The Revenge of the Thin Blue Line 35: Dirty John Catanzara threatens "blood in the streets".

In the annals of the Chicago Police, there have been a few supremely dirty cops; but few of them have been as outspoken as Dirty John Catanzara.

Best known, nationally, as the defender of the Insurrection of January 6th, Catanzara blazed such a path of criminality he was forced to resign as a Police Officer.  But, Dirty John did not resign as the head of Chicago FOP Lodge 7, and as the leader of Union lodge Catanzara has pledged support for Paul Vallas for Mayor of Chicago.  And despite his criminal activities as an Officer and his penchant for supporting rightwing terrorism, Dirty John won another term as the head of the FOP Lodge a few weeks back.

So, Dirty John Catanzara probably felt empowered when he declared, in a Trumpian turn of phrase, that if Brandon Johnson wins election on April 4th, "we're going to see an exodus, like we've never seen before."

This is so much bullshit, Catanzara's FOP members aren't going to follow him out of their jobs.  But, Dirty John has a history of blowing smoke and threatening duly elected Mayors with outsized threats of Cops Quiet Quitting.  It's always made me laugh when rightwing Cops grumble about "quiet quitting" or bemoan 'Nobody wants to work anymore', when Police Officers invented this shit with the Blue Flu and habits of hiding out while on duty, sometimes in plain sight.

Paul Vallas has denounced Dirty John Catanzara's blood in the streets rhetoric because he's already secured Catanzara's support.  Meanwhile, Vallas is also spinning a bunch of bullshit about retirees and those Officer who've quit the Chicago Police of rejoining the Force;

“I know for a fact that there are hundreds of officers who will return if there's new leadership,” Vallas said during a WGN-TV debate last week. “The bottom line is, fill the vacancies, and invite those who have retired and those who have transferred to return and, under new leadership, they will.

First off if you're taking you Pension via Article V of the Illinois Pension Code you can't just come back.  And if someone who quit is going to reapply to work in Chicago I expect they have all sorts of red flags.  Brandon Johnson pointed out this is just so much poppy-cock.

Vallas is currently leading and has a good shot of winning election, he's playing the game of telling white liberals one thing and Republicans the opposite (as he did by publicly denouncing Catanzara even though hammering Johnson and Lightfoot before him as soft on crime and mean to the Police is his entire campaign strategy) as he has probably rightly concluded, no big story about his duality will make an impact in this last week before the election.