The press is reporting the city's attempt to get a federal grant to hire 400 more cops. The catch, according to the city, is the money it will cost us to get the grant. Let me correct that. It's not the money but the morals that's the catch...!
Whenever the Mayor wants, he can always stir up the money. What he can't stir up are the morals. The civic morality on the part of us Chicagoans whose everyday habits all to often border on the ammoral if not the immoral. Until that changes, 400 new cops won't make a dent. Nor will 4000.
I'm not talking the bad guys here -- murderers, rapists, burglars, drug pushers. Chicago's finest have at least a fighting chance against them. It's the rest of us whose little everyday habits overwhelm our fair city. Road ragers...DUIs...crowd trouble-makers...barroom brawlers...purse snatchers....subway hecklers....street hustlers...all the seamy sides to our after-Eden human nature.
Despite the usual grumbling about errant cops, they're still the last thin blue line between us and the jungle. But if the rest of us keep acting like -- well, like people! -- no amount of cops is going to tame our animal nature and hold back its jungle.
Maybe what we need to hire are not better cops, but better citizens
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Better cops, yes! But where the hell can we hire better citizens?????
ReplyDeleteActually that's what I spent 40 years trying to produce by teaching US History. Looking at our times, I'm not sure I helped the cause very much....
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