Crime is Down...Except for.....

Everyone knows overall crime is down in Chicago, right? The mayor and the superintendent keep telling us so. Never mind the fact that CompStat is built to manipulate crime statistics, that it is being debunked by its very creators in New York City, that Milwaukee is in the middle of a crime counting scandal based on their version of CompStat. All that is just nonsense - if Rahm and McCarthy pretend it doesn't exist, the media lapdogs will cover for them.

So overall crime is down, except for those pesky killings and shootings. You can't easily hide a dead body first of all. And someone with extra holes in them is going to be treated at a hospital, so there's an outside paper trail that has to be explained. So the media will accept rises in these types of crimes, but continue to believe (and tell the public) that crime is down everywhere else.

Then this happens:

• Chicago is having a banner year for bank robberies.
  
  As of Dec. 7, the city reported 198 robberies, a 70 percent increase in the past four months, according to BanditTracker Chicago. At this rate, the number likely will cross 200 by year's end and could double the 2011 record of 115.
  
  It's not clear what's causing the jump, though the feds say hard economic times and the holidays aren't always to blame for the crimes.

Up 70%. Nearly double the 2011 totals, and although not in danger of passing the record of 284 set back in 2006, still on the way to break 200.

But overall crime is down? Ladies and Gents, you're being played. These aren't aberrations - these are the trends. You don't have increases in three major categories of this size without the trend being felt across the board. CompStat is all about the smoke and mirrors. Cutting manpower means boosting response times, making people fed up and them leaving without getting a report. If it doesn't get reported, it never happened. Same thing with the OEMC overtime - calls are through the roof, yet they won't hire anyone but they'll pay OT at the drop of a hat. No patrol officers being hired, no ET's processing scenes, no detectives investigating, it all points to pretty much one conclusion.

003 District to be Burned

A very interesting CompStat meeting Thursday.  The mood was tense seeing as how shootings were up almost 50% for November and Chicago just had a weekend of eight or more killings with another few dozen maimed.  The "shakeup" of command staff had everyone edgy.

McSupernintendo didn't disappoint.  He was in rare form, telling the assembled officers, supervisors and exempt staff that he didn't like being the bad guy, but they forced him into it.  It kind of devolved from there.

Commander Fred Waller from 002 took a lashing at the podium.  We've heard a lot of nice things about Fred, but when you make the jump to Commander a mere four weeks after being promoted to lieutenant, who's really to blame?  A four-week lieutenant doesn't know shit about running a watch, running a tact squad, running a district.  And then miraculously (or meri-clout-oriously), he's running the joint with zero experience?  Zero seasoning?  He's going to make errors and he's going to make bad moves, but how much of it is the fault of those pushing to make him before he's ready?

And then came Commander Glenn Evans of 003.  He got hammered and didn't have answers.  When McCompStat doesn't get answers, he senses weakness and moves to humiliate.  It's behavior we see all the time in abusive relationships and now it's running the Police Department.  McLookAtMe got more and more irritaed and was on the verge of wrapping up his verbal beating when Glenn pulled what had to be one of the most boneheaded moves in CPD history:

• I will burn down the district and start anew.

That may not be a direct quote, but it's close enough.

003 District?  Meet the underside of the Glenn Evans bus.  You've just been run over to appease a beaten wife of McNYPD.  Two possible scenarios here:

1. Commander Evans has just advocated the wholesale slaughter of civilians in the 003 District, which ought to be front page news and the discussion of a number of politicians and "reverends" along with an investigation as to whether he is fit to command;
2. Commander Evans is pushing for a superbid for both the FOP and the PBPA members of the 003 District.  Hopefully, they can land somewhere nice while Glenn rebuilds from the ground up while Stockholm-ing with G-Mac.

Personally, we're hoping for option 2.  It would be hilarious.

Disorderly Conduct Revisited

The mayor and city council are attempting to revamp a law that has been distorted and struck down so many times, that no one know if it would actually be applicable:

• Chicago aldermen on Thursday advanced a plan to change the city’s disorderly conduct ordinance in a way they argued could help police disperse crowds at gang funerals as part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s get-tough stance on the gatherings.
  
  The new provision would allow “public safety officials to address a situation that threatens the public health, safety or welfare,” and Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, asked city attorneys how that squares with Emanuel’s pledge to treat gang funerals like “a gang event.”
  
  “Under the right circumstances, I think it could apply,” replied Jeff Levine of the city's Law Department during a City Council Public Safety Committee hearing on the disorderly conduct statute.

Great. A "lawyer" from the "Law Department" thinks it "could apply."

Well, gee whiz, that's a fucking relief. Especially seeing as how the lawyers and aldercreatures aren't the ones whose homes and livelihoods are on the line enforcing an ordinance a "trained lawyer" won't even say is ironclad when it appears in Federal Court. 

And not to put too fine a point on it, the city's "Law Department" doesn't exactly have the best track record in front of federal magistrates, appellate courts or the US Supreme Court.

Fire McCarthy Please

Crime is down our asses.  Everyone see the Tribune headline this morning?

• Shootings Up 49% in November

 And the article isn't any better:

• That meant shootings were up more than 11 percent in the first 11 months of 2012 compared with a year earlier. Through October, shootings had risen about 81/2 percent.
  
  And four fatal shootings on Friday alone pushed the homicide total for the month to 38, just above 37 in November 2011. For the first 11 months of 2012, homicides have risen to 480, a 21 percent increase from 398 a year earlier. If trends continue, Chicago will likely exceed 500 homicides for the first time since 2008.

CompStat is a failure as are the NYPD transplants that brought this bullshit to Chicago.  It has been decisively proven a fraud by its very creators on the East Coast, although the media here in Chicago keep parroting the company line. Milwaukee and Cleveland have had their own statistic scandals, too.  If there was even a hint of an independent media here, Rahm, McJersey and that Tracy hack would be on the defensive from sunrise to sunset.

Upon reaching the 500 mark, McCarthy should be fired at noon that very day and Tracy should follow.  Someone at HQ should start stacking moving boxes in a nearby closet for that happy day.

Another Rahm Lie

There have been several, but a few pertain directly to the Police Department.

First there was the infamous "500 hundred more street cops" which was just an exercise in double counting.

Then the "hiring is keeping up with retirements" as District numbers dwindled, time off was denied and 1,200 spots were eliminated with the stroke of a pen.

Now comes the "combined Districts will lose no manpower. Rahm and G-Mac promised residents of the affected Districts that not one officer would be lost to cover their neighborhoods. They promised this on numerous occasions at a number of meetings. Yesterday, we pointed out that 002 and 019, both "combination" districts would be losing officers to Area teams, which are being sent all over the place.

Of course, if the residents who were lied to don't seem to care, or they were bought off by Rahm in some way, shape or form, we can't see G-Mac being unhappy to do Rahm tells him to do.

What Shortages?

As assorted districts continue to send two officers to the 016 District just to man the beat cars overnight (something the aldercreature in the 41st Ward seems to think doesn't happen and the west side aldercreatures seem ignorant about), now comes word that 002 and 019 are being required to surrender an entire tactical team to the Deputy Chief of their respective Areas for "redeployment."  This is in addition to the teams/cars already being send out of District on a daily basis.

If someone downtown would just admit that we need an entire redistricting plan, we could avoid all of this redeployment and "right-sizing" that has become prevalent as manpower dwindles across the board.

012 / 013 Merge on Tap

Word is the Lieutenants have made their choices/bids to leave or stay.

Same source relates the Sergeants are having issues with who stays and who goes due to very high seniority among the newcomers.

And of course, the Officers have no idea who or how many get to remain in the new 012 and what their choices may be to move to - or if the choices are even going to be granted.

Any of this making any sense?

Beyond Abbate

An interesting question posed by a reader in response to our contention that we are in for a boatload of new training and videos about this supposed "code of silence" we're all a part of now:

• So, if training or whatever is not the answer, then let me ask you in all sincerity: What do you suggest to keep people like him from getting away with such behavior? How shall people like me, who support the good cops and can't afford the monetary consequences of abuse and corruption, be served and protected from bad apples?
  
  --Law Abiding Citizen

We'll open this one up to the floor - how do we, as a Department, address the conception that there is some "code of silence" conspiracy?  

Are there crooked cops?  Unfortunately, yes, but there are crooked people in all walks of life.  

Do cops extend courtesy to other cops (and city workers) in terms of parking or moving violations?  It happens, but everyone has stories about the guy who writes everything, regardless of who it is.  And don't even get us start about those assholes in Revenue.

But none of that has anything to do with a "code of silence."  

Look at our fearless leader - an inter-agency brouhaha  following a traffic altercation in his previous job, shooting out streetlights, liberal use of a particularly offensive racial pejorative and guess what?  The media ignores it and let's Rahm hire this guy to drive the Department into the ground.  This is a "code of silence?"

We're pretty sure we are going to see training videos - remember Hillard and Mrs. Hillard starring in that training video?  Racial profiling or something?  We just don't think videos that everyone knows are simply a knee-jerk reaction to the scandal of the moment are going to change anything institutionally.

Opinions?

Duty Disability Arbitration

Something to keep a close eye on:

• The arbitration went well on Wednesday. In about two weeks we will have a copy of the transcript of the arbitration. The attorneys from both sides then have until December 5, 2012, to get their briefs submitted to the arbitrator. Once the arbitrator has both sets of briefs, he will send copies to both sides. Arbitrator Roumell is usually pretty quick with his decisions, but my guess is that it will be sometime in January before we get his final decision. There is a lot of evidence for him to read, and we want him to view all the evidence so that he can make a good decision.
  
  The arbitrator is well-aware that some members may go into a no pay status on February 1, 2013. Make no mistake, this is one of the most difficult arbitrations that we have done.

Something we saw posted a few months ago suggested that there might be a hard ceiling on the number of Limited Duty spots available for officers undergoing long term medical issues.  Is this part of it?

UPDATE: Someone is complaining we're blurring the line between duty disability and limited duty spots.  Sorry if that's the case, but in the last paragraph, we directly ask if the two are related in any way.  We're looking for info on all of it.

Manpower Shortages Continue

We get e-mails:

• Hey SCC, long time reader.
  
  Was at roll call the other day on the west side and the Station Supervisor made an announcement that the Department was looking for 2 volunteers to work in the 016 District certain nights in November - not RDO people, not people on furlough, actual officers working to go north.
  
  This isn't the first time either. It's a regular occurrence. Is 016 that short? Because I haven't seen any openings posted there for years. Do the reverends know that the west side is being shorted manpower to cover crime-free north side districts?

Well, leaving aside your sarcasm regarding crime-free areas of the city, we'd certainly like to know if midnights is short anywhere a lot of city workers live.

Shortages!

How do we say this.....duh?

• Chicago already has registered more homicides than it did during all of last year. Now, the Chicago Police Department is on pace to break an all-time record that could make it more difficult to stop the bloodshed: police retirements in a single year.
  
  Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields disclosed Monday that the ranks of 2012 retirees will top 580, breaking the old record of 570 in 2004.
  
  Through Oct. 31, 475 officers had retired. According to Shields, an additional 105 officers met a Nov. 1 deadline to file the paperwork to take advantage of the city’s offer of premium health-care benefits for those who retire at 55.
  
  Over the last decade, 4,178 city officers have retired from the force, an average of 417 officers a year.
  
  Retirements ranged from 261 in 2009 to the previous high of 570.
  
  Equally troubling to Shields is the fact that the city has hired just 190 officers so far this year.
  That means Chicago is falling behind when it comes to police manpower after a three-year hiring slowdown and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to balance his first budget by eliminating more than 1,400 police vacancies, he said.

It's obvious to anyone who pays attention that hiring has not kept up with retirements for years now.  Run any seniority lists for districts alone and the manpower shortages become apparent. Units disappeared.  And the article states 1,400 vacancies were eliminated.  Rahm is counting on the media's inability to add and compare numbers and keep citizens in the dark.

Any of This Sound Familiar?

Yeah, it's the New York Times, but it sounds disturbingly similar to the alarm we've been sounding:

• SACRAMENTO — At first, it seemed just an unwelcome nod to frugality. Overtime for police officers was reduced. Vacant positions went unfilled.
  
  But each year brought more bad news for this city’s Police Department. In 2011, faced with the biggest budget cuts yet — $12.2 million — Chief Rick Braziel was forced to take drastic action: he laid off sworn officers and civilian employees; eliminated the vice, narcotics, financial crimes and undercover gang squads, sending many detectives back to patrol; and thinned the auto theft, forensics and canine units. Police officers no longer responded to burglaries, misdemeanors or minor traffic accidents.
  
  Earlier this year, the traffic enforcement unit was disbanded. The department now conducts follow-up investigations for only the most serious crimes, like homicide and sexual assault.

And how about this?

• Chief Braziel said he had tried to make the cuts strategically, making sure that the public’s highest priority — having a police officer respond in a timely fashion when a 911 call comes in — is met and preserving a focus on violent crimes. (“There’s no law that says you have to investigate homicides, but you don’t just stop investigating homicides,” he said.) Detectives serve on regional task forces led by the F.B.I. that focus on gangs and trafficking. To help morale, Chief Braziel has also offered short-term rotations to patrol officers, providing some variety now that their chances for promotion are severely limited.
  
  “I could cry all day long about the budget cuts and the 30 percent and the loss of people and everything else,” Chief Braziel said. “But it doesn’t do any good because you get dealt a hand of cards with a budget crisis and you’re playing stud poker — you can’t give back the cards and say deal me two or three more.”
  
  “You’ve got to figure out within the new rules of the game how to do it better,” he said.
  
  But he is not blind to the effects of paring down a police force to its core.
  
  In 2011, Chief Braziel said, the cuts, in his opinion, went past the tipping point. While homicides have remained steady, shootings — a more reliable indicator of gun violence — are up 48 percent this year. Rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and vehicle thefts have also increased, though in smaller increments.
  

Wow.  It sure sounds like what's happening here.  Of course, Rahm and McBraggart claim other crimes are down - something we take direct issue with.  CompStat is perfect cover for altering/bending/lying about statistics and has been thoroughly debunked by former NYPD brass and university professors. At some point, you hit "diminishing returns."  We'd speculate we hit that point about a year ago, given the 25% uptick in killings and who knows how many shootings.

012 / 013 Merger

A whole bunch of history is set to be closed with the closing of the Monroe and Wood stations.  The new station near 14th and Racine is set to open 09 December.  We're assuming the Department will rename the new 012th District if they haven't already.

So when does the other renumbering take place then?  025 is due to become 013.  024 would have to step down a digit or two.  Who gets the 021 designation?

November Retirement Numbers

We got a few e-mails recently and a few comments last month about November being a particularly heavy month of retirements:

• 4 to 7 captains
• over a dozen lieutenants
• 40 or more sergeants
• well over 100 officers

We're pretty sure someone out there has the exact numbers.

We'd also point out that the Academy has around 200 or so recruits and the 500 hires that Rahm promised  seem a bit of a fantasy so far.

And Another Thing....

....this "shot spotter" crap?

Even if it managed to beat a cell phone caller to the punch (which it hasn't);

AND police actually arrived on the scene within moments of the shots being fired (which has happened without shot spotter)

AND the program was able to determine an actual fixed address where the shots originated from (we have no idea of the software is that integrated);

...without actually seeing the shots coming from a house, does anyone realistically believe that we're just going to start kicking in doors and ransacking homes/apartments looking for the gun and/or shooter?

In this day and age?

With the amount of punitive damages and such being assessed against officers?

With the number of officers at callback?

With the brass we have in place who wouldn't back their own mother in a parking lot fender-bender?

And even if we did, without the gun being in the hand, let alone the same room as the suspect shooter, does anyone really think Anita is going to charge anyone with the felony?

That sound you hear is millions of dollars being flushed down the toilet - again. Millions that could hire more actual officers.

CAPS is Dead? Finally?

Once again, the Reader leads the way:

• Chicago police officials are contradicting each other and withholding information about the future of the program designed to open communication networks with the community.
  
  On Friday afternoon, the director of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, or CAPS, added the latest twist, denying that anything will be different next year—except where it is.
  
  "Nothing has been changed, so to speak," says CAPS director Ron Holt.
  
  Really?
  
  As I reported earlier, the budget for the CAPS central office has been cut from about $4.6 million this year to zero for 2013.

When your job (or your entire department/division/bureau) ends up as a line item of "ZERO," that usually means something is up.

• While monthly or semimonthly beat meetings are scheduled to continue, police superintendent Garry McCarthy said this week that he wants to dramatically revamp things so that district commanders decide what to do with CAPS beat by beat.
  
  "I want a philosophy of policing. I don't want a program, and CAPS is actually a program," McCarthy said. "We haven't finished all the details on this now, but the fact is that we're distributing all the CAPS folks out into the districts, into the district commanders' hands, where it's localized and they have a better handle on what's going on."
  
  Aldermen repeatedly asked just how this new form of community policing would work, but McCarthy struggled to explain it—probably because, as he admitted, he didn't know himself just yet.
  
  "This is all being built as we speak," he said.
  

That sounds ominous. But Wysinger has a different song book that he's singing from:

• First deputy superintendent Al Wysinger added that Holt and other top CAPS officials—those who've been responsible for implementing community outreach citywide—would likely be given other duties. "We don't know where they're going to fit per se," he said.

In the real world, that would be a kiss of death - but CAPS has had so many pronouncements of its demise (and it is the Halloween season where the dead walk....and vote) that we can't really believe it.

We Don't Need No More Cops

So declares Rahm Emanuel and Garry McCarthy:

• As City Council budget hearings continued Wednesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel was trying to deflect aldermanic calls to hire more police officers than already planned for next year.
  
  CBS 2 [...] reports the fight against crime on the streets of Chicago might become a fight inside City Hall.
  
  In 2011, there were 432 murders in Chicago all of last year, and there have been 426 so far this year. 

So we might manage to pass 2011's totals in October leaving us two entire months of "bonus time."   But don't worry, these brainiacs have it all figured out:

• During the Police Department’s budget hearing on Wednesday, Ald. James Balcer (11th) asked McCarthy, “Can you please tell me what is the difference about Chicago, and why we are seeing this level of violence?”
  
  “That’s a big picture question,” McCarthy said.

And that's a bullshit answer.

• Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd) asked McCarthy, “Can you help me understand what you believe to be full-strength?”
  
  “Full-strength” is a term McCarthy and the mayor have been using recently, when discussing the number of police officers they want on the street.
  
  Emanuel and McCarthy said that means having 12,500 officers on the streets by the end of 2013.

12,500, which is 1,000 under the numbers we had just about ten years ago.

Here's a laugher of an admission from Rahm:

• The mayor wasn’t ignoring the aldermen who want more cops than he’s already planning to hire, but said said at an unrelated event on Wednesday that he’ll keep the force at full strength while putting more cops on the street, by using about 600 officers he’s already shifted off desk duty since taking office last spring.
  
  “The police officers weren’t doing policing, they were doing paperwork. They were doing very good paperwork, but they weren’t doing policing. We’ve put them on the street,” Emanuel said. “And since that time burglaries are down 15 percent, auto thefts are down 14 percent, sexual assaults are down 8 percent.”

Rahm is hoping no one is noticing he's counting those officers twice.  You and McJersey already moved those guys...or so we thought.  Could it be they're lying again?  Crime isn't down - it isn't being reported because people figure they have better things to do than sit around for 2 or 4 hours waiting for a car that might never show up.  Call volume is up how much?  OEMC overtime is how far over budget? We're busier than ever and can't catch a break - that isn't because crime is down.  We're undermanned and crime is still ongoing.

And finally, get a load of this statement near the end of the article:

• Aldermen pushing for more cops might soon find themselves butting heads with the mayor and McCarthy over this issue.
  
  “There’s no studies that show that more cops means less murders. It’s what those officers are doing,” McCarthy told the aldermen.

Maybe not, but we have a pretty strong empirical case that says if you're down over a thousand cops, the homicide rate ends up climbing.  We'll leave it to the readers and pundits to figure that one out.

Nice Catch

Someone pointed out this in the "New 9-1-1 Policy" article:

• This March, there were 100,000 more calls than last March.
  

Even discounting a third of the calls to dupes and bullshit, that's a sizable increase.

And this?

• Also during Thursday’s hearing, aldermen hammered Schenkel about the perennial problem of 911 center overtime and about a dramatic increase in overtime spending — from $5.6 million last year to more than $7 million this year.
  

But crime is down? Is anyone in the media smelling the crap they're helping Rahm and Garry shovel?

New 9-1-1 Policy

Advocated here for years.  Maybe someone is actually listening?

• After years of discussion and delay, Chicago is finally ready to usher in a revolutionary change in 911 dispatch to free police officers to respond to the most serious crimes, a top mayoral aide said Thursday.
  
  Gary Schenkel, executive director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, disclosed that Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has drafted a “general order” outlining the “call diversion” plan that will alter a dispatch policy that sends police officers to respond to 70 percent of 911 calls, compared with 30 percent in other major cities.
  
  It won’t be implemented until the public is educated and physical improvements to the 911 center floor are completed, he said.

Of course, that could take years.  Years beyond McNewYawk's tenure even.  And that delay could kill the entire project.

We imagine Rahm will demand a commensurate pay reduction since we'll all have 40 or 60% more time to spend on revenue generation once service calls are redirected to 3-1-1 or disregarded entirely.  We sense a long road ahead, with many bumps.  Bumps involving slowed hiring, more positions unfilled and a complete lack of advancement opportunities.

Riot Preparations?

All we've seen so far is the cancellation of elective time from 05 November to 07 November.  No word on increased street presence, maybe some refresher training, changes in start times or 12-hour shifts.

Remember though - only one side is threatening to riot if things go south for their candidate:

• Despite the issue receiving national media attention, Obama supporters continue to threaten to riot if Mitt Romney wins the presidential election, raising the prospect of civil unrest if Obama fails to secure a second term.
  
  
  The new threats continue to dominate Twitter and the vast majority make no reference to press coverage of the issue over the last week, illustrating the fact that they are a legitimate expression of how many Obama voters plan to respond if Romney comes out on top, and not merely a reaction to media hype.

Has anyone seen any sort of plan yet? Or is this another, "Keep em in the dark" moment?  We're under 30 days out now.

UPDATE: Some people have problems with the source - infowars.com.  Maybe this one will make them happier:

• The threats have gone viral on Twitter, with Obama supporters retweeting and pledging their arms to riot in the streets if he is not reelected. The volume of viral traffic on the network suggests the threat is genuine. 
  
  Multiple media outlets have picked up this story and are bringing the topic to national attention. The Obama administration, which we would hope would move to quell the threat, will at best make a late-coming, half-hearted plea for people to stay home rather than destroy their own neighborhoods, if they say anything at all.