Robot Cops of Chicago's West Side

I resent the robot cops of the west side. They are probably news to non-ghetto residents but these little officers on a stick are ubiquitous on light poles of my native west side. They are little metal boxes, something like four feet high by two across by two feet deep. They’re blue and white with the CPD star logo on all sides. On their bottoms are those black bubbles that so often conceal surveillance cameras. And they are topped with blue and white mars lights that flash 24/7.

It’s the lights that put my knickers in a twist. You could tell me that Chicago’s “authorities” need to endlessly surveil us lest we carry out acts of terror or worse, Republicanism. I assume there are cameras trained on every Porta Potty from South Shore to Ravinia. But the lights of the robot cops aren’t there to illumine the scene. They flash eternally to intimidate would-be bad guys, which includes, the city apparently thinks, everyone in the neighborhood.

Maybe the little fuzz boxes reassure some west side residents. A guy who lives across from a robot cop near the Henry Horner project says every twelve year old on the block figured out the robot’s blind spot within days of its arrival. The robot made the dope deals only minutely more clandestine.

From my home on the north shore I can only agree with my mother who ruefully asserts, “You wouldn’t see that kind of mess in a white neighborhood.”

Nonetheless I am trying to have a better attitude the about the robot cops. I feel a little better if I imagine that the little dome on the bottom is not a camera but a dispenser and that if I stood below it and said the right magic cop words coffee would pour down into my awaiting mug. It amuses me further to think that the robots are really secret police refrigerators, that in the wee hours, fire department ladder trucks hoist hungry officers up to the robots which are opened to reveal delicious midnight snacks including, of course, doughnuts.

I’d think the CPD should let neighborhood residents decorate the little robot cops. The ones near the United Center should have little Bulls jerseys and the domes on the bottom should look like basketballs. Blue and white pinstriped baseball robot cops should adorn Wrigleyville light poles. Ones in Pilsen should sport sombreros and in West Rogers Park they should have yarmulkes and beards.

Then, once a year they should take all robot cops down from perches and display them along Michigan Avenue so our fine, rich people can see that poor folks can make even a police state look like fun.