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Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice responds to Sheriff Dart

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* WGN on a recent suburban “shoot-out” which injured four people…

One of the two men now charged in a shoot-out in the south suburbs was free on electronic monitoring while awaiting trial for murder, WGN Investigates has learned. […]

[Torrey Lewis] was arrested in 2018 and charged in the murder of a paralyzed man in a wheelchair outside a Country Club Hills movie theater the previous year. He was locked-up until Cook County Judge Carl Boyd lowered his bond in 2020 allowing Lewis to be released on electronic monitoring after posting $30,000 bond. Cook County sheriff’s deputies clamped an ankle monitor on Lewis and he left the jail.

“Home monitoring was meant for people with less serious offenses, certainly not attempt murder or murder charges… and I was ignored on that,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told WGN Investigates. Dart said his calls to clamp down on the use of electronic monitoring in violent cases have gone unheard by lawmakers.

Lewis was also able to take advantage of a little-known provision of the SAFE-T Act that went into effect in 2022 that gives people on electronic monitoring more freedom. It’s meant to allow them to take care of basic necessities without being tracked in real-time.

Defendants are still required to wear their ankle bracelets on their two days of free movement; but law enforcement isn’t alerted if they stray from home, work or other pre-approved destinations. […]

“If this person was on home monitoring, being monitored the way we used to monitor people, the second he left his house we would have been alerted and started looking for him,” Dart said. “Say he had ability to go to work that day, the second he wasn’t there, we would’ve been alerted and we would’ve gone after him.”

* Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice…

We are incredibly disappointed to see Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart once again exploiting community safety concerns to spread misinformation about the electronic monitoring provisions of the Pretrial Fairness Act. The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice wants to reduce gun violence and create safe communities for everyone, and the Sheriff’s desperate search for and elevation of outlier cases does not help us reach that goal. Instead, stories of isolated incidents are designed to change the law governing tens of thousands of people’s rights while awaiting trial — all while avoiding engagement with data that shows the vast majority of people on electronic monitoring return to court and are not rearrested while awaiting trial. These cynical attempts to blame pretrial reforms are only a distraction from evidence-based efforts to reduce gun violence.

The Pretrial Fairness Act requires that people subject to house arrest under electronic monitoring be given permission to leave their homes to take care of basic needs such as buying food and doing laundry. Each electronic monitoring program in the state can choose how to implement that requirement. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office chose to implement this law by allowing each person two, eight-hour periods of time per week to take care of their essential needs. Other programs allow people on EM to simply contact their supervising officer and request permission for individual trips to the grocery store or laundromat.

There is nothing in Illinois law requiring the Sheriff to stop tracking individuals during this time, a fallacy that Sheriff Dart has repeated at a county budget address and during a radio interview. We documented his long history of spreading misinformation in our recent report, Obscuring the Truth: How Misinformation is Skewing the Conversation about Pretrial Justice.

For years, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office denied people on electronic monitoring the ability to contribute to their households, perform life-affirming tasks, and even access healthcare. The electronic monitoring reforms in the Pretrial Fairness Act are intentionally designed to correct that history. Even under the new law, current Sheriff’s Office policy prevents people in apartment buildings from doing laundry or checking their mail in common areas of the building without the kind of movement permission the Sheriff is now attacking.

Since taking effect in 2022, the electronic monitoring provisions of the Pretrial Fairness Act have been incredibly successful. Ensuring people on electronic monitoring are able to go grocery shopping, attend doctor’s appointments, and apply for jobs increases community safety. Removing these provisions would violate basic human rights principles by returning to a system that locked people in their homes with no way to access food or other necessities.

Mr. Lewis’ Case

● Mr. Lewis was originally incarcerated in Cook County Jail on a no-bond order. He was only given a $300,000 D-bond in May 2020, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time period, stakeholders were working together to dramatically reduce the number of people in Cook County Jail to prevent the loss of life and stop the community spread of COVID. Mr. Lewis was considered vulnerable for complications from COVID-19 due to his asthma and psoriasis, a condition impacting the immune system.

● According to public court documents filed by his attorney, Mr. Lewis is being charged with murder because he was allegedly in a car with other people who are accused of shooting someone. There is no evidence that he participated in the shooting in his underlying case, and no identification of him by any witness.

Facts on Pretrial Fairness Provisions

● Nothing in the Pretrial Fairness Act or any other law requires the Cook County Sheriff’s Office not to track people during the time they are on essential movement. Every person on Sheriff’s EM is on a GPS ankle monitor, and those GPS monitors continue to record people’s exact location the entire time they are outside of their home. You can read the provision of the Pretrial Fairness Act that authorizes essential movement at 730 ILCS 5/5-8A-4(A-1).

● Before these reforms were implemented, the lack of movement caused immense harm to people on Cook County Sheriff’s electronic monitoring, as detailed in a report submitted to the Cook County board by CGL Industries and Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts. (See page 47 here for discussion of harms of lack of movement.)

General Information on Pretrial Release

● Between January 2016 and June 2020, 91% of people on electronic monitoring in Chicago were not re-arrested for any crime. Only 1.75% of people were re-arrested for a serious felony (Class 2 or higher). People with the charges highlighted in the story are arrested at an even lower rate: Between September 2017 and September 2018, of the 2,811 people were released (EM or not) with these charges, only 1% — 29 people — were rearrested for a violent felony.

● The WGN story drew attention to the fact that 708 people on Sheriff’s electronic monitoring are currently accused of attempted murder, murder, armed habitual criminal, possession of a weapon by a felon, or unlawful use of a weapon (“UUW”). By conflating simple gun possession charges with murder, the Sheriff’s Office is artificially inflating these numbers. Most cases of “armed habitual criminal” are accusations that someone possessed — but did not use — a gun without a license and with certain past convictions.

○ In addition, the most common UUW charge is a class 4 felony. Far from being “a serious gun charge,” unlicensed possession of a gun is the least serious class of felony in Illinois law.

● People on electronic monitoring are not disproportionately connected to incidents of gun violence. The University of Chicago Crime Lab found that in 2021, there were just three arrests of individuals on electronic monitoring for allegedly committing a homicide or shootings—out of almost 4,500 homicides and shootings that year.

Have at it.

posted by Isabel Miller
Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 11:50 am

Comments

Dart’s a politician doing what politician’s do - inaccurately spinning a story for his career. Principles by many politicians (especially MAGA GOP ones) take a back seat on a very long bus to self-interest.

Comment by Norseman Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 12:06 pm
–the second he wasn’t there, we would’ve been alerted and we would’ve gone after him.–

You absolutely would not have gone after him. Otherwise your policies would have been monitoring him in real-time.

We are at the point where sheriffs and certain SAs are knowingly sabotaging the system in order to make a point. It’s clear as day, and at some point it’s going to be a dereliction of office. Especially when at least one of them will be dumb enough to also put this purposeful strategy in an email somewhere.

Can a Sheriffs office be determined by a court to be a ‘public nuisance’ under the state specific nuisance laws? Seems strange, but an interesting thought experiment. Maybe it would only lead to a writ of mandamus at best, but it’s better than nothing.

Comment by TheInvisibleMan Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 12:20 pm
With respect to all- Dart isn’t entirely wrong here and he is right in the simple fact that this guy should never have been out on electronic monitoring. That does not seem to be an issue with the SAFE T act and actually is probably an argument in support. The court and SA’s office messed this one up. But the guy should never have been released.

I don’t know that this is the hill the Illinois Network folks want to choose for their battle.

Comment by JS Mill Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 12:25 pm
=== There is nothing in Illinois law requiring the Sheriff to stop tracking individuals during this time, a fallacy that Sheriff Dart has repeated===

=== Nothing in the Pretrial Fairness Act or any other law requires the Cook County Sheriff’s Office not to track people during the time they are on essential movement ===

Normally, I would suggest that this seems a case of Sheriff Dart attempting to cover his mistake. However, in this case, it seems more appropriate to assert that Sheriff Dart through his policy of not tracking people who are a danger and a threat, may well be culpable for creating the circumstances in which people were killed, through Sheriff Dart’s own negligence of the circumstances and the provisions of the law that empowered him to protect the public.

If Sheriff Dart wants to be a law-maker, he should run for that office. But if Sheriff Dart wants to be a law enforcer, he should enforce the laws as written. In this case it appears he did not do so, which lead to the murder of citizens.

Am I reading this wrong? I understand “qualified immunity” and am not going there intentionally. I am move concerned with his failure to enforce the law as written, his decision not to track, etc.

Comment by H-W Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 12:36 pm
PS - I just caught myself. Not murder, but shooting and injuring is the issue. Sorry about that.

Comment by H-W Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 12:37 pm
Wow talk about politicalspinning. They start off minimizing the crime with an asthma and psoriasis defense. Are you kidding me? And only 29 people re arrested? 29 victims whose lives are changed forever. Why not look out for them?

Comment by Spinning Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 12:41 pm
His crime seems appalling and the general facts seem like he should not be release but he could have been held under new law and was not perhaps because he is charged under felony murder
I would be more interested to hear from Dart how many people are missing from his electronic monitoring program and why has costs not gone down in his department finally I would like to know how many shirt tail relatives of tv anchors and reporters does he have on staff and how come Roe Cohn has not stopped carjacking

Comment by DuPage Saint Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 12:54 pm
Cook County’s electronic monitoring was created in the late 80’s, when the jail was under a federal court order to reduce its chronic overcrowding problem. Back then, the sheriff picked which inmates would be released on EM and he typically chose drug offenders and others charged with nonviolent crimes. If someone released on EM committed a new crime, the sheriff “wore the jacket.” He was roundly blamed in the media because he was the one who chose to release the inmate on house arrest and his risk assessment failed when that individual committed a new crime.

Because the jail’s population is less than half of what it used to be, the federal consent decree giving the sheriff authority to release inmates on EM expired (this actually happed a couple years before the SAFE-T Act passed) so the sheriff no longer picks EM participants — the judges do, and they often assign defendants who have been charged with violent crimes. However, the sheriff still administers the program. So when a participant commits a new crime while free on EM, the media still look to the sheriff to assign blame. The media almost never mention the judge who assigned the suspect to EM, let alone chase the judge down to ask questions about why their risk assessment failed. This ticks off the sheriff. So when an “investigative reporter” from one of Chicago’s television news shops does an expose on crimes committed by EM participants, as they invariably do a few times a year, and stick a microphone in the sheriff’s face, he is quick to ensure he’s not the only one wearing the jacket by shifting blame elsewhere. Every Cook County sheriff from now on will do the same thing.

Comment by History lesson Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 1:12 pm
Wise counsel by JSMill. If Dart’s focus was solely on the monitoring issue, he needs to be careful about how he discusses it. Especially to journalists who like to play on the agenda of the Safe-T Act being dangerous to the public.

Comment by Norseman Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 1:16 pm
Nothing Dart said is untrue. Also why is the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice saying there is no evidence tying Torrey Lewis in the 2020 case? If that were the case, he wouldn’t have been charged.

Comment by Chicagonk Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 1:17 pm
== The University of Chicago Crime Lab found that in 2021, there were just three arrests of individuals on electronic monitoring for allegedly committing a homicide or shootings—out of almost 4,500 homicides and shootings that year.==

Hmmm… I think the folks over at CWB blog would disagree with that there “fact.” Three arrests?
https://cwbchicago.com/2024/01/chicago-attempted-murder-charge-on-probation-and-bail.html

Comment by Nope. Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 1:47 pm
Two things I find interesting:

1. Readers can click the link provided by Rich and the INPJ to see what the man’s attorney and to say about the evidence regarding the man’s alleged involvement in a murder as well as the extenuating circumstances

2. WBEZ just ran a story about how Sheriff Dart’s budget did not shrink proportionate with the jail population, and here he is once again arguing that thousands* more people should be in jail

* He never says “thousands” but that would be the end result of adopting the policies he has advocated for.

Comment by Stephanie Kollmann Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 2:13 pm
Only in a 80 percent Democrat city would comments like these be coming forward on the blog. Of course Sheriff Dart’s a public safety official handcuffed by electronic monitoring process handed down to him. Of course he’s frustrated when his warnings go unheeded.

Comment by Here Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 2:49 pm
It is quite likely I read too much into this story, and reached a biased conclusion above. If the Sheriff has no say over when monitoring will be turned off or not monitored, then I was wrong to suggest he is responsible for not monitoring the accused when the crimes occurred. And in any case, I apologize for suggesting culpability. That was just mean-spirited on my part. Sorry Sheriff.

That said, I do stand by my assertion that if the Sheriff wants to interpret the laws of the State or make laws, he should run for that office or serve in a different capacity within the judiciary. Those charged with enforcing laws are independent from those who write and interpret laws for a reason - public safety and due process.

Comment by H-W Thursday, Feb 8, 24 @ 3:29 pm
I’m no fan of EM - when you think about it doesn’t really serve a purpose, making life difficult for those predisposed to not reoffend, and making reoffending easy for those that would.

At the same time - this use of rearrest data as somehow proof that people on EM aren’t committing crimes is incredibly misleading. Look at the low underlying arrest rate. They could be missing many cases. There’s no way to know.

Comment by Read into the data Friday, Feb 9, 24 @ 7:19 am
===They could be missing many cases===

If the police cannot solve a case in which the perpetrator was wearing a geo-tracking device, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Comment by Rich Miller Friday, Feb 9, 24 @ 11:05 am