Beats Me. And You.
Here’s a gem. Our district execs have decided to play yet another numbers game. The Lincoln Park area of the district has (not) more police!
The two big police trucks and vans assigned to Uptown, Lakeview, and Lincoln Park for transportation of prisoners—squadrols in CPD vernacular—are no longer officially assigned to be squadrols. Instead, they are designated as “beat cars” in Lincoln Park’s part of our district.
As a result, the southern part of the 19th district is generally getting a full complement of beat cars. On paper, any way. In reality, the so-called beat cars are spending the night dragging prisoners from the street to jail cells and from jail cells to hospitals, and parking on Clark Street to make a “show of force” in Wrigleyville.
We’ll bet $100 that the powers that be will find a way to declare that manpower is “up” in our district within the next six months*.
Police + politicians + numbers = bullshit.
Update
More information has come out about an incident that we reported last Saturday.
At 6:10PM, a witness reports seeing a man’s wallet get snatched at 820 W. Belmont as the victim takes out a credit card. It is unclear if police make contact with the victim.
We now know that the incident turned out to be a strong arm robbery and the victim did file a report. It’s recorded in CPD case HW536313.
Wheel of Misfortune
Police handled yet another report of a vehicle being stripped of its wheels and tires. The call at 10:54PM Saturday night came from the 2500 block of Stockton inside Lincoln Park.
A CWB reader sent photos of two other wheel-less cars on Stockton earlier this week.
If you’re not familiar with thieves’ new-found affection for wheels and tires from smaller vehicles, check out our story from earlier this week.
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*—If we’re wrong, we’ll post proof of a $100 payment to charity.
UPDATE NOVEMBER 25, 2013 12:31AM: Restructured to clarify that we are speaking of the the 19th district’s section of Lincoln Park.
