Kim Foxx’s GOP challenger calls her ‘a disaster,’ cites police group’s report
Kim Foxx’s Republican opponent blasted her Thursday, citing a recent report by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund that concluded the top Cook County prosecutor wasn’t effective in convicting criminal suspects.
“She wins less cases, secures less guilty verdicts, dismisses more cases and loses more cases than her predecessor,” Patrick O’Brien said, pointing to how the report compares Foxx to former State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.
O’Brien, a former defense attorney and circuit court judge who is hoping to unseat Foxx on Nov. 3, called her “a disaster for the prosecution of crime in Cook County.”
The report O’Brien used against Foxx included a forward by Edwin Meese, who was attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. Meese is a board member of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a notfor-profit organization that funds defenses of police officers in criminal cases.
The report found that in the jurisdictions of Foxx and five other top prosecutors who ran on reform and progressive platforms, there was an overall 20% increase in dropped or lost felony cases and a 19% decline in guilty verdicts and pleas.
After Foxx took office, there was a 13% decline in guilty pleas or verdicts in felony cases and a 39% increase in dropped or lost cases, the report found.
A 2019 report by the Marshall Project also found that Foxx was dropping more felony cases that Alvarez would have pursued, most notably for shoplifting and drugs, but also found an increase in prosecutions by Foxx’s office for gun offenses.
Foxx’s campaign questioned the report Thursday and said the data used in it has been manipulated for political purposes.