Shortshanks Defends J-Fled

First, the aldercreatures begin to pile on:

• Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd), who is mulling a race for mayor, and Ald. Joe Moore (49th), one of Mayor Daley's most outspoken critics, said the secret session disguised as a routine parole meeting was tantamount to waving the white flag.

  "I can't believe we're sitting down and negotiating with urban terrorists who are killing our kids with guns and drugs on the streets," Fioretti said.

  "These are not people the superintendent ought to be negotiating with. They've now been elevated to equals. They're not equals. They belong in jail. It's an admission that the Police Department can't control the streets."

• "What kind of approach is it to say, 'Cut the violence or else we're gonna go after you with everything we have?' What have you been doing for the last three, four, five years?" the alderman said.

• [Ald. Joe] Moore branded the secret session a "desperation tactic" that's "kind of like meeting with terrorists." He argued that it accomplishes nothing other than to embolden gang leaders.

  "What would accomplish more is to have a Police Department with good morale that believed in their leadership and believed in their mayor. We haven't had a Police Department with that kind of leadership in 22 years," Moore said.

  Even Ald. Pat O'Connor (40th), the mayor's City Council floor leader, had grave reservations about the secret meeting.

  "When I first read about it, I was thinking you're like legitimizing lawbreakers. It's like warning them if things don't get better, we're gonna enforce the law. Well, why aren't we doing that anyway?" he said.

Seems like a few of these guys have people that listen to the arguments most cops make.

Then Fran Spielman has to do an entirely new article because City Hall called her on the carpet:

• Mayor Daley said Tuesday he would “negotiate with anyone to have peace,” denying that Police Supt. Jody Weis was “negotiating with urban terrorists” when he met secretly with West Side gang leaders to demand that they stop the killing.

  One day after Weis came under attack from a handful of aldermen, Daley fired back in defense of his $310,000-a-year superintendent.

  The mayor called the Aug. 17 meeting a “good concept” that’s been tried in other cities, including Boston, Los Angeles and Cincinnati.

  “We’ll negotiate with anyone to have peace — even during the war. You sit down with anyone. If you save one life — if I can save your son’s life, you’d want me to sit down with them. But, it’s not your son. It’s not your daughter,” he said.

That sounds almost exactly like Neville Chamberlain. Remember him?


Negotiated peace is a good thing, but only if done from a position of strength with the ability to completely eliminate the enemy from the field of battle. "Unconditional surrender" is the term. J-Fled attempted to bring the enemy to the table (wrongly in our opinion), but he has nothing to compel them to behave. Parking tickets? Traffic stops? Harassment? These assholes don't own anything of value in their names and certainly don't control each and every gun in their gang.

We got a letter from an 011 District officer the other day that since the "gang banger tea party" took place, there have been 3 homicides and 15 other shootings. Does that sound like anyone learned anything from the Supernintendo? Besides the gang bangers that is, who seem to have learned only that the CPD can't stop them from doing exactly what they want to do.

And yes, we heard about the WGN "poll" that showed an 80-20 break in people saying they were OK sitting down with gang bangers. Those polls are BS without any controls or rules on sampling. Remember, WGN America goes nation-wide. It's not even a Chicago, Cook County, Illinois poll.