No Consent Decree?

Rahm and the ACLU are pulling their hair out. Rahm because this means no federal money to misappropriate, and the ACLU because they can't dismantle the Department that they hate with a passion:

• U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' order to review federal court agreements that bind city police departments to reforms creates further uncertainty about whether Chicago will see such a decree under President Donald Trump's administration.
  
  On Tuesday, the Obama administration official who oversaw a civil rights investigation into Chicago Police Department said Sessions' review signified a "retreat" from the federal Justice Department's previous work. And Mayor Rahm Emanuel reiterated he'd continue pursuing police reforms regardless of whether the city is compelled to do so by a federal court order — a theme he has stuck to since Trump took office.

The Slum-Times article points out that all reform now rests squarely on Rahm's tiny shoulders:

• “It takes away a point of leverage if he was trying to convince various stakeholders that might be in opposition to reform that he has no choice,” said Police Board President Lori Lightfoot, who co-chaired the mayor’s Task Force on Police Accountability.
  
  “The mayor has to own responsibility for this entirely now. The federal government is walking away. Not a surprise. But this [Sessions] memo makes it abundantly clear,” she said.

Prickwrinkle is dancing around her office. She or her lackey have just leapt into the theoretical mayoral election lead as Rahm needed federal people to blame for reform (or lack of reform).

Alderscum Sawyer warns that the FOP is going to be "emboldened:"

• Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, said Emanuel’s job will now be “much more difficult.”
  
  “With the federal government backing us, we would have had the force of law behind us in implementing these changes. Now, we don’t have that. And we’re going to have an emboldened FOP saying that, `We don’t have to do these changes. It’s not necessary,'” Sawyer said.

By the way, the word "emboldened" must have been on ignorant politicians' Blackberry feeds all day:

• Police officers are emboldened by a Sessions memo that, Lightfoot contends, pushes the “false narrative” that, “If you support reform and accountability, you’re somehow anti-police.”

No Lori - the "false narrative" is the one that even if police are doing their jobs correctly, which has been backed up by local, state and federal studies in Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland and across the country, along with the retired judge overseeing the ACLU agreement here, they're still assumed to be racist and must be punished for being the police.

You want proof?

• And Black Caucus members are threatening to hold up ratification of any police contract that continues to make it “easy for officers to lie” by giving them 24 hours before providing a statement after a shooting and includes “impediments to accountability” that prohibit anonymous complaints, allow officers to change statements after reviewing video and requires sworn affidavits.

Whoever ends up in the Big Chair at the FOP ought to be demanding, first and foremost, that Chicago Police Officers be granted the exact same Rights as the FBI and assorted federal agencies in regards to statements and interrogations. Fuck these alderassholes who lie at every opportunity, steal anything that isn't nailed down and spread false information like it was going out of style.