Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says he warned about shortcomings in electronic monitoring program
Days after new Cook County Chief Judge Charles Beach ordered an urgent review of the county's electronic monitoring program, Sheriff Tom Dart said this crisis isn't new, and that he's been warning lawmakers of problems for years.
Dart said his office once ran a strict program, but changes in state law made the program unsafe and eroded public trust.
"If you're going to put people that have violence in their backgrounds out, you need to have a strict program. You can't just let people just sort of run free," Dart said.
Dart's office ran an electronic monitoring program for decades until ending its program in April, when the chief judge's office – which already had been running its own separate program for 14 years – began overseeing all electronic monitoring in Cook County.
"Apparently, people didn't like how we ran it. They said we were too strict," Dart said.
The program has come under intense scrutiny ever since 50-year-old Lawrence Reed allegedly set 26-year-old Bethany MaGee on fire on a Blue Line train.
MaGee suffered severe burns.
Reed has since been arrested on federal terrorism charges, but at the time of the attack he was on an ankle monitor for an August assault arrest, and had repeatedly violated the terms of his electronic monitoring days beforehand – even twice just hours before he allegedly set MaGee on fire – yet nothing was done to take him off the streets.
"When we had someone violate the rule — they came in late from their job, didn't show up on time – we went and picked them up that day," Dart said.
The system is now run through a complicated process involving multiple agencies.
Dart said once the Illinois law known as the SAFE-T Act came into play, he told lawmakers he couldn't safely run the electronic monitoring program.
The SAFE-T act gives offenders on electronic monitoring two days a week when they are not actively monitored. Their movements are recorded, but no one is watching in real time.
"I'm not going to run a program where I'm basically lying to people, saying everything is great here, they're being watched all the time, when I know I have to shut it off two days a week," Dart said.
The most recent data from November shows 25% of people being monitored were violent offenders, but Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell said there is another story behind the numbers.
"We know that the vast majority of people go on electronic monitoring and succeed. I think the thing that we should be also talking about is what happens when we have a policy where we are doubling and tripling and quadrupling the jail population, because that's what we're talking about, right?" he said.
Dart said he warned state lawmakers not to weaken electronic monitoring rules, and he said the results were predictable.
"When you make these type of changes, it's not good, it's not helpful. You're not watching people, and then if bad things happen, people will be saying, 'I wonder how that happened.' I was like, 'What do you mean? What do you mean? We told you,'" Dart said.
Preliminary results of the electronic monitoring program review ordered by the chief judge are expected at the end of January.
Dart said he's had a conversation with the chief judge and he's ready to help.