Fingerprints?

This is funny-sad.....and every cop we know is pretty disgusted by it:

• A Chicago man was left scratching his head last month when the police department refused to dispatch technicians to collect evidence after someone stole a gun from his car in Uptown.
  
  “I was MFing myself for forgetting weapon” was in the car, the man told us. “Not an excuse, but I walked into [a family health] episode and forgot to retrieve the weapon from the vehicle.”
  
  But the situation went from MF to WTF when responding officers told him that CPD was refusing to send an evidence technician to process a “perfect set of prints” on the SUV’s window.
  
  A CPD spokesperson confirmed that officers responded to the call, and an evidence technician supervisor was notified of the crime. The police report does not indicate why the sergeant declined to dispatch someone to collect the prints.

Here's a dirty secret that not many people outside of the Department seem to know about:

•  95 times out of 100, an ET will not come out unless there is someone in custody

You would think that was counter-intuitive - you need evidence to convict someone of a crime, right? But that isn't how the Department works any more. There's no money to process prints for mere property crimes like burglary, thefts, many robberies. Unless you're raped, shot or deceased, you shouldn't ever count on an ET being dispatched.

We call Citywide all the time for ET's so victims feel like we're doing something. It almost never works, and we put the beat number of the refusing ET sergeant in every report. This also is an explanation for the miserable clearance rates (and conviction rates, too).