The Revenge of The Thin Blue Line 32: Highways to Hell (i.e. Chicago)

The Illinois State Police released statistics for gun violence on the Expressways in and around Chicago.  Targeted ISP enforcement resulted in a 50% decrease in shootings and a drastic reduction in violence.  According to the report Illinois State Police will continue this targeted focus and enforcement, 

[T]he Illinois State Police (ISP) is reporting the total number of Chicago area expressway shootings dropped 47% in 2022 compared to 2021. The number of non-fatal injury expressway shootings in the Chicago area was cut in half and the number of expressway homicides decreased by 88% compared to last year. 

ISP will continue to take the multifaceted approach that has shown to reduce violent crime on our expressways.

Increased ISP presence

Focused, strategic violent crime reduction missions. Proactive enforcement - Statewide Anti-Violence Enforcement (SAVE) Unit 

Multiple jurisdiction collaboration 

Unified Command - Multiple ISP divisions focused on expressway violence 

Technology - automated license plate readers, air operations

This kind of Police work is what Police at municipal, county and state levels should be doing.  Instead because of slashing taxes, cutting services, and generally dumping everything into the laps of the Police over the past 40 years, the focus of effort has devolved into Police adjacent calls for service and efforts to bolster revenue.  Worse than that the sensationalist media coverage of crime reporting during that timeframe lead to two of the worst initiatives in history; Stop-and-Frisk and Broken Windows, which should properly be understood as Stop-and-Fuck with People and Broken Trust of the Community.   

Besides the rampant racism of Police Officers writ large, U.S. Police Departments have always had an insular Us-against-Them mentality but those two "theories" of Police Work, turned many a department into Occupying Armies.  

What's needed in Policing and what Police Reform has haphazardly tried to address, with programs like CIT, are Officers with a capacity for deductive reasoning, a modicum of humanity and compassion, and the ability to communicate especially under stressful conditions.

Every "Democrat" City according to Faux News

Of course, complicating all of this has been the steady adoption of Law & Order as a cultural wedge issue since the time of Dirty Tricky Dick Nixon.  We saw this used again in 2020 with the dubious and deceitful Republicans bemoaning Defund the Police efforts leading to rampant crime.  One of the unshakeable Republican tropes trotted out daily on rightwing media, is that Democratic Cities are all smoking dystopian ruins, akin to the images of Boston in the HBOMax series The Last of Us.  Whether it was Portland, Oregon being burned to the ground 6 or 7 times in 2020 and 2021 by BLM and Antifa or the Highway to Hell that is Chicago despite the "strictest gun laws in the Universe" or when a simple gay Brazilian immigrant Congressman named George Santos was mugged at 3 in the afternoon in broad daylight in downtown Manhattan and robbed of his shoes just for being a Republican!

Now, the are multiple reasons both gross and fine for Republicans continually claim Democratic cities are hellholes (See Pig Fvcker Darren Bailey's comments on Chicago as he ran for Illinois Governor in 2022); the Republican Party has wedded themselves to the idea that Crime is a Black problem and its' exacerbated by Democrats who love Criminals.  This has been the overarching rightwing strategy since Dick Nixon ; to equate crime with Urban centers (and thus by minorities and elite liberals who live there) as opposed to the Rural America where the Real Americans live and the suburbs to which all good white people flee the smoking ruins of Democrat Cities. 

And facts don't matter in this Narrative.  For example when Democratic candidate Joy Hofmeister corrected pointed out that violent crime in Oklahoma was higher than New York City or California under the Republican Governor's mismanagement.  Governor Kevin Stitt was all, 'Aw shucks can y'all believe she's correctly pointing out the facts when all you good Real Americans know Escape from New York was a documentary?'  Facts, as was long ago pointed out, have a liberal bias...

So, getting back to Chicago.  After every Mass Shooting, Republicans jump onto the Corporate Media to repeat CHICAGO! CHICAGO! CHICAGO! which is of course code for Blacks, to dispute the fact that flooding the Nation with Firearms has not made Americans safer.  And, more importantly, guns are most often used to kill their owners after the gunman has murdered his family.  So here a few recent shootings which didn't rise to wider national coverage;

• In Baldwinsville, New York, "This is how it ends for us," abusive asshole Christopher Wood told his ex-wife before shooting the couple's 14 year old daughter to death before killing himself because his wife correctly left him rather than stay in a violent abusive relationship. 
• Jarid Haddock walked into a Circle K in Yakima, Washington and shot 3 people for no apparent reason.  Fleeing in a car Haddock then shot himself as Police responded.
• Some guy shot another guy and then shot himself in Everett, Washington.
• In Hawley, Texas Justin Coonrod gunned down his parents then shot himself...

Guns used to kill the owner after HE has killed someone else.  And these four incidents are by no means the only recent ones or at all unusual in the United States.  But, none of this matters to the cadre of Gun Nuts, Republicans, and Firearm Manufacturers who profit mightily off the blood of dead and wounded Americans.

But, Gun Nuts simply ignore this fundamental truth and as they are fanatics who fight every gun law, regulation or restriction adopted at every level of Government by a politically powerful Well Financed groups of scumbag attorney's America keeps losing.

But, this is merging into another post I'm working on about the Rightwing effort to undo the Illinois Assault Weapon Ban and the Unending War conservatives are waging on the American People to ensure unrestricted gun violence is unstoppable plague forever and ever. 

The Revenge of the Thin Blue Line 2: Welcome to Chicago Trump

"You just kicked the shit out of an innocent man." - Strawberry Alice

"Innocent of what?" - Little Bill (Unforgiven 1992)

The Chicago Police Department embarrassed and debased themselves during Traitor Trump's visit. Trump is so obviously a conman and yet they applaud him. Police Departments across the United States are so thoroughly corrupted by believing their own Hero Warrior bullshit that Trump needed to spew little more to get the fawning adulation of a group of so-called Law Enforcement Officers.

Working the job for over a decade the only thing which irritates me on the job is when someone lies to me. I can deal with a lot but, lying to me is just too much. Yet, Chicago Cops not only enjoy being lied to by Trump they are eager to be lied to? Why?

During the 2016 campaign Trump recounted one of his fantasy scenarios where a big strong burly tough guy fawns over Trump when he declared a confided in him,

"And I said, 'How long would it take you to straighten out this problem?' " the president added. "And he said, 'If you gave me the authority — couple of days.' I really mean it.  I said, 'You've gotta be kidding. ... Give me your card.' And he gave me a card. And I sent it to the mayor. I said, 'You ought to try using this guy.' Guess what happened? Never heard. And last week they had another record. It's horrible."

Trump trotted out the story yet again, and added in the standard rightwing canards that Chicago has the Toughest Gun Laws in America and laws don't work. Now, you would think even the least inquisitive Cop would recognize the syllogism:

If the laws are tough and crime is still a problem, then enforcement is lax. 

I.e. the Chicago Police Officers are lazy or incompetent. But, what these Officers heard was 'those people are natural born criminals and animals and your command staff are weak or namby-pamby liberals' and if only Police Officers were unshackled they would be able to clean-up the City.

Trump is stupid but he has certain mean low cunning and what Trump knows is most people believe in half-conceived theories of criminal justice; usually variations of the wholly discredited Broken Windows Theory. So what Chicago Cops heard was what they wanted to hear;  "Don't be too nice."

I am wholly insulted and ashamed that Police Officers are so fucking gullible and easily taken in by a bloated, adderall abusing, grifting RAPIST.

Of course, no one should be surprised Police Officers, especially Chicago Police Officers, will ignore the law and willingly violate peoples Constitutional Rights because Chicago Police Officers are currently engaged in such activities.

Stop & Frisk violates the 4th Amedment. In 2016, Chicago Officers became required to justify their detention of minorities because that's who Chicago Police stop, by being able to articulate their reasonable suspicion. Of course, what's become apparent in the data collected since then is Officers don't have or don't know what that standard is and their supervisions are helping them add data after the fact, to justify the unlawful interaction.

But, illegal stop & frisk is supported by conservatives because right-wingers believe all black people are a priori guilty of some crime thus, any stop any detention of a black person is thus justified.