150 More Cops to the Street?

That Rahm...he's a miracle worker alright:

• 150 extra Chicago Police officers will be ready to patrol city neighborhoods by the end of the coming week. That promise came today from Mayor Emanuel and the new Police Superintendent.

  As CBS 2’s Mike Parker reports, during his campaign, Rahm Emanuel pledged to put 1,000 more police officers on the streets of Chicago. Within days of taking offic[e], 500 officers had been reassigned to beat duty. On Sunday, he said 150 more cops are now being added to neighborhoods across the city.

Read paragraph #2 again:

• Rahm Emanuel pledged to put 1,000 more police officers on the streets of Chicago. Within days of taking offic[e], 500 officers had been reassigned to beat duty.

That was the TRU/MSF disbanding. Those officers were already working in 006, 007, 011 and 025 about 95% of the time. Aside from the benefits that come from working in a unit, these 500 officers were already working the street. Moving them from a unit into beat cars isn't really a net gain of 500, but Rahm and his people are all over it, claiming it as half of his promised "1,000" and there's Channel 2's Mike Parker aiding and abetting the smoke and mirrors. (there were also some inside spots and a couple of extraneous removals from certain units added in to make it a round 500.)

Today, they come up with another 150 bodies for the street. Where did these 150 bodies come from? We haven't heard of anyone else being disbanded. The Shortshanks detail remains intact. Callback seems fully staffed with POW's and light-duty, long-term medical people. You'd think we'd hear about 150 people being removed from spots - in fact, we would get a dozen e-mails about it and more than a few dozen comments, but we haven't heard anything.

Could this comment be the reason?

• Our district received 5 po's to help the numbers. the only thing they forgot to say about it, we received 5 ppo's who will be po's in 2 weeks.

Aha. That would make sense. He really is pulling numbers out of thin air. The Probationary Police Officers are about to "graduate" to full-duty status, so now we can count them as "Officers" instead of PPO's. It's fucking brilliant! Well done Rahm. Now if you can just find another 350 people squirreled away somewhere and "reassign" them to street duty, you can make a little check mark next to that campaign promise and cut a commercial for your Senate run in 4 years.

And this is just pathetic:

• Shakespeare District Commander Linda Flores is in charge of police activities in the Logan Square neighborhood. Of those dozen or so new cops she’ll be getting, she said “There’s a lot of different things that I have in mind…my mind is rolling with what I’m going to do with them.”

  She wouldn’t talk in detail about her plans for the additional officers. She smiled and said, “The bad guys will never know.”

First of all, your mind is rolling commander because there's so much extra space in there for actual ideas that don't involve yelling at subordinates and locking yourself in the office rereading the General Orders to make sure you didn't screw up another decision. Second, the bad guys will never know because they won't even notice the seven "extra" people you're getting on midnights because they're already there.

The circus continues.