YA THINK? – AT 9:56 A.M. ET: The mayor of Chicago, who thinks deep thoughts, has come to an exciting conclusion on the relationship between rising crime rates and harassment of police. From the Chicago Tribune:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday stood by his contention that Chicago police officers are becoming "fetal" out of concern they will get in trouble for actions during arrests, blaming officers second-guessing themselves in the wake of high-profile incidents for rising crime rates in Chicago and elsewhere.
Last week, the mayor was part of a meeting in Washington, D.C., with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and a group of mayors and police officials from across the nation to discuss a spike in homicides and other crime.
"We have allowed our Police Department to get fetal, and it is having a direct consequence. They have pulled back from the ability to interdict … they don't want to be a news story themselves, they don't want their career ended early, and it's having an impact," Emanuel said, according to the Washington Post.
On Monday, Emanuel pointed to that tentativeness as one of the causes of an increase in crime here this year. "What happened post-Baltimore, what happened post-Ferguson is having an impact," Emanuel said. "And I still believe recent events over the last year or 18 months have had an impact. And officers will tell you that. And I tried to speak up for the good officers that are doing community policing that make up the men and women of the Chicago Police Department."
Emanuel's decision to blame violent crime increases in part on the after-effects of the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody in Baltimore and the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., cases that led to rioting in those cites, comes as Chicago sees violence on the uptick.
COMMENT: I must admit that Emanuel is showing some courage in speaking out like this, as he's likely to be attacked by the race industry and the hustlers. Yes, of course there are some bad cops who deserve punishment when they use excessive force or break the law. But the great majority of officers try to do an honest job, and they're understandably afraid of intervening, especially in inner-city communities, when they know that they can easily be accused of something they never did because someone wants to build a legal or political career.
October 13, 2015 |