• Roe Conn, of WLS 890 AM, will have a new partner starting April 12: Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper. The show will be called “The Roe Conn Show with Richard Roeper,” but Michael Damsky, president and general manager of WLS, told Robert Feder, “I anticipate that we’ll hear a lot of the shorthand ‘Roe and Roeper.’"
• Coming soon to all Chicago Police squad cars: tasers. Currently, there are 280 tasers in use by the CPD but only sergeants and field training officers are allowed to carry them; the expansion will add 380 more and every squad car assigned to a beat will receive one. CPD Supt. Jody Weis said, "It's a level of force that I want to authorize to use before the situation escalates. We want to use every other option before we use lethal force." Of course, as the Tribune points out, the announcement came shortly after a man died after being tasered by police in suburban Midlothian (though the official cause of death has not been determined).
• In happier news, Time Out Chicago has a great feature on Jeff Jenkins, lead local trainer of the Humane Society’s End Dogfighting campaign and the Pit Bull Training Team, and his battle to, well, end dogfighting.

We don't know about you, but our main priorities when choosing a day care center for our kids are that it's clean, the caregivers are good with children, and most importantly, that it doesn't also contain a pit bull fighting ring. So a home day care in Maywood definitely wouldn't have made our short list after the Cook County Sheriff raided it, breaking up an alleged dog fighting operation and rescuing 9 dogs, all of which needed medical attention. Some of the dogs were in horrific condition -- Sheriff Tom Dart told the press that they "found a dog with its eye ripped out, a dog with a leg twisted backward and a dog with its lower extremities nearly ripped off its body," and another dog that appeared to have very recently been in a fight and "its chest... was shredded and its penis was bitten almost completely off." more ›

Kankakee officials broke up a dogfighting ring over the weekend, arresting seven and rescuing nine pit bulls. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says that while he's seen many things at dogfights, but the case of 50-year-old Ronald Patton of Chicago, who took his five year-old daughter along with him is particularly shocking. Officials say the winner of the fight stood to win $20,000, which authorities seized. "This was a high stakes one. We were estimating the purse for the final champion was going to be $20,000 to $30,000," Dart told CBS2. more ›

Cook County sheriff's police broke up a dogfight taking place in the basement of a house in the 500 block of West 66th St. on Saturday night. The fight was attended by 50 people, including a pregnant woman and a few teenagers. Three men (pictured from left to right: Donaver Jones, Melvin Trent and Timothy Norris) were charged with felony dogfighting. All others were issued misdemeanor tickets for attending a dogfight.

Police swept into the basement about 10 p.m. Saturday night to find a bloodied 10-by-10-foot makeshift ring surrounded by 3-foot-high wooden boards smeared with blood, bites and scratches. The floor of the ring was covered with a red rug that police said was used to disguise blood. more ›

What could be better than Brownies singing on YouTube? Brownies singing about why dogfighting is bad! more ›

Police confiscated 10 dogs after a raid on a convicted felon's house yesterday. Police executed a search warrant on the home after police chased a suspect into 5259 W. Altgeld St., where they spotted several dogs that appeared not to be neutered. Possession of dogs that have not been fixed by a convicted felon is a crime in Illinois. "Officers in the district are familiar with [that home]," Grand Central District Tactical Lt. John Garrido said. "In the past five years, 20 people that have been arrested have used that address as their address of residence." more ›

The University of Chicago and the Humane Society released a new study on the causes of urban dog fighting earlier this week. The study was conducted by interviewing current and former dogfighters in Chicago, focusing on why young men and boys in the city get into the illegal practice. more ›

A fire on the 3400-block of West Harrison early this morning revealed an apparent dog-fighting ring. Nine dogs were recovered from the basement of the building, and other than one snout injury, the dogs appear healthy. more ›