It's Not Like We're Shorthanded

Keep spinning Shortshanks:

• Despite a bloody holiday weekend that left nearly a dozen dead across the city, Mayor Richard Daley today defended police efforts to reduce violence -- and denied they were focused too much on the Taste of Chicago.
  
  "Anytime you have a long weekend, weekends are very difficult, especially big, holiday weekends," the mayor said, adding that police were continuing to investigate the motives behind the murders.
  
  Daley was asked if officers were too focused on the Taste of Chicago celebration, which may have contributed to lawlessness elsewhere in the city. He replied flatly: "No."
  
  The mayor was also asked if warmer weather may have played fueled the more than 30 hours of violence that also left dozens of people hurt. "We always have hot weather during the summer," he replied. "I hope the mayor doesn't have to make that announcement."

Glad to know we don't have hot weather during the winter there Richie. Again, he and J-Fed are reading from the same playbook that doesn't acknowledge the New York Times story linking hot weather to increased violence, despite years of stats that prove just that fact, and the observations of any rookie cop who graduated to the street in June, July, August or September.

This is an interesting turn of a phrase though:

• This year, no one was shot in the vicinity of the food festival, police said

Define "vicinity" please.

And if you believe that pulling between 10 and 20 cops out of districts to work downtown for the fireworks display doesn't have an impact on crime, we've got a bridge to sell you. We're seeing a dynamic that hasn't been in play in Chicago in years. Decades maybe. We'll ask some old timers, but if you pull the cops out of high crime areas, the criminals notice it pretty quickly. And they start settling old scores because they know the police aren't coming any time soon.

We are becoming (or maybe we have become) a completely "reactive" police force rather than "proactive." In layman's terms, we're not preventing crime, we're showing up after the fact. And the downward slope doesn't look too good.