West Cook News

State Sen. John Curran (R-Lemont) is pushing House Bill 4176 as a tool to give law enforcement the kind of support they need in maximizing their effectiveness.

“As you’ve heard this morning from our law enforcement officials, it appears and there's great concern that the state’s attorney is applying a heightened standard for charging decisions,” Curran said at a press conference earlier this month addressing the issue. “House Bill 4176 is a proposal that is an attempt to address the concerns of our law enforcement officials. Those officials are on the front line in providing safety and order in their communities and they’re being let down as they pursue those charges.”

With House Minority Leader Jim Durkin (R-Burr Ridge) as one of the chief sponsors, HB 4176 seeks to amend the Counties Code to stipulate that in a criminal investigation in counties in excess of 3,000,000 people, a law enforcement agency in the jurisdiction of the alleged crime would have the authority to override a state’s attorney’s decision not to file felony charges or designate the case as a continuing investigation if the evidence supporting such a course of action is clear and convincing and the case is filed with the clerk of the circuit court.

The measure further establishes if the court determines that a law enforcement agency's decision to override is based on sound reasoning, “the State's Attorney must proceed with a preliminary examination or seek an indictment by grand jury within 30 days from the date the suspect is taken into custody."

“This will give those officials a process to pursue charges when they believe the State's Attorney's applying a heightened standard,” Curran said. “At the charging phase, the standard is not nor should it be beyond a reasonable doubt. Clear and convincing evidence, supporting a criminal charge is the appropriate standard. This proposal gives those law enforcement officials when they meet that standard another opportunity for review on that standard. This measure brings accountability to the criminal charging process in Cook County and further the public database that will be created through this measure also brings transparency to the public at large.”

A recent Chicago Tribune analysis concluded that overall the number of felony cases charges under Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx have dropped since she replaced former State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, including for such serious offenses as murder, attacks on police officers and sex crimes.

More specifically, data shows over the last three years Foxx’s office moved to drop all charges against 29.9% of felony defendants, compared to a rate by Alvarez of just 19.4% during the final three years of her tenure. In all, a total of 25,183 people had their felony cases dismissed under Foxx through November 2019, up from 18,694 for a similar period under Alvarez.

Foxx was ushered into office on the strength of a reform-minded platform that included a pledge to reduce the population of Cook County Jail. While not disputing many of the details outlined in the Tribune report, Foxx argues the numbers give an incomplete picture of her commitment to keeping the public safe.

“It is always eye-opening to be able to look at our own data and compare it to my predecessor’s past,” she said. “I can’t reconcile what her decision-making was, and how they chose to (dismiss) cases in the past. But I will say that this administration has been clear that our focus would be on violent crime and making sure that our resources and attention would go to addressing violent crime.”