If the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office conspires with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to win convictions —as some convicted murderers and their lawyers have alleged in civil rights cases — then they are doing a lousy job of it.
Clearance (solve) rates of murders in Chicago last year were low, and have historically been low, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
A recent CWB Chicago report shows that a statement by Mayor Brandon Johnson about CPD clearing over 50 percent of 617 murders last year is misleading.
Drilling down into the numbers shows some of the murders cleared were committed in prior years, and in 108 of the cases police believed they had enough evidence but the State’s Attorney’s office refused to bring charges. Some of those cases were from prior years as well.
“The truth is the relationship is anything but conspiratorial,” said one long-time detective, referring to the State’s Attorney’s office. “It has always been a contentious relationship, but it’s gotten more contentious under Kim Foxx. Now they keep moving the goal posts for information. Detectives refer to it as the "perpetual continuing investigation.”
In a recent posting on X, the Chicago Contrarian supported the detective’s claim that the standards for bringing charges under Foxx had become almost impossibly high.
“Under Foxx, detectives have had to ratchet up their effort to meet standards set by Foxx's felony review,” the Contrarian said. “And CPD still cannot get charges approved. The fact charges are rejected at such a staggering rate should cast doubt on the integrity of Foxx's felony review. Foxx has sought two goals in office: Tear down the office and rebuild it in her progressive vision and obstruct the prosecution of crime.”
Foxx did not run for re-election in November. She has been succeeded by Eileen O'Neill Burke.
For an earlier story, former homicide Detective Kenneth Boudreau said claims of police conspiring with prosecutors were made in wrongful conviction lawsuits of the Englewood Four, convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of Nina Glover.
Their convictions were vacated in 2011 after DNA evidence failed to link them to the crime. They filed their wrongful conviction lawsuits, and Boudreau was named in the complaints even though his work on the case involved interviewing one of the four, Terrill Swift, for 20 minutes. Yet Boudreau’s name never appeared in the depositions in the civil cases brought years later by the four.
“The lawyers claimed it was one big conspiracy that along with the state’s attorney’s office, and even the crime lab we framed these kids,” Boudreau said.
Swift said during depositions in the civil case that police mistreated him but in his criminal case said that he wasn’t “mistreated at all” by police.
The University of Chicago Crime Lab has begun work on two studies in cooperation with the CPD to better understand clearance rates for homicides and non-fatal shootings in Chicago.
“The first study explores homicides and arrests in Chicago going back to 1965, intending to determine the factors influencing solvability and how they have changed over time,” a statement from the Crime Lab said. “The second study is a quasi-experimental evaluation of the ATCs [Area Technology Centers] to understand their impact on homicide and non-fatal shooting case clearance."
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