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Illinois will officially become the first state to abolish cash bail in September, following months of legal action from opponents of the law who say it will make residents and law enforcement less safe.
The Illinois Supreme Court ruled last week that the abolition of cash bail did not violate the state constitution, allowing the law to proceed and take effect Sept. 18. Under the new regulations, judges will not require suspects charged with crimes to post bail to leave prison pending trial. Suspects deemed a threat to the public or those likely to flee may still be required to remain in prison.
Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker celebrated the state Supreme Court ruling after years of arguing that abolishing cash bail is a step toward “dismantling the systemic racism that plagues our communities.”
“In this terrible year, in the midst of a relentless viral pandemic that disproportionately hurt black people and brown people, lawmakers struggled to address the pandemic of systemic racism in the wake of nationwide protests,” Pritzker said in a 2021 press release.
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Gov. JB Pritzker greets voters as he campaigns in Bellwood, Illinois, on Nov. 1, 2022. (Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital spoke to the former police chief of Riverside, a suburban village in Cook County about 12 miles from Chicago, who raised the alarm that the law will make residents and law enforcement more vulnerable to crime, while activists and politicians who supported the move “overdramatized” the rationale for it.
“They came up with the theory that … the justice system, especially in Cook County, was unfair,” retired Riverside police chief Tom Weitzel told Fox News Digital in a telephone interview after the state Supreme Court ruling. “There were different levels of justice and if you were black or Hispanic… you somehow got a different level of justice, especially when it came to bond court.
“And then there were lawyers who just didn’t think you should be taken into custody on bail because your case hadn’t been tried yet, that you weren’t found guilty,” he added.
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Weitzel said bail was put in place to “make sure you get to justice in the future,” and that local leaders and activists “sort of hijacked that and made the public think, ‘Oh, you know, we shouldn’t be taking people into custody at all if they haven’t been found guilty or pleaded guilty.'”
He added that the reasoning that cash bail unfairly targeted minority suspects was “overdramatized” to the public.
Retired Riverside, Illinois, Chief of Police Tom Weitzel. (Tom Weitzel)
“Defendants of misdemeanor cases have never been taken into custody. That is a complete lie. Some of the minor felonies in Illinois, the class four felonies, drug charges…they were rarely held in custody. Most of them are electronically monitored or have very low bond,” Weitzel said.
He added that on any given day in the Cook County Jail, most of the suspects are held behind bars for violent crimes such as carjacking, armed robbery, assault and murder.
Weitzel added that he was “appalled” by the state Supreme Court’s ruling, explaining that he thought it would be at least partially overturned.
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The repeal of cash bail, which is part of the 2021 criminal justice reform bill, the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act, was set to take effect Jan. 1 in Illinois, but was met with fierce legal opposition from dozens of state sheriffs and prosecutors who said the law was unconstitutional, diminished public safety and endangered law enforcement. A judge in Kankakee County ruled in December that the law was unconstitutional, but that ruling was overturned last week by the state Supreme Court.
Now sheriffs who spoke to Fox News earlier this month say they are bracing for the fallout from the law, which they labeled “America’s most dangerous law.”
However, the exact effects of the law won’t be known until it actually goes into effect, law enforcement officials have said.
The exterior of the Cook County Jail in Chicago on April 9, 2020. (REUTERS)
“We have 100 people in jail or demanding cash bail. What happens to that? We literally have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of arrest warrants that are assigned bail. What happens to that?” Franklin County Sheriff Kyle Bacon told Fox News this month. “All of these questions exist and, frankly, I’m sitting here and have no idea what the answers are.”
The majority of Illinois residents live in Cook County, which is home to approximately 5 million people and includes the city of Chicago. It’s where such policies come from, according to Weitzel. Now rural and more suburban areas will have to follow the Cook County policy rules, he said.
“You could go to other counties — DuPage County, Will County, further west — and they operate differently and you see that even in the court system. So they would keep people on higher bonds and if they were convicted, they would get harsher sentences from judges in those counties,” Weitzel said.
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Meanwhile, Cook County had “always had a reputation for being extremely lenient and not really supporting law and order to the extent that the rest of the state does.”
The 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis was a watershed moment for Illinois police policy and served as a “launch pad” for a more lenient Cook County policy that would go into effect for all of Illinois, he said.
Fall colors cover the Chicago skyline with Lake Michigan in the foreground in downtown Chicago, United States, October 16, 2022. (Vincent D. Johnson/Xinhua via Getty Images)
“This bond policy, this guarantee policy, all comes from politicians in either Chicago or the greater Cook County area,” Weitzel said.
However, he was clear that not all policies in the SAFE-T Act are bad.
“There are some good things – the police cameras are good, and no police chief has argued about that. There is good training legislation in that… The only thing that is bad and this is this bond,” he said.
Once the law goes into effect, “chaos” is likely to erupt, especially with suburban departments, he said.
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“The city of Chicago is probably getting enough staff to meet whatever the courts are imposing. But you’re going to see a lot of dissatisfaction in the job, and you’re going to see police officers say, ‘why even bother,'” Weitzel said.
Elimination of cash bail in Illinois based on ‘over-dramatization’ continued by city leaders: Former police chief
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