Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, September 22, 2016.
- Weather: A warm first day of fall
The first official day of autumn will be warm, with a high of 84 and a low of 69. It will be humid and partly sunny. [AccuWeather]
- Chicago Police will hire 970 more officers over the next two years
The Chicago Police Department is planning to add 970 new police officers to the force over the next two years to help combat the surge in shootings and homicides across the city. “I’m confident that these added resources will make us better,” CPD top cop Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Wednesday. The department will hire “516 new officers, 92 field-training officers, 200 detectives, 112 sergeants and 50 lieutenants,” CPD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the Associated Press. [Associated Press via ABC News]
- Ricketts family go from “Never Trump” to being supporters and donors
The billionaire owners of the Chicago Cubs, the Ricketts family, have gone from being vocal critics of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to being donors. The family will now spend $1 million to help Trump win the presidency over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to Bloomberg. Trump famously lashed out at both the Rickettses and the Cubs on Twitter earlier this year after the family donated $5.5 million to fund anti-Trump ads. [Bloomberg]
- The most dangerous police district has the youngest and least experienced cops
The 11th police district, which includes Garfield Park on the west side, is the most dangerous in the city, with the highest murder rate. It also has the youngest and most inexperienced police officers in the city, with more than a third of those assigned having served less than five years in CPD. “You’re putting your least-experienced officers in the situations that really call for the most experience and best judgment,” Sam Walker, a police expert and professor at the University of Nebraska, told the Marshall Project. [The Marshall Project and City Bureau]
- Rahm wants to suffocate Chicago’s increasing rat population with dry ice
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a new method to kill the city’s expanding rat population: dry ice. Emanuel announced a trial program that involves sticking dry ice into rat holes so the rats will suffocate when the dry ice turns into carbon dioxide. [Tribune]
- Craft brewer Three Floyds working on “something cool” in Humboldt Park
Craft brewery Three Floyds, based in Munster, Indiana, has been interested in a building a brewpub in Chicago, specifically in Humboldt Park, for years. Founder Nick Floyd sold the Humboldt Park lot that he’d hoped to build his Chicago brewpub on in early 2014, and now a restaurant has been built at the location. “Something cool is going in there,” Floyd told Eater Chicago. “I might not even own any of it, which is sad.” Floyd may be consulting on the Humboldt Park restaurant project in order to avoid Illinois laws on barrel limits for brewers. [Eater Chicago]