By John Ruberry
The political conversation in Illinois has turned to “The Scream.” In one of the most powerful, and yes, disturbing political ads ever aired, there is no dialogue other than a woman screaming as three thugs run from a car to mug her.
The ad, which is funded by the People Who Play By The Rules PAC, has been pulled from b some television stations. Like many Chicago area residents, I viewed it a week ago, during the Chicago Bears-San Francisco 49ers game on the Fox broadcast network. The ad, using video footage obtained by CWBChicago opens with this caption, “On a Sunday afternoon in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.” It ends with, “Pritzker. Lightfoot. How much worse does it have to get.” Lori Lightfoot is Chicago’s inept mayor, who takes any attack on her, even on COVID-19, and turns it into a racial issue. J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire and Illinois’ governor, is a bit more polished than Lightfoot, but he labeled the ad racist too. Both politicians are Democrats.
The 45-year-old woman was robbed of her fanny pack, keys, wallet, and phone. While the 32nd Ward of Chicago, where the attack occurred just two Sundays ago, is predominately white, it’s difficult to determine the victim’s race, as is the case of the attackers, they wore hoods and masks.
Crime has skyrocketed in Chicago since 2019, the year both Pritzker and Lightfoot were sworn into office. Pritzker is running for a second term, and possibly, assuming he wins in November, for president in 2024. Lightfoot is running for reelection too, the first round of voting takes place in late February.
Kim Foxx is Cook County’s State’s Attorney. A Democrat, her campaigns have been funded by ultra-leftist billionaire George Soros. She’s a catch-and-release “prosecutor” of the vein of Los Angeles County’s George Gascon and since-ousted San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin. Foxx, best known internationally as Jussie Smollett’s protector, is a member of the rival leftist camp of Cook County Board headed by president Toni Preckwinkle, who was Lightfoot’s runoff opponent in 2019. Despite Foxx’s numerous failures, Lightfoot endorsed Foxx in the Democratic primary in 2020.
Going back to the ad, “How much worse does it have to get?” Barring changes to the absurdly misnamed Illinois SAFE-T Act, things will get much worse here. Cash bail will be eliminated in Illinois. The Prairie State has 102 counties and of course 102 prosecutors. Of those, 100 oppose the SAFE-T Act. Of course Foxx is one of those two backers of it. While signed into law early last year, Pritzker and Illinois Democratic legislators smelled a pile of you-know-what, so they wrote into the legislation that the law won’t take effect until January 1, 2023, nearly two months after the gubernatorial and General Assembly elections.
One of the most prominent opponents of the SAFE-T Act is a Democrat, James Glasgow, the state’s attorney of Will County.
This weekend on Fox Chicago’s Flannery Fired Up, Glasgow told the host, Mike Flannery, “There are forcible felonies that are not detainable.” He then fires those crimes off, “Burglary, robbery, arson, kidnapping, second degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, [and] drug offenses.”
“Mike,” Glasgow continued, “if I showed up with dump truck full of Fentanyl–enough to kill everyone in the United States of America and I got caught under this new law, I would be processed and released. I could not be detained for a day.”
Flannery mentioned those who say Glasgow is wrong. “[I] just explained it to you,” the prosecutor replied. “Those crimes] are not listed in the detainable offenses. If it’s not listed in the detainable offenses–you can not detain.”
Beyond deeming objections to the SAFE-T Act racist, the media wing of the Democrat Party has also struck back by means of a fact-check, at Snopes, where Nur Ibrahim deemed such criticism as “Mostly False.” No, Ibrahim is mostly false in my opinion about his misleading fact-check–he should have reached out to Glasgow. Yes, there is a reason that Dan Bongino has a regular segment on his radio show and podcast, “Fact-Check Clown Show.”
Barring veto session amendments to the “Unsafety Act,” the rampant criminality of Chicago will spread statewide. If you live outside of Cook County and you want to see what you are facing in 2023, read CWBChicago every day, as I do. The site is filled with stories about accused criminals being released on no little bail, or placed on electronic monitoring, then committing more crimes, including car jackings, rapes, and murders.
Here are some headlines from this month at CWB Chicago:
18-time felon tells authorities his electronic monitoring bracelet got cut by CTA train tracks
#36: Driver exchanged shots with gunman in another car while on felony bail, prosecutors say
What do those numbers mean? It is part of CWBChicago’s “coverage of individuals accused of killing, shooting, or trying to kill or shoot others while on bond for a pending felony case. CWBChicago began our series of reports in November 2019 after Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans publicly stated, ‘we haven’t had any horrible incidents occur’ under the court’s bond reform initiative.” Don’t forget, soon there will be no cash bond in Illinois, pending changes in the SAFE-T Act, beginning in 2023.
What to do? Even if you don’t live in Illinois–your state may be next to eliminate cash bail–Glasgow has some advice for you. “It is absolutely critical that we get this message out,” he warns, “or public safety will be damaged more than we can ever imagine.”
And if the SAFE-T Act remains in place? John Kass, in his most recent Chicago Way podcast, recalled this advice from a former confidante of the first Mayor Daley, who said these words to the former Chicago Tribune columnist after Kim Foxx was reelected in 2020, “The message is get the (bleep) out,” A relative of mine lives in Chicago’s 32nd Ward, blocks away from “The Scream” attack and also blocks away from where a culinary student was shot three times after being robbed of his cell phone. He’s planning his Chicago exit after living there for over two decades.
John Ruberry lives in suburban Cook County and he regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
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