Chicago Police Give ‘No Confidence’ Vote to State’s Attorney Who Let Smollett Walk, Demand Her Resignation
Shane Trejo
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The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and a group of suburban police chiefs joined together on Thursday to give a vote of no confidence to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx after her office let Obama-connected actor Jussie Smollett walk with no charges after he lied to police to create a hate hoax.
“People standing around me can give you countless examples of how Ms. Foxx’s lack of prosecution has cost our members and police officers … an enormous amount of problems,” FOP President Kevin Graham said. “Not to mention the fact that the people in Cook County are depending on prosecutors to put people in jail and charge them accordingly.”
Graham joined a group of roughly 30 suburban police leaders in calling on Foxx to resign. She has no plans to do so and continues to deny any wrongdoing despite pulling this miscarriage of justice in broad daylight.
“I was elected by the people of Cook County to pursue community safety, prevent harm, and uphold the values of fairness and equal justice,” Foxx said in a public statement. “I’m proud of my record in doing that, and I plan to do so through the end of my term and, if the people so will it, into the future.”
Graham makes it clear that the Smollett disgrace was far from an isolated incident. It is just another embarrassment coming from a long career of inappropriate conduct from Foxx’s office.
One troubling instance is Foxx’s office dropping murder charges on Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes despite the fact that Foxx’s top assistant at the time believed that the two men brutally stabbed a couple to death in their home in 1998. Graham is also perturbed that those who assault police officers are rarely charged by Foxx.
“We need to have a prosecutor who is going to charge people when they commit a crime,” he said. “If there’s no charges and nobody goes to jail, then obviously the law doesn’t mean anything. … That’s a problem.”
A group of suburban police chiefs from Northern Illinois also addressed their concerns in a sternly-worded letter of denouncement addressed to Foxx.
“It appears your strategy to address non-violent crime in Cook County is to decriminalize or ignore it, regardless of any collateral cost which is born overwhelmingly by individual communities and their police agencies,” they wrote.
They believe Foxx’s unwillingness to prosecute individuals for drug and shop-lifting crimes is hurting the ability of law enforcement to do their job adequately.
“These decisions add to the continuing resource burden on police agencies,” the letter said. “We continue, as we are required, to investigate and make arrests for these offenses for which accountability and deterrence are greatly diminished.”
“Our officers must explain your decisions not to prosecute to our local victims,” the letter coldly stated.
Foxx’s office decided to drop all charges against Jussie Smollett after Foxx exchanged some texts with former Obama bundler Tina Tchen. The rule of law is all but dead in Chicago, and it is the Democratic leadership and their voting base who is to blame.
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