An early Tuesday gun battle on the North Side is part of a sudden, unexplained rise in police-involved shootings in recent weeks, authorities said.
Tom Byrne, the Chicago Police Department’s chief of detectives, said he can’t explain the spike — which is happening in a year in which police-involved shootings have been trending downward.
But he said the shootings are a demonstration of aggressive policing.
Really? Aggressive policing? Waitress? Whatever the Chief is having, we'll take a double.
Surprisingly, someone else touches on what we believe to be part of the reason:
[some guy], president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he thinks criminals have become bolder because of a continuing police manpower shortage.
“They have no respect for authority and will pull a gun out to keep themselves out of prison,” [some guy] said.
Since the end of August, officers have shot six people in Chicago, police said.
There are a combination of factors contributing directly to an increase in flying lead, manpower being but the most obvious of them. The recent tendencies to toss any-and-every cop under the bus for the sake of political expediency, the overly political prosecution of cases long since closed and/or forgotten, and the resultant increase of weapon movement due to the listed factors (i.e. police are actually less aggressive) means more guns on the street, more shots fired at opponents, more police literally stumbling into gun fights that normally wouldn't be occurring.
UPDATE: Once again, one month doesn't make a trend. McCompStat bragged about numbers trending down in July, then got buried in August, making July the aberration, not the trend.
Shootings involving police up over two weeks doesn't mean anything either.