An animated musical princess fantasy adventure about caring for parents with dementia doesn’t exactly sound like a propitious high concept. And sure enough, Vicky Jenson’s Spellbound struggles to connect its somber emotional material with its whimsical and formulaic genre approach.
Ellian (Rachel Zegler) is a 15-year-old princess in a magical kingdom with (among other wonders) trained, giant, winged cat steeds. But she also has a painful secret: the preceding year, her parents, Queen Ellsmere (Nicole Kidman) and King Solon (Javier Bardem), were transformed into monsters who growl and fight and wreck the castle. Ellian has had to take care of all the kingdom’s business herself. In a last ditch effort to save her parents and her childhood, she sets off on a quest with the two of them to find a magic light in the forests of eternal darkness to bring them back to themselves.
The reversal of caregiving roles—the child having to look after the parents—is painful and poignant. So is Ellian’s desperate determination to prove that her parents still remember her and care about her, despite all the evidence to the contrary. There’s not a lot of time to live with that difficult material though, amidst all of the (indifferent) musical numbers and the (predictable) adventuring. And when you do have time to think about it, the handling of the theme raises some uncomfortable questions. Like, is it a good idea to tell kids that they can reverse serious mental illness in their caregivers if they are courageous and go on a fun quest?
Eventually, it becomes clear that the metaphor is more about divorce and parental separation than mental decline. But the late gear shift feels clumsy and disorienting, and in any case, begs some of the same questions, especially when the film suggests that Ellian’s understandable anger and resentment have to be fought off, lest they corrupt her. The ambition in Spellbound is admirable, but what Jenson wants to say just doesn’t fit well into the Disney-esque box she’s trying to shove it into. Given the garbled messages and the lackluster presentation, it’s difficult to recommend this for children of any age. PG, 109 min.
Netflix, limited release in theaters
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“My son’s emotions were big and strong like a great storm cloud,” says his mother Jessica Walks First. “No matter what he felt, he felt it big. He loved big. His personality was big. Even as a small child, elders told us he carried a powerful old soul in his body. Those old souls sometimes are here just long enough to teach us something. My son taught me about forgiveness, healing, laughter, and love. He taught me about strength and how to fight forward toward my dreams.”
Great Cloud, or Kāēqc Anahkwat in Menominee, was also known as Michael Louis Pamonicutt III, a 30-year-old father of two, champion grass dancer, tribal police officer, and passionate cook—a skill he picked up from his mom.
“Food and cooking: that was our love language,” says Walks First, the chef behind the all-Indigenous caterer Ketapanen Kitchen that will honor her late son this November 24 at the next Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern.
Adding to Walks First’s grief is the fact that there is no official cause of death yet (it’s under investigation). What’s keeping her going, she says, is her work.
For her fourth Foodball, she’s preparing his favorites, including a return of her bison brisket platter with Bannock roll, and choice of smoked cactus pear or blueberry barbecue sauce. She’s also doing her elote pasta salad, and her signature Menominee maple baked beans, with the proceeds going to offset his funeral expenses.
This Foodball has an added significance coming four days ahead of a national holiday that means something completely different for First Nations. “As Native people we don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving,” she says. “For us it’s a time of family, a time of connection, and a time to come together and honor those that walked on before us. And my son is now one of those.”
Ketapanen Kitchen starts serving at 5 PM until sellout this Monday, November 24, at 2905 N. Elston in Avondale.
Meantime, check out the full Foodball schedule.
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Mike Sula (he/him) is a senior writer, food reporter, and restaurant critic at the Chicago Reader. He’s been a staffer since 1995.
His story about outlaw charcuterie appeared in Best Food Writing 2010. His story “Chicken of the Trees,” about eating city squirrels, won the James Beard Foundation’s 2013 M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. “The Whole Hog Project,” and “What happens when all-star chefs get in bed with Big Food?” were nominated for JBF Awards.
He’s the author of the anthology An Invasion of Gastronomic Proportions: My Adventures with Chicago Animals, Human and Otherwise, and the editor of the cookbook Reader Recipes: Chicago Cooks and Drinks at Home.
His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, NPR’s The Salt, Dill, Harper’s, Plate Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Eater. He’s the former editor in chief of Kitchen Toke.
He lives in Chicago and is the curator of Monday Night Foodball, a weekly chef pop-up hosting Chicago’s most exciting underground and up-and-coming chefs.
Spain has arrested 14 people suspected of links to the powerful Mexican Sinaloa cartel as part of a kidnapping and murder probe, police said Sunday.
The ring busted by Spanish investigators was mainly made up of Mexican nationals. It was connected to the Sinaloa drug cartel, which is based in northwestern Mexico and has been shaken by weeks of gang infighting.
“The dismantled criminal network, which is based in Catalonia, is believed to be involved in the kidnapping and death of a man whose body was found in a wooded area” in the northeastern Spanish region in August, police said in a statement.
The victim, whose nationality was not specified, allegedly worked with the gang and “had come from Italy for a meeting with several chiefs.”
The victim’s family in Kosovo reported his disappearance to the police after he was abducted between late May and June.
The family received a 240,000-euro ransom request ($253,000) and a total of $32,000 was paid in cryptocurrency.
The 14 detained suspects were allegedly involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping and murder, the statement also said. The detainees, 11 men and 3 women, are between 30 and 70 years old.
The Catalonia-based ring received shipments from Mexico containing clothes soaked with methamphetamine, which they then extracted in a Spanish lab, police added.
The 14 arrests came just days after Spain arrested one of its top police officers after 20 million euros were found hidden in the walls of his house, as part of a probe into the country’s largest-ever cocaine bust.
The Sinaloa cartel, which is named after the Mexican state where it originated, is one of the largest criminal organizations in the world. Two of its founders, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, are jailed in the United States.
Zambada, 76, was arrested on July 25 in the southern United States, where he landed with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of “El Chapo’s” sons, who led a faction of the cartel known as the “Chapitos.” The veteran drug trafficker has accused Lopez of kidnapping him and handing him over to U.S. law enforcement.
According to an indictment released by the U.S. Justice Department last year, the “Chapitos” and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.” El Chapo’s sons were among 28 Sinaloa cartel members charged in a massive fentanyl-trafficking investigation announced in April 2023.
“El Chapo” is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
Spiraling criminal violence, much of it linked to gang drug trafficking, has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since 2006.
By a canal in Amsterdam’s red-light district, one of the “window women” is actually a hologram which Dutch police hope will help solve the gruesome murder of a sex worker in 2009.
Peering through a frame out onto passers-by, a human-sized likeness of Bernadett “Betty” Szabo — in skimpy shorts and a leopard-print bra, a dragon tattoo covering much of her torso — taps the pane and fogs the glass with her breath.
The word “HELP” appears, chillingly, on the screen.
A pedestrian walks past a hologram representing murdered sex worker Bernadette Szabo, known as Betty, implemented by Dutch police in hope to uncover new information around her murder, in Amsterdam, on November 15, 2024.
NICK GAMMON/AFP via Getty Images
“Fifteen years ago, Betty was killed in a horrible way and the investigation was never closed,” Amsterdam police spokesman Olav Brink told AFP.
Aged only 19, Hungarian-born Betty was stabbed multiple times in her brothel room in the centuries-old red-light district, known as De Wallen, just months after giving birth to a baby boy.
Despite a large-scale police probe, the case went cold.
During a review, however, police found “promising clues” and decided to reopen the investigation, Brink said.
They hope the likeness of Betty, created with 3D visualization technology, will jolt the memories of people who may have information about her murder.
“Betty was murdered in one of the busiest areas in Amsterdam, maybe even in the Netherlands. It is really almost impossible that there are no people who saw or heard something unusual at the time,” cold case team member Anne Dreijer-Heemskerk said in a statement. “We hope witnesses who may have been afraid before or kept silent for other reasons now have the courage to come forward.”
Waiting for the “golden tip”
“There are still people who know what has happened to Betty,” said Brink, hoping that 15 years on, “people feel freer to share information with the police.”
The initiative also aims to raise awareness about the violence faced by sex workers.
Around 78 percent of prostitutes in the Netherlands have faced sexual violence and 60 percent report being physically attacked, according to a 2018 report by Dutch charities and sex worker rights groups.
Concerns about violence also rose during the Covid-19 pandemic, when loss of income forced some prostitutes to continue working illegally and reduced their ability to report crimes to the police.
In the week since the hologram and accompanying information about Betty went on display, the police have seen “that a lot of people are talking about it.”
“We find it quite special that Betty can bring attention to her case this way,” said Brink.
In the streets of De Wallen, lined with women watching from red-lit window booths, groups of locals and visitors pause and strike up conversations about the unusual display, entitled “Who was Betty?”
Bernadett “Betty” Szabo
Amsterdam Police
Theo, 80, who lives outside Amsterdam, said he read about the project in the papers and “came especially to see it” when he was in the city.
Soyoon Jun, 34, lives near the red-light district, “so it was more shocking for me that there were neighbors who are going through this type of horrendous event.”
For Jun, who works at a Christian charity, the hologram made the murder “real.”
“It wasn’t just information that was given out,” Jun explained. “People could feel the helplessness that Betty would have felt.”
The police have already “received several tips because of the campaign,” Brink confirmed to AFP.
They are still waiting, though, for the “golden tip” that will lead them to the murderer, which comes with a 30,000-euro ($31,600) reward.
“Special way of getting attention”
According to Brink, the hologram is a “special way of getting attention for this case” — including by putting it in De Wallen, which is “one of the busiest places in Amsterdam and probably the whole of the Netherlands.”
This may not last, though, since Amsterdam’s sex workers may soon lose the centrality and visibility of their windows.
The local government plans to relocate the red-light district to a purpose-built centere south of the city in the hope of reducing petty crime and tourist footfall in De Wallen.
The move is opposed by tens of thousands of locals and sex workers, who are calling instead for better crowd control and surveillance in the existing red-light area.
Miranda K, a 57-year-old who lives near Amsterdam and declined to give her full surname, said the relocation plan was a “pity” because she felt “safe” in De Wallen.
She said the out-of-city center would be in a “dark” area, whereas De Wallen has “tourists and people and locals and everything here. So I think it’s safer.”
“For me, it’s not just about finding Betty or who was Betty,” she said, “but it’s about… these other ladies on the streets too.”
Ongoing effort to identify cold case victims across Europe
The search for Betty comes amid a wider effort to solve cold cases in the Netherlands and beyond. Last month, Interpol launched a new campaign to identify 46 women whose remains have been found across Europe in unsolved cases, some dating back decades.
The initiative from the Lyon-based organization builds on the success of the first Identify Me campaign, which last year helped identify the body of a woman — dubbed the “woman with the flower tattoo” — found murdered 31 years ago in a Belgian river as Briton Rita Roberts.
The original initiative launched to identify 22 deceased women saw some 1,800 tips received from the public.
Now the campaign has been expanded to include cold cases from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, as well as unexplained deaths from new participating countries France, Italy, and Spain.
Most of the women were “murdered or had died in suspicious or unexplained circumstances,” the organization said.
Among the women Interpol is seeking to identify is the body of a woman — dubbed “the woman in the suitcase” — with an estimated age of between 16 and 22. In the autumn of 2005, her corpse was found in a red suitcase lying in the canal in the town of Schiedam in the west of the Netherlands.
The oldest of the cold cases, “the girl on the parking lot,” dates back to 1976. Her body was found along the A12 highway in the Netherlands.
Two people were killed and 11 others were wounded in two separate shootings along a New Orleans parade route and celebration attended by thousands on Sunday, authorities said. There were no immediate arrests.
Officers responding to reports of gunfire shortly after 3:30 p.m. on an avenue in the city’s St. Roch neighborhood found eight victims with gunshot wounds, according to a news release from the New Orleans Police Department. All eight were taken to hospitals in unknown condition. Police later said a ninth wounded person arrived at a hospital via a private car.
CBS New Orleans affiliate WWL-TV reports that, according to investigators, ballistics showed that two shooters were involved.
About 45 minutes later, police received another report of gunfire as revelers were crossing the Almonaster Avenue Bridge, just over half a mile to the north. One person died at the scene and another died at a hospital, police said. A third victim was driven to a hospital in a private vehicle and was in stable condition, police said.
No arrests were announced and no suspect information was released.
The St. Roch neighborhood is several blocks northeast of the city’s French Quarter that is popular with tourists.
The Almonaster Bridge was closed in both directions during the investigation.
Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said detectives didn’t immediately know if the incidents were related.
“They were … different kinds of approaches,” she said of the shootings, which occurred in the area where a “second line,” a celebration following a parade, was taking place.
Thousands had gathered for the annual outing of the Nine Times Social Aid & Pleasure Club in the 9th Ward, organizer Oscar Brown told NOLA.com.
“It is a wonderful event, and we want to keep it a wonderful event,” Kirkpatrick said.
It was the second major shooting in the South since gunfire marred a homecoming weekend at Tuskegee University in Alabama on Nov. 10, killing one person and injuring 16 others, a dozen of them by gunfire, authorities said.
Gov. Newsom defers clemency decision on Menendez Brothers case
Gov. Newsom defers clemency decision on Menendez Brothers case
00:26
California Gov. Gavin Newsom will defer his decision on the Menendez brothers’ clemency petition to allow for incoming Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to review the case, his office announced Monday.
“The Governor respects the role of the District Attorney in ensuring justice is served and recognizes that voters have entrusted District Attorney-elect Hochman to carry out this responsibility,” Newsom’s office said in a statement. “The Governor will defer to the DA-elect’s review and analysis of the Menendez case prior to making any clemency decisions.”
Lyle and Erik Menendez have spent roughly 35 years in state prison after they were convicted in their parents’ 1989 murder. Outgoing District Attorney George Gascón sent letters in support of the brothers’ clemency to Newsom after a Netflix show and documentary revived interest in the brothers’ case.
“I strongly support clemency for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who are currently serving sentences of life without possibility of parole. They have respectively served 34 years and have continued their educations and worked to create new programs to support the rehabilitation of fellow inmates,” Gascón said in a statement before losing his re-election bid.
In an interview, Hochman said if the case is not resolved by a Nov. 25 habeas petition hearing — when a judge will hear a motion requesting to vacate the first-degree murder convictions — he will review the case to determine whether or not to recommend resentencing.
Hochman, who will be sworn in on Dec. 2, indicated that he would petition the court for additional time to review the cast ahead of the resentencing hearing scheduled for Dec. 11.
“I wouldn’t engage in delay for delay’s sake because this case is too important to the Menendez brothers,” Hochman said in an interview earlier in November. “It’s too important to the victims’ family members. It’s too important to the public to delay more than necessary to do the review that people should expect from a district attorney.”
Such an analysis of the case would involve reviewing thousands of pages of prison files and transcripts of the months-long trials as well as speaking with law enforcement, prosecutors, defense counsel and victims’ family members, he added.
“Whatever position I ultimately end up taking, people should expect that I spent a long time thinking about it, analyzing the evidence,” Hochman said. “But my 34 years of criminal justice experience — involving hundreds of cases as a prosecutor and a defense attorney — allow me to work quickly and expeditiously in conducting this type of thorough review because I’ve done it in many, many cases before.”
After being arrested for their parents’ deaths in 1990, the Menendez brothers went through two trials where prosecutors argued that they murdered their parents because of greed. However, the siblings testified that they killed their parents in self-defense. The brothers told the jury about the alleged sexual abuse they said they experienced at the hands of their father during an emotional, highly publicized first trial.
Following closing arguments, the jurors spent roughly four days deliberating but failed to come to a unanimous decision. The judge declared a mistrial after the jury was unable to deliver a decision.
In the next and final trial, the presiding judge did not allow the defense to submit some evidence connected to the sexual abuse allegations. Prosecutors argued the brothers were lying about the allegations.
The second jury convicted Erik and Lyle Menendez of first-degree murder in 1995 and sentenced them to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Matthew Rodriguez
Matthew Rodriguez is a digital producer for CBS Los Angeles. He’s previously reported for local outlets like the Argonaut and Pasadena Weekly. Matt typically covers breaking news and crime.
Guns, bombs, WWII artifacts found while magnet fishing in Michigan
Guns, bombs, WWII artifacts found while magnet fishing in Michigan
03:48
A man has pleaded guilty in the killings of a Georgia couple who were lured to their deaths nearly a decade ago, authorities say, after someone magnet fishing in a creek reeled in a rifle and other evidence linked to the cold case.
Ronnie Jay Towns pleaded guilty to the 2015 murders of Bud and June Runion and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Telfair County Sheriff Sim Davidson said in a statement Monday.
The conclusion to the case came just months after someone using a magnet to fish in a Georgia creek pulled up a rifle as well as some of the Runions’ belongings in the same area where the couple was found murdered. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in April that driver’s licenses, credit cards and other items pulled from Horse Creek were “new evidence” in the murder case.
Officials said then that the magnet fisher had discovered a .22-caliber rifle — the same caliber as the gun used to kill the Runions. When the magnet fisher returned to the same spot two days later, they found a bag containing a cellphone, driver’s licenses and credit cards, which investigators said had belonged to Bud and June Runion.
This combination of photos provided on Jan. 26, 2015, by the Cobb County Police Department shows June Runion, of Marietta, Ga., and her husband, Elrey “Bud” Runion.
/ AP
The couple’s bodies were discovered off a county road in January 2015 and authorities said they had been robbed. Investigators said at the time that their bodies and their car had been found in three different locations, CBS affiliate WMAZ-TV reported.
Investigators said Towns lured the couple by replying to an online ad posted by 69-year-old Bud Runion seeking a classic car, though Towns didn’t actually own the car. Authorities said the couple drove three hours from their home in Marietta to Telfair County to look at the vehicle. They never returned.
Towns was eventually charged in the killings but his trial was delayed multiple times — once because too few jurors reported for jury duty when prosecutors took it to a grand jury, WMAZ-TV reported. He was indicted again in 2020, but the case was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, after the new evidence was pulled from the creek, Towns pleaded guilty and is now set to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“We are thankful to have closure in this case, and our prayers are with both families,” Sheriff Davidson said Monday.
People magnet fishing have pulled in other unexpected items in recent months. In June, a New York City couple said they used a magnet to reel in a safe containing two stacks of waterlogged $100 bills. The month before that, a magnet fisher reeled in a human skull padlocked to an exercise dumbbell from a New Orleans waterway.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stephen Smith
Stephen Smith is a managing editor for CBSNews.com based in New York. A Washington, D.C. native, Steve was previously an editorial producer for the Washington Post, and has also worked in Los Angeles, Boston and Tokyo.
Oslo — Norwegian police said Tuesday that the 27-year-old son of Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit had been arrested on suspicion of rape. Police said Marius Borg Hoiby, who was born from a relationship prior to Mette-Marit’s 2001 marriage to Crown Prince Haakon, was arrested Monday evening.
“What police can say about the rape is that it concerns a sexual act without intercourse. The victim is said to have been unable to resist the act,” they said.
In a later statement, police said they had searched the suspect’s home and made “seizures.”
Marius Borg Hoiby sits next to his mother Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit, in a file photo taken on June 16, 2022, in Oslo, Norway.
LISE ASERUD/NTB/AFP/Getty
Borg Hoiby was raised by the royal couple alongside his step-siblings Princess Ingrid Alexandra, 20, and Prince Sverre Magnus, 18, but has no official public role.
The rape arrest comes only months after he was accused of bodily harm after a night-time row on August 4 at the Oslo apartment of a woman he was having a relationship with, police said. Norwegian media reports said police found a knife stuck into one of the walls of the woman’s bedroom at the time.
He was arrested again in September for violating a restraining order.
Police said he was in a car with the alleged victim of the August incident when he was arrested Monday.
On Tuesday, police also said the suspicions relating to the August incident now include domestic abuse.
Police said they had yet to decide whether he would be remanded in custody.
A family is demanding answers after a Las Vegas father was shot and killed in his own home after calling police to report a potential home invasion.
Newly released police bodycam video shows Brandon Durham, 43, struggling with an alleged intruder over a knife in the early hours of Nov. 12. The intruder, later identified as Alejandra Boudreaux, 31, was wearing a red hoodie, while Durham was shirtless, the video shows. Durham’s 15-year-old daughter was home at the time, but was not at the scene, officials said.
Las Vegas police said Officer Alexander Bookman entered the home and ordered the pair to drop the knife before firing his weapon, police said. Durham was struck and fell to the floor. Bookman then fires five more rounds, the video shows.
Alejandra Boudreaux and Brandon Durham.
CBS Mornings
Durham was pronounced dead at the scene. Now, his family is pushing for answers.
“He called the police for safety and instead, he was brutally murdered,” his daughter Isabella said in a news conference.
“Someone needs to explain to me why my son is not here with us today,” added Durham’s mother.
Bookman is on paid leave while the Las Vegas Metro Police Department investigates whether he acted appropriately or should face criminal charges. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told Durham’s family the investigation could take 30 to 90 days, according to CBS affiliate KLAS.
Brandon Durham.
CBS Mornings
“Every time a police officer used force, he has to be able to articulate why he used that force,” Felipe Rodriguez, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former detective sergeant for the NYPD, told CBS News. “And even if he did use one round, you know, how is it that he was, you know, he continued shooting after the person was down in such a rapid succession? It’s going to have a lot of explaining.”
Boudreaux was arrested and faces multiple charges, including one count of home invasion with a deadly weapon, a count of assault with a deadly weapon, a count of performing an act of willful or wanton disregard of safety resulting in a person’s death, and one count of child abuse, according to police.
Boudreaux and Durham knew each other and had a sexual relationship, according to an arrest report obtained by KLAS 8. Boudreaux told detectives she intended to have police kill her on the day of the home invasion, the station reported, and Boudreaux has refused to appear at two court hearings.
Carter Evans
Carter Evans has served as a Los Angeles-based correspondent for CBS News since February 2013, reporting across all of the network’s platforms. He joined CBS News with nearly 20 years of journalism experience, covering major national and international stories.
Chicago street festivals underestimate crowds by tens of thousands, endangering attendees
Chicago street festivals underestimate crowds by tens of thousands, endangering attendees
07:32
CITY HALL — The city spent $22.6 million on police overtime for special events this year but has only been reimbursed $2 million, leaving taxpayers to cover the remaining costs.
City law requires special event producers to pay for police services beyond 12 shifts. However, an investigation by Block Club Chicago and CBS Chicago revealed through records requests that the city has not been retroactively charging for those costs.
Chicago hosts hundreds of street festivals each year, with approximately 1,300 events held between 2021 and 2023. During that period, nearly 2,800 Chicago police officers logged a combined total of 27,000 overtime hours to patrol these events, according to a CBS News Data Team analysis of police overtime records and special event permits.
At a Chicago Police budget hearing on Friday, officials confirmed that a significant portion of the overtime associated with special events has gone unreimbursed, attributing the issue to a “decentralized system.”
In 2024, the police department spent $22.6 million on special event overtime across various music, street, and neighborhood festivals. About $7.2 million of that is attributed to ticketed events like Lollapalooza, the Chicago Marathon, and NASCAR. However, the city has only been reimbursed for Lollapalooza and the Chase Corporate Challenge, totaling just under $2 million, police officials disclosed on Friday.
The 2024 figures are an increase from 2023, which saw $19.2 million spent in police overtime across all special events, police officials said. It’s currently unknown how much of that was reimbursed to the department. Special events include large ticketed festivals, street festivals, athletic events and bar crawls. Chicago hosted 677 special events in 2023, according to records obtained by CBS Chicago.
The revelation aligns with months of unanswered public records requests directed at the Department of Finance, which has been unable to produce invoices for police overtime at street festivals.
While the department did provide invoice data for traffic control aides at events like Riot Fest, Lollapalooza, and several 5Ks, it referred CBS News to the city’s Public Safety Administration for police overtime. However, the Public Safety Administration has not responded to records requests for police overtime details and did not return requests for comment.
“What may make more sense is we can provide all of our historical data about what our costs are, and we can provide that to DCASE, we can provide that to the Department of Finance. We can give a unified city service quote at the front end,” said Ryan Fitzsimons, Deputy Director at the Chicago Police Department.
During a budget hearing for the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events last week, officials revealed that their department is not involved in the invoicing process for reimbursing police overtime, raising concerns among aldermen that permits are being issued to event producers with outstanding balances.
On Friday, police officials said that despite the lack of reimbursement, they do not have the authority to block special event permits unless there are safety concerns. This lack of enforcement power leads to ongoing accountability issues with invoicing, they noted.
“We conduct numerous after-action meetings with OEMC and other city agencies. The problem is that, while we identify these reimbursement issues during those meetings, they are not addressed in subsequent permits issued the following year,” said Chief Duane DeVries, head of the Bureau of Counterterrorism with the Chicago Police Department.
After each permitted special event, the Chicago Police Department generates an “event evaluation form” that tracks the number of incidents and officers assigned to the event.
On Friday several aldermen requested event evaluation forms for various Chicago’s special events.
In July, the CBS News Data Team and Block Club Chicago requested event evaluation data for various events from 2019 to 2024, including PrideFest, Market Days, Wicker Park Fest, and Lollapalooza. The department said the evaluations were kept on paper. A request for those documents was made in August. As of last week, the department is still working on that request.
All special event producers are required to present security plans to Chicago Police for feedback before the city’s events department issues a permit. The amount of private security is determined by various factors, including the event’s history, location, current events and crime trends. Event organizers suggest a security plan and the police department approves, denies and makes suggestions.
Because of this, some special event producers have argued that they should not be required to pay for police overtime.
“It’s like someone coming and painting your house and then saying, ‘I want you to pay for it.’ … Well, I didn’t want you to paint my house,” Hank Zemola, CEO of Special Events Management, previously said. “I ordered all this (security) so we wouldn’t have to do that.”
Special Events Management puts on numerous special events including street races and neighborhood street festivals. The company organizes some of the city’s most popular street festivals like Pridefest, Ribfest and others.
By city law, street festivals cannot charge an entry fee but can propose suggested donations for entry. With suggested donations in decline, inflation making festivals more expensive to produce and consumers spending less, Zemola estimates that at least 50% of the company’s events this year lost money.
Still, with the City Council looking for cost-saving measures aldermen are eager to close the loophole that is hemorrhaging money from this city.
“I hope that with the information … your department provides us, we can, from the council side, work on maybe a better process that gives you guys … a seat at the table … so that we can better manage and join our resources,” said Ald. Maria Hadden (49th).
This story was produced under a collaboration with Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit newsroom focused on Chicago’s neighborhoods, and CBS News Chicago. Melody Mercado contributed to this report.
Elliott Ramos
Elliott Ramos is a senior investigative data journalist for the CBS Data Team based in Chicago.
