Chicago newspaper attempts to refute Balko

The Chicago Sun-Times responds to Radley Balko's exposé in the current issue of Reason on the failings of various American cities (where Chicago was a clear, uh, winner):

Reason mocks the city for requiring that fat cops shape up, providing them with nutritionists and trainers to help.

We don't. Police work is physical work. A cop has to be in shape.

Fair enough. But my mocking was more about the fact that after a year of headlines about police abuses, it just struck me a bit odd that the Board of Aldermen's biggest concern while I was in town researching the article was a proposal to assign cops personal trainers at taxpayer expense.

Reason knocks the mayor for regulating thousands of taverns — evil peddlers of demon rum — out of existence. Chicago has only about 1,300 taverns today, compared with about 7,000 in the 1940s.

We don't. A lot of those joints were buckets of blood that loomed within a short stagger of neighborhood schools. And nobody in town complains they can't find a drink.

Ah, yes. For the children.

And "buckets of blood?" Really? You know, I'll bet if we compare Chicago's crime rate in the tavern-happy 1940s with its crime rate now, the modern, 1,300-tavern era doesn't fare so well. In fact, let's go back a bit further. There was a time when alcohol in Chicago and the rest of America was banned altogether. What was crime like between 1919 and 1933? What was it like in Chicago? Also, is it really a good idea to make people travel farther from their homes to find a drink?