murder on the Wabash Ave bridge

What I had said was that the current president of the Chicago police union, John Catanzara, had said something to the effect that the Chicago cops were disenchanted with the way they were being treated and weren't working as hard.  Nobody actually comes out and says anything as explicit as calling for a slow down.  But yeah, it appears that is what is going on.  Is it a contributing factor to what?  I assume Beagles means our current soaring violence (crime is down but murders are way up),  

Last Sunday morning I woke up at two and stumbled into the front room and holy shit, Wacker Drive from State Street up to where it curves behind the wall of downtown buildings was ablaze with blue lights. Stepping out to the balcony with my binoculars it looked like there was some kind of party going on,  There were people on the streets, cars weaving, a bunch of those rickshaws lit up and blasting music.  I guess the cops were breaking it up.  Well shit I've seen that happen before, but not so late at night and with so many people.  I went back to bed.

When I got up around five and walked onto the balcony there was a cop car at Michigan and Wacker and another on State, and they were blocking whatever 5 AM Sunday morning traffic there was.  My neighbor was on his balcony too and he told me that there had been a shooting at 2:30, guy killed and his girlfriend wounded.  I would probably still would have been awake,  Did I hear the shots?

Well I don't remember.  There are a lot of fireworks going on all night.  How do you tell one from the other?  A few days later discussing the matter with a neighbor who was a cop, he said due to the physics of a bullet leaving the muzzle faster than the speed of sound, you hear kind of a double bang.  I will have to remember it.

Apparently these upper Wacker Drive parties have been going on for some time.  I do recall hearing a lot of noise on weekend nights but I had never tried to pin down its source.

Actually there are not so many fireworks now as there were before the fourth of July, but roaring motorcycles and hot rods roam the streets from morning to deep into the night.  It gives a aura of lawlessness to the stately downtown streets.  Where are the cops?  Well some are apparently calling in sick in silent protest, and the others have their hands full with all the shooting in the ghetto.  

Most all the shooting that you read about happens in the ghetto.  That downtown shooting was an outlier.  They got to the guy before he died but he wouldn't say anything about who had shot him, and his girlfriend wasn't talking either.