Drugs Not a Priority, But Money?

We asked and our readers came through. Some people had been commenting about a sudden shift in policy advocated by the Superintendent. The readers provided the links within minutes and quite a bit of witty commentary to boot. Here's the Tribune link and part of the article:

• Ultimately, the priority to reduce violence trumps the department's need to combat drugs, he said.
  
  "Life has become extraordinarily cheap in some neighborhoods," Weis said. "If a gang is dealing drugs and not killing anyone . . . that's not on our priority list."

So is this carte blanche for the gangs to move as much product as possible as long as they stop killing each other? Maybe a nod to the gangs that if violence goes down, so does police pressure? Doesn't J-Fed realize that guns, gangs and drugs run hand-in-hand? If you want to really expound on it, gun, gangs, drugs, churches and politics are so intertwined in this town you could almost qualify Chicago as a narco-state on par with what Columbia used to be and Mexico currently is.

But what everyone is really missing here is an opportunity for Shortshanks to close up his budget gap and tap new revenue streams. If the Superintendent is offering to back off non-violent gangs, why not look into the following:

• The City owns the streets, alleys, sidewalks, etc. Why not establish territories for selling dope? The number of corners would be determined by the size of the gang and how fully they could staff it around the clock. You think it hasn't been done before? The City divided up the entire pie for exclusive cable contracts a mere 25 years ago or so. The City is also granting exclusivity to a single red-light camera provider in exchange for an 85% prosecution rate and almost $100 million in revenue.
• Put the more lucrative corners out for bids. Hey, if the Cubs can hold back the entire set of home plate seats for the Yankees and White Sox series, then turn around and sell them to the highest bidder through their own brokers, why not see what certain corners in 006, 007, 015, 010, 011 and 025 can bring in?
• Equal opportunity - not the traditional crack, heroin and 'dro out there, how about Club Drugs. 012, 013, 023 for starters. X, meth, Special K and who knows what else. It's out there and the gun play isn't in evidence so it's not a priority under J-Fed's rules, but for a cash strapped Daley, it's gold.

We're just trying to roll with the new policy. Once again though, we had to learn about it from the media and not via the Supe's Office. We thought that was going to change?