For months, on one corner or another in the intersection outside my door, police cars have been parked with their blue lights blazing.
My God, I thought—every night since it started—it’s just unbelievable. The cops are present every night. And they’re here for so long, it has to be more than traffic stops. And it’s not accidents night after night either. You can always tell. The intersection has its share.
How much crime is around here? I thought. We’ve had a lot, from petty thefts to break-ins, to assaults, bullets going through windows—and into walls beyond—fights, drug dealing, shoplifting, snatched purses and even murders.
So I wasn’t surprised to see recently that the cops tending to my four corners are actually sitting there preventing crime!
I found that out over the weekend from a Chicago mayoral candidate on zoom, one of four candidates seeking an endorsement from a political organization I’ve been involved with for years.
A County Board member from the west side who’s running for mayor lamented the fact that the cops were sitting on corners downtown (and in a residential area on the outskirts of downtown) and wanted to see the same treatment where he and his constituents live.
I was quite surprised to learn that the cops were sitting out there protecting me and my neighbors. And not responding to crimes that were being committed.
I often blow my stack when I think of all the politicians, both local and beyond, who have round the clock security with guns and armored cars and such and…..
And I pay for it.
What about me?
Little did I know I was getting the same politician/celebrity treatment.
So the next day I told a good friend who lives a few blocks from me in the South Loop, as she drove us home from a party in a secure building on North Michigan Avenue about this new discovery—at the same time pointing to a cop car with blue lights blazing near where we live. And I told her what the mayoral candidate said about our blue light protectors, and that he was kind of jealous.
She started laughing hysterically. And told me those cars are just parked there with their lights on. With no one inside. To give the feeling to the residents that they’re secure.
“It’s too expensive to have cops in those cars,” she explained. “The cars and the blue blights are just for show.” She kept laughing.
So if she knows, I asked her, the bad guys must know, too. Since no cop can see them. How does this deter crime? I asked her.
She laughed hysterically again. “It doesn’t!”
I looked it up, to see if this was really true: were empty blue light-emanating police cars that deceive us dopes, and probably give bad guys carte blanche real?
I found nothing.
At this point, I’ve gone from thinking there was a crime outside my house every single night that the cops were there for; to hearing that I was the beneficiary of a pseudo private security force that was to prevent crime—and envied by other crime-ridden neighborhoods; to being told the whole thing was phony and making fools out of everyone.
That’s why I’ve got the blues. No pun intended.
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Coincidentally I’m reading Emerson these days. “Dream follows unto dream and there is no end to our illusions...” true but who to trust with all the illusion-makers out there? So frustrating. Best to you and yours ❤️