Don't Blame the Cops

Blame the politicians (via The Contrarian):

• If you want to know why Chicago’s police overtime budget keeps exploding like a defective Roman candle, don’t point fingers at the men and women on the street. Point them directly at the political geniuses who created this mess: Governor J.B. Pritzker, “Mayor 6.6 Approval Rating” Brandon Johnson, and his equally disastrous predecessor Lori Lightfoot. These are the architects of Chicago’s “defund the police, demonize law enforcement, incite ICE riots, obstruct federal justice, and undermine public safety” era. And now — shocking absolutely no one — they have the nerve to blame the police for the predictable consequences of their own policies.

  Let’s be very clear about what’s happening here.

  Chicago’s Police Department has not been on a shopping spree. They have not been joyriding through the overtime budget like drunken sailors with a city credit card. Officers have been plugging holes in a sinking ship, forced into 12-hour days, canceled days off, mandatory weekends, riot response, special event security, teen takeover triage, downtown chaos containment, and every other catastrophe cooked up by politicians who spent the last five years kneecapping the department and then wondering why it limps.

The Contrarian even takes a poke at WTTW's horseshit "reporting," then rolls out the receipts for exactly how CPD has been structurally decimated for the last half-a-decade at least.

As usual, go read it all. It's a very good article.