Shuffle Shuffle Shuffle

Moving the deck chairs on the RMS Titanic again:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledged Thursday that Chicago needs more police officers on the street, but he won’t ask taxpayers to foot the bill until he’s certain existing officers are being used effectively.
  
  Toward that end, Emanuel and Police Supt. Garry McCarthy announced plans to shift 200 more sworn officers from desk jobs to street duty and assign them to “area saturation” teams already focusing on the gang violence that now has a face: 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton.

And as usual, the FOP properly points out that this is more smoke and more mirrors:

• Emanuel’s plan to shift 200 more sworn officers from desk jobs to street duty did not impress Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields.
  
  Shields called it “more smoke and mirrors” and “policing by press conference” from a mayor who balanced his first budget by eliminating 1,400 police vacancies.
  
  Shields has been beating the drum for Emanuel to hire more police officers — beyond the 500 officers the mayor has pledged to hire this year to keep pace with retirements.

And the media, as usual, laps up Rahm's and Garry's numbers with nary a question:

• Last week, Inspector General Joe Ferguson suggested that the city could save up to $16.6 million a year and put 292 police officers on the street by shifting sworn officers from clerical and administrative jobs to street duty.

So the City is still cutting checks to these 200 officers.....AND they're going to hire at least 200 civilians to replace them.....AND this saves the city $16.6 million how exactly?

As far as we can tell, these 200 new hires don't exist any more, so the application, interviewing and vetting process will take....what? Twenty-four hours maximum so these 200 cops can be on the street in time for the weekend?

We particularly like that as everything McBrickCity tries, fails within weeks, his "newest" strategy is to re-institute an idea he denigrated upon arriving in Chicago:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel appeared to rip a page from the Daley administration’s playbook Thursday when he announced he was moving cops from desk jobs to “saturation teams” in the wake of a promising teenager’s murder, one criminologist suggested.

Unfortunately, as the FOP has pointed out, Rahm eliminated 1,400 spots to balance his last budget. That's 1,400 spots we aren't getting back - ever.  Not without Rahm admitting he fucked up royally, and we know that isn't happening.  The only reason New York does as well as it does is it has 35,000 police officers to deploy.  We can't even field a citywide "strike force" on the second watch.