In the first movie there is a St. Patrick's Day parade so it must take place around March, but in the second movie there are Christmas decorations everywhere.
So around 8 or 9 months apparently passed in between the 2 movies, yet the characters act like the events in the first film just happened. Am I missing something here?
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You can get away with most anything. All you gotta do is try.
--Bad Grandpa
Two theories on that:
1. THE LENGTHY THEORY - It took 8-9 months (because it's still set in 1988 and technology back then sucked) to gather all of the evidence (interviews, actual physical evidence, etc.), process it then go through it (including court hearings and such) for Forrest and Mallory to be officially cleared of all Cordell's wrongdoings especially the multiple homicides. During that time they could have been on leave where they were still paid. Once they were cleared they needed to go through the psych evaluation to determine if they were still fit for duty following such a traumatic ordeal. I don't know they would have necessarily been fired if they weren't but Jack knew that if he didn't cooperate the same big shots that took down Cordell would be sure he was out as a cop. Theresa knew the same thing but had the courage to face it rather than hide from it which is why Jack is offed less than 15 minutes in.
2. THE SHORT THEORY - Someone, most likely the writers, *beep* up timeline wise when they wrote it to take place around Christmas time.
The choice is yours as to which one is more plausible but as a writer I'm inclined to go with the first to give benefit of the doubt.