"Extra" Cops

Meaning canceling at least one of everyone's days off for yet another failure of the political set to keep criminals behind bars where they belong:

• After another jarring weekend of gun violence in Chicago left 18 people dead — including three children — and 47 others wounded, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown announced Monday that 1,200 additional officers will hit the streets for the historically violent Fourth of July weekend.
  
  Starting Thursday, the surge in officers will be deployed in “hotspots” for violence, according to Brown. Acknowledging “tired cops make mistakes,” he said every officer on duty over the weekend will get a day off.

Included in the press conference was this laugh line:

• Along with extra patrols, the department also typically conducts a series of narcotics and gun raids just before holiday weekends. Department officials have said the goal of those raids is to ensure those most likely to be involved in violence — as either shooter or victim — are locked up over the holiday.

No doubt the Consent Decree monitor would be interested (along with numerous law firms and the Federal Courts) to hear that CPD locks up potential victims. But we can tell everyone reading that after the Department conducts these "raids," 99% of the arrestees don't miss the holiday. These things are just steaming piles of Civil Rights litigation.

We're going to set the over/under as follows:

• From 0001 hours on 03 July all the way to 05 July 2359 hours:
• 21 dead, 80 wounded - for a total of 101 casualties

We're hoping we're wrong, but we base it on the existing trend lines.