Chicago City Wire

Former Judge Pat O’Brien said as Cook County state's attorney he would never have allowed the ankle monitoring bracelet of Sincere Williams to be removed. 

Williams was charged with the Sept. 6 murder of Olga Maria Calderon, a young mother who was working at a Walgreens on Milwaukee Avenue in Old Town.

“When he was on that ankle bracelet, there was no reason to take him off it,” said O’Brien, the Republican candidate for Cook County state’s attorney. “He should have been restricted to his house. He should have been monitored as to his whereabouts.”

Williams, 18, had been participating in the county’s electronic home monitoring program for about three months after allegedly trying to rob a Melrose gun shop of 14 guns in May, according to media reports.

“Mr. Williams was a significant threat to the community,” said O’Brien, former Cook County Circuit Court judge. “I would not have allowed the ankle bracelet to be removed because at the point it's removed, as we see, you have no control and no ability to know what he's doing.”

Just days before the fatal stabbing of Calderon, Williams was released from the Cook County electronic monitoring program.

“Kim Foxx agreed to his release from the monitoring program,” O’Brien told Chicago City Wire. “She has failed us in every respect. She doesn't have the experience. She doesn't have the judgment and she certainly doesn't have the character.”

A defendant wearing an ankle monitoring device typically occurs before trial and is in place to address overcrowding in the penal system, according to the Cook County sheriff’s website.

Cook County Sheriff Electronic Monitoring Program data shows that since its inception in 1989, more than 300,000 inmates have been under electronic monitoring and the average daily population of the program is more than 2,000.

O’Brien said Williams’ attorney said his client had some mental issues.

“An ankle bracelet is something that the state's attorney should be advocating for in the correct situations and this certainly would have been one of them,” O'Brien said. “But apparently the common sense that would prevail does not hold with Kim Foxx.”

O’Brien has been calling for Foxx's removal since he filed nominating paperwork for Cook County state’s attorney on Dec. 2, 2019.

“Part of the policy that seems consistent with the state's attorney and the directions that Kim Foxx gives to her assistants is to basically favor criminals,” O’Brien said. “She sees a person who is a defendant as another victim. The unfortunate part of that is those people have attorneys and if the state's attorney is siding with the defendant, there's nobody advocating for community safety and for the victims. That's why we've got so much violence and so little ability with the state's attorney to get it under control.”