Chicago has always been a tough town. Tough on cops, tough on criminals.
But in the past decade that’s been flipped upside down with progressive politicians’ often “stupid” ideas and soft-on crime policies making the Windy City increasingly violent.
Now, a fed-up Chicago prosecutor named Jason Poje has thrown in the towel — and he’s letting the world know about it with a scathing letter sent to 85 colleagues.
Poje had been a prosecutor with the Cook County State Attorney’s Office run by controversial Kim Foxx.
She was the prosecutor who bent over backwards to protect ding dong Empire star Jussie Smollett from being prosecuted for reporting a bogus racist beatdown.
“The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster,” wrote Poje, Fox News reported.
“And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that has the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.”
He slammed bond reform that has seen a slew of violent criminals go through the revolving door, only to kill.
“Bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders, the malicious and unnecessary prosecution of law enforcement officers, the overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books after being passed by our legislature and signed by a governor, all of the so-called reforms have had a direct negative impact, with consequences that will last for a generation,” Poje said.
While he didn’t mention Foxx in his screed, there’s little doubt he was laying a lot of the disaster at her feet.
“I’ve been through enough stupid State’s Attorney policies before. But this Office’s complete failure to even think for a moment before rushing into one popular political agenda after another has put my family directly in harm’s way,” he wrote.
“The unavoidable consequences are what we are witnessing in real-time, an increase in crime of all kinds, businesses and families pulling up the stakes, and the bodies piling up; the whole time with a State’s Attorney who insists there is nothing to see here, and if there is, it must be someone else’s fault.”
Like many large American cities, Chicago embraced a progressive slate of candidates for politicians and prosecutors. A cornerstone of this coterie was easy bail, diminished charges and now, outrage at an exploding homicide rate.
“When both sides vigorously defend their positions, a balance is reached between protecting rights while preserving some sort of order and safety. Once we start doing too much of the defence’s job, once we pull our punches, once we decide it’s worth risking citizens’ lives to have a little social experiment, that balance is lost,” Poje said in his letter.
He added that the sound of gunfire is common in once-quiet suburban neighbourhoods.
The veteran prosecutor said he is now moving his family, including a five-year-old son out of Illinois because it’s too dangerous.
“I will not raise my son here,” he wrote. “I am fortunate to have the means to escape, so my entire family is leaving the State of Illinois.
“I grew up here, my family and friends are here, and yet my own employer has turned it into a place from which I am no longer proud to be, and in which my son is not safe.”
Source : Toronto Sun