Imaginary Smoke

When you're reduced to claiming 500 additional officers on the streets by disbanding two street units and putting them "back" into the exact same districts they already worked in, making up imaginary officers is easy as pie:

• The city plans to increase the number of undercover officers patrolling the upcoming Taste of Chicago to head off problems before they start, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy announced on Tuesday.

  The move comes in the wake of recent mob attacks downtown — and the possibility that those roving groups of young men could head to the Taste — which runs Friday through July 3.

  “We’re deploying the same number of uniformed officers we’ve used in the past, [but] we’re deploying more undercover officers,’’ McCarthy said a news conference at Buckingham Fountain. “We’re not going to tell you the numbers [of officers] because that would be imprudent for us to do that.”

"Trust us."

"The check is in the mail."

"We're going to have lots of undercover officers at the Taste, but you might not see them because they're undercover!"

And where are these officers coming from? The Department has already stripped the units, front offices, desks and lock ups. We aren't hiring. The D-unit isn't in uniform. Tact teams are already scheduled for their days off. We haven't heard they're doing Special Employment. We'd certainly like to see these people.

This sounds like more robbing Peter to pay Paul:

• Sources said that 40 probationary police officers will be reassigned from Michigan Avenue to the Taste on Thursday. The officers-in-training — who have completed two of their three required training periods in police districts after graduating from the police academy — had been assigned to Michigan Avenue in wake of the high-profile mob attacks. Their reassignment raises questions about who, if anybody, will take their place on Michigan Avenue.

  “They’re out to give people the illusion that there are a lot of police officers on Michigan Avenue,” said one 18th District police officer, who asked to remain anonymous. “They don’t even have enough radios for these guys.”

  McCarthy, asked whether Michigan Avenue was losing its beefed up police presence, declined to talk specifics, but said: “We’re going to be covering everything, that’s what it boils down to.”

What is that smell? Did we step in something?

Hopefully, they'll dress up a few cops as clowns and they can blast a few assholes back to kingdom come.