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Straight Talk on Electronic Monitoring at 5:30pm today (Monday) online, RSVP required


Euler

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CWBChicago

CWBChicago said:

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart will participate in an online meeting called “Straight Talk on Electronic Monitoring” at 5:30 p.m. Monday, January 10. Several politicians, including three state legislators who voted in favor of a new law that decriminalized electronic monitoring absences of less than 48 hours, are listed as hosts. They are: Sen. Rob Martwick (10th); Rep. Ann Williams (11th); and Rep. Margaret Croke (12th). Also, Sen. Sara Feigenholtz (6th), who voted in favor of the legislation, will moderate. If you’d like to participate, RSVP here.

 

The CWBChicago article has several stories about monitoring subjects cutting off their monitors and committing more crimes. I'd have to quote the whole article to get all the good parts.

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CWBChicago

CWBChicago said:

One of the biggest take-aways from Monday evening's "Straight Talk on Electronic Monitoring" webinar with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, moderated by State Sen. Sara Feigenholtz (6th), is this: Whoever moderates online webinars controls the questions that are asked.

 

And, so, Feigenholtz didn't ask Dart about the wisdom of allowing people on home confinement to walk away for up to 48 hours at a time without being charged with escape -- that's something she and three other organizers of the Zoom session voted for one year ago. Although Dart did call the law "sort of confounding."

 

Instead, Feigenholtz and Dart seemed to direct a fair amount of attention away from the well-known electronic monitoring (EM) program run by the sheriff's office to a lesser-known home detention system operated by the office of Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans.

...

"It's beyond belief," Dart said later. "I mean, I have no idea. I have literally no idea how many people are on that program. As I say, I vaguely know that they monitor them during just 12-hour windows."

...

The court's monitoring program, called "pretrial monitoring," is designed for situations in which judges want to put a defendant on a curfew rather than on 24-hour home confinement, Evans' office confirmed last year.

...

Bond court judges who impose curfews typically set 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. as the timeframe unless a defendant works, goes to school, or has other responsibilities during those hours. That explains why, as Dart noted, the participants are only monitored 12 hours a day.

...

And, remember, Dart, who currently has 2,600 people on his EM program, said he thought perhaps 1,000 people were on Evans' monitoring system.

 

One year ago, Evans' office had 452, according to information his office provided at the time. ...

...

We wanted to know how many of the program's participants were AWOL or non-compliant. The judge's office couldn't tell us.

...

... The court's officers do not locate or arrest curfew violators because, unlike people on the sheriff's department electronic monitoring program, they are not technically "in custody," Evans' office said.

...

 

So apparently the point of the Zoom quasi-Town Hall was a power grab by Dart and Feigenholtz against Evans. They make Evans look like the good guy.

 

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CWBChicago

CWBChicago said:

...

Rep. Margaret Croke (12th) wants attempted first-degree murder, reckless homicide, aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm or dangerous weapon, armed habitual criminal, and any offense that would require the defendant to register as a sex offender to be excluded from electronic monitoring eligibility. Sen. Sara Feigenholtz (6th) said she would introduce similar legislation in the state senate.

 

Illinois already excludes people who have been convicted of certain serious crimes from being placed on EM in the case after conviction, but no crime is specifically barred from EM before trial. ...

 

If Croke wants to prohibit people accused of serious violent crimes from being released on EM before trial, her current proposal won't do it.

 

Even if Croke does succeed in barring certain defendants from being placed on EM, there's nothing that would stop them from being released without electronic monitoring. We asked Croke, Feignholtz, and House Asst. Majority Leader Jaime Andrade (40th), a co-sponsor of her bill, how releasing defendants in violent cases without EM is better for public safety than releasing them with it. None responded.

...

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  • 3 weeks later...

The political saga that is pre-trial EM of dangerous felons continues.

 

CWBChicago

CWBChicago said:

...

Speaking to a lunch crowd at the Union League Club, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans dropped a mid-speech bombshell.

 

"Not one person who has been charged with murder or even attempted murder has been ordered to electronic monitoring under the sheriff since October of last year," Evans claimed. "So that whole process is changing and I just want you to be well aware of it."

 

Within hours, nearly every major corporate news media outlet in Chicago repeated Evans' claim in their reporting.

...

The sheriff's office EM roster lists about 20 people charged with murder or attempted murder who've been on electronic monitoring for less than 90 days, we said. The specifics of all 20 are not known and some of them may have been on EM for their murder cases previously. But we knew of some first-time post-October releases from our research for a recent series of reports about the EM controversy, we added.

 

A spokesperson for Evans said that we would have to send them a list of all 20 people on the sheriff's office list with their court case numbers to get a response. Instead, we sent them the list, which is available online, and invited them to look the cases up. We also sent along two case numbers of recent first-time EM releases that a researcher happened to come across during other work at the courthouse that day.

 

We didn't hear back.

...

Regardless of the truth, Chief Judge Evans certainly scored political points with his claim about no more accused murderers being placed on electronic monitoring. All of the big news outlets reported his claim without question.

 

Mike Flannery, political editor at Fox Chicago, mentioned it at the beginning of his weekend talk show, "Flannery Fired Up."

 

"It turns out Cook County circuit court judges have apparently been listening to all of those complaints about their releasing on electronic monitoring people accused of murder and attempted murder," Flannery said before playing a video clip of Evans making his claim at the Union League Club.

...

Since 2020, CWBChicago researchers have identified 114 people accused of killing, shooting, or trying to kill or shoot, someone in Chicago while on felony bail. Those cases involve 161 victims, 56 of whom died.

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