Obama to give up 5% of his pay ya right

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will return 5 percent of his salary each month to the Treasury in a show of solidarity with federal workers smarting from government-wide spending cuts, the White House said Wednesday.
Obama's decision grew out of a desire to share in the sacrifice that government employees are making, said a White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced to take unpaid leave - known as furloughs - if Congress does not reach an agreement to undo the cuts.
The president is demonstrating that he will be paying a price, too, as the White House warns of dire economic consequences from the $85 billion in cuts that started to hit federal programs last month after Congress failed to stop them. In the weeks since, the administration has faced repeated questions about how the White House itself will be affected. The cancellation of White House tours has drawn mixed reactions.
A 5 percent cut from the president's salary of $400,000 per year amounts to $1,667 per month. The move will be retroactive to the March 1 - the day the cuts started to kick in - and will remain in effect for the rest of 2013, the White House official said.
The notice followed a similar move a day earlier by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who committed to taking a salary cut equal to 14 days' pay - the same level of cut that other Defense Department civilians are being forced to take. As many as 700,000 civilians will have to take one unpaid day off each week for up to 14 weeks in the coming months.
On Monday, the White House said 480 workers on the president's budget staff had been notified they may have to take days off without pay. Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, wouldn't say whether notices have gone out to Obama aides outside the Office of Management and Budget, including senior staff in the West Wing. But he said pay cuts remained a possibility for additional White House employees if a budget deal to undo the cuts isn't reached.
Every federal agency is grappling with spending cuts. Carney said the White House also has been trying to cut costs by slowing down hiring, scaling back supply purchases, curtailing staff travel, reducing the use of air cards for mobile Internet access and reviewing contracts to look for savings.

Primates obtain guns, drugs, and cash inside NOLA prision

After courtroom fireworks Tuesday morning from a video depicting drug use, gunplay and beer drinking by inmates inside the Orleans Parish jail complex, and one video showing an inmate hanging out on Bourbon Street, testimony in the week-long hearing over a proposed jail reform package turned to a corrections expert who called inmate violence in the jail the worst he's seen.
The testimony from Manuel David Romero, an expert for the U.S. Department of Justice, echoed the testimony Monday from another expert for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represents inmates in the case.
Romero, former deputy secretary of the New Mexico prison system, reported a wide array of lapses in the jail facility during two visits last year, in April and December. Those lapses included inmates engaging in "sexual misconduct" in plain view of deputies who did nothing, Romero reported.
Also among the facts that emerged during his testimony was that 32 inmates suffered stab wounds in the jail facility last year. There also were 698 prisoner assaults, one for every three to four inmates.

"I have not seen numbers this large," Romero said.

Romero was asked to comment on the video footage, which showed inmates playing cash dice games, drinking Budweiser, unloading what appeared to be a Glock handgun, and one inmate shooting drugs into his arm.
No sheriff's deputies were in sight. How the gun got into the jail -- never mind the beer, drugs and video recorder -- and how the inmate got out to roam Bourbon Street, remained in doubt.
"What it tells you is, it's basically a total lack of a security program," Romero testified.
Romero cited a lack of manpower that makes it nearly impossible for deputies to closely supervise inmates in the jail, although he acknowledged that he did not conduct a staffing survey to see if deputies assigned elsewhere could be redeployed.

OPP video shows inmate checking out of jail and enjoying Bourbon StreetThis video was shown in a federal courtroom this morning in the ongoing trial over whether conditions at the Orleans Parish jail are unconstitutional. In it, an inmate is allowed to leave the Orleans Parish jail's House of Detention for a stroll down Bourbon Street, where he visits with strippers and others.

Advocates for inmates, the U.S. Department of Justice and Sheriff Marlin Gusman agreed in December to a federal consent decree that would be overseen by U.S. Disrict Court Judge Lance Africk, who will decide after the week-long hearing whether to approve it.

After that, another hearing slated for late May would determine just how much the consent decree will cost.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu is balking at the potential cost, and lawyers for the city are trying to argue that the agreement is too broad and that many of the deficiencies have nothing to do with money.
The city took aim at Gusman for the blatant illegal activity in the video, which was filmed in the now-closed House of Detention.
"Have you ever seen a group of inmates have not only a Glock, but controlled substances, heroin and cocaine, a lighter, large cans of beer, all at the same time?" asked Harry Rosenberg, an attorney for the city.

OPP video shows inmates highlighting poor conditionsThis video was shown in a federal courtroom this morning in the ongoing trial over whether conditions at the Orleans Parish jail are unconstitutional. In it, inmates highlight poor conditions in the now-closed House of Detention.

"No, I have not," Romero said. "That's the first time."

The consent decree would mandate widespread changes at the jail, including increased staffing and training to address a raft of alleged lapses, including a raft of violence, death and escapes.
Attorneys for the city played up the fact on Tuesday that the jail facility is accredited by a national group on its health care and fire prevention measures.
Rosenberg also tried to ask Romero about murder rates in the jail, hoping to point out that killings in the facility are rare.
He also asked Romero whether he had considered the consent decree's cost to the city, and its possible effect on public safety throughout the city -- from cuts to other services -- should the consent decree go into effect.
Africk wouldn't entertain the line of questioning, however. Downplaying suicides and other deaths in the jail, or playing up the potential cost, won't work at least for now, the judge said.
"It wouldn't work for your family and it's not gong to work for the city of New Orleans," Africk said, while several family members of inmates who have died in the jail sat in the gallery. "Put aside the question of murders. It's much broader than that."
Romero spent awhile testifying to what he called a weak or non-existent prisoner classification system that would separate low-risk inmates from more violent ones, or predators.
He also described numerous incidents of shank stabbings in the jail, and called the jail staff woefully deficient in conducting regular inmate patdowns.
The video, he said, points to a jail staff that not only lets inmate conduct slide, but may allow or facilitate contraband entering the facility.
"The level of contraband was outrageous, particularly with the firearms and drugs, and the money, and the beer," Romero said of the video. "From a security standpoint it was shocking. They are found in jails, but not blatant like this."
Romero's testimony was ongoing Tuesday afternoon. Gusman is expected to testify later in the week.
Gusman responded to the videotape in a news release Tuesday, noting that he closed down the House of Detention last year because it was "in a state of disrepair" and had an "abhorrent lack of proper security measures."
Later Tuesday, he announced that he will be available to speak with the media after Wednesday's proceedings conclude. Click to watch videos

NOLA Jazz Fest

Powerful Shit head might be from Corrupt Chicago and took what he learned from the two top shit heads Daley & Madigan

QUEENS — Power-hungry state Sen. Malcolm Smith schemed with a Queens councilman and GOP bosses to build a "corridor of corruption" in an ambitious attempt to line their pockets with cash and get him elected the mayor of New York City, federal authorities said Tuesday.
In a brazen betrayal of public trust, the Democratic senator hatched a plot to bribe Councilman Dan Halloran, the head of the Bronx Republican party Joseph Savino and the vice-chairman of the Queens Republican party Vincent Tabone, investigators said. Two Rockland county officials — Spring Valley Mayor Noramie Jasmin and her deputy Joseph Desmaret — are also accused of a role in the far-reaching scheme.
The alleged corruption stretched from the city to Albany and involved $80,000 in payoffs and shady deals in restaurants and cars — all in an effort to win the support of Republican leaders so Smith could run on the party's ticket in this year's mayoral race, according to investigators.
"At the heart of allegations is a sitting Democratic senator from Queens. Malcolm Smith believed he could, and should, be the mayor of New York City. And who in the service of that ambition tried to bribe his way to a shot at Gracie Mansion," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office brought bribery and fraud charges against the alleged crooked pols.
On Tuesday afternoon the six were arraigned together in federal court in White Plains before Judge Lisa Margaret Smith. The judge ordered bail set at $250,000 for five of the defendants. Desmaret's bail was set at $150,000.
The six were ordered to surrender their passports and not to travel outside the city or Rockland county.
Smith — once the president of the state Senate — and Halloran had been hauled away in handcuffs from their Queens homes early Tuesday morning.
The senator, who represents Queens Village, St. Albans and Jamaica, is accused of conspiring in November 2012 with a cooperating witness and an undercover FBI agent posing as a wealthy real estate developer to bribe city Republican leaders in order to win Wilson-Pakula certificates.

State Sen. Malcolm Smith was arrested early Tuesday morning along with City Councilman Dan Halloran and charged with election fraud and bribery.
(DNAinfo/Tuan Nguyen)

The certificate means a party has given its blessing for a non-party member to run on its ticket for a citywide office. Smith needed three of the counties to run on the Republican line for mayor.
"He was a Democrat but believed his best shot was running as a Republican," Bharara said.
In exchange for their help and ponying up the bribe money, Smith is accused of promising to use his position in the senate to steer $500,000 in state funding to a development project in Spring Valley that the cooperating witness and the undercover agent claimed they were planning.
Bharara described Halloran — a Republican — as having "quarterbacked" the ploy get Smith on the GOP ticket.
Beginning in September, the cooperating witness met with Halloran, agreeing to support the councilman's run for Congress in exchange for getting an associate a job and steering $60,000 to $80,000 in City Council discretionary funding to hire him and the undercover agent as consultants.
After the November meeting with Smith, the cooperating witness and the undercover agent enlisted Halloran to act as a middleman to persuade the Bronx and Queens party bosses to sign off on the certificates, according to a criminal complaint.
Halloran, an ex-police cadet, is accused of accepting nearly $40,000 in cash for his services and demanding a role as deputy NYPD commissioner or deputy mayor in a Smith mayoral administration. He also received $6,500 in straw donor contributions, the complaint says.
On Valentine's Day, Tabone met with the undercover FBI agent at a restaurant and accepted $25,000 for his support, the complaint states. He was promised $25,000 more if he came through with the certificate, according to the complaint.
Savino came cheaper. That same day the FBI agent met Savino at a Manhattan restaurant and later handed him $15,000 in a car, according to the complaint. He was allegedly promised another $15,000 after the certificate was squared away.
On March 21 the witness and FBI agent updated Smith on their progress in his Albany office. By then the senator had grown impatient and snapped when the undercover and the witness mentioned Tabone and Savino were looking to be paid more, according to the complaint.
Smith said that neither party leader would receive any more bribes until he got an endorsement, the complaint says.
"I'd say, if I even give you a nickel more, you'd have to stand on the Empire State Building and drop every person you endorsed and hold Malcolm up and say he's the best thing since sliced bread," Smith said, according to the complaint. "Matter of fact, he's better than sliced bread."
Jasmin and Desmaret were both charged with fraud for voting in favor of the sale of town land for the purported real estate project by the witness and the undercover agent. In exchange for their votes, Jasmin was allegedly promised a share in the real estate firm, and Desmaret was given $10,500 in cash.
Smith, Halloran, Tabone, and Savino were all charged with wire fraud and participating in a bribery conspiracy.
A somber Smith, dressed in a dark blue suit, and Halloran, wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and jeans, stared at Judge Smith during their hourlong arraignment.
Halloran's lawyer, Dennis Ring, protested the severity of the judge's bail restrictions.
"These are serious charges, and pretrial supervision is not unduly intrusive," the judge responded.
Ring told reporters after the hearing that he would fight the charges.
"The councilman denies the allegations and looks forward to clearing his name and coming back to court," Ring said.
Smith's lawyer, Gerald Shargel, denied any wrongdoing by his client and said the senator would not step down from office.
''The allegations in this complaint do not tell the whole story. I think there is much more to this story," Shargel said. "I ask anyone reading this or reading about this to withhold judgment. We intend to enter a plea of not guilty if and when an indictment is returned.''
Democratic leaders in Albany moved Tuesday to strip the senator of leadership positions on committees.

City Counciman Dan Halloran and state Sen. Malcolm Smith were arrested for allegedly trying to rig this year's mayoral election.
(Wikipedia)

In a statement, Smith spokesman Todd Shapiro said his boss would be "vindicated when all the facts in the case are revealed."
"The Senator has a record of 13 years of dedication, hard work and integrity to the people he serves in Queens," he added. "He has provided to the health, safety and well-being of the almost 20 million residents in New York."
Tabone's lawyer, Vito Palimieri, didn't buy the charges against his client.
"It seems to be they're trying to make the business of politics into a crime," Palimieri said.
Savino's lawyer yelled at reporters to get away.
The bombshell arrests cast a pall on the state's political system, which has already seen a slew of disgraced elected officials convicted of corruption in recent years.
"The charges we unseal today demonstrate once again that a show-me-the-money culture seems to pervade every level of New York government," Bharara said at a press conference earlier Tuesday.
"The criminal complaint describes an unappetizing smorgasbord of graft and greed, involving six officials who together built a corridor of corruption stretching from Queens and The Bronx to Rockland County and all the way up to Albany."
Bharara added that Halloran was caught on tape dismissing corruption as standard practice in New York City politics.
"Money is what greases the wheels. Good, bad or indifferent," Halloran allegedly told one of his cronies. "That's politics. It's all about how much, and that's our politicians in New York. They're all like that. You can't do anything without the f---ing money."

North Korea scum tells the South to get on their knees and start sucking North Korean dick

PAJU, South Korea (AP) — In past deadly confrontations between North and South Korea, a jointly operated industrial park stayed open, churning out goods.

But in the latest sign that North Korea's warlike stance toward South Korea and the United States is moving from words to action, the North on Wednesday barred South Korean managers and trucks delivering supplies from crossing the border to enter the Kaesong industrial park.

It's an announcement that further escalates a torrent of actions that analysts say is aimed at pressuring the U.S. and South Korea to change their policies toward North Korea.

The Kaesong move came a day after the North said it would restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and a uranium enrichment plant. Both could produce fuel for nuclear weapons that North Korea is developing and has threatened to hurl at the U.S., but which experts don't think it will be able to accomplish for years.

The North's rising rhetoric has been met by a display of U.S. military strength, including flights of nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets at annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that the allies call routine and North Korea says are invasion preparations.
The Kaesong industrial park started producing goods in 2004 and has been an unusual point of cooperation in an otherwise hostile relationship between the Koreas, whose three-year war ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
It has remained open despite the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010, killing 46 people, which Seoul blamed on the North, and a North Korean artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island later that year that killed four people. The North denies involvement in the ship sinking and says a South Korean live-fire drill triggered the bombardment.
Kaesong's continued operation through those episodes of high tension, and its high economic value to impoverished North Korea, has reassured foreign multinationals that another Korean War is unlikely and their investments in prosperous, dynamic South Korea are safe.
"What we are seeing right now is something that was less expected, that is, less directly in North Korea's interests," said Patrick Cronin, a senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. "Is this a short-term demonstration of North Korean dissatisfaction with U.S-South Korean policy, or a portent of something more drastic at Kaesong?" he said.

Drastic could range from a complete shutdown of Kaesong to North Korea taking South Korean workers at the facility hostage, which is a risk that has long hung over the joint project, Cronin said.

On Tuesday, a senior South Korean government official said Seoul has a contingency plan for its citizens in Kaesong, which number over 800 on weekdays. Most South Korean managers at Kaesong return to South Korea on the weekends. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he was not authorized to speak publicly to the media.

It is unclear how long North Korea will prevent South Koreans from entering the industrial park, which is located in the grim North Korean border city of Kaesong and provides jobs for more than 50,000 North Koreans who make goods such as textiles, clothing and electronic components. The last major disruption at the park amid tensions over U.S.-South Korean military drills in 2009 lasted just three days.
Seoul's Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said Pyongyang was allowing South Koreans to return home from Kaesong. Some 33 workers out of about 860 South Koreans at Kaesong returned Wednesday. But Kim said about 480 South Koreans who had planned to travel to the park Wednesday were being refused entry.
Trucks streamed back into South Korea through its Paju border checkpoint in the morning, just minutes after heading through it, after being refused entry into the North.
North Korea threatened last week to shut down the park, which is run with North Korean labor and South Korean know-how. It expressed anger over South Korean media reports that said North Korea hadn't yet shut the park because it is a source of crucial hard currency for the impoverished country.
Its March 30 statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency said "no one can see an inch ahead as regards the destiny" of Kaesong. It characterized the continued existence of the industrial park as a "very unusual thing" in light of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
About 120 South Korean companies operate factories in Kaesong which produced $470 million of goods such as clocks, clothing and shoes last year that are trucked back to the South for export to other countries. The industrial park is crucial for the small businesses that operate there to take advantage of North Korea's low wages but not important for the South Korean economy overall.

It has more significance to cash-strapped North Korea since, according to the South Korean government, wages for North Korean workers totaled some $81 million last year. On top of that, nearly all the trade between the Koreas, which totaled $2 billion in 2012, passed through Kaesong. North Korea appearing to act against its own interests with Kaesong has underlined the risks that its brinkmanship will result in a miscalculation that could result in an even more dangerous polarization of the Korean Peninsula.

Barring entry to South Koreas is a "slap in the face" after the South Korean government recently extended medical aid to the North, said Lee Choon-kun, a North Korea researcher at the Korea Economic Research Institute, a Seoul-based think tank. "I see this as a start for more provocative actions," he said.
"The North has made too many threats to stop short of any real action," he said.
Kaesong, initially conceived as a test case for reunification and reconciliation, also provides an irksome reminder for North Korea that what it lacks, the South has in abundance — material prosperity. An enormous gap emerged between the two Koreas in the decades after the Korean War as the South embraced a form of state-directed capitalism while the North adhered to communist central planning.
Every morning, North Korean workers commute to the complex on the edge of Kaesong on South Korean-made Hyundai buses. Once inside the gates of the complex, it's a world apart. The paved streets and sidewalks are marked with South Korean traffic signals and signs and the parking lots are filled with the Hyundai, Samsung and KIA cars driven by South Korean managers.
Inside several factories visited by The Associated Press last year, the posters on the walls are not party slogans but safety warnings. "Beware of fires," read one; "Wash your hands" read another. While most factories in North Korea are drafty, and few have running water, the facilities in Kaesong are equipped with hot water, flush toilets and air conditioners.
In the rest of the Korean Peninsula, it is illegal for Koreans from North and South to interact without government permission. But inside Kaesong, North Korean workers work side by side with South Korean managers, discussing orders and mapping out production.
However, they tend not to socialize with one another. At most factories, North Korean workers eat their meals in cafeterias that serve basic stews and rice while the South Koreans dine separately.
Park Yun-kyu, who heads a men's apparel maker that employs 700 North Korean workers in Kaesong, said he was worried he couldn't send fresh food to his eight South Korean workers there.
"They were working normally when I called them in the morning," said Park, who returned to Seoul after being refused entry into Kaesong. "The problem is food. I hope North Korea would at least let us send food. We have to send food and some materials for production every day."

American's hiding guns and loading up on am after U.N. Arms treaty signed

UNITED NATIONS -  The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the first treaty on the global arms trade, which seeks to regulate the $70 billion business in conventional arms and keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers.

The official U.N. tally showed 154 votes in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions, though diplomats and U.N. officials said the actual vote was 155-3-22 due to Angola being recorded as having abstained and not voting yes. Venezuela, which said it had planned to abstain, Zimbabwe and three other countries were not allowed to vote because they were in arrears on their U.N. dues.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the vote, saying the treaty "will make it more difficult for deadly weapons to be diverted into the illicit market and ... will help to keep warlords, pirates, terrorists, criminals and their like from acquiring deadly arms."

Iran, Syria and North Korea last week prevented a treaty-drafting conference at U.N. headquarters from reaching the required consensus to adopt the treaty. That left delegations that support it no choice but to turn to a General Assembly vote to adopt it.

The Iranian, Syrian and North Korean delegations cast the sole votes against the treaty on Tuesday.
Iran, which is under a U.N. arms embargo over its nuclear program, is eager to ensure its arms imports and exports are not curtailed, while Syria's government is embroiled in a two-year civil war and relies on arms from Russia and Iran, envoys said.
North Korea is also under a U.N. arms embargo due to its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
The treaty will be open for signature on June 3 and will enter into force 90 days after the 50th signatory ratifies it. Mexican U.N. Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba told reporters it normally takes two to three years for a treaty to come into force, but said he hoped it would happen sooner in this case.
Major arms producers China and Russia joined Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries in abstaining.
RUSSIA TAKING A HARD LOOK
A number of countries, led by India, which also abstained, complained the treaty favored exporting over importing states. Russia said Moscow would take a hard look at the treaty before deciding whether to sign it.
Several delegates told Reuters the treaty's effectiveness would be limited if major arms exporters refuse to sign it.

The United States, the world's No. 1 arms exporter, voted in favor of the treaty despite fierce opposition from the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful U.S. pro-gun lobbying group.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement the U.N. adopted "a strong, effective and implementable Arms Trade Treaty that can strengthen global security while protecting the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade."
"Nothing in this treaty could ever infringe on the rights of American citizens under our domestic law or the Constitution, including the Second Amendment," he added, referring to the U.S. constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to bear arms.
The NRA opposes the treaty and has vowed to fight to prevent its ratification by the U.S. Senate when it reaches Washington. The NRA says the treaty will undermine domestic gun rights, a view the U.S. government has strongly rejected.

Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari repeated that his government opposes the arms trade treaty because it does not ban the sale of weapons to non-state actors and "terrorists" like those it says are active in Syria. The civil war there has claimed at least 70,000 lives, according to U.N. estimates.

Syria routinely refers to rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad as "terrorists" backed by foreign governments.
The treaty does not ban transfers to armed groups, but says all arms transfers should be subjected to rigorous risk and human rights assessments first.
British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the vote as a "landmark agreement that will save lives and ease the immense human suffering caused by armed conflict around the world."
SCRUTINY ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Mexico issued a statement on behalf of 98 U.N. member states saying, "an effective implementation of this treaty will make a real difference for the people of the world."
U.N. member states began meeting on March 18 in a final push to end years of discussions and hammer out a binding international treaty to end the lack of regulation over cross-border conventional arms sales.
Arms control activists and rights groups have said a treaty was needed to halt the uncontrolled flow of arms and ammunition that they say fuels wars, atrocities and rights abuses.
The Arms Trade Treaty aims to set standards for all cross-border transfers of conventional weapons. It would also create binding requirements for states to review all cross-border arms contracts to ensure that arms will not be used in human rights abuses, terrorism or violations of humanitarian law.
"The agreement of the Arms Trade Treaty sends a clear message to arms dealers who supply warlords and dictators that their time is up," said Anna Macdonald of the global development group Oxfam.
Amnesty International's Frank Jannuzi said the NRA, which claimed credit last year for persuading the United States to block the treaty in July 2012, failed this time.
"Iran, Syria and North Korea blocked consensus at the U.N., while the NRA cynically, and ultimately unsuccessfully, tried to erode the U.S. government's support through a campaign of lies about the treaty," Jannuzi said.
The main reason the arms trade talks took place at all is that the United States, the world's biggest arms trader, reversed U.S. policy on the issue after President Barack Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.

Cop shoots man inside station



An officer shot and wounded an armed man inside the Vernon Hills police station early this morning, the first police-involved shooting in the north suburb, authorities said.

The man entered the lobby of the station at 740 Lakeview Parkway shortly after midnight saying he had been involved in an accident and wanted to file a report, authorities said.

"So an officer arrived to take the accident report information. And the suspect pulled out a gun and pointed it at the officer. So the officer shot the suspect," Officer Sharon Joseph told reporters outside the station, where a front glass door was shattered from the shooting.

The man was hit at least once and was taken in fair condition to a hospital. Joseph did not know whether he fired at the officer, who was not injured.
Joseph did not know whether there had been an accident or it was a ruse to draw the officer out. "That's part of the investigation," she said.

The man has not yet been positively identified and no charges have been filed, she added.

Joseph did not think anyone else was in the lobby at the time and noted that the dispatchers were behind "bullet-resistant glass."

"So that should have kept the dispatchers safe," she said.

Still, Joseph said "anybody with a handgun is a danger to everyone around. . .You have to stay on high alert at all times."

The officer has been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation, which is being conducted by the Lake County Major Crime Task Force

Chicago police officer found dead

The officer suffered a gunshot wound to the head, authorities said. His name was not being released, but he lived in the 900 block of West 129th Place. He was a 26-year veteran and was assigned to the Calumet District.
The Cook County medical examiner's office said the officer suffered an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Six squad car and several unmarked police cars were parked outside the single-story brick home as uniformed and plainclothes officers stood in the driveway to the west side of the home. About 7:45 a.m., a fire truck pulled up at the home but soon left.

Police at the scene referred all questions to police news affairs. A supervisor said the situation was particularly emotional because many who had responded, including herself, had worked with the officer.

Neighbors stood outside their homes and asked what had happened. They described the neighborhood as a quiet one where many police officers live. At least three other officers live within a block of the home.