4465

Yea, definitely there are huge problems with what Trump is proposing / threatening. I would just focus on that rather than suddenly try to make the argument that there isn’t a problem, especially when six months ago every major newspaper was talking about a crisis in Chicago.

4466

FBI, ATF, Homeland Security, etc. Plenty of federal law enforcement agencies.

4467

They’re already there, collaborating with the Chicago PD. While Trump probably doesn’t know that, I suspect it’s not what he was thinking. Like “The Feds” are a magical crew that can solve a problem that the Chicago PD and it’s collaborators haven’t been able to solve in years.

4468

A beneficial side effect of all of the recent wars is huge advances in treating combat injuries. These new techniques are starting to make their way to stateside emergency rooms.

4469

My guess is that Trump envisions sending in Sean Connery with brass knuckles and a sawed off shotgun.

4470

Pretty sure this is his vision:

4471

I was hoping it was more a reflection of Midwestern values.

“Aw jeez, you know I gotta shoot you now, but tell you what, I will try to hit an arm or a leg, OK? You have a nice day now!”

All joking aside though, the violence in Chicago is nuts and needs to stop. Sending in Federal troops to police the streets is not the answer (and makes Trump look like he can’t wait to deploy American troops against American citizens…wow), but something does need to be done. There has to be a root cause for what is going on. I haven’t read up enough on the situation to know if it’s drug related, gang related or what, but somewhere there is a root problem that needs to be addressed.

4472

Mab’s probably stirring up trouble again. Has anyone called Harry Dresden yet?

4473

I agree. I think it’s because the graph goes from 2010-2015, and things really started getting bad in 2015, and then got much worse in 2016 in Chicago. Plus it takes per Capita rate of a really large city. Most of the violence is concentrated in South Chicago, not the whole city.

4474

I think the simulation has met its goals and whoever was in charge of it is no longer bothering to administer it for plausibility and logic. And so chaos is building up. Next year Trump will probably sprout wings and assume his giga-form prior to destroying the world, but the rest of us won’t care anymore about such paltry human concerns.

4475

Well, she’s probably concerned about global warming.

4476

Trump’s probably envisioning cleaning up Chicago Duterte style. Send in the Feds to kill all the killers. That will surely stop the killings. You know, on account of all the killers being killed. By other killers.

4477

Which already operate in Illinois. So, what is Trump talking about?

4478

The DOJ report recently issued hints at the problems.

The short version is that right now there is a fatal undermining of the police system in Chicago due to several factors. One is the overemphasis on broken windows policing tactics, while simultaneously putting few resources towards serious crimes here.

In effect what is happening is that low level, non violent crimes are being pursued with disproportionate harshness, excessive sentencing, and unneeded violence. Laquan Mcdonald is emblematic of this. Death with video contradicting police testimony.

However Chicago has embarrassingly low homicide clearance rates, somewhere in the 30% range. So what is happening is that low level drug offenders and such are pursued harshly, while murders go largely ignored. This undermines trust int he PD within communities, which in turn leads to people taking their issues out of the system, which leads to an increase in violence.

Sending in federal troops (which seems to be Trumps suggestion) with a not unlikely chance they would be used to suppress protests, particularly BLM protests, and you would see the problem increase.

4479

This is true. For 2016 the number is going to be close to 27 per 100k, it was really that bad.

4480

Great article, thanks for posting.

This was especially troubling :

That does not seem to bode well for America in general right now, as faith in government is being rapidly eroded by our current Administration.

Trump’s tweet shows how out-of-touch and uninformed he is. If even half the stuff in the DOJ report is true, there is obviously a deep problem within the Chicago PD precincts tasked with policing those areas of the city where violence is highest. Those communities have completely lost trust in the police because of the actions of the police. Protect and Serve is not happening there. I’m not sure how you fix that, but it’s not with National Guardsmen and armored vehicles.

Someone needs to take away the President’s phone. If he’s four days into his administration and already threatening to send National Guard troops into Chicago, what will he tweet if China conducts naval exercises somewhere they shouldn’t be, or if Iran talks tough about ramping up it’s nuclear program again? One tweet could be construed as a declaration of military intent, and escalate out of control so quickly.

4481

I live in Chicago, and a few months back when there were protests in Mount Greenwood over a police shooting there? My running route takes me within a mile of where those protests were. So the DOJ report is something of intense interest to me.

And the ‘if half the claims are true’? Well I can absolutely confirm that this is the case. Not in all neighborhoods, but most on the south and west sides for sure.

4482

I actually think this probably is accurate. It would not surprise me at all to learn that he respect’s Duerte’s approach and plans to try to implement it here.

4483

Well…

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/03/politics/trump-duterte-phone-call/

We* are fucked.

*and by we, I mean specifically me here in Chicago.

4484

He’s supposed to be using the secured phone they gave him. The one that Obama complained about. The one that basically has no apps and is barebones as hell. He was supposed to have switched over to this secure phone before he was even sworn in.

He’s apparently said “fuck that” to all of it. He’s still posting tweets from his unsecured Android phone.