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| solid, standup people |
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| in over her head |
By Mitch Dudek
@mitchdudek | email
The abrupt end of the Jussie Smollett prosecution was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for a group of suburban police chiefs set to gather Thursday afternoon with members of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police to announce a “no confidence” vote in the leadership of Cook County State’s
Attorney Kim Foxx.
Duane Mellema, head of the North Suburban Association of Chiefs of Police representing more than 30 departments — said a no-confidence vote taken Tuesday was unanimous.
In a letter sent to Foxx, Mellema, who is police chief in Park Ridge, expressed concern over prosecutors’ refusal to file felony charges in certain crimes.
“The abrupt dropping of the 16 indictments against “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett during an unannounced court hearing on March 26, 2019, is the latest and most egregious example of the failure by you and your staff to hold offenders accountable,” Mellema states in the letter.
Mellema said representatives from two other chiefs of police organizations representing the south and west suburbs join him at a news conference at 2:30 p.m. at the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police headquarters on West Washington Street in the West Loop.
A spokesman for the Chicago police union declined to comment.
Harvey Police Chief Gregory Thomas pushed back against the no-confidence sentiment expressed by his counterparts, including other members of the South Suburban Association of Chiefs of Police.
“I can only speak for myself, but my message is simply that while I respect my colleagues who’ve signed and issued a letter of no confidence, I think at this time that letter is premature,” Thomas said.
“As police we carry investigations as far as we can and once we turn them over to the state’s attorney we don’t have a say so in the outcome … whether or not we agree with it,” he said. “And that was the standard long before Foxx, so I question the timing here.”
Mellema said the Smollett case is emblematic of decisions not to prosecute in other cases that have left police officers and victims scratching their heads.
“Our officers must explain your decisions not to prosecute to our local victims,” he states in the letter.
One of the biggest problems for the police chiefs is squaring how arrests for certain crimes that are on the books in Illinois — such as marijuana and shoplifting — do not result in prosecutions by Foxx’s office.
“It’s a problem knowing we’re not all working together to pull the rope and these policies are unilaterally put in place by her office,” Mellema said in a phone conversation Thursday morning.
“The Smollett case, metaphorically, is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
She is refusing to resign.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't they have done this a long time ago with the Cook County States Attorneys office period????
ReplyDeleteThe filing by Saani Mohammed, who until recently was an assistant state’s attorney in Foxx’s office, marked the first formal request that a special prosecutor be appointed since the bombshell decision last week to drop all charges against Smollett.
ReplyDeleteSaying Foxx’s handling of the case was “plagued with irregularity,” Mohammed’s 10-page petition asked that presiding Criminal Court Judge Leroy Martin Jr. appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether Foxx “acted to impede the investigation … concealed evidence, and/or intentionally misled the public.”
So what we have is the heater case being the way the heater case was handled.
DeleteWas this picture taken at 115 bourbon street?
ReplyDeleteWhere's the Cook County Sheriff's Police Department Chief(s)?
ReplyDeleteOh, wait,.... Thats right, it didn't concern dog training, gardening, low/no bond, pizza,lost EM guests of his, saving puppies & whores or any other of his far fetched camera pr photo ops, or wife beatings.
Dart would never let his puppet pooches upset the cart and take part in anything that would make sense.
And Dart has an op-ed piece in the Tribune about solitary confinement. It only took til the second paragraph until he talks in terms of the 'jail I run" and later in the article he repeats the dig me line 'my jail' while talking about the damaging effect of solitary confinement on inmates. He doesn't talk much about the mismanagement of the jail, including short staffing of correction officers or the unaccounted for numbers of inmates on electronic monitoring he's set loose on our communities. Sorry Tom, you're just an egotistical asshole who'd be better off if Prickwangle put the "public guardian" job title back in the county budget. You couldn't find your ass with both hands in your back pockets.
Delete"solid, standup people"
ReplyDeleteNo, not really.