Chicago City Wire

State Rep. David Welter (R-Morris) is hoping Democrats in Springfield make changes to the SAFE Act.  

“We are back for our first legislative day of this new session,” Welter recently said in a video posted to Facebook. “Today, we are hearing that the minority party is looking to pass some updates to the SAFE Act that we passed about a year ago at this time. If you’re familiar with that, the SAFE Act is what I like to name as the ‘Criminal Bill of Rights.’ It’s one of the most progressive and far-reaching bills to come through any state in the entire country that has to do with criminal justice.”

In Welter’s view, the legislation ties the hands of law enforcement and makes the job of keeping communities safe more difficult. He points to Chicago's historic year of violence in 2021 and how the city began the new year with at least 31 people being shot and six killed over the first weekend of 2022.

“As they passed this bill in the last minute, the last hour last year during the previous General Assembly there were a lot of errors in the bill,” he said. “A lot of maybe unintended things made it into the bill, and now they’re looking to clean up their mess. I can tell you there’s some really bad provisions of this bill that I know I would like to see changed as well.”

Also known as the Illinois Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act, the measure eliminates cash bail by 2023 and allows for some individuals accused of felony offenses to be released before trial while placing greater restrictions on officers across the state.

In 2021, 797 homicides were recorded in Chicago, the most violent year on record across the city in a quarter-century, according to statistics recently released by the Chicago Police Department. While other cities also saw upticks in homicides, Chicago ended the year with more homicides than any other city in the country, including New York and Los Angeles.

Police Superintendent David Brown told ABC7 News the bulk of the killings stem from conflicts between rival gangs and he is planning to raise the number of detectives probing violent crimes from 1,100 to 1,300 during the first few months of this year while also recruiting more new officers.

"There will be more officers on the street, not just in patrol cars or behind desks, to interact with all Chicagoans," he said.

 Over the first weekend of 2022, 12-year-old Marcell Wilson was among six people killed by gunfire in the city, which also saw another 25 people wounded over that period.

Authorities said Wilson was struck by a bullet while sitting on a bed in a home in Englewood on the city’s South Side, police said. He later died at Comer Children’s Hospital.

Illinois Policy Institute President Ted Dabrowski recently charged Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx with mishandling the increase in crime, which includes a rash of robberies and other incidents in the downtown Chicago business district.

“When you start combining this crime issue that we're talking about and start adding that corporations are going to delay their office reopenings it starts to all add up again," Dabrowski told the Morning Answer. “I think it’s a real issue. I hear people say we don’t go down there anymore. People don’t walk around there anymore. They take an Uber everywhere they’re going. It’s really confusing when you hear (authorities) say how much better they’re doing managing felonies when this new report comes out and says just the opposite.”

With felony crime on the rise, a new report details how Foxx and her staff have dismissed more than 25,000 felony cases – including many involving charges of murder and other serious crimes – over her first three years in office. Reports say since 2016 she has dismissed all charges against nearly 30 percent of all felony suspects, a rate that’s more than 10 percent greater than predecessor's Anita Alvarez.

In a recent Tribune interview, she defended her track record by claiming her office has made the decision to focus on violent crime.

“I will say that this administration has been clear that our focus would be on violent crime and making sure that our resources and attention would go to addressing violent crime,” she said.