Policing in pairs? We’ve got a ways to go before we reach enlightenment

The order went out to Chicago Police Department officers Sunday morning in the wake of an attack on officers in Baton Rouge, La., that left at least three cops dead and others wounded.

CPD showing their support, while watching their backs

They’re not to be going out on patrol all by their lonesome. They’re also to be in full uniform, to ensure that it is fully clear to the public who exactly the police are. Similar orders have been given to police officers in New York and Boston, to name just a couple of cities.

NOW SOME PEOPLE might think that makes the cops all the more of targets. It probably does. Although I suspect that to the kind of people inclined to want to attack officers, they’re going to know in advance exactly who they’re looking for.

If anything, this might reduce the chance of a non officer being mistaken by someone who thinks of themselves as some sort of revolutionary fighting for the rights of the people against an oppressive force.

Which is what I’m sure is the kind of cheap rhetoric we’re ultimately going to hear if any of the gunmen who attacked the officers in Louisiana Sunday morning are taken alive.

You know, the men dressed in black. And no, I don’t mean the late singer Johnny Cash!

FOR IT SEEMS that one of the gunmen was killed by cops right away, while the other two remained at large for much of the day – with the public in Baton Rouge being advised to look out for anyone black-clad. Not that any further description was given.

For it seems the people who might actually know something didn’t see nothin’, or at least that’s what they claimed when they talked to cops.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think of these latest attacks on Sunday – other than to say we shouldn’t be surprised by anything that happens these days. We have a national mood of mistrust concerning our attitude toward law enforcement personnel.

 

TRUMP: Too eager to mix it up in dispute?

Some of us are determined to view them as the problem, while others are quite eager to use this as an excuse to go after people whom they never trusted and have long wished they could fight back against.

IN SHORT, I’M saying I expect this kind of nonsense to continue on, and not just in Baton Rouge, where local residents remain miffed at the shooting death by police of a black man that got captured on video.

This is not a problem limited to any one city or part of the country. It is why I have refused to get as worked up as some people have over the officer now on trial in Chicago for the shooting death in 2014 of Laquan McDonald.

It’s bigger than any one incident, and it is not going to be solved with cheap rhetoric.

Which is what I think of Donald Trump, who couldn’t wait to rush out with a statement eagerly meant to support the police – claiming he expects that law and order attitudes will prevail. Eager to take sides, and I’m sure his followers will repeatedly parrot the same lines throughout the Republican National Convention being held this week in Cleveland.

PERHAPS HE THINKS we’ll rise up and start shooting people who aren’t sufficiently deferential to the police. Or maybe he’ll settle for an angry mob engaging in fisticuffs against someone who looks just a tad suspicious – from their life’s perspective.

It is a serious issue, this one of mistrust that some of us have with the police – which is really more about our racial tensions and hostilities flaring up!

As much as I wish we could be responsible and rise to a higher level, I won’t be the least bit surprised if our society continues to delve down in the muck for awhile longer.

It’s the kind of situation where I expect there’s going to be many more rounds of stupidity and ignorance that we’ll have to be ashamed of before we can finally attain a level of enlightenment in the future.

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One-time “hog butcher to the world” can’t avoid spread of swine flu virus

For all I know, by the time you read this, Chicago may have its first case of the swine flu.

We’ve all heard the horror stories about the strain that is spreading through Mexico (but which President Barack Obama appears not to have contracted when he was in Mexico City last week), and which officials now fear will work its way through the United States.

CONSIDERING HOW MUCH of a transportation hub Chicago is because of O’Hare International Airport, I’m surprised that some international visitor didn’t manage to leave the Second City a souvenir, of sorts, during their brief stopover.

That’s really all it takes for this thing to be triggered.

I’m surprised to learn that Ohio and Kansas managed to beat Illinois to having confirmed cases of the virus within their boundaries.

According to White House doctors, President Obama appears not to have contracted the swine flu during his recent visit to Mexico City. Photograph provided by White House.

Not that I view this as some sort of bizarre competition. But as of Sunday night, the Illinois Department of Public Health was unaware of any instances of the virus occurring here.

BUT THE CHICAGO Health Department is taking what I consider to be a much more realistic approach to the issue. They’re accepting it as fact that the virus will break out here, probably in the city proper – if not one of the hundreds of suburban towns that surround us.

“There’s no reason to think that we won’t eventually see it in the state of Illinois and city of Chicago,” health Commissioner Terry Mason told reporter-types.

Thus far, there have been 20 reported incidents of the virus spread over five states. Many appear to be people who have traveled in recent weeks, such as the New York high school students who took what should have been a life-long memory trip to Cancùn.

It will be memorable, but not for the reasons they intended.

NOW I DON’T mean to downplay the seriousness of the virus, which has already killed some 86 people in Mexico and has left about 1,400 ill during the past few weeks. If quick actions are not taken, it can inflict serious harm on a person – as well as spread so quickly from person to person.

But part of the reason I’m not panicking is that I have enough faith in our public health systems to cut this potential problem off before it gets too far out of control. In part, that faith is because I choose not to live my life isolated in a cave somewhere, which is what it would take for someone to avoid all the potentially bad things that can happen in life.

And I also have enough sense to realize that Mexico doesn’t have some special claim to this virus. For those people who envision closing the border crossings along the Rio Bravo del Norte/Rio Grande in the name of keeping the U.S. free of a virus, it ain’t gonna happen.

Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano said as much on Sunday, although people entering the U.S. from Mexico are going to have to submit to a few questions about their health before being allowed to cross the border.

FOR ONE THING, in today’s world of international travel, it is the airports that are the true entry points. And there could very well be people going from Mexico to somewhere else (and maybe another place as well) before entering Chicago or the United States.

Officials note that the quarantine facility at O’Hare International is now up and running in case anyone needs to be detained for a time. Homeland Security officials also said airport officials will be watching all people passing through, which is a good thing.

Focusing too much attention on Mexico when it comes to this particular viral outbreak is a mistake. This is a disease that doesn’t particularly care about ethnicity. It will take out anyone it can.

So the nativists who are going to start clamoring for stringent restrictions on travel to and from the land south of the Rio Bravo del Norte are guilty of nothing more than trying to use a potential health risk to stir up fear that backs up their own nitwit thoughts.

SO HOW GOOD are the chances that people in Chicago will someday be wearing those white masks that we’ve all been seeing residents of Mexico City wearing?

It could happen, although that would be the worst-case scenario.

I’d hate to see Chicago have to become as stringent as the Mexican capital, where officials have gone so far as to shut down most public facilities in an attempt to reduce public interactions that could spread the virus further.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Chicago officials are preparing for when (not if) the swine flu (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-swineflu-illinois,0,3135647.story) finds its way to our city. Even the Chicago Public Schools are pitching in with the effort of trying (http://www.wrex.com/Global/story.asp?S=10252391) to find potential viral outbreaks before they occur.

Here’s hoping Chicago does not come to resemble the Federal District of Mexico when it comes (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103509097) to daily life in the wake of the swine flu virus.

What a wimpy response!

Perhaps it was the ghost of Lee Elia lingering in a corner of the manager’s office at Wrigley Field, but someone clamped their hand over the mouth of Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella.

The Elia diatribe (which White Sox fans love to quote, particularly the part about 85 percent of the world working for a living, and the rest being Cubs fans) has become the standard by which all baseball managers are judged when they lose their tempers.

PINIELLA HAD THE potential to top it when he was asked following a particularly pathetic Cubs loss to the Milwaukee Brewers whether he had considered replacing star hitter (but lame defensive player) Alfonso Soriano in left field.

“You’re damn right I thought about it,” Piniella snapped. “You think I’m stupid or something?”

But then, he silenced himself, although the look in his eyes gave the impression of someone who had many dozens more words to say.

Which is too bad, because if ever there was a baseball personage with the potential to top Elia’s obscenity-laced schpiel of 26 years ago (it repeatedly implied that in addition to being unemployed, Cubs fans are the types of people who perform certain sex acts often featured in pornographic films), it is Piniella.

PINIELLA THE BALLPLAYER was actually a favorite of mine when I was a kid who actually enjoyed the on-field antics of the 1970s-era New York Yankees (particularly the play of former White Sox players Rich Gossage and Bucky Dent). It’s hard to say how many baseball dugout water coolers got bashed beyond repair because Piniella took out his on-field frustration on someone else’s drink of water.

That same attitude was maintained during his managerial stints in New York, Cincinnati, Seattle and Tampa Bay. Although the one time I covered him as a reporter (the first round of the 2000 American League playoffs, when the White Sox got stomped by Piniella's Mariners), he was mellow and in good cheer. I guess winning does that to you.

I always wondered just how Piniella would cope with the notion of being affiliated with the Chicago Cubs. The organization’s losing ways were bound to make him crack, and are bound to put a blot on his baseball career – similar to how Dusty Baker may have won a division title in his first year as a Cubs manager, but finished his four-year stint in Chicago with a losing record.

Despite his attempt at manners on Thursday, I wonder when the memorable outburst will come. There’s no way “Sweet Lou” is going to be able to “stifle” himself forever.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Another Cubs loss nearly provoked a Lou Piniella outburst (http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=406953)