’re not the hero you think we are guys, people that spend money to do little more than walking around with an custom iron-on t-shirt design, those are the real heros.

via Business Insider and STLToday (and our tipster, who is so cool we’d like to send a plane over their house with a banner than reads: “Thanks for the tip! You’re….” followed by a second plane with a banner that said “…cool.” Two planes! Take that Kirkwood lady!)

The Congressman for Missouri’s 7th District, Billy Long, took to twitter earlier today to finally make the connection we’ve all been searching for: How is the government’s looming debt crisis like Amy Winehouse’s recent demise?

Nailed it. Way to related to the young people, old fat guy in a cowboy hat that makes odd references to a celebrity death on the currently popular social network!

Congressman Boss Hog here thought he was mighty clever after he thought this one up! You get it right? Both Winehouse and the government are “addicted” to stuff, and reaching August 2nd without a new debt ceiling deal in place will be like America passed out and died on the floor of our London flat…wait, what?

We’d like to think that at least Long managed to pick the least offensive death news from this weekend, but the day is still young and right now Long is probably sitting on the wooden horse he uses as an office chair, rocking back and forth, as he tries to find the best way to tie Norway’s most brutal murder in to the debt crisis. Stop what you’re doing Billy and back away from your computer slowly. Any references to “blowing up the economy” would be unwise at this point, even if you can’t pick out Norway on a map.

via Gawker