Chicago’s broken, revolving door criminal justice system has led to trouble in paradise between Chicago’s new mayor Lori Lightfoot and her mayoral campaign opponent, County Board Chairwoman Toni Preckwinkle. Meanwhile, as the two powerful women bicker among one another, the bodies continue to pile higher in the Windy City.
John Kass, the well-known Chicago columnist, wrote about the political schism in The Chicago Tribune now that the bickering has become very public.
Here’s the piece from the Tribune:
One big reason Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle are feuding: The broken bond system.
Why can’t Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle just get along and end their feud?
It’s a question being asked by those who are, unfortunately, so tied to their political theory that they drive blind on The Intersectionality Highway.
Both women are Democrats and liberal and African American. And I’m asked as I was on Friday by a nice liberal fellow: Shouldn’t they be able to walk into some sunny meadow, sit on the grass and just settle their differences?
No. Reality doesn’t work that way. Reality has a habit of grabbing political theory by the throat.
And there’s nothing more real for Mayor Lightfoot than dead bodies on the streets of Chicago, mothers and children screaming and residents fleeing her city. That’s what Lightfoot is dealing with.
What is Preckwinkle dealing with? Her politics gone wrong.
The conflict between them is rooted in Preckwinkle’s good intentions paving a road to hell: low bonds for alleged offenders, including some charged with gun crimes, and a broken home electronic monitoring system.
The low bonds and EM programs pushed by Preckwinkle and her protege, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and, to some extent, by Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans, have reduced the population of Cook County Jail, saving an estimated $160 million a year.
And Kass tackles the key aspect of the failed policy for Lightfoot.
Though such policy buys support from social justice warriors of the left, it offers no comfort to the victims of crime and their families, or to potential witnesses intimidated by the release of violent men.
In simpler terms, Lightfoot’s now faces more blowback and criticism from dead victims’ families than she does from the social justice warriors. To say nothing of national embarrassment at political functions and the media.
And Cook County Board head Preckwinkle? Thus far, she has faced almost no political heat for prodding the Cook County Sheriff to empty his jails. After all, fewer inmates in custody means more money for Preckwinkle and her political allies’ other pet programs. Each inmate in the Cook County Jail costs her roughly $85 per person per day.
Put another way, getting that inmate out of jail, for whatever reason, saves $31,000 annually. Multiplied by a thousand inmates, that’s a cool $31 million for the cash-strapped county.
The general in-custody inmate population has declined from about 11,000 per day in 2013 to 5927 as of August 12, 2019.
That’s a lot of extra money for Preckwinkle and her friends to spend elsewhere. But at the same time, that’s about 5000 more criminals out on the city’s streets doing exactly what criminals do.
Kass continues with the obvious:
But eventually, a shooting by someone on home monitoring for another gun charge will involve multiple victims. It will again focus national attention on Chicago’s river of violence.
And Preckwinkle and Foxx, each weakened and seeking reelection, will be asked: Is this your Willie Horton moment?
I’m going to steal that “river of violence” line.
Meanwhile, Murder City USA got its moniker the old-fashioned way: It earned it. In this case it earned it’s shockingly high number of murders through the soft-on-crime liberal criminal justice policies that fail, time and time again, when they’re implemented.
It’s always about the money, and there never seems to be enough to go around for all the free handouts that bring in the vote.
“Chicago’s Political Elites Bicker While The Bodies Pile Higher”
Of course they do, and it ALWAYS someone else’s fault…
Well yeah, it’s a feature not a bug.
Heyjackass is the best and sometimes funniest Chi Raq crime resource.
There’s no fixing Chiraq. The next Detroit.Both gals are convinced they’re right. Fun fact: Both the diminutive bugged-eyed mayor Lightfoot and the giant Preckwinkle have or had white spouses😄Toni P had hubby Zeus…seriously😏
Lori Lightloafers is affectionately named Groot by the locals. Groot is a cartoon character that you need to see to understand.
and baby groot is married to thor. “you thor, mf’r, i can hardly walk!”
So, why does the weekly blood bath in Chicago go unnoticed while the national media chokes us with the continued reporting of anomalous shooting events? Because the socialist Democrats control Chicago where nothing is to be said to besmirch the image of the great workers paradise. It’s hard to enforce laws against the only people left in the city who will vote for you so you have to blame someone, anyone else. Perhaps we can blame roving bands of Norwegian “utes” for the mayhem. After all it’s in there heritage. Or, them damn Indiana Republicans who keep infiltrating the cities’ defenses. Yea, let’s blame the Norwegians.
Yes, isn’t that interesting that the body count in Chicago alone exceeds the recent spate of mass shootings yet gets very little coverage. And that’s just one city, add in St.Louis, Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore and the total is enough to skew the statistics the gun control crowd always point to.
Incarceration obviously isnt a deterrent. How about hard labor? Work seems to be the thing that scares Chicago’s demographic the most.
Of course incarceration is a deterrent. Unfortunately it only lasts as long as the incarceration, and only for the individual incarcerated. The guillotine is a much more permanent deterrent.
Build a wall around it. Dump em all in. Call it a self governing, self policing prison. Done.
“… nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”
😉😉😉
The thing that really bothers me is this. I know for a fact that Mayor Lightfoot is an absolutely brilliant lady by virtually any measure. She was a hugely successful attorney at a premier law firm in the Chi. To get to that level one needs a ton of book smarts, and even more importantly a few tons of street smarts. I assure you, she has both.
When i hear her saying things like, gun control is working, or all the gun violence in the city is the republicans fault, i know deep down, she knows she’s kidding herself. To watch such a brilliant women fall into the trap of Dem talking points, and in her case, make even more bizarre statements, really boggles my mind. I would love to see her use her brilliance and for once, call out the real problems in the city. Sadly, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. This is a mayor who has the smarts to make a difference and really stand out. It’s a bummer to watch her just fall in line with the rest of the Dems here.
The revolving door system of justice for bad guys in Chi, is obviously not working. Every rational thinking person I know understands this. How many more have to suffer before someone actually calls it what it really is??? A very soft and highly ineffective justice system. #SAD
So, if it is not a question of intelligence, then it seems a question of values. She has shown what her values are: get elected, no matter what it takes. Stay in office, no matter what it takes. Doing nothing more than preserving the status quo? That is good; it keeps our voters in slavery and we keep getting re-elected.
It is all about values.
I was thinking more in the lines of her being a good decision maker. She still has time in her term to make things better, but most results won’t be scene for a few years. But it makes you wonder who all is infuencing her to make not-good decisions.
You are kinder and more generous than I.
It is a quality to be admired.
Yeah, no. I can definitely question her intelligence and wisdom given how she is running a craphole even further into the ground. Her ignorance is a choice. Lawyers need not be intelligent to be successful.
Let’s see. She lives in Chicago, votes Dem, runs for Dem office, governs like a Dem, lies like a Dem, and yet, you tell us she’s smart. I say she’s dumb as a rock.
Show me one area in the US that is controlled by the gop that has a higher crime rate than any of the dem controlled areas. Just one.
Socialism is a blood soaked failure.
Chicago is a gun crime sanctuary city.
Run by corrupt criminals who live like Royalty.
For the past, what, 75 years?
No money worries, blacks getting shot by blacks are probably saving the city more money less in welfare costs. However neither one give a shit about there own…..Just what goes into “their” own pockets!
The river of illegal weapons flows into Chicago from States with little or no gun vetting enabling second hand guns to be sold to anyone 24 hours around the clock. When you couple this with a stingy Republican Government that does not give troubled cities enough Federal funds to help run prisons and even renovate old ones as well as hire more police and run more youth programs and retraining programs it puts a lot of pressure on the Mayors of cities to not lock up people who have not had previous criminal records and in some cases let out of prison people who should still be there.
Its a proven fact that when youth programs were tried (most often from private funds that are never enough) that it has made a difference in keeping kids out of gangs and crime but when you have a racist Republican party in control in Congress that regards minority children as expendable and not worth saving it only is a self-fulfilling prophecy so the Republicans can crow to their racist base that they were right all along to save a penny and not do anything about the situation.
Yes the SS Storm Trooper Republican solution is to demonize the poor and promote a higher gun saturation point promoting the idea that if you are white and kill more blacks and other minorities and imprison the survivors at a cost in the billions a new Utopian all white community will now be able to live in a crime free society (ignoring the face that there are poor and rich white criminals too). Hitler said much the same and the world lived happily ever after (sarcasm)
Fool. Without exception all these places are run by socialists. And the whites are not killing blacks. The blacks are killing each other. But of course a devotee of Margaret Sanger, such as yourself, will do anything to enable a black genocide. You’ve proven that before.
So you deflect blame onto the gop, which has no control over these violent, socialist controlled areas while your evil work is done. All the while you proclaim yourself a victim.
And the Chicago Crime Commission estimates there are only 150,000 gang members in Chicago and they probably would all be working as community organizers or volunteering to work for non-profits if it wernt for the Iren River of guns. Everybody knows the gun dealers in low crime states give massive bulk discounts on guns and ammunition to any body who is buying guns for export to Chicago.
is that iren river anywhere near the old wapsipinicon? or were you speaking irenically?
Gotta call BS, Vlad. A gun in one’s hand does not turn a community organizer into a gang banger. This is not the world of Harry Potter where a hunk of metal has magical powers to turn a good guy into a bad guy.
For your logic to be accurate, the crime situation in Indiana, with far less draconian gun laws, should be just as bad. There should be blood in the streets since so many more individuals can purchase and carry guns.
That simply isn’t so. If there are gun stores selling guns to be resold in Chicago, those dealers are breaking the law and should be held accountable. That isn’t what is happening. Guns traced to Indiana are largely stolen, if you look at FBI and ATF data. There is a small amount of straw purchasing, which happens everywhere, including Illinois.
The problem in Chicago is liberal policies that have had a stranglehold for the past 40 years. It is a proof point for Einstein’s definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
The solution isn’t more gun laws. Criminals don’t follow the law (otherwise they wouldn’t be criminals). The solution is to allow the law-abiding to be able to defend themselves so that the honest, hard-working folks in some of those minority neighborhoods can be safer at night and when they go to work.
Ah, so now it is the Fed’s fault. Because GOP. Even though these problems existed before there was a GOP majority in either chamber or a GOP POTUS… Seriously, how much are you getting paid to say crap like this? You have TONS of free time to be so amazingly ignorant and inconsistent.
Federal dollars fed to Chicago end up in the pockets of the rulers, we should become more stingy, not less. And all surrounding areas have less crime, perhaps Chicago should adopt all of their laws, and disband their city government completely. Is that too easy?
If I could just figure out a way to buy stock in a funeral home on the South side I’d be set.
If victims start popping these guys think of the money saved. Just don’t spend the money saving their lives. They live by the sword then die by the sword too.
All this is not rocket science. It’s not the surrounding states, it’s not need for stronger gun control, it’s not the overwhelming majority of law abiding citizens of Chicago…….
It’s what it’s been for decades, poor leaders. Toughen up, man up and let the police and legal system do what they do. ENFORCE the laws !!! Book em DanO !!
Comments are closed.