South Cook News

Worth Village senior investigator Nicholas Boynton is voicing his support for a bill designed to help police officers keep violent repeat offenders off the street.

Filed earlier this month by minority House Leader Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Western Spring), House Bill 4176 seeks to amend the Counties Code to stipulate that in a criminal investigation in counties in excess of 3 million people, a law enforcement agency in the jurisdiction of the alleged crime would have the authority to override a State’s Attorney’s decision not to file felony charges or designate the case as a continuing investigation if the evidence supporting such a course of action is clear and convincing and the case is filed with the clerk of the circuit court.

The bill further outlines if the court determines that a law enforcement agency's decision to override is based on sound reasoning, “the State's Attorney must proceed with a preliminary examination or seek an indictment by grand jury within 30 days from the date he or she was taken into custody or, if he or she is not in custody, 60 days from the date he or she was arrested.”

Boynton argues the bill is a needed tool if law enforcement is to have the best chance of being effective.

“It’s become more and more apparent that the list they will give you for continuing investigation may not have an impact on charging or not charging and that's concerning to me because how many times do I have to arrest the same offender?” he asked. “You want to CI a case that I'm working on, when I believe I have clear and convincing evidence that this is the offender, and in some cases a full confession with corroborating evidence. And you're telling me, no CI for XYZ reasons.”

A recent Chicago Tribune analysis concluded that the number of felony case charges under Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx have dropped since she replaced former State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, including for such serious offenses as murder, attacks on police officers and sex crimes.

Data shows over the last three years Foxx’s office dropped all charges against 29.9% of felony defendants, compared to a rate by Alvarez of just 19.4% during the final three years of her tenure. A total of 25,183 people had their felony cases dismissed under Foxx through November 2019, up from 18,694 for a similar period under Alvarez.

“How many times do I have to put that same offender back on the street for things you're directly stating to me may not actually affect my case,” Boynton said. “I think it needs to be almost overhauled to show ... that icing on the top can come in at a later time. It shouldn't affect our ability to charge and get him in front of the court.”

Foxx was swept into office on a reform-minded platform that included a pledge to reduce the population of Cook County Jail. While not disputing many of the findings uncovered in the Tribune report, Foxx said the numbers give an incomplete picture of her commitment to keeping the public safe.

“It is always eye-opening to be able to look at our own data and compare it to my predecessor’s past,” she said. “I can’t reconcile what her decision-making was, and how they chose to (dismiss) cases in the past. But 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.”