Chicago City Wire

Republican candidate Pat O’Brien is critical of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx's decision to release several suspects stemming from a recent drug bust that resulted in Chicago police arresting 11 individuals.

“A number of the people who were charged also had past felony convictions for the same kind of thing, which is selling drugs,” O’Brien told the Chicago City Wire. “It seems that Kim Foxx doesn’t have the appropriate judgment of who is a danger to the community and how it's her job to protect the community as opposed to having sympathy for the defendants and letting them walk out the door.”

O’Brien, a former judge, has been calling for Foxx's removal since he filed nominating paperwork Dec. 2, 2019.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the drug bust was an undercover initiative called Operation Split Corners, which took place on West Division Street.

Seven face felony counts of calculated criminal drug conspiracy and three face weapon charges. Three others have not yet been apprehended.

O’Brien, who served as Cook County Circuit Court judge for eight years, is objecting to the alleged drug defendants receiving their immediate release on I-bonds after being arrested.

“It leaves the police in a quandary as to how they can do their job and respond to the problems in their own communities without feeling betrayed by the very investigations and arrests they make, which should result in some kind of appropriate conclusion or penalty, but are actually going in the one door and out the other,” O’Brien said.

I-bonds, also known as individual recognizance bonds or signature bonds, frees a defendant upon arrest without having to pay on the condition that he or she will return for the next court date.

“It strikes me that [Chicago Police] Superintendent [David] Brown, who had a news conference about this Chicago police sting operation, and a number of the 11 were charged with calculated drug conspiracy, which is a count where if you're found guilty, there's a mandatory minimum six year prison sentence,” O’Brien said. “Those persons are facing mandatory prison if they're convicted. The superintendent probably thought a cash bond would keep them in jail but they probably were out and about and could have watched his news conference from home when he talked about the sting operation. “