Chicago Looks to Ban Baggies

[Rich46yo]

                              Take a good look at prices of homes and property in NYNY and Chicago both before and after and you see the reason why crime is down. That and the fact most of the high rise housing projects have been torn down. I worked them all and they were all crime factories. Cabrini, the Horners, Ablas, Taylor homes, Stateway, Rockwell...ect

                             So now they are down, many of the criminals cant afford to live here anymore, And, since jail populations are way up many arent on the street to do criminal watermelon anymore. But none of those reasons are sexy enough for Politicians both in and out of uniform so they make up programs, deem themselves responsible for the drop in crime, "because they are so smart".

                            What they dont tell you is that our conviction rate for homicide is so bad, most of all in gang-relateds, that its an ugly and dark secret. But they dont tell you that do they?

                            So what would you rather have? 600 bodies with a 70% closure rate , or 500 with a 30% one?

                           Rudy did nothing special. No doubt it was the rank and file who made NYNY a better place. And since when did the welfare of the property of an honest citizen become a program?

                           You all really have to be careful about believing this newspaper crap and all the statistics that are flung out at you regarding crime. There is nothing sadder then when I go to work and hear 40 people say the exact same thing based on the same newpaper headline theyv all read that morning. As if its Gospel? This entire statistics charade is phony anyways, or a lot of it is. Always be suspect of the numbers game. We've gotten caught up in it as much as NY has and I doubt we've done anything different..

[Thruster]

Many years ago when I had first moved here I was surprised at how many odd laws were on the books in Chicago. I think it's still a misdemeanor to spit on the sidewalk. Over the years I got more familiar with the town and began to understand to a degree why this was so.

It's a matter of density. Put a million or so people in the same town and with human ingenuity being what it is, people find all sorts of ways to annoy/endanger/inconvenience their neighbors. Although I'm still confused as to why I can't drive my pick-up on L.S.D.

But Chicago seems to enjoy it's laws, not actually obeying them, but having the ability to invoke them when the situation merits.

The baggie ordinance is another one of these statutes. It's simply another ruse to justify further searches or to magnify a collateral charge. The recent cell phone ban was yet another. Although in the case of hands free driving I can see a benefit, I don't see much enforcement. I never tested the city's resolve on the Fois Gras prohibition but I suspect it was also modestly enforced.

What N.Y.C. did was take an old school approach to municipal policing. They put more bodies on the street, fewer in "task groups" and aggressively enforced quality of life issues. Jaywalking, littering, noise and traffic violations were given higher priority. The logic being that most serious offenders can't be bothered to obey even the most basic rules. Beside they obvious dividends that come with more visible and immediate law enforcement they also found hundreds of goofs that had been able to evade the "specialists". Now Disney's in Time Square.

I doubt Chicago would go for that. With the residency rules and the culture of the C.P.D. I seriously doubt this will be the last silly statute to hit the books, and I doubt it will be the most absurd.

Gentrification has done a lot to dissipate the street crime throughout the city, it's just numbers. Hopefully the recent wave of reclaimed neighborhoods won't fall victim to any looming real estate bust and the trend continues. But it won't be because we forced a change in the way ready rock is packaged.