PRECKWINKLE BASHES TOP COP’S ‘NARRATIVE’
An angry Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has sent a letter to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, seeking to discredit a “false narrative” she says Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson is promoting that portrays the county’s bail reform efforts as “the root cause for gun violence.”
The city’s top cop and the Fraternal Order of Police have “promulgated” a narrative that pins the violence in the city on the county, “county judges, county prosecutors — and their failure to do their job and that’s simply not true,” Preckwinkle told the Chicago Sun-Times.
“It’s a false narrative, and they know it, and it’s infuriating,” she said.
Preckwinkle accused Johnson of finger-pointing to evade the real root of the city’s crime problem, his department’s “clearance rate for homicides . . . one of the lowest in the nation.”
In the letter she sent to her former rival in the mayoral race on Tuesday, Preckwinkle invited Lightfoot to participate “in a more substantive way” in the county’s own anti-violence efforts.
“We have an opportunity to leverage our combined resources and expertise to develop strategic solutions to reduce gun violence,” part of Preckwinkle’s letter, which was obtained by the Chicago SunTimes, reads. “However, I am concerned that the false narrative being put forward by Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson places significant blame on Cook County’s reformed bail system as the root cause for gun violence. We both know this is simply not true.”
Lightfoot and Preckwinkle met last week, and though the board president alerted the mayor of her concerns, she did not tell her about the impending letter.
The mayor’s office wasn’t immediately available for comment on Wednesday.
During Lightfoot’s “Accountability Monday” press conference on the Monday after the Fourth of July weekend, both the mayor and the police superintendent pointed to repeat gun offenders for the violence that left 66 wounded and six dead.
“We can’t keep our community safe if people just keep cycling through the system, because what that says to them is, ‘I can do whatever I want. I can carry whatever I want. I can shoot up a crowd, and I’m going to be back on the street.’ How does that make sense?” the mayor said last Monday.
Johnson said many of the offenders were familiar to the police department, saying, “we keep arresting them over and over again.”
But Preckwinkle sought to debunk the idea that the county’s justice reform efforts were to blame for city gun violence.
“Gun violence was at its highest in 2016 but since then, as we instituted bail reform, the homicide rate and shootings have dropped substantially,” she writes in her letter. Of those who are arrested and who do enter the criminal court system, a recent report by the office of the chief judge found that during an 18-month period that ended on March 31, only 0.6% of defendants who were released on bond were charged with a new violent offense, Preckwinkle writes.
The problem, Preckwinkle says, is not what happens when violent criminals come before judges, “but rather what happens when violent criminals are never brought before a judge.”
“Chicago’s clearance rate for homicides continues to remain one of the lowest in the nation,” the letter says.
When she was running for mayor, Preckwinkle didn’t hide that she would’ve replaced Johnson. She hasn’t changed her mind.
“What I said then, and what I believe, is that you can’t solve problems you don’t acknowledge, and you can’t pretend that you’re addressing your problems by pointing your finger at somebody else,” Preckwinkle told the Sun-Times on Wednesday.
Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the police department, said he hadn’t seen the letter, but we “fully support criminal justice reform that focuses on treatment and support for nonviolent offenders. When it comes to violent individuals and those who carry and use guns in our community, it’s up to the people of Cook County to decide how our criminal justice system should treat those who fuel gun violence.
“We as the police will not editorialize this issue but simply try to be more transparent and present data so the people of Chicago can make their own conclusions.”