14,000 Visits? What the...?!?

As of this writing, we are on pace to hit 14,000 visits for a single day.

This is unprecedented. Our previous highs were in the neighborhood of 11,000, almost 12,000 and that was on a day we suffered an Officer killed and the Sun-Times gave us a front page link.

As far as we can tell, we've been linked by a few sites, both left and right of the political spectrum and it appears to center around the "Riot Survival for Dummies" post. The right leaning blogs point out the underlying sense of apprehension gripping the City and Department over one-million people being invited to Grant Park by Shortshanks. The lefties resort to name calling (paranoid, racist, shades of 1968, etc) and insist that all the violence will come from the boys and girls in blue.

A few points:

• We aren't praying for riots. We challenge anyone to point out anything we wrote that claims we want to revisit the turbulent 60s. You can't, so don't waste your time. Are there comments that lean that way? Sure, but no one here and no one out there in blog-land can prove it's cops.
• While we aren't praying for riots, it's only prudent to plan for problems. One million people crammed into a space meant to hold a few thousand people playing softball on a summer day isn't the brightest idea put forth by our political masters. Providing minimal sanitation and crowd amenities is going to create a bit of discomfort. And anyone who has studied group dynamics knows that an uncomfortable crowd, an edgy crowd can morph into something unintended.
• Based on intelligence gathered, experience gained, and known history, a "Quick Response Force" of at least 150 to 200 cops in battle dress and properly outfitted should be on call seconds away. It was in place for the TABD (or whatever they call it), it was in place for more than a few of the anti-war protests, it should be in place for precisely this. It's the smart thing to do.

Stay safe tonight. If updates are a bit behind, we're sure our readers will understand.