Kendall County Times

State Rep. David Welter (R-Morris) hopes Democrats in Springfield have finally come to see what sees in addressing the state’s rising crime rate.

“Today, we are hearing that the minority party is looking to pass some updates to the SAFE (Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today) Act that we passed about a year ago at this time,” Welter said in a recent video posted to Facebook. “If you’re familiar with that, the SAFE Act is what I like to name as the ‘Criminal Bill of Rights.’ It’s one of the most progressive and far-reaching bills to come through any state in the entire country that has to do with criminal justice.”

Welter condemns the measure as being all wrong for Illinois. He says it ties the hands of law enforcement, making the job of keeping communities safe more difficult. He points to the way the city of Chicago suffered through a historic year of violence in 2021 and kicked off the new year with at least 31 people being shot and six killed over the first weekend of 2022.

“As they passed this bill in the last minute, the last hour, last year during the previous General Assembly there were a lot of errors in the bill,” he said. “A lot of maybe unintended things made it into the bill, and now they’re looking to clean up their mess. I can tell you there’s some really bad provisions of this bill that I know I would like to see changed as well.”

Under the provisions of SAFE-T, cash bail would be eliminated by 2023 and some individuals accused of felony offenses would be released before trial as stiffer restrictions would be placed on officers.

With 2021 being recorded as the most violent year in Chicago in a quarter-century, 797 homicides were recorded across the city, according to statistics recently released by the Chicago Police Department. While other cities also saw upticks in homicides, Chicago ended the year with more homicides than any other city in the country, including New York and Los Angeles.

Police Superintendent David Brown recently classified the majority of the killings as stemming from conflicts between rival gangs, adding he is planning to raise the number of detectives probing violent crimes from 1,100 to 1,300 during the first few months of this year along with also recruiting more new officers.

"There will be more officers on the street, not just in patrol cars or behind desks, to interact with all Chicagoans," he said.

Over the first weekend of 2022, 12-year-old Marcell Wilson was among six people killed by gunfire in the city, which also saw another 25 people wounded over that same 72-hour window.

Authorities say the boy was struck by a bullet while sitting on a bed in a home in Englewood on the city’s South Side. He later died at Comer Children’s Hospital.

Illinois Policy Institute President Ted Dabrowski recently charged Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx with mishandling the increase in crime, which has included a rash of robberies and other incidents in the downtown Chicago business district.

“When you start combining this crime issue that we're talking about and start adding that corporations are going to delay their office reopenings, it starts to all add up again," Dabrowski told the Morning Answer. “I think it’s a real issue. I hear people say we don’t go down there anymore. People don’t walk around there anymore. They take an Uber everywhere they’re going. It’s really confusing when you hear (authorities) say how much better they’re doing managing felonies when this new report comes out and says just the opposite.”

With felony crime spiraling out of control, a new report highlights how Foxx and her staff have dismissed more than 25,000 felony cases over her first three years in office, many involving charges of murder and other serious crimes. Since 2016 she has also dismissed all charges against nearly 30 percent of all felony suspects, more than 10 percent greater than predecessor Anita Alvarez.

In a Chicago Tribune interview, Foxx defended her actions as a case of authorities deciding to focus on violent crime.

“I will say that this administration has been clear that our focus would be on violent crime and making sure that our resources and attention would go to addressing violent crime,” she said.