End of the Beat Car?

No manpower, minimal hiring, beat cars being downed.

The solution? Scrap the Beat Car system. This rumor popped up a few days ago and we've been getting a couple of e-mails about it. Like this one:

• ....hearing rumors about a pilot program happening in 012 beginning in Sept. I've heard that they are moving us into "squads" run by the sergeants. The Squads will cover specific areas and will take the place of the beats. Our d.o.g.s will be changed and partners will be broken up to accommodate this shift. When requesting time off, we are competing against the people in our squad instead of the whole watch. 

From what we can figure, it works something like this:

• Instead of Beat Cars, you end up with something like "Sector Teams" or mini-TRU units that are deployed to hot spots identified by computers, commanders and political phone calls. 
• All non-emergency calls are phone jobs and "the report is in the mail."
• All property crime is shitcanned - no follow up because no evidence is collected (look at the E.T.  shortages).
• You don't need to man beat cars any more, so safer neighborhoods will see even less visible police presence.
• What manpower shortage? You aren't tied to 9 or 12 or 15 beats, so everyone is a rapid response car or mini-team hitting violence zones and the like.
• You aren't producing numbers? We have a foot post just for you! Lots of foot posts actually. It saves Rahm money in vehicle expenditures.

Someone else called it "Team Policing," an experiment that was pretty much discredited as unworkable in the 1970's and 80's.We found a paper written (we're still reading it) about it at this link here and it seems plausible that this could be in the works based on the current political climate and efforts by the Department. Failure doesn't mean that Chicago can't make it fail even more spectacularly.

If nothing else, it's an interesting topic.