I heard the Chicago Police boss say that 17 deaths and 82 bullet mutilations is just unacceptable. He immediately shifted blame from shooters holding hand guns to his people with a John Deweyesque lab lesson, “We're square-rooting* nine ways from Sunday what is it that happened. Was it a fatigue factor? Did we give (too many) people (time) off? Because the fireworks were Friday and Saturday. That's where we had a lot of folks deployed during those time frames.” He admitted the numbers of bodies taking rounds was unacceptable,
I wonder, what exactly would be an acceptable rate of ballistic intrusions on carbon foot-prints over a few hours in Chicago? A real headstratcher that one.
Mayor Chicagoland was equally huffed and puffed about the numbers, the optics and the growth of ballistic corporeal intrusions over Independence Day Weekend.These guys are almost mildy concerned enough to actually give voice to what everyone else in Chicago knows?
Not a chance.
In April when the temperatures spiked after the long Arctic Chicago winter, so do did bullet gusts and Rahm said,
"Every child deserves a childhood, regardless of where they live. But to do that, our city and community, the neighborhoods that make up this city, cannot live by a code of silence," Emanuel said at a news conference at an Edgewater school to announce more international baccalaureate programs. "They have to live by a moral code."
"Now I've read some of this, and I just want to say this, when some people go 'Well, it's the weather.' It's whether you have values," the mayor said. "Yes, weather's an impact. Where you put police is an impact. Whether you have summer jobs, after school programs, camps, summer reading programs. We have to do that and more."
And By Jingo, he did! In fact he said so in the wake of 4th July fussilades, "While [Chicago is] providing record summer educational job opportunities and summer jobs, where is the federal [government] with assistance to expand that?"
Rahm knows that After School Programs do more to stop bullets* travelling between 770 -840 feet per second than decking out an entire neighborhood in T-shirts and marching behind Reverends at Gun Shops, or posting STOP GUN VIOLENCE signage hither and yon in ballistic afflicted neighborhoods.
Certainly, After School Programs do much, much more than having a well-led, well-manned and well-backed Police Department unencumbered by showers of pissy lawsuits and pissier media smears of cops doing their jobs bolstered by the pissiest of academic frauds with pie charts and mythopoeic yarns of systemic racism, brutality and working class contempt in bringing bad guys, cut-purses and sundry ne'er-do-wells to book for actual crimes.
After School Programs, especially when school is out for the summer, will end the bloodbath and bring Robert Redford's documentary crews back for another clear-eyed look at this Shooting Gallery on the Lake.
Boy, and all this time, silly me, I believed it was due to the fact that vicious, self-absorbed, bone-stupid and well armed thugs feel that they can get away with murder in Chicago, because Rahm, Daley, the Alderpersons, Toni Preckwinkle, Northwestern's Wrongful Industry, G. Flint Taylor, Locke Bowman, Loevy & Loevy, both newspapers' editorial boards and icon columnists, WTTW, Pat Quinn, University of Chicago, CPS and too many grant-making philanthropies have made Chicago A Thug Comfort Zone.
Science, my boy, science!
* Square Rooting -"Last year saw dramatic improvements after a particularly violent 2012 when Chicago topped 500 homicides for only the third time in a decade. But the momentum has appeared to slow so far this year. Through Sunday, homicides have dropped 5.6 percent, to 185, 11 fewer than the year earlier, police statistics show. But shooting incidents have risen to 953, up 5.3 percent from 905."
** Bullets in metric conversion -
Bullet Mass = 10.2 grams
Velocity = 230 meters per second
Energy = 282 Joules
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