Judge faces charge after dropping loaded gun in Chicago courthouse
Judge Joseph Claps kept his sunglasses on as he paced the courthouse lobby, but his suit jacket was off, folded and draped over his prohibited firearm.
He is a friendly guy, at least according to a surveillance video inside Chicago’s Leighton Criminal Courts Building, which shows Claps waving at two women passing by. It was about lunchtime July 3, hours before the holiday.
Then a silver-toned pistol tumbles from a fold in his coat and slides across the polished floor.
There is no audio in the video released by authorities, but the sound undoubtedly makes an impression. The women, one of them a sheriff ’s deputy, pivot toward the metallic clank. Another deputy nearby whips her neck around to see what happened.
And now Claps, 70, an associate judge in Cook County’s circuit court, has been charged with a misdemeanor crime of carrying a firearm in a prohibited place, authorities said.
Claps’ pistol was loaded when he dropped it, Cook County Sheriff ’s Office chief policy officer Cara Smith told the Washington Post on Wednesday.
The judge has a gun owner identification card and a valid concealed carrying license, but that does not supersede the state law banning firearms in such places as courthouses, she said.
Judges, deputies and other courthouse workers come in the building without stepping through metal detectors, she said. Claps was walking toward the court when the incident occurred, an official familiar with the incident said.
Claps did not immediately return a message seeking comment. He was reassigned to “nonjudicial duties” pending a Wednesday meeting of 17 judges of the circuit court, chaired by Chief Judge Timothy Evans, spokesman Pat Milhizer said in a statement. His court date is July 19.