What a Load of Crap

We don't usually write long articles for Christmas Day, but this one just begged for a verbal beating. This is the biggest pile of crap to come out of HQ, and believe us, there's a lot of crap that has come out of that building this year. Some highlights:

• As Chicago grapples with a surge in killings and a mistrust of law enforcement stemming from police shootings, the number of arrests in the city has fallen by 28 percent versus last year, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis finds.

Only 28%? We'd like to see a District breakdown - we'd have pegged it closed to 35%.

• The drop is steepest in areas such as Englewood and Austin where violence is common and police have long flooded “hot spots” and drug markets. But the decline isn’t limited to high-crime areas: Arrests are down by double digits in every district in the city.

Yup.

• Police Supt. Eddie Johnson says the figures reflect the department’s focus on addressing gun violence and improving community relations.

And just how is that working out for you Special Ed? Gun violence down? Community relations looking good?

• “We want to arrest the right people at the right times for the right reasons,” Johnson says. “But just indiscriminately stopping people? No. We cannot arrest our way out of this.”

Have you seriously tried? If the Courts and the Jail worked with us, keeping the people who need to be behind bars, actually behind bars, we bet there would be a few less than 4,200 shootings.

• The superintendent says the department is moving away from decades of “broken windows” policing — a strategy that emphasizes heavy enforcement of even low-level offenses to send a message that crime won’t be tolerated. While that led to lower crime rates, it also worsened tensions in some neighborhoods where people felt the police were heavy-handed.

Actually, we've talked to a lot of street coppers. You know what they say? They didn't feel any of the so-called "tension" until Obama started attacking the police. The community was happy with the lack of gunfire on the streets and the absence of dead bodies stacking up at the morgue. Some people, believe it or not, were actually glad to not attend funerals.

• “The time when broken windows theories came in — I think it was effective,” Johnson says. “But we have to focus on what’s really hurting Chicago right now, and that is the gun violence.
  
  “Don’t get me wrong — we have not abandoned locking people up for quality-of-life issues. But low-level narcotics offenses — we can continue to do that, but would it affect the gun violence we’re seeing? I doubt that.”

Well then, you're an idiot. We don't know how many other ways to say it. The "quality of life" offenders were, in many cases, the ones smoking weed on the corners, gambling on the sidewalks, blasting the loud music. They were stealing the cars, hiding/transporting the guns and running the tip, too. But to accomplish anything effectively, you need what Rahm wasn't going to give you - manpower.

• Johnson rejects the idea of the “Ferguson effect” — the theory that violence has risen because cops have been holding back amid protests over police shootings in Ferguson, Mo., and other cities. Yet he acknowledges that many police officers feel “vilified,” and others have been slowed down as they learn new legal requirements for documenting street stops.

Wow. Special Ed truly is "special," isn't he? Anyone insisting that this mope was actually a "good copper" at some point is delusional.

• The decline in arrests is welcomed by civil rights groups.
  
  “Our perspective is: The fewer people in jail, the better it is for our communities,” says Deangelo Bester, executive director of the Workers Center for Racial Justice, which focuses on access to jobs.

Really? We could point you in the direction of 4,200 people who would beg to differ. Actually, only about 3,500 since the other 750 can't speak at the moment, being six-feet underground. Maybe their mothers could come speak with you?

• Instead of responding to violence by locking up nonviolent offenders, city officials could divert funds from the police department and into neighborhood development, Bester says.
  
  “Chicago is the most-policed city in the country,” he says. “Maybe it’s time to do something different.”

Um, earth to moron - "different" is what's happening right now. "Different" is a few thousand extra shootings. "Different" is 300 more dead people. "Different" is another word for "hope and change" that a certain someone promised you by demonizing the very people who kept you safe.

• Natalie Howse, president of the Cook County Bar Association, says the African-American lawyers group supports “policing that is more concerned with respect for the rule of law and individual rights, rather than the number of arrests.
  
  “If the Chicago Police Department has placed greater focus on reducing the violent crime that plagues our city, and that new emphasis has temporarily resulted in fewer arrests of non-violent offenders, the CCBA welcomes that strategy so long as the cost is not allowing black communities to descend into lawlessness.”

These idiots have their talking points and by golly, they're going to keep spouting them, even as the streets run red with blood. Everything is the fault of someone else, in this case, the police. not a single glance into a mirror that would lay the 500+ dead black people (or folks) anywhere near their doorstep.

• Some rank-and-file officers say cops aren’t being less aggressive as an act of protest but because they’re worried they’ll be caught on video making an honest mistake, then blasted for it.
  
  “You’re being Monday-morning-quarterbacked for everything,” says one officer, speaking only on the condition of not being named.

Self preservation. And then this asshole steps in for the final kick:

• Others say that’s not acceptable, arguing that body cameras and increased documentation will help police do their jobs.
  
  “Those people are looking for an excuse,” says a veteran North Side supervisor, also speaking only on the condition of anonymity. “What they’re saying is that I liked it better when no one was recording when I trounced on someone’s head.”

Not a doubt this asshat was on at least one "merit" list. Those days are long gone. No one "trounces" any more. Hell, the last guy to apply a (completely justified) kick to the head of an offender who was strangling his partner in a hostile crowd is still stripped. There would be a lot more mug shots of offenders walking around in bandage-turbans if CPD was still using that amount of force.

The disconnect here is amazing. We know why a lot of people stopped being proactive. But the brass and the media are involved in some sort of kabuki theater where they all dance around the elephant in the room and pretend it isn't taking a giant crap on the floor and flinging it everywhere.