Hey Toni, You Ready for This?

Philly voters just learned how badly they got screwed by a democrat:

• Soft drink shoppers are experiencing “sticker shock” at steep price hikes on their favorite products after a massive soda tax went into effect in Philadelphia Sunday.
  
  The contentious soda tax secured passage in June but consumers in Philadelphia are still flabbergasted by the price increases the tax is sparking. In some cases, shoppers found that they were paying more for the soda tax than the actual product they were purchasing. The 1.5 cents per ounce tax on sugary drinks is implemented at the distribution level, meaning retailers must choose how much of the cost to pass onto consumers at the shelves. A 12-pack of Lipton Diet Green Tea at a Save-A-Lot in the city is now priced at $8.03, instead the $4.99 it costed in December, reports WPVI.

And how did such a thing happen? Someone failed Economics 101:

• After driving up the cost of soda and other sugary drinks with a new tax, the mayor of Philadelphia is now trying to blame businesses for charging higher prices
  
  [...] "They're gouging their own customers," [Mayor] Kenney said
  
  [...] The distributors sells five-gallon boxes of syrup that can be used in soda fountains, and each box costs a retailer about $60. Thanks to the city's new tax, though, retailers have to pay $57.60 in taxes for each of those boxes of syrup.
  
  "We're not talking about a couple of bucks on a $60 item," Andy Pincus, who owns Carbonator Rental Services, told Newsworks. "We're talking about $57.60 on a $60 item. It's too big not to pass on."

Prickwrinkle raised the County tax a penny per ounce, but it's still going to bite consumers hard. It's going to bite businesses even harder when people start shopping in surrounding counties and even Indiana. And remember, Prickwrinkle herself broke the tie vote, casting the deciding vote at the Board meeting.

Assaults on CPD Way Up

Anyone see this in the DOJ Report?

• Chicago police officers faced multiple attacks in 2016, one of the most violent years in the city’s history.
  
  Thirty-one officers were shot at in 2016, a 82 percent increase over 2015 numbers, the Chicago Police Department told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Only 17 officers were shot at in 2015.
  
  Nine officers reported gun-shot wounds in 2016, the CPD told The DCNF, but zero died as a result.
  
  “These emboldened criminals are responsible for destroying families and communities as well as dozens of attacks on Chicago police officers in 2016,” Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said at a press conference.

Sooooo....Officers being attacked at a higher rate just might translate into and higher number of incidents of Use of Force?

Hey Special Ed? Any way we can get the racial breakdown of the assailants? Or is that a "no-go zone" for you? Rahm told you not to defend the Department?

Narcan Order Coming?

From an e-mail:

• ...heads up, new order is in the works to get us all trained with Narcan and no more OD dupes to the ambos. We will administer and transport ourselves. Order is written and just going through the approval with CFD and CPD.
  
  And CFD is footing the bill for training and equiping us.

Any Waiver of Liability in the works? Supposedly, this is administered as a nasal spray. So what if the addict doesn't react? How many doses are we authorized to give?

What if the addict is so far gone, he ain't never coming back? Are we to pronounce them? Seems you need a paramedic for that.

What if he walks to your squad car for transport and goes down again, maybe this time a heart attack from the years of drug abuse. We're going to wait how longer for ambulance to arrive?

What if you walk him to the squad and he decides not to go? He's not in custody, so what's the liability if he walks off and dies later? He already ingested the drugs, so what's the PC to detain him?

Let's go full-on stupid - what if you don't get there fast enough for Rahm, the junkie dies and someone says you deliberately slow-rolled the response knowing it was "just an OD, just another junkie." Who's going to make that determination - the DOJ? We're risking our careers, livelihood and property for someone who purposefully, willingly puts poison in their bodies?

Even better, will an ISR be completed?

So many questions, so much liability.

The Report

We're going to take a day or so to read it. So far, there's nothing surprising in it. In fact, we based an entire 10.5 years of blogging pointing out just about everything covered in the DOJ report:

• Training is inadequate
• Promotions are crooked
• Discipline is non-existent if you're connected

Somehow we missed the racism of tens-of-thousands of minorities killing tens-of-thousands of other minorities. Don't know how we missed it.

You can use this thread to point out the inanities of the DOJ rush to judgement.

We say "rush" because while it took nearly two years to find that Baltimore (a city with a black mayor, a black chief prosecutor, a black police chief and a department that's majority black) was inescapably racist, it only took 13 months to find CPD (a department almost five times as large), was also inescapably racist.

Buy Your Own?

Body cameras:

• MISHAWAKA, Ind. (AP) — The northern Indiana city of Mishawaka has a new policy that allows police officers to wear body cameras if they purchase the equipment themselves.
  
  The policy went into effect last week after the city and police department discussed the issue for a year to work out guidelines, including how to store and handle the recordings.
  
  Patrolman Brian Long tells the South Bend Tribune he is wearing a body camera to give him peace of mind. He calls it a "good insurance policy." Long says the camera can gather evidence and is a way to establish trust with the community. He says it also is a safety net if officers need to prove they were correct.
  
  Uniform division chief Jason Stefaniak says about 10 officers are wearing their own cameras and about a dozen others are considering buying them.

As an added bonus, you should be able to keep a copy for yourself and circulate around to Hollywood agents to see if you can get "discovered."

Wait.....What?

Sneed comes up with some stuff that just makes us shake our heads sometimes:

• Activist priest Michael Pfleger predicts the Chicago Police Department is going to get a licking when the clock stops ticking Friday.

Really? Awesome - what kind of licking?

• “I was told by Vanita Gupta,head of the department’s civil rights division, that the Chicago Police probe by the Department of Justice is going to send a message to the rest of the country when it comes to the abuse of civil rights,” said Pfleger, a Roman Catholic pastor whose South Side parish has been ravaged by drugs, street gangs and murder.
  
  • To wit: The U.S. Department of Justice is releasing a yearlong report on civil rights and constitutional violations by the Chicago Police Department on Friday, which could place Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s political career on tenterhooks.
  
  “She told me there would be no limits on who they would talk to,” he said. “No place they would not investigate and search. No one would be protected. It was a search to find the truth,” said Pfleger, who tells Sneed he was interviewed by the DOJ six times last year.....

Wait, what? Pfleger was interviewed 6 times by the DOJ? And McCarthy was interviewed how many again? Oh yeah - zero. What could this pfake pfony priest possibly have had insight into that McCarthy didn't?

If that doesn't tell every decent thinking person in the city what this report is all about, then there is no hope for Chicago. The premier paleface apologist for thug culture and disobedience of diocesan rules is somehow an expert on police procedure? If that doesn't take the cake.....

Rahm? You're letting this pissant run around telling everyone he has more information than you do? Letting Sneed imply that your political career is on "tenterhooks"? Phfleger is talking to the DOJ more than you it looks like. Is the tutu a little too-too tight around the nether regions lately?

And Blase? Not one fucking dime.

DOJ Day

And that's all the Sun Times can talk about (seeing as how they're all professionally vested in maintaining the current narrative).

First, Rahm says it's coming no matter what! (...but....)

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday there is no turning back on the road to police reform, but he would not promise to turn the agreement in principle he intends to sign with the U.S. Justice Department into a consent decree.

Really? He's not promising to sign the agreement so we can find out what's in the agreement? He's actually taking the smart road? Or course he is - he knows that there is going to be zero funding coming from DC to run a Consent Decree. And if he's really unlucky, Trump is going to undercut all of the so-called "sanctuary cities," so Rahm's coffers are going to be extremely bare shortly.

McCarthy is still making his case:

• Former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy blasted the Justice Department on Thursday, saying the feds have wrongly focused on whether officers have been stopping African-Americans disproportionately.
  
  McCarthy also blamed City Hall for “flipping over the table” on Chicago cops in 2016.
  
  [...]
  
  “They’ve already adopted the battle cry over and over again that we are disproportionately stopping African-Americans, and their conclusion is that we are biased and racially profiling,” he said of the DOJ. “They’re wrong.”
  
  McCarthy pointed to statistics on officers’ street stops in 2013 and 2014 to highlight his position that policing during his tenure was based on crime data — and didn’t violate citizens’ rights.
  
  The statistics, which he had previously presented during a speech to the City Club of Chicago in September, show the percentage of black and white people stopped over that period were almost identical to the percentage of black and white people suspected of crimes.

As we've been pointing out for years. Anyone remember this map?

Of course you don't, because no one in the media reported it except HeyJackass.com. It shows exactly where all the killings were last year. And wonder of wonders, those kind of look like economically depressed, drug market infested, majority-minority neighborhoods where "Hope and Change" went to die. Thinking people might assume that that's where the most police resources are sent...and they might be correct, except that's where all the accusations of stopping too many minorities will be coming from, so the cops are essentially handcuffed from doing anything that might possibly be construed as a Civil Rights violation.

Insurance Debacle Hits Media

And the City claims they're working on a fix (warning - Tribune link):

• Some city employees who have gone to doctors and pharmacists since the start of the New Year have been told they no longer have health insurance, a mistake in the automatic renewal process that City Hall officials said Wednesday would soon be corrected.
  
  "The city's health care vendors reported a technical error to the city's benefits division last week and are working to correct the error," city spokeswoman Mary Kay Accurso said in a prepared statement, adding that it affected both HMO and PPO members. "These employee insurance plans remain active, and there should be no issues accessing coverage once the issue is resolved."
  
  The problem became public when someone anonymously posted on a Chicago police blog about being turned away from a doctor's office and also being told by a pharmacy worker that his wife's $10 co-pay for generic heart medication would now cost him $590. Others weighed in with similar experiences, identifying Blue Cross-Blue Shield as the insurer.

Because Blue Cross-Blue Shield is so unaware of how to run an insurance business that they'd just assume without any sort of notice that the entire City of Chicago (one of their biggest clients) would stop insuring its employees on the First of January. That's totally believable.

Armed Good Samaritan

Sometimes, backup comes from the least expected places:

• A man traveling to California came to the rescue of a wounded state trooper who was struggling with the gunman who had shot him on an isolated stretch of Interstate 10, authorities said.
  
  The man, who was with his wife, stopped his car when he came upon a rollover accident and saw the struggle, according to Col. Frank Milstead, Arizona Department of Public Safety director.
  
  The trooper told the man he needed help, and the man returned to his car, got his gun and fired at the assailant when he refused to listen to orders to stop and back away, Milstead said.

Good thing an upstanding citizen with a gun was around to help.

DOJ Report Friday!

Let the Countdown begin! (warning - Tribune link)

• The U.S. Department of Justice plans to announce it has found the Chicago Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct that violated the U.S. Constitution, two sources with knowledge of the investigation told the Tribune.
  
  U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will make the announcement Friday, according to the sources, but the details were still being worked out Wednesday.
  
  It could not be learned how sweeping the conclusions of the 13-month investigation would be, but the two sources said the Justice Department found constitutional abuses of citizens by Chicago police.

Lynch, who ought to have been indicted herself for meeting with the husband of a subject under investigation for numerous breaches of Federal Law, is flying in for the big event.

The Sun Times has a quote from McCompStat about how disappointed he is:

• Word of the Justice Department announcement came as former Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said he is “disappointed” that federal investigators who have been probing the police department’s practices didn’t consult with him.
  
  “I was never interviewed, so I can only speculate what is in that report based on what I’ve seen in other cities,” McCarthy told a reporter in a text message.

Garry, no one has to consult with you because they know exactly what you're going to say - the same thing you said in New York and the same thing you said in Newark, both Departments which ended up under some form of Federal Consent Decree......

Hey, wait a minute.....maybe that's the connection? Anywhere Garry goes, a Federal Consent Decree follows? Stop the Presses!!!

U of C to Offer Reward - to Lie

So much for "Truth" we suppose:

• The University of Chicago’s admissions office is offering a reward to its student tour guides who can dispel the notion among prospective students and their families that the city is "unsafe" and "scary."
  
  In an email obtained by The Chicago Maroon, Colleen Belak, the assistant director of admissions at the university, offered a $500 cash prize to those who find "a creative way to dispel the negative perception" about Chicago's violence epidemic.
  
  “If you’ve paid attention to the national news (or Donald Trump’s tweets) over the last few months, you’ll notice that the city of Chicago is often painted with a broad brush as an ‘unsafe’ or ‘scary’ place to reside,” Belak wrote to the campus tour guide listhost. “Of course, certain realities should not be ignored, but at the end of the day most of us are proud Chicago residents with a deep love of the city.”
  
  “With that spirit in mind, we have an opportunity for you to win some money—$500 to be exact. If you are able to come up with a creative way to approach this negative perception, be it a video series, blog post, photo, or something else (and better) entirely… Keep in mind that the audience is a high school student and his/her family.”

While the U of C is respected around the globe as a particularly excellent university, it should be noted that they are an island, a very tiny island, surrounded by some of the most violent and depraved sections of Chicago.

Perhaps some of our readers would like to assist the University with the "message" to potential incoming students?

Homicide Numbers Even Higher?

So many numbers to choose from:

• The record-setting violence in Chicago is even worse than announced as new evidence shows the city suffered 50 more homicides last year than the numbers publicly reported in the past week.
  
  The city posted a decades-high homicide count of 812 in 2016, per the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. That’s 15% greater than the 762 murders reported by the city's police department.
  
  The discrepancy is largely due to the fact that the county tallies “homicides” while the police number counts “murders.” Murders are defined as violent acts subject to criminal prosecution. Homicides, according to the medical examiner, include instances “when the death of a person comes at the hand of another person. This does not imply that all homicides are murders that would be subject to criminal prosecution.”
  
  The city police count is also lower because it excludes violent, intentional deaths if the act is deemed justified, including police killings of residents.

And HeyJackass.com had 796, which is the closest thing to reality we can locate.

UPDATE: We're told that the six dead actually occurred in 008 in the opening days of February. So how did 009 end up with 6 homicides in 11 days last year? That place was outta control!

SeeBS Strikes Again

The media once again, telling a story that isn't there:

• A CBS Radio News report on the horrific black-on-white torture case in Chicago falsely implied that the victim was black and his attackers were white, Mediaite reported.
  
  On Friday, a listener on Reddit flagged the brief Thursday morning report which refused to clarify the races of the parties involved, deceptively suggesting that the roles were reversed:
  

  The viral video of a beating and knife attack in Chicago suggests the assault had racial overtones. CBS’s Dean Reynolds tells us the victim is described as a mentally-challenged teenager.
  
  In the video he is choked and repeatedly called the n-word. His clothes are slashed and he is terrorized with a knife. His alleged captors repeatedly reference Donald Trump. Police are holding four people in connection with the attack.

Leaving out all descriptors of the offenders and victim - you see exactly what impression the media was attempting to portray. SeeBS removed the offending report as soon as they were caught without correction or attribution.

This ties in with the State's Attorney initial hesitation to charge along with Duffin's comments that this was just high spirited children having fun.

Wait...Crime ISN'T Down?

Golly, who knew this was coming?

• There are stunning new crime numbers from the FBI: in Chicago, it isn't just murders and shootings that are up - it is all violent crime.
  
  Newly-obtained FBI data show that the crime surge in Chicago goes beyond the end of a gun. Overall violent crime - an umbrella figure that includes murder, rape, robbery and assault - jumped significantly here the first half of last year, an increase more than four times higher than the rest of the nation.
  
  According to this FBI report, violent crime in the U.S. increased a little more than five percent the first half of last year. But in Chicago during the same period, overall violent crime heaved 24 percent.
  
  While the numbers were driven by a surge in Chicago murders - 49 percent higher than the previous year - FBI data show the increase in all violent crime categories in Chicago is significantly outpacing the nation, with aggravated assault up 23 percent and robbery 28 percent higher

And those are just the stats for the first half of 2016, meaning every time Special Ed or anyone claimed "crime was down," they were lying. Anyone want to guess what the total increase in crime was once they figure out the second half of the year? It certainly didn't go down, that's for sure.

Don't Fall for Retro

You younger kids don't remember the Newsletters that used to come out around Contract time, where Bill Nolan would close every single article with "...and enjoy your retro pay," as if that was the sole factor in determining how we'd vote on a contract.

In many cases, however, he was correct. Coppers looked at the short term money that the City had held hostage (without interest we might add), and disregarded serious issues that had real long-term consequences on seniority, discipline, or bidding rights. Cops finally started to wake up around 1997 or so and the Contract that Nolan presented to the members went down in a spectacular ball of flaming wreckage that also also led to the entire eviction of the Nolan ticket (including Dean Angelo).

We're coming up to another negotiating year and you young kids are going to hear a lot of things. Here's your chance to prove you're smarter than all of us dinosaurs were back in the day:

• Don't be distracted by the "promise" of a retro check

Don't sweat the money issue. We'd suggest that the FOP ignore it, too. In fact, we'd go so far as to recommend that the FOP demand no more and no less than what Rahm awarded his inner circle in terms of percentage raises, and then walk away from that issue (Reminder - it was double digits).

Instead, concentrate on the following:

• Round up the Baby Furlo Day to a full day
• Round up the vacation time to full days, not hours;
• Lower the time to hit maximum pay via compression - every other city maxes out at 20 years;
• Restore Duty Availability to the kids - you got fucked last Contract;
• If anyone says "More cars," throw them out of the FOP;
• Refuse to negotiate disciplinary changes;
• Reduce "merit" percentages

In fact, demand "transparency" from the City. For too long, everyone has to be "transparent" except the City. Screw that and screw them:

• Post the "merit" picks;
• post their sponsor;
• post the entire promotional list in rank order so that everyone can see exactly how many spots the connected jumped up (justify that one);
• post a real and attainable set of targets that cops can actually strive for in order to be Merit.

We'd also like to see how sergeants who had to be assisted over the finish line ("merit") a few short years ago suddenly manage to score #1, #2 and #3 on the current Lieutenants list, but since that crosses different Union lines, we'll probably never see that unless it reaches a Federal courtroom. Right Special Ed?

Anyway, the big issue is going to be reducing your Rights and protections under the contract. Money should take a back seat to all of this. Numerous bad actors are claiming that the Contract is "racist" somehow and protects bad cops. We aren't exactly sure how. A document that protects the Rights of coppers of all colors, creeds and orientations is nothing that needs alteration.

Race to "Overhaul"

Kind of what we touched on the other day:

• With just days until Donald J. Trump is sworn in as president, the Obama administration is making a last-minute push for police overhauls in two of the nation’s most violent cities, Baltimore and Chicago, where officers have been accused of routinely mistreating African-Americans.
  
  In Chicago, where a city task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel concluded that “the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color,” the Justice Department is rushing to wrap up a sweeping investigation into police patterns and practices, prompted by the release of a chilling video that showed a white officer shooting a black teenager. The findings are expected to be released before Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.
  
  Such an investigation is typically the first step toward a consent decree in which a police department is required to make significant changes under court supervision. But in Chicago, President Obama’s Justice Department is running out of time to pursue such an order, and activists fear that the Trump administration will abandon the effort.
  
  Here in Baltimore, where Justice Department officials have already released a blistering report accusing the police of systematic racial bias, negotiators for the city and the Obama administration are “getting very close” to agreement on a consent decree, Mayor Catherine E. Pugh said. An announcement is likely on Thursday; the United States attorney general, Loretta E. Lynch, is scheduled to deliver a speech on community policing at the University of Baltimore.

As we said the other day, government rushing around, especially a lame duck government, never leads to anything good. If Rahm had half a brain, he'd let the clock run out. But he's beholden to a dying political regime and desperately attempting to re-make his image for another run for office.

Are You Insured?

Anyone know if Rahm has fixed this fuck-up yet?

• Please have all the members call up Blue Cross Blue Shield and make sure they have coverage. I currently have HMO and was at the doctors office today and was refused service, stating that I currently do not have insurance. I checked the BLue Cross website and it states that my insurance was cancelled on 01Jan17.
  
  I made no changes to my insurance plan from 2016. I called Walgreens to pick up my medication for my wife and the total for her heart medication which is normally $10 generic, was $590.00 dollars. Please SCC let the guys and girls know what is going on..........

Supposedly, there's a "fix" in the works, but the last recommendation we heard is "bring your charge card to the doctor." That's just fucking great - is the City reimbursing the double-digit interest charged for something that should have been covered?

Does anyone have any doubt this was a deliberate machination on the part of Rahm to stick it in everyone's ear again? How about a class-action lawsuit to make things right? Every insurance company knows that the City just didn't cancel all employees' insurance on 01 January, yet there are a sizable number of workers facing months of hassles, phone calls and letters to get their money back. Find and assign the blame and make them pay for the errors.

Contract Talks Coming

Is everyone ready for this? FOP, we're looking at you:

• The phrase “police union contracts” likely won’t appear in the U.S. Department of Justice report on the Chicago Police Department, set to be released this week. The DOJ has historically not made labor recommendations after its investigations of police practices.
  
  But the contracts have become a focal point for civil rights groups, activists, and even some politicians since the 2015 release of the Laquan McDonald video that triggered the DOJ’s civil rights investigation. The video of Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting the black 17-year-old paralyzed the city with protests, toppled a police chief and state’s attorney, and renewed citywide calls for policing reform.
  
  In the weeks after the video’s release, aldermen said for the first time that the labor contracts were a significant barrier to police accountability for misconduct. They promised to remove provisions that make it harder for the city to investigate and discipline officers.
  
  Those promises will be put to the test this year as the city renegotiates its contracts with the four unions representing officers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains. Historically, the contracts have been negotiated behind closed doors by the city’s law department and approved unanimously by the City Council.

"unanimously"? Is that true? We recall a number of contracts being negotiated and approved and someone always raised some sort of objections. The aldercreatures have always had input and believe it or not, the final say-so. Just because they were rubber stamps to Shortshanks and Rahm doesn't mean the FOP was some negotiating Superman. We got what the City gave us or what the arbitrator awarded us. The police can't strike, so we've ALWAYS operated from a weaker position. (cue liberal heads exploding)

Fortunately, they've revealed their game plan, so the FOP can be prepared:

• The task force identified about a dozen provisions that it said discouraged citizens from filing complaints, made it easier for officers to lie in official reports, and made it harder for the city to identify and discipline officers who are responsible for misconduct.
  
  For example, the contracts prohibit the filing of anonymous complaints, allow officers 24 hours after a shooting before they can be interviewed by investigators, give officers the right to amend their statements to investigators after reviewing video or audio evidence, and ban rewards for whistleblower officers.

We suppose the FOP could just offer one proposal to counter this. Agree to abide by the same provisions that the FBI operates under. After all, if' it's good enough for the federal government, it has to be good enough for the CPD, right?

In any event, keep a close eye on everything that both sides do. Whomever is negotiating this time had better be open and upfront about what's going on.

Not at All Rosy

You mean Rahm's been lying again?

• Chicago and New York rank at the bottom of a new analysis of fiscal strength based primarily on data from 2015 financial reports issued by the cities themselves. The analysis includes 116 U.S. cities with populations greater than 200,000. See the full rankings here.
  
  Chicago’s position at the bottom of the ranking is no surprise to anyone who follows municipal finance. The Windy City has become a poster child for financial mismanagement, having suffered a series of ratings downgrades in recent years. Aside from having thin reserves and large volumes of outstanding debt, Chicago is notorious for its underfunded pension plans.
  
  For example, the city’s Municipal Employees' Annuity and Benefit Fund (MEABF) reported $4.7 billion in assets and $14.7 billion of actuarially accrued liabilities at the end of 2015, representing a funded ratio of just 33 percent. The actuarial calculations rely on a controversial practice of discounting future benefits at a rate of 7.5 percent, which is the assumed return on the fund’s portfolio return. If a more conservative assumption was employed, MEABF’s liabilities would be higher and its funded ratio lower.

The article admits that the impacts of Rahm's most recent tax hikes and increased employee contributions aren't fully known yet. A lot of it is going to depend on the Federal Governments attitude toward business and that effect on various markets.

But New York City is in second place, and that's even with a booming real estate market and a supposed "bull" market underway. We're going to go out on a limb and suggest that democrats being in charge has something to do with it.

In any event, Rahm's predictions of sunshine, rainbows and a unicorn in every garage deserve a closer look and a wary eye.

So About that Unarmed Police Force

Given the recent shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport, it might be time to refresh everyone's memory about this:

• If armed terrorists rushed the front entrances at Chicago's airports they would find more than half of all uniform police officers at O'Hare and Midway are unarmed.
  
  At O'Hare and Midway not all 500 sworn police officers are created equal. Regular Chicago police carry guns. City Aviation Department police do not, even though they all undergo law enforcement training and certification. The unarmed airport police say that would be a problem in a terrorist attack.
  
  With passengers scattering in Istanbul, authorities say armed police near the front door brought down at least one of the terrorists and stopped him from shooting even more people before blowing himself up.
  
  At Chicago's airports there are about 230 armed Chicago police officers and nearly 300 unarmed aviation police.

Someone said that there is a movement afoot (once again) to arm the D.O.A. Police, so they don't end up DOA in the event of an attack. Remember, these are the officers who were told to "run and hide" in the event of an attack. That isn't going to be helpful.

And yes, we realize the D.O.A. Police have their share of political hacks and misfits - so do we. We would say that could be cured with an influx of training and money, but this is Chicago - who knows what Rahm would do with the money?