MORE NORTH AVE. BEACH MEMORIAL DAY MAYHEM

FROM SECOND CITY COP

The Bigger the Lie...

And here's another whopper - a much bigger whopper:

• Gang loitering, intimidation, flash mobs and violence had nothing to do with the Chicago Police Department’s unprecedented decision to close North Avenue beach on a sultry Memorial Day, Acting Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Wednesday.
  One day after Mayor Rahm Emanuel blamed a surge of calls about patrons suffering from heat exhaustion for the beach closing, McCarthy stood at the mayor’s side and agreed.
  

  Asked point-blank what role, if any, gang activity or violence played in Monday’s 6 p.m. closing, McCarthy said without hesitation, “None.”
• WHICH ONE IS MCCARTHY AND WICH ONE IS KNUCKLE HEAD SMITH?

Wow. Seriously, Wow. We guess it's good to get the first one out of the way though. You tell a big enough lie, and all the little lies become that much easier after a while.

What we can't decide is if he's lying on his own or getting bad information:

• “There was no gang activity involved in the commander’s decision to close the beach. ... It was based upon the public safety concerns where we had to get ambulances to victims on the beach and the overcrowded conditions made it difficult for that to occur,” McCarthy said.
  “The folks who showed up at North Avenue, what I was informed of, were suburbanites who were coming to the beach to enjoy a nice day. It was simply an overcrowding situation. It had nothing to do with anything else that was going on.”

Based on this definition, we expect that the "overcrowding" at the Taste of Chicago, the Air & Water Show, the Chicago Marathon, the Polish Constitution Day events, Bud Billiken, and the mayhem at the Humboldt Park Puerto Rican Festival will be dealt with in the same manner.

By the way, here's Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey's Twitter feed on 31 May:

• Based on a couple of conversations that I've now had, yesterday's beach closure had more to do with crowd control concerns than the heat.
• And if the police can't get a handle on beach safety, there are going to be a lot of problems this summer...
• Even more interesting is that the papers so quickly bought into the heat story without reporting any of the real problems that went down.
• There is a growing problem at the beaches, one that I believe that are trying to keep under wraps.

But we suppose he's just making shit up, too. Like these people over at Reddit.com. Honest to pete, even the Sun Times comment sections are alive with first hand accounts of what happened.