DOJ Report

So we're about two-thirds of the way through, but far enough along to have drawn certain conclusions and formed opinions. This was put together by a politicized Department and an obviously partisan Administration for the sole purpose of advancing an agenda. That Hillary lost lent an unseemly speed to the conclusion and de-legitimizes many of the supposed "findings."

Evidence of haste can be found almost immediately:

• Page 2, paragraph 3: 60 ride-alongs

Given that there are 279 police beats, three watches, that's 837 potential ride-alongs. Not to mention rapid response, traffic, 06, tact, saturation, gang enforcement, boats, horses, god knows how many administrative and undercover beats, there's probably nearly 1,200 potential ride-alongs in a 24 hour period. The DOJ claims they spent "300 person-days" here, that's 360,000 opportunities to ride-along.

• .016% - sixteen thousandths of one percent

We've taken a few math courses in our time and this isn't even close to what would be considered a valid statistical representation. There's more:

• 340 individual CPD members (out of a supposed 12,000 - 2.8%)
• 1,000 community members (.037% of 2.7 million)
• 90 community organizations (out of ?); are any citizens listed above part of this group?
• "family members of individuals who were killed by CPD officers" (how many were justifiable shootings?); and again, are these persons from either of the previous groups?
• "local researchers, academics, and lawyers who have studied CPD extensively for decades (gee, lets guess - Futterman, Ayers, Loevy, Protess - how close were we?)

In other words, people with ingrained prejudices against the police, people with histories versus the police, people whose livelihood relies on suing the police - people with axes to grind. How many of these "interviewees" fit into one or more of those categories? How many were selected at random, or did they all volunteer to come forward with their stories? We know that certain retirees who left or resigned under investigation were all to eager to sit with the DOJ to air their supposed "grievances."

More importantly, how many of these stories fall outside the supposed window of 2011 to 2016? Some? Many? All? We don't know because in every single example cited throughout the report, no dates are given. Some of these stories could be ten or twenty years old. Maybe more, seeing as how they bring up Burge who has been gone for almost 25 years now.

A slapdash report like this, with minimal footnotes and references, calls into question the validity of the rest of the "conclusions" if they're based on faulty metrics. But don't expect a lazy media in thrall to Rahm and his cronies to take any serious look behind the curtain.