CeaseFire SCAM castigated in 2007 IL Auditor General report

The anti-civil rights group CeaseFire is facing criticism that the City of Chicago’s payment of $1 million for its criminal thug employees to “prevent” crime is not preventing a thing.

Here at Guns Save Life, we’ve long said that monies paid by Chicago to the rabidly anti-gun CeaseFire amount to nothing more than paying tribute to criminals.

There are no shortage of questions about CeaseFire and what they may actually do, aside from garnering grants from both government and some private sources.

Nobody’s exactly sure who CeaseFire’s employees are or what they do.  Before this most recent report on the lack of results from CeaseFire, the only splash of publicity for the group’s name in the mainstream press since Chicago wrote them a check earlier this year was when a street pharmacist who claimed to be one of CeaseFire’s employees was arrested by Chicago police.

Theotis Holcomb had a slew of crack cocaine and some marijuana on his person in the July traffic stop before being taken to jail.  A search of the Illinois Department of Corrections reveals Mr. Holcomb, despite having nearly a half-ounce of crack on his person, is not a guest of IDOC as of this time.

Second City Cop, a blog run by a Chicago Police Officer, also had rumors of a second CeaseFire employee being arrested with a serious quantity of heroin.

Not to be outdone the 010th dist tact team gabbed a ceasefire interrupter gal with about 280 blows (that’s heroin for you media trolls). Let’s see how fast ceasefire spins this one.

Unfortunately though, despite no shortage of critics of the CeaseFire program and the make-believe paradigm by which it supposedly works, Chicago’s cool million is only the latest in government monies that have flowed to CeaseFire Illinois’ organization in recent years.

CeaseFire’s scam of securing grants from local, state and federal government here in Illinois was castigated five plus years ago in a scathing 2007 Illinois Auditor General report.

His findings?

Not only are there a host of questionable activities by CeaseFire, but there is no metric to measure their “success”.  They’ve claimed large drops (70%+ in homicides) in two police beats they’ve worked in one year, but larger drops occurred in seven of the fifteen other beats in the district where CeaseFire thugs were absent.

Amidst criticism and negative publicity, they have recently re-branded themselves with a new name, Cure Violence.

Irrespective of their name change, here’s the latest in the Sun-Times about this scam these hoodlums have put together to fleece taxpayers…

CeaseFire’s effectiveness was questioned in 2007 by state auditor

Chicago (Sun-Times) – The scoop in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times by police reporter Frank Main about the effectiveness of CeaseFire isn’t the first time such questions have been raised about the group.

Five years ago, Illinois’ top auditor questioned what exactly taxpayers were getting in return for millions of dollars in state funds that were invested with CeaseFire.

A 2007 report by Auditor General William Holland scrutinized $13 million in state spending on CeaseFire and concluded no state standards existed to measure the group’s anti-violence work.

On Tuesday, Main reported that after more than three months into a $1 million contract with the city, a ranking police source said the anti-violence group has “no significant success stories.” The group disputed that claim, insisting it had made a dent in crime in the areas covered by the city’s new anti-violence pilot program.

“To me, they’ve never proven their worth,” said state Sen. Donne Trotter (D-Chicago), who was behind the original Senate resolution that got Holland moving on his CeaseFire audit of five years ago.

In the auditor general’s analysis of shootings in Chicago, Holland found no consistent correlation between the group’s work and reductions in violence.