There are times in life when even the most well-meaning people make decisions and are actually following their hearts when in reality they are leaving their brains behind.

Anyone familiar with the hit show Seinfeld most certainly remembers the Soup Nazi! Please let me participate in a little creative indulgence. I can just hear Chicago’s politicians and the ACLU telling the people of Chicago and its law enforcement officers, “NO STOP AND FRISK FOR YOU!”

Back in 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a landmark case called Terry vs Ohio that indeed police officers are allowed to stop individuals without probable cause for an arrest providing that the officers can articulate a REASONABLE BASIS FOR THE STOP AND FRISK. In other words, if the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. It also ruled that the officers may perform a quick search of the person’s outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person is armed and presently dangerous.

Now we skip to August 7, 2015, when in the great wisdom of Chicago’s politicians including then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his top cop Garry McCarthy decided to enter into an agreement with the ACLU that essentially buried Stop and Frisk in Chicago. The agreement states that Stop and Frisk would be replaced by a new and cumbersome report called (ISR) Investigatory Stop Report. The report on average takes individual officers anywhere from 40 to 45 minutes to fill out and is later reviewed by a retired Federal Judge. So what was essentially a five to ten minute stop and frisk right Chicago’s cops in order to let’s say, to stop suspicious persons in an alley at 3:00 a.m. now are facing 40 to 45 minutes filling out reports to justify why they stopped suspicious individuals? Needless to say, street stops plummeted in Chicago by at least 80 % and have come nowhere near the past numbers before the agreement was ratified.

Cops will tell you that the best preventative measure against shootings and most especially drive-by shootings is street stops and the stop and frisk rule. Since that agreement went into effect 22,706 people have been shot and 4,333 homicides have occurred within Chicago’s city limits. The experience and expertise of Chicago’s cops working Chicago’s streets have been replaced by a Federal judge working from home picking over the few investigatory stops in a clean wholesome environment. It’s mind-boggling to me that hundreds of criminals are arrested and released in Cook County and Chicago almost immediately either by no bonds, low bonds, or the hilariously incompetent home confinement monitoring ankle bracelets. Home confinement by definition of Cook County officials would seem to mean the code word Plant Earth. There are over 100 criminals in Cook County on home confinement who have been charged with murder or attempted murder and hundreds more for violent crimes who are released back into the communities they have preyed upon. Yet they are released time and time again with little or no accountability or punishment, but stopping them on the streets using the Supreme Court-ordered ruling is somehow a violation of their rights, and just to throw in another excuse card, the ACLU says it’s profiling.

Profiling is a word that literally scares the hell out of timid politicians who would not know a Latin King or a Gangster Disciple from circus clowns. Something needs to change, and something is very rotten and it’s not Denmark. Chicago’s victims and future victims need common sense leadership. To not punish criminals and bad behavior just gets you more of it and Chicago is a prime example of that for sure.