Page 35 - October 2019 FOP

SPECIAL REPORT: HOLDING THE PROSECUTOR ACCOUNTABLE
Who’s Accountable?
Not the prosecutors.
But after a meeting with the DOJ, Chicago Lodge 7 is working with the National FOP to change that.
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
Readers of “The Watch,” Chicago Lodge 7’s cutting-edge and trend-setting blog, know all too well the pain and suffering that has come from the judicial system’s growing failure to enforce the law by letting repeat offenders back on the street. Page 9 of this issue of Chicago Lodge 7 Magazine details further evidence of this practice, a case in which two men charged with a host of felonies and attempted murder of a police officer freed and ultimately were involved in an incident that ended with three women being seriously injured.
Chicago Police Officers know it all too painfully well. How of- ten do they see repeat offenders on the street who have been re- leased as a result of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s re- storative justice platform? Every day? Didn’t one of these thugs kill Commander Paul Bauer in February 2018?
Tragically – and inexplicably – the problem of holding state’s attorneys, district attorneys and prosecutors accountable for their decisions to not enforce the law has become an epidem- ic that has inflicted pain on countless victims across the U.S. In fact, in Philadelphia it has become so bad that FOP Lodge 5 posted billboards along Interstate 95 with the messages, “Enough is Enough” and “Help Wanted New Philadelphia Dis- trict Attorney. Please contact Philadelphia FOP Lodge #5.”
Enough has become enough for the FOP, so much so that Na- tional President Pat Yoes convened a think tank of Lodge pres- idents most affected by this growing gap in the criminal justice system to demand help from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Lodge 7 President Kevin Graham joined this alliance for
the Oct. 1 meeting at an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C.
“I would characterize the meeting as very productive,” Gra- ham reported. “We identified the problems and we did get some recognition from the DOJ about how it’s contributing to violent crime. We came up with some ideas, and we have a plan to go after these prosecutors.”
Yoes offered context to the problem by referencing the “Bro- ken Windows” theory. The analogy, he explained, uses an aban- doned factory where somebody throws a rock and breaks a win- dow. Before long, all the windows are broken.
As he elaborated in an article in the National FOP Journal, in San Francisco, Proposition 47 severely reduced penalties for property crimes. Since then, the city has seen a dramatic in- crease in property crime rates. He also noted Foxx’s dropping charges against Jussie Smollett for his infamous staged attack that he claimed was a hate crime as an egregious, if not illustri- ous, example of a prosecutor failing to prosecute.
“There’s a growing trend across the country of prosecutors and the judiciary system declining to enforce laws and releasing people back on to the street who are committing murder and other violent crimes,” Yoes added. “These crimes wouldn’t take place if they would just do their jobs.”
Graham saw how the problem hit home recently. He de- scribed an incident where three people were in the process of a carjacking when they got into it with a Lodge 7 member. Two of them took off, but the one who was apprehended was let go.
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