Moving custody of the Cook County EM program to the court system invites disaster
Instead of holding a hearing about why so many people are harmed or murdered under Sheriff Tom Dart and Chief Judge Timothy Evans’ GPS and electronic monitoring (EM) programs, Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County Commissioners held a meeting to vote to move the Sheriff’s EM program under the direct supervision of the Office of the Chief Judge and then had their affiliates issue a celebratory public statement. This action of moving control over the EM program from Dart's office to the Chief Judge will likely place up to 1,400 defendants, most of whom are charged with violent crimes or weapons charges, under a program that is not equipped to monitor them.
The recent harm caused by perpetrators on these GPS bands include the brutal murders of Officer Enrique Martinez and the horrific murder of a victim of domestic violence, Lacramioara Beldie, who this week was stabbed to death by her abuser who was wearing a GPS band. This tragedy also resulted in the injury of a heroic, off-duty police officer, who was struck by gunfire while attempting to Beldie's life.
Ms. Preckwinkle, Judge Evans and the Cook County Board are members of the same group of elected officials who still insist the SAFE-T Act is enormously successful. They dismissed a call to action issued by Clerk Iris Martinez to address the fact that defendants are being released and then refuse to appear in court in and astounding 74 percent of cases; they ignore that residents and businesses fear for their safety; and they refuse to act even after being told that murders in domestic cases went up 110 percent last year.
Under Sheriff Dart’s leadership, the 30-year, electronic monitoring program has sunk so low it permits defendants charged with murder, rape, gun crimes, and criminal sexual assault of children to sit at home for years, while also getting “good time credit,” which cuts their sentences in half. According to the Sheriff’s office, since 2016, the number of defendants placed on the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program while facing murder charges has gone up a staggering 619 percent and armed violence up 333 percent.
Defendants also get two free days off from being monitored a week, per the Safe-T Act. Legislation to fix the issue of allowing violent offenders back into our communities has never been introduced by the Sheriff or the Chief Judge, despite numerous tragedies.
CWB Chicago reports that since 2020 there have been 393 suspects arrested for murder or attempted murder while on bail or electronic monitoring while awaiting trial for another felony. They report Chicago Police (CPD) having made arrests in only a third of the murder cases and in less than five percent of attempted murder cases.
For those perplexed about CPD clearance rates, please consider traumatized victims and witnesses of crime and the intimidation they must feel seeing these perpetrators walk free in our communities. Would you risk your life to cooperate with the police and the court system that continually releases violent offenders?
These programs are a public safety disaster, but at least the Sheriff’s electronic monitoring program had law enforcement officers monitoring these individuals, who have the power of arrest when defendants break the rules. The Sheriff also can send law enforcement officers to go arrest defendants when they go AWOL, which happens in hundreds of cases.
The Chief Judge’s staff can only request that an arrest warrant is issued, which will just go on top of the current pile of almost 32,000 criminal arrest warrants at the Sheriff’s Office. This negligent move by Cook County leaders will place thousands of violent offenders under a department that is not run by a law enforcement personnel and an office that is not subject to government transparency laws, meaning the public will be kept in the dark.
According to the Chief Judge, his GPS pre-trial program is a basically a curfew program running from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and he does not have the ability to properly monitor these individuals charged with violent crimes. As the Chief Judge recently shared with Commissioners:
“What we do is different from what the Sheriff does. The sheriffs are law enforcement, the courts are not law enforcement. They are custodians and detention operators. The court is not…”
Judge Thomas Nowinski presided over the Beldie domestic violence case and in another horrific example of a failing system: The murder of a brave and talented 11-year-old boy, Jayden Perkins, who died attempting to save his pregnant mother from being murdered by a violent offender against whom she sought an order of protection against. The order of protection, however, was denied by Nowinski.
Nowinski has been excoriated for his behavior and has faced calls to resign this week, but it has been shared that he was only following the perilous guidelines of the SAFE-T Act and also apparently was required to consider the low scores from the “pretrial assessment tool” that county leaders implemented years ago. This tool instructs Judges on whether a defendant is danger or is a risk of not coming to court. This tool failed in this case and in countless others. This defendant had just brutally attacked and threatened this poor victim, yet the score was so low that he was deemed safe to release. Advocates for victims should be outraged that this tool remains in use after the admission that it was a factor in this tragedy.
The Judge also followed Preckwinkle’s golden rule for those who want to be appointed to a judicial position or endorsed by the Democratic Party: use any method available to not detain someone. Keeping the jail population low is imperative to Preckwinkle, as she and Dart have demolished multiple buildings on the Cook County Jail’s compound and reduced the jail population by 58 percent over the past decade to help balance her budget.
Decarcerating the Cook County Jail is also her primary ideological view, and she has wielded her power to remove anyone from office that does not agree with her. Judges, including Nowinski, must adhere to the rules and must give Preckwinkle’s Democratic Party $40,000 to be considered for a judicial position.
Blaming Judge Nowinski is fair game, but why isn’t anyone asking why the GPS program failed? Were police notified by the GPS contactors when the perpetrator went to the home that the Judge ordered him to stay away from? How about recalling the pretrial tool?
While Toni Preckwinkle and some of the County Commissioners applaud themselves for saving the electronic monitoring program, please consider Chief Judge Evans’ moment of candor when he shared with the Commissioners, “This means less security for your neighbors and more taxpayers’ money.”
County leaders: The public deserves better. Victims and witnesses do not trust the criminal justice system and many lives are in danger.
