Kim Foxx’s Republican challenger calls her a ‘disaster,’ cites report by police group

Kim Foxx’s Republican opponent blasted her Thursday, citing a recent report by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund that concluded the top Cook County prosecutor wasn’t effective in convicting criminal suspects.

“She wins less cases, secures less guilty verdicts, dismisses more cases and loses more cases than her predecessor,” Patrick O’Brien said, pointing to how the report compares Foxx to former State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

O’Brien, a former defense attorney and circuit court judge who is hoping to unseat Foxx on Nov. 3, called her “a disaster for the prosecution of crime in Cook County.”

The report O’Brien used against Foxx Thursday included a forward by President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese. Meese is a board member of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a not-for-profit organization that funds the defense of police officers in criminal cases.

The report found that in the jurisdictions of Foxx and five other top prosecutors who ran on reform and progressive platforms there was an overall 20% increase in dropped or lost felony cases and a 19% decline in guilty verdicts and pleas.

“This study should serve as a wake-up call to our elected leaders, law enforcement officers, and the media that leftist ideas of social justice and true criminal justice are not compatible,” Meese wrote in the forward.

Jason Johnson, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, said the report’s subjects were chosen because they are among the most vocal in the country on issues of criminal justice reform and because they received funding from billionaire philanthropist George Soros, an advocate for progressive causes.

“We wanted to present the data in a compelling way without getting too bogged down in the details,” Johnson said of the report’s aim. “It was a very subjective process,” he said of the top prosecutors selected for review.

There was a 13% decline in guilty pleas or verdicts in felony cases and a 39% increase in dropped or lost cases after Foxx took office in 2016, compared to Alvarez’s record between 2013 and 2016, the report found.

A 2019 report by the Marshall Project also found Foxx was dropping more felony cases that Alvarez would have pursued, most notably for shoplifting and drugs, but also found an increase in prosecutions by Foxx’s office for gun offenses.

Declining to prosecute low-level felony cases has been Foxx’s calling card since she won the state’s attorney’s race with more than 61% of the vote against her Republican challenger Christopher Pfannkuche.

Foxx’s campaign questioned the report Thursday and said the data used in it has been manipulated for political purposes.

“For example, a ‘dropped case’ includes low-level retail theft and low-level drug cases, these do not classify as misdemeanors,” Foxx campaign spokeswoman Alex Sims said. “By implementing these reforms, the State’s Attorney has dedicated resources and attention on violent gun crimes, rather than low-level cases.”

O’Brien said that Foxx lost more gun cases than she won last year and said he would more forcefully prosecute cases related to guns, drugs and gangs.

O’Brien recently announced a website soliciting complaints of negligence and malpractice in Foxx’s office after she introduced a form on the state’s attorney’s office’s website that allows the public to report potential cases of criminal police misconduct.

Complaints have already been submitted on his website, including those from assistant state’s attorneys who work for Foxx, O’Brien said Thursday.

“We’re getting the kinds of complaints that you would expect when you have a failed state’s attorney,” O’Brien said. “If you can be a prosecutor who prosecutors crime, then you shouldn’t be a prosecutor.”

O’Brien said the site would eventually publish the complaints it has received.