Posts Tagged ‘safe-t act’

Droogs’ paradise: Rough first week for the “Purge Law” in Illinois

Posted: September 24, 2023 by John Ruberry in News/opinion, opinion/news
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By John Ruberry

A legal challenge, struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court, delayed the start of Illinois’ ludicrously misnamed SAFE-T Act, but it finally went into effect last Monday. 

The SAFE-T Act’s opponents refer to it as the “Purge Law,” a reference to the movie about a generally peaceful dystopian society, except for an annual 12-hour period where all crimes, including murder, are legal. The SAFE-T Act abolishes cash bail. Accused criminals are either set free after their arrest to await trial. Or they are locked up with no bail. The latter category is reserved for the most heinous criminals, as well as flight risks, and those who are suspected of being likely to intimidate witnesses, and the like.

Most accused criminals in Illinois, public safety be damned, will walk free, albeit some while wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, which, in case you didn’t know, are very easy to remove.

Of course, without cash bail, which often is paid for by a friend or relative, accused criminals can be expected to be more likely to skip out of town and blow off their trial dates.

Welcome to Illinois, the criminal paradise, where Alex and his “Droogs” of A Clockwork Orange fame, will feel at home.

Here are some of the lowlights of the first week of “the Purge.”

One of the first accused thugs arrested and set free pretrial was a woman raising hell during an unofficial, and at times disruptive, Mexican Independence Day automobile caravan celebration in downtown Chicago. Esmerelda Aguilar of suburban Cicero allegedly attacked four Chicago police officers with pepper spray. Prosecutors didn’t even ask the Cook County judge presiding over her hearing to detain Aguilar.

Cook County prosecutors, in another case, didn’t ask for another accused criminal to be detained in another egregious case. A Ukranian national, Ivan Muryn, was ordered by a Cook County judge not to drive, to submit to electronic monitoring and to surrender his passport. According to CWB Chicago, Muryn has been “charged with failure to report an accident involving death.”

That death was of his wife. According to the Arlington Cardinal, Muryn was arguing with his spouse while driving in Inverness. His wife removed her seatbelt and she “fell” out of his car, and then she was fatally struck by another vehicle. Muryn kept driving. Yeah, she “fell” out of her car.

Outside of the Chicago area, two California men were pulled over in Henry County, near the Quad Cities, driving an old bus that contained over 5,000 pounds of marijuana. The value of the drugs is estimated to be worth between $6 million and $14 million. They were not jailed, even though the duo is accused of committing an Illinois Class X felony. The drug bust is being called one of the largest in Illinois history. 

Eight days ago, the sheriff of Williamson County in southern Illinois released 30 jail inmates, because of the SAFE-T Act, the sheriff said he could no longer detain them as they awaited trial. 

Back to the spiritual descendants of Alex’s Droogs.

Criminals are risk averse. If criminals believe they can get away with lawbreaking, or if they are caught, they won’t get locked up, they become emboldened. 

Early Thursday morning, at least 10 people, including a 72-year-old man who was beaten, were robbed on Chicago’s North Side. 

In an encore performance on Saturday night, in at least five incidents, a dozen people were robbed at gunpoint in a two-hour period on the city’s Northwest Side.  No one has been arrested for either wilding spree.

That last story led CWB Chicago to quip, “Did anyone in Chicago NOT get robbed or shot last night?” Oh yeah, of course people have been shot in Chicago this weekend, including an 86-year-old man.

Violence also hit DePaul University’s North Side campus on Saturday night. Four students were mugged, and one of them was beaten, another was pistol-whipped.

The Purge is here.

No one has recently heard from the SAFE-T Act’s primary champion, possible presidential candidate Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is on an extended vacation with his wife. Citing “security concerns,” the Democrat governor’s staff isn’t saying where Pritzker is. The governor, laughably but repeatedly claimed that the SAFE-T Act was about, “Making sure that we’re also addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” The truth is, and Pritzker knows it, is that these Jean Valjeans of motherhood weren’t being jailed in Illinois, and they haven’t been so in quite some time.

Oh, back to Pritzker and his vacation: What about the security concerns of Illinois’ 12 million residents?

Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney who is more of a social worker than a prosecutor, says Illinois is “on the right side of history” now that the SAFE-T Act is up and running.

Well, history sometimes takes an evil turn.

John Ruberry regularly blogs, more nervously than ever, just outside of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

To combat food deserts in Illinois, shoplifters need to be prosecuted–Pritzker responds with retail tax rebates instead

Posted: August 23, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Imagine if instead of serving as the governor of Illinois, Democrat J.B. Pritzker is an Uber driver. And Pritzker’s car is loaded with problems. The check engine, oil pressure, ABS, and TPMS warning lights are on. 

What would be Pritzker’s fix? 

Uber J.B. would simply ignore the problems by having his car professionally detailed, so his vehicle looks good, then he’d place electrical tape over the locations on the dashboard where each warning light is flashing. 

Pritzker governs America’s sixth most populous state the same way–by ignoring the metaphorical warning lights facing the Land of Lincoln. Here at Da Tech Guy for years I’ve been railing Illinois’ big three problems–which are intertwined–and they are a massively underfunded public pension system, widespread government corruption, and declining population. 

Now there is a fourth one, rampant theft and violent crime. Illinois’ largest city, Chicago, is still suffering from the highest murder rates since the 1990s. Carjackings are skyrocketing–in 2013 there were 344 reporting carjackings, last year the total was 1,674. Because so many shoplifting incidents aren’t reported, I don’t trust any theft figures. But the anecdotal evidence is alarming–shoplifting is soaring. 

For years, liberals have, often blaming “corporate greed,” decried the many food deserts in big cities–and rural areas too. A food desert, if you are unfamiliar with the term, is an area without a nearby supermarket selling inexpensive groceries. Chicago, after some pushback from left-wing alderman because it is non-union, didn’t see its first Walmart open until 2006. Eventually there were eight Walmarts in Chicago, but shortly after the election of a far-left Democrat, Brandon Johnson, as mayor, Walmart announced it was closing four of those big box stores. In the press release explaining the reason for the shuttering of those Chicago stores, Walmart revealed “that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years.” 

Back to Pritzker.

Last week, the governor announced the $20 million Illinois Grocery Initiative to reverse the growth of food deserts, which includes tax rebates and unnamed incentives. 

Also last week, multiple media outlets reported that Home Depot, Target, and yes, Walmart, have decried the drastic rise of “shrink,” that is, shoplifting, at its stores. Walmart’s CEO, John Furner, pointed his finger in the right direction about “shrink.” 

“It’ll take communities stepping up and enforcing the law to be able to – to bring this issue under control,” Furner said.

While local law enforcement is not the responsibility of Illinois’ governor, Pritzker has never condemned Kim Foxx, the Soros-funded so-called prosecutor in Cook County. Her social worker approach to law enforcement–which Brandon Johnson also favors–is partly responsible for Chicago’s crime wave.

As for Pritzker, thru his ridiculously misnamed SAFE-T Act, the abolishment of cash bail–little or no bail is the current de facto practice of Foxx–will take effect statewide in less than a month. 

Here’s my fix for the food desert problem: Hire more cops, have them arrest shoplifters and the criminals who fence their swag, prosecute them in a fair trial, and imprison them if found guilty for a few years. Such a surefire strategy will not only to protect the public and retailers, but it will serve as a deterrent to people considering a life of crime. 

Simple and easy.

Illinois’ mainstream media needs to get on board and accurately report on food deserts. In a New York Times-length study by the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago’s NPR affiliate from earlier this month, only one sentence mentioned the real problem, albeit gently. “Grocery operators have pointed to crime and homelessness as reasons they’ve needed to invest more in security, driving up costs,” they reported, “according to Amanda Lai, a Chicago director of food industry practice for the consulting firm McMillan Doolittle.”

Yep, one sentence.

Meanwhile, with the warning lights flashing, J.B. Pritzker continues to drive Illinois into the ground, while pissing away $20 million to fight food deserts. In the short term there is no hope for a repeal of the SAFE-T Act, but that’s part of the cure that Illinois needs.

As Ronald Reagan said, “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

At least 24 Illinois county prosecutors have filed suit against pro-criminal SAFE-T Act

Posted: October 9, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

As you’ve learned in my recent posts at Da Tech Guy, Illinois’ SAFE-T Act will become effective on January 1, which will make the Prairie State the first in the union to abolish cash bail. Under very narrow circumstances, accused criminals can still be jailed, but these are among the crimes that will be non-detainable, which means, after perhaps 24 or 48 hours, they’ll walk free until their trials.

  • Aggravated Battery
  • Aggravated DUI
  • Aggravated Fleeing
  • Arson
  • Burglary
  • Intimidation
  • Kidnapping
  • Robbery
  • Second-Degree Murder
  • Threatening a Public Official
  • Drug-Induced Homicide

    Fact checkers, an ever increasingly dishonest lot, have been running to the defense of the law, which is being championed by the far-left of the Democratic Party. Illinois’ governor, J.B. Pritzker, a likely candidate for president if Joe Biden doesn’t run for reelection, probably plans to use the SAFE-T Act, which passed the state Senate at 5:00am on the last day of the 2021 veto session, to enshrine his woke credentials for 2024. 

    Illinois’ rising crime rate is a hot-button issue this election season, as it should be. The opinion of prosecutors of the SAFE-T Act is hostile. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, 100 of Illinois’ 102 county prosecutors–they’re called state’s attorneys here–oppose the law. Tellingly, Kim Foxx, a George Soros-funded politician who is the so-called prosecutor in Cook County, where I live, is one of the two who support it. 

    Claiming the SAFE-T Act is in violation of the Illinois constitution, at least 24 state’s attorneys have filed suit to prevent it from going into force.

    As of October 9, these prosecutors include: 

    And I may be way short on this count. East Peoria’s mayor, John Kahl, claims 50 state’s attorneys have filed suit again the SAFE-T Act. But I’ll stick with my number for now–I derived my figure after an exhaustive Google News search. Some of the plaintiffs are Democrat and some are Republicans. Many county sheriffs have joined in on these lawsuits, most of which list Pritzker, Illinois’ attorney general, Kwame Raoul, and the state House speaker and state Senate president as defendants.

    Pritzker, along with some Democratic members of the Illinois General Assembly, are promising that changes will be made to the SAFE-T Act after Election Day, but no details are being offered. Which means that Illinois voters shouldn’t take their promises seriously. During Thursday’s televised debate with his Republican opponent, Darren Bailey, Pritzker didn’t mention any specific changes that he favors to the law. Bailey favors full repeal of the SAFE-T Act.

    Pritzker, as I’ve written for my own blog, has resorted to the ad misericordiam fallacy, an appeal to sympathy as the props up the controversial law. He keeps clinging to an apocryphal story about “addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” Breitbart, in an honest fact-check, shot holes into Pritzker’s “Diapers Mom” argument.

    If the SAFE-T Act is so wonderful, then why does Pritzker have to lie when he defends it?

    John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

      If Pritzker is serious about flaws in the pro-criminal SAFE-T Act, he’ll call for a special General Assembly session to repeal it

      Posted: October 2, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, elections, media, News/opinion, politics
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      By John Ruberry

      The foremost political issue in Illinois is crime. And we have plenty of other issues to choose from, including negative population growth and endemic corruption. The election of Kim Foxx as Cook County’s state’s attorney in 2016–her campaign was funded by radical leftist billionaire George Soros–set forth a rise in crime in Chicago and its inner suburbs that accelerated during the COVID-19 lockdowns. 

      The spirt of Foxx’s catch-and-release philosophy of law enforcement will go statewide, but only worse, on New Year’s Day when the SAFE-T Act goes into effect. In case you missed my last two posts at Da Tech Guy, I cited a Democrat, Will County state’s state’s attorney James Glasgow, who had this to say to Fox Chicago’s Mike Flannery about the SAFE-T Act, “There are forcible felonies that are not detainable: burglary, robbery, arson, kidnapping, second degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, [and] drug offenses.” Which means these accused felons walk free with the promise of returning for trial. An exception for flight risks, which a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney, John Curran, who is now a Republican state senator, says is almost impossible to use for jailing accused criminals. Curran told John Kass last month in his Chicago Way podcast that the SAFE-T Act passed the state Senate at 5:00am in the morning on the last day of a veto session of the General Assembly. He was given one hour to read the 764-page bill.

      Some critics of the SAFE-T Act are calling it “the Purge Bill,” a reference the 2013 movie, The Purge, where crime goes unpunished for a 12-hour span.

      As I noted before, Pritzker notoriously claimed that the SAFE-T Act was about “making sure that we’re also addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” I called on the fact-checkers–even contacting them directly–to vet that statement. I’m considering offering a $1,000 reward to the person who finds Pritzker’s “diapers mom.”

      Kass, a former Chicago Tribune journalist who was essentially demoted after his woke colleagues falsely claimed that a column he wrote blowing the whistle on Soros was anti-Semitic, now writes essential articles at John Kass News. He’s been at the forefront of the battle against the SAFE-T Act, and he’s calling for its repeal. Illinois’ Democrat governor, billionaire J.B. Pritzker, is promising unspecific changes to it after next month’s general election. He’s up for reelection, his opponent is state senator Darren Bailey. 

      Kass says, and I’ve been expressing the same view, that the Democrats are panicking about the SAFE-T Act. As they should, it’s a dangerous law that is a threat to public safety. He’s asking that Pritzker call an immediate special session of the General Assembly, “eat a few platters of steaming hot crow,” and repeal the SAFE-T Act. “J.B. Pritzker has the supermajority,” Bailey told NBC Chicago, which Kass recalled in his column. “Why hasn’t he called the legislature into action? Literally a text or a phone call, we could be demanded to meet in Springfield within a few hours. Why aren’t we meeting tomorrow at 9 o’clock hammering this thing out?” I believe I know the answer to that question. Pritzker wants to run out the clock.

      Kass suspects that the SAFE-T Act is a woke exercise in credential building for the governor’s possible run for president. I’ll add my own theory. In addition to minting a badge of honor for himself, Pritzker is prepping himself for receiving a Nobel Peace Prize as the prophet who, at least in Illinois, atoned for the murder of George Floyd. Only the aftermath of an in-force SAFE-T Act will anything but peaceful.

      Ads from the People Who Play By The Rules PAC focusing on violence have been very effective, even though at least three Chicago television stations have banned “The Scream.” A more recent ad, even more disturbing than “The Scream,” shows a robbery and a bloody assault that occurred last Sunday on Chicago’s CTA Red Line train. A few hours earlier my daughter was a passenger on the Red Line. One of the perpetrators in this attack has been arrested. He’s now locked up, amazingly, bail was denied to him. But the People Who Play By The Rules PAC has this message for Illinoisans, the attack you’ll below is “a non-detainable offense under Pritzker’s Purge law.”

      Bailey, in my opinion, is still a decided underdog in the gubernatorial race, but the downstate farmer is closing his gap with Pritzker according to a recent Fabrizo, Lee, and Associates poll.

      Twice last week non-political acquaintances of mine told me, “Hey John, you are wrong about the SAFE-T Act, I read a fact-check about it.” I exposed the phony SAFE-T Act fact-checks in an entry on my own blog a few days ago. Yet once again, and almost certainly not for the last time, I am compelled to point out that fact-checkers are primarily propagandists for various leftist narratives. And if you are told by someone that you are incorrect about the SAFE-T Act and they cite a fact-check as evidence, this needs to be your response: vomit on that person. 

      Back to Pritzker: If he is really serious about addressing the numerous flaws in the SAFE-T Act, he’ll call for that special session of the General Assembly with the purpose of repealing all of it. His feeble and non-specific calls for changes to the SAFE-T Act are empty promises. 

      Early voting for the November election in Illinois began last week. One way to block a Pritzker run for president is for voters to evict him from the governor’s mansion. A whole bunch of new state legislators in Springfield is needed as well.

      By the way, no Republican legislators voted for the SAFE-T Act.

      John Ruberry regularly blogs from suburban Cook County at Marathon Pundit.

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