A Cry for Help

Pretty sad when Sneed has to bring this story into the light:

• Yipes!

  Police Supt. Garry McCarthy’s plans for enlisting police security for the G-8/NATO summits this spring is so hush-hush, Sneed hears it’s got statewide security agencies in a swivet.

  “It’s almost March and the two summits are in May,” said a top security source. “What’s up?”

  “There is no way Illinois agencies outside Cook County have the manpower to help Chicago without the numbers the New York Police Department could provide,” said another source.

  McCarthy, who has yet to comment on whether he requested help from New York, “has status with them and they have a force of 30,000, twice the size of Chicago’s police force,” said another security source.

  But some plans are under way:

  *Sneed has learned the Chicago Police Department has requested the help of 350 cops from police departments across the state, according to a recent email dispatched by the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System.

  *Assistance from Illinois State Police also has been requested, but Sneed hears only about 250 police officers could be spared.

  So how many Chicago cops are needed?

  *It took 4,000 cops to handle the G-8 a few years back in Pittsburgh, which had a police force of less than 1,000 officers.

  *It took at least 2,000-plus cops from outside the Chicago area to help control crowds on election night 2008, when President-elect Barack Obama addressed an excited crowd at Grant Park.

  *Response: “We are assessing our needs as we plan, and that includes the use of in-state and out-of-state sworn personnel,” police spokesman Melissa Stratton said Saturday. “We are not limiting candidates to one state or agency. We don’t have the final footprint for the summits so we won’t be able to finalize the number of sworn personnel we will be utilizing from other agencies until closer to the event.”

  *Meanwhile: Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is this/close to President Barack Obama, was in Washington midweek to meet with Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano to discuss Chicago’s upcoming double summit and federal help.

Everyone keeps says how the CPD "handled" the Obama crowds in 2008 with just 2,000 cops (completely disregarding the widespread, yet unreported, rioting on the west and south sides). Anyone who has studied crowd dynamics knows there is a distinct difference between a crowd out celebrating (although lord knows what they were happy about looking back 3 years) and a mob out looking for trouble, destruction and targets to vent their anger upon.

Of course, our readers have been bringing this up since the events were announced, but what the hell do they know?