MSN News report about Chicago's new 911 protocols.

According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, the change came into effect on Sunday and also covers crime where the victim is "safe, secure and not in need of medical attention" and the offender is "not on the scene and not expected to return immediately." Chicago authorities are hoping the change frees up more officers to attend to the most serious crimes, such as serious assaults and murders. Instead of sending officers, 911 dispatchers have been told to transfer the calls to the Chicago Police Department’s Alternate Response Section, which is staffed by officers on light duty.

The implication, one supposes, is that people shouldn't get upset about the Detroit Police Department's poor response time because this sort of thing is a problem everywhere, including Chicago. Don't think you can just quit on Corktown for Wicker Park and expect a fabulous new life. The grass on the other side of Lake Michigan is equally brown.

And whereas you ungrateful whiners always expect the Detroit Police to "solve crimes" and "respond to calls," the people of Chicago are taking these changes in stride. Wait, no they aren't.

However, some Chicago aldermen suggested the changes will prove difficult to accept for crime victims. "I can understand if it's [to report] somebody spray-painted my trash can. But people want to see an officer when it gets up to a certain level of crime. They're setting the bar pretty high for police not to respond," said Alderman Scott Waguespack. "When you're talking about someone's garage being broken into and you've had three or four neighbors with the same thing, people have an expectation of having an officer on location to assess the situation," he said. "If no officer shows up, they're going to assume it's going to keep happening. They'll feel this is scaling back even more. There'll be a lot of people angry."

Maybe that's the fundamental difference between a place like Detroit and a place like Chicago. Bad things may happen in both cities. Sometimes public officials in both cities react badly to bad things. In Chicago, however, people actually get angry about their leaders' bad decisions.