Newbond to deter gun crime backfires

Chicago doubles amount, but more are leaving jail, report finds

CHICAGO — Since Chicago’s violence rate began to spike in 2012, Cook County judges have doubled the amount of bond set for people charged with felony gun crimes.

If judges hoped the increase would keep armed gang members off the streets until their cases were decided, that did not happen.

Despite increasingly high bonds, the opposite has happened — the same group of those charged with gun crimes is getting out of jail more than twice as fast as they were four years ago, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis of jail data of arrests and bonds.

At the same time, the Chicago Police Department is making fewer gun arrests and recovering fewer guns. From 2012 through the end of last year, the number of guns recovered fell by 33 percent and the number of arrests dropped by nearly 9 percent overall despite a recent uptick, according to department figures.

The result, police leaders acknowledge, is a revolving door in the criminal justice system for those who potentially pose the greatest threat to public safety. And it is coming as city leaders have come under pressure to stem the violence, including a tweet from President Donald Trump this month that he would “send in the Feds!” if police don’t get the violence under control.

It’s all the more confounding because Mayor Rahm Emanuel and successive police superintendents have made increasingly strident calls for judges to be tougher on gun cases to keep violent criminals behind bars.

Judges have indeed become tougher in setting bonds for a felony gun cases, which have seen bonds double from $25,000 in 2012 to $50,000 last year. But to get out of jail, typically only 10 percent of that is paid.

Police are just bringing fewer people to court.

To some criminal justice experts, the revolving door is part of the significant fallout from the police misconduct scandal that has consumed the department since the end of 2014. The police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, which led to a murder charge against an officer and a wave of discipline against other officers, spurred a civil rights investigation by the Justice Department.

At the same time, it also has resulted in a high level of anxiety among officers battling the city’s ultra-violent gangs. Rank-and-file officers acknowledge that they have retreated, making fewer arrests and often staying out of the way of gangs on the street.

That means gang leaders who control drug profits have fewer demands on their money because fewer of their foot soldiers are being locked up and they are seeing less interference from police in the drug trade, said Frank Himel, a criminal defense lawyer.

In the end, there’s plenty of money to go around when gang members need to make bond.

“Drug dealers are flush with cash right now,” Himel said. Gang leaders who control drug corners, he added, are not having “to bond out multiple people at a time, and fewer guys are getting arrested.”