Fewer Taste Arrests

J-Fled touts this as good news:

• Arrests were down from a year ago during the city's revamped fireworks display of three smaller shows along the lakefront, Chicago police said Monday.

  Police Supt. Jody Weis said there were seven arrests Sunday night. Last year, there were 30 arrests during the single fireworks show at Grant Park.

  "If you look at the results, we had pretty much an incident-free night," Weis said of the fireworks shows during a news conference at police headquarters. "It did take away the massive push in Grant Park."

  In all, 1,000 police officers fanned out to cover the 26 miles of lakefront on Sunday.

But then the Sun Times takes some of the air out of his sails:

• Far fewer people tasted Chicago this year than in recent years.

  The 2010 Taste of Chicago drew 2.65 million people, about 700,000 fewer than the 3.35 million who attended the summer chow-fest in 2009.

  The 21 percent attendance drop was mainly because the city canceled the July 3 Grant Park fireworks, an event that would bring more than 1 million downtown and through the Taste booths on that day alone, said Cindy Gatziolis of the Mayor's Office of Special Events.

A 21% drop in attendance would produce fewer arrests. So would a Department that is so far into survival mode, it wouldn't take anyone into custody on questionable grounds even at the direction of Shortshanks himself.

In any event, all the police went home safe. That's cause for celebration in and of itself.