“People sell heroin all over. It’s sold in the public sector. It’s sold in the private sector…” Mayor Daley’s response to the newest scandal to plague Chicago City Hall.
MAYOR DALEY FIGHTS HEROIN CHARGES AT CITY HALL, VIDEO HERE.
Columbian Drug Lords operating in the Chicago Water Department are accused of conspiring to move hundreds of grams of heroin.
As Mayor Daley opened the US Conference of Mayors in Chicago this week, a new scandal is reported from City Hall. This time it involves Heroin and Columbia smuggling! But Daley says he’s not embarassed by the charges because “I didn’t sell it!”:
Pressed for his comments at an unrelated news conference Wednesday, Mayor Richard M. Daley said, “Heroin is all over. People sell heroin all over. People … it doesn’t matter, could be a public employee, a private employee. People are selling heroin right now out on the streets.”
Daley said he’s not embarrassed by the charges because “I didn’t sell it.”
Federal prosecutors announced Wednesday that an investigation shows that Colombian drug lords were operating in the Chicago Water Department.
Investigators arrested eight people for alleged drug trafficking, three of them from the water department.
Reporting from the Dirksen Federal Building where an afternoon news conference outlined the details of the arrests, Martinez said that it all started last month.
A drug courier for the ring got his car impounded with a kilo of heroin inside, she said. When he went to retrieve that car, the FBI let him do so without arresting him. Instead, he went back to answer to his bosses about where the drugs were.
A lot of finger-pointing within the drug organization followed, Martinez said, and a series of events ultimately brought it down.
State, federal and local officials announced Wednesday that they had arrested the alleged leader of the Chicago cell of a Colombia-based heroin trafficking ring.
Earlier this month a scandal removed an In-law of the Mayor’s brother from office:
The city water commissioner and nine of his workers, including an in-law of Mayor Richard Daley’s brother, were ousted in a payroll scandal in the department at the center of a federal probe.
Ron Huberman, Mayor Richard Daley’s chief of staff, said Friday the nine employees, who worked on a 24-hour telephone hot line for reporting water problems, had used each other’s identification cards to make it appear they were working when they were not.
However, Mayor Daley was available long enough today to help pass stifling economic policies for Chicago. The Conference of US Mayors meeting in Chicago, led by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, passed the Kyoto Protocol for their cities today:
The U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution Monday that requires their cities to attempt to meet or exceed emissions standards set by the Kyoto Protocol, an international global-warming treaty ratified earlier this year without the United States.
The U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement urges federal and state governments to meet or beat the goal of reducing global warming pollution levels to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Those efforts will include reducing dependence on fossil fuels by accelerating development of fuel-efficient technologies such as wind and solar energy, efficient motor vehicles and biofuels.
President George Bush opposes the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the U.S. administration questions scientists’ views that man-made pollutants are causing temperatures to rise. U.S. officials also argue the Kyoto requirements would raise energy prices and cost millions of U.S. jobs.
Update: (Tuesday AM) Not even 24 hours has gone by and a new scandal is being reported in the Chicago Sun Times. This new scandal involves cleanup crews giving preferential treatment to Mayor Dayey’s aquaintances. Ouch!
