"Whatever the strategy is."

Think about that phrase for a second. https://twitter.com/chicagotribune/status/1265380407387795456

The Superintendent is at the beck and call of the Mayor. The same Mayor who publicly said "we will cite you/arrest you" to partygoers but later implied CPD was violating people's rights while handling a rowdy crowd in which 2 armed offenders were apprehended and 2 officers hurt.

The Mayor has a Twitter account dedicated to her "Stay Home, Save Lives" campaign. She is investing millions into disease contact tracers. She has extensive plans, stricter than the governor's, for reopening the city.

But no concrete acknowledgement of crime reduction strategy.

One purported strategy has been the "surge" mission. It involves police vehicles driving around in circles to.. do what? Deter crowds? Crime? This increased visibility often comes at a cost as beat cars are borrowed for the mission and are temporarily unavailable for assignment.

The first time this was done, police cars were sent from north side districts to the west side. A number of Aldermen took issue with this because people living in their wards were suddenly left without regular patrol cars to respond to their calls for service. Or anyone's calls.

Additionally, overtime has always been a contentious issue, but with many officers out sick or under quarantine orders due to being exposed, certain districts are hurting for manpower. I can't rattle out specific statistics, but I'm confident that 911 call backlogs will increase.

In a recent press conference, the new Superintendent, who I'm sure means well, mentioned a "new" program where people from some other city agency (?) reach out to victims of gun violence and attempt to prevent retaliation.

That's been a thing for years. CeaseFire/Cure Violence.

And those "new" detective areas that were recently opened up?

Reopened.

They were shuttered during Superintendent McCarthy's reign. So, perhaps a step in the right direction, but it's effectively reinventing the wheel.

It seems disingenuous to combat violence in Chicago with a combination of new strategies that make little logistical sense and tout other strategies as new, but which have already been in place previously. And then say "whatever the strategy is" when the numbers don't look good.

You have officers guarding the lakefront path to ensure people don't violate social distancing in an area most visible to tourists who aren't even here.

You have beat cars shuffled around to other districts to drive around with their lights on, unavailable to handle calls.

And when police handle rowdy crowds, not because of the stay-at-home order, but because they are and have always been a public safety hazard, and officers are INJURED while apprehending armed individuals in the crowd, you have a mayor who refuses to acknowledge the circumstances.

No one person has all the solutions. I certainly don't. But the Superintendent looks to the mayor, who then shrugs and scolds him in return. The rank-and-file need their voices heard. They're the ones risking their lives, whether due to Covid-19 exposure or pervasive gun violence

To put it mildly, this summer is ramping up to be an absolute bloodbath in Chicago. The city needs leaders to do more than just point fingers and convey mixed messages about what police should/shouldn't do about an issue that, though important, will unavoidably take a back seat.