I walk, fairly often, from the building where I work to the South Loop office where a number of my doctors see patients. It’s a great situation for me: I can then catch the train at 11th Street, no cars necessary. But, lately, I’ve noticed something that is really bothering me: Chicago, which is never exactly flush with cash, is apparently paying cops to sit in the medians of State Street and Michigan Avenue and, from what I can tell, play on their cell phones. As one does.
Yesterday it felt like cops in medians had reached a point of no return. There were not only multiple cops in the median along State Street, but there were cops in the medians on Michigan; in the parks on the east side of Michigan; and, most angering to me, even in the bicycle lanes on the east side of Michigan, blocking access to safe transit for who knows how many people. The cop sitting in the median outside my alma matter was playing on his cell phone. I have no idea what the cops in the bicycle lanes were doing, other than impeding traffic, but I do know that all those cars were running, and every one had some sort of lights going.
I assume that this is either supposed to deter crime (but they’re not even watching so…HOW) or to make certain members of society feel served and protected. I was mostly just mad, but I run angry, and while I am in the demographic that typically feels served and protected, my background doesn’t lead me to the same set of feelings. It does, however, make me think about the pollution that’s going on, and the blockage of sidewalks and bike lanes, and all the ways in which that seems like a very odd way to use Chicagoans’ tax money—not least when I have seen multiple traffic lights out this summer, often with no one there to direct traffic at all, even if they’re in the heart of the financial district. (And did I say that working in the financial district is weird as hell, when you’re kinda not a capitalist? Because it is!)
I’m not an expert on crime deterrence, but it sure seems like this ain’t the way to deter people. It also seems like a bizarre waste both of money and of manpower, and a ridiculous excursion into useless pollutants. I’ve never seen a cop walking the pedway, the underground walkway I take when it’s raining, or cold, or too hot to bear. I rarely see cops walking the beat, even downtown—except, of course, for my pedway days, when I see cops aplenty hanging around the City Hall half of the shared County and City building. (Oddly enough, the sheriff’s deputies seem to have more to do than the cops hanging around City Hall.)
The Loop is a hive of activity, as much now as it was before COVID. (If you read the Chicago Tribune you’d think otherwise, which makes me assume that the people who write their op-eds stopped going anywhere in 2019.) And maybe there’s a big need to deal with Lots of Criming, but the way to do it sure as hell isn’t to waste money on cops sitting in the middle of the road and blocking sidewalks and bicycle lanes. There has got to be something better.
Essentially a Nerd 