It Could Have Been This Guy

Paul Vallas guest posting over at The Contrarian. And quite frankly, the city and Department would have been better off:

• Within hours of the final balloon falling from the ceiling of the United Center to close out the Democratic National Convention (DNC), the order came for Chicago Police Department (CPD) to return to “Normal Operations.” The directive brought an end to months of meticulous planning and preparation for the DNC. One day following the DNC’s farewell from Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson basked in national attention for executing a nearly flawless special event. Of course, having more police personnel than protesters certainly helped.

  While Mayor Johnson deserves praise for overseeing an efficient DNC, so does Superintendent of Police Larry Snelling, who spent years training recruits at the Police Academy. Officers who were assigned responsibilities at the DNC attest that Snelling’s planning and training regimen left them better disposed to address expected protests. CPD’s effectiveness however will offer no respite from the demands for reform. However, it is time to acknowledge the Consent Decree may not be that reform vehicle.

  As the decree enters the seventh year on which millions have been spent implementing and monitoring, it is obvious the decree is not working because it fails to tackle the real and often ignored reasons for the problems faced by CPD, largely the lack of resources and support and the political nature of hiring, promoting, and accountability. The failure of the Consent Decree to address these vital issues has taken a toll on the quality of its recruits, department leadership, and the system of police oversight.

The post is a bit longer than what would be quotable, and we don't want to steal all of The Contrarian's content, seeing as how they do this for a living and we do this as a hobby, but Vallas hits a number of points with unerring accuracy:

• the Consent Decree has failed insomuch as it relies on the measure of two things - controversial police shootings and complaints. Police shootings are essentially flat, because most police shootings are defensive in nature. Complaints, while skyrocketing initially, have fallen precipitously, and Vallas correctly points out that this is (A) a result of under staffing and (B) conscious disengagement (self preservation);
• the most obvious effect of the Consent Decree is how it has provoked a massive uptick in crime, something we and our readers predicted years ago. Imagine that.
• he proposes something that has been kicked around for years - a "reserve force" of retirees doing a bunch of the background work to free up front line Officer and Investigators. An interesting concept that deserves an actual look, and not lip service. He also suggests a return to the early days of CAPS, where Officer worked the same beat every day, knew the citizens and the criminals, and wasn't the bloated, overstaffed, house mouse-hiding, money-stealing enterprise it is today.
  

This paragraph made us laugh out loud though:

• Did we really need a court to tell us that the police need working cameras, tasers, sufficient supervisor-to-officer ratios, ongoing, redundant training, and a state-of-the art training center? Apparently in Chicago we do. The decision to withhold these vital resources were political decisions driven by some combination of budgetary considerations, poor prioritizing, or negligent leadership.

Sheeeit. You didn't even need a Court to tell anyone that. You had a blog, written for cops, run by cops with tens of decades of police experience, and backed by readers with centuries of street time, minimally censored and open to public view with ideas free for the taking....if you could ignore the language and dirty talk.