Kendall County Times

State Rep. David Welter  (R-Morris) argues desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Crime is rising in Illinois, police officers are under attack and Democrat policies are making our state less safe,” Welter recently posted on Facebook. “It’s time to show the men and women of law enforcement that we have their backs and repeal the SAFE-T Act in Illinois.”

Welter is urging residents to sign a petition calling for the repeal.

Welter argues the bill he calls the “Criminal Bill of Rights” ties the hands of law enforcement and makes their job of keeping neighborhoods safe even more difficult. As evidence he points to the way murders, carjackings and retails thefts are all up across the state since the bill took effect. He said at least 31 people were shot over the first weekend of the new year, with six of the shootings being fatal.

“We are back for our first legislative day of this new session,” Welter said in a recent video posted to Facebook. “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. 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. A lot of maybe unintended things made it into the bill, and now they’re looking to clean up their mess.”

Among other things, SAFE-T does away with the cash bail system for nonviolent offenders and allows for some individuals accused of felony offenses to be released before trial, all while putting stricter restrictions on officers across the state.

Chicago saw 797 murders in 2021, easily the city’s most violent year in a quarter-century, according to statistics recently released by the Chicago Police Department. While other cities also saw higher numbers in homicides, Chicago ended the year with more killings than any other city in the country, including New York and Los Angeles.

In a recent interview with ABC News, Police Superintendent David Brown said most of the killings stem from conflicts between rival gangs. He said the department is now finalizing a plan that will see the number of detectives probing such violence rise from 1,100 to 1,300 over the first few months of the year as the department also works to recruit 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

Illinois Policy Institute President Ted Dabrowski recently charged Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx with mishandling the crime surge, 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 on the rise, a new report details how Foxx and her staff have dismissed more than 25,000 felony cases – including many involving charges of murder and other serious crimes – over her first three years in office. Reports say since 2016 she has dismissed all charges against nearly 30 percent of all felony suspects, more than 10 percent greater than predecessor Anita Alvarez.

Foxx has continued to defend her record, recently telling the Chicago Tribune her office has made the decision 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.