ICYMI — CHICAGO TRIBUNE EDITORIAL BOARD: “EILEEN O’NEILL BURKE IS A MARVEL SO FAR AS STATE’S ATTORNEY. HER OFFICE NEEDS MORE RESOURCES.”
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CHICAGO — Over the weekend, the Chicago Tribune editorial board looked at State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s first six months in office, concluding she “has wasted no time beginning to whip the office into shape,” while citing a critical need for additional resources in order to continue improving the office after “years of diminishment.”
The entire editorial can be read HERE.
Selected excerpts:
- “She has wasted no time beginning to whip the nation’s [second]-largest district attorney’s office into shape after years of diminishment. Recruiting new prosecutors has gone so well that the office has surpassed its salary allocation, she told us.”
- “Women aren’t being adequately protected from the men in their lives who abuse them. Under…Burke, prosecutors already are making some progress on this front. The rate at which Cook County judges now are detaining those accused of domestic violence while they await trial has increased to 81% from around 50% before she took office, she told us.”
- O’Neill Burke pledged during her campaign to seek pretrial detention for anyone caught with an assault weapon, and that includes handguns with contraptions converting them to automatic firearms. She’s been true to her word.”
- “Cook County is virtually the only major urban local prosecution office in the nation without [an internal forensics unit]. In this day and age, DNA analysis, drug content analysis and of course fingerprint analysis are integral components of most felony cases…. An effective forensics team needs to be established as soon as possible.”
- “The state’s attorney’s office, which has a current-year budget of $187 million, badly needs a bona fide case-management system, and that will cost millions. Money well spent, we say, because the public would have access to this important information, and the office itself could make better decisions about resource allocation and — critically — move criminal cases through the process much faster than the current woefully slow pace of prosecutions.”
- “There’s no statistic that definitively captures the deterrent effect of believing consequences will be severe for violating gun laws, and Burke doesn’t toot her own horn like other local politicians when it comes to the current improving crime stats. But she deserves her share of the credit. Now Cook County should get her what she needs to be even more effective.”
The editorial comes on the heels of a Transition Report issued last week that reflects a diverse cross-section of perspectives from more than 50 safety experts, criminal justice partners and community stakeholders who worked in nine distinct subcommittees. Alderman Pat. Dowell, who represents Chicago’s 3rd Ward, Anthony Driver, president of Chicago’s Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, and Arne Duncan, managing partner and co-founder of Chicago CRED, oversaw the process as Transition Committee Co-Chairs.