The Wall of Lies Crumbles

Gee, who'd have thunk it? A Chicago mayor lying and his handpicked supernintendo keeping the public in the dark?

• A number of emergency calls on Memorial Day could pose a credibility problem for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his new police superintendent.

  The official word from city officials has been that North Avenue Beach was closed that holiday due to concerns for public health. But calls made by beach-goers to Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications seem to support claims that gang activity was also at play.

  "There's a fight breaking out on the beach, because there's nothing but animals covering this beach today," one caller is heard saying in recordings obtained by WLS-AM radio through a Freedom of Information Act request.

  "You can't even walk along the bike path or ride along the bike path. There's the crowd control. What the hell is going on?" the caller fumes.

"What the hell is going on" indeed. Go through the last couple of years of our archives and it will explain quite a bit of what's "going on."

And the bigger the lie, the bigger the rush to defend it:

• In a statement released late Thursday evening, police officials said the release of the calls changes nothing, and maintained that the decision to close the beach was made "in the interest of public safety and public health."

  Indeed, with temperatures in the 90s, about a half-dozen people at North Avenue Beach were treated for heat exhaustion. Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said ambulances could not get to victims.

CFD has been responding to the beaches for at least the past 100 or so years, probably even longer than that, so McCarthy's excuse holds as much water as his Sabina speech. And since the Department is now labeling gang fights as "public health" matters, maybe there's some CDC funding we could tap into to alleviate the $500 million deficit Shortshanks left Rahm?