The two attorneys vying to replace Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez have different ideas about how the prosecutor’s office should handle police shootings, the issue that doomed Alvarez’s re-election bid.
During a debate on WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight,” Republican contender Christopher Pfannkuche said he would create a special unit within the State’s Attorney’s Office, with prosecutors who would handle nothing but police misconduct cases. His Democratic rival, Kim Foxx, said she would leave those cases to independent prosecutors, to prevent the “politicization” of police shootings.
The McDonald case proved the undoing of Alvarez’s re-election campaign, with Foxx harshly criticizing how the two-term incumbent handled the investigation and riding the issue to a landslide victory in the Democratic primary.
“Taking the politics out of it, having an independent prosecutor look at those cases, means that we’re not going to have someone using these very split-second decisions that police officers make for their own political gain,” said Foxx, who worked in the state’s attorney’s office for 12 years.
Pfannkuche, a veteran of 31 years as a Cook County assistant state’s attorney, insisted local prosecutors have a duty to handle the cases and a dedicated staff of attorneys could bolster public confidence.
“The problem right now that the public perceives is that the prosecutors rotate in and out of this unit. I will establish a unit that will be independent but within the office,” Pfannkuche said. “[For] the prosecutors that man that unit, this will be a permanent assignment.”
Though Alvarez said during her campaign that her office could handle the prosecution of Officer Jason Van Dyke for the shooting, after her primary loss she handed the case off to a special prosecutor.
The two candidates also differed on whether there should be a criminal investigation of how Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office handled the McDonald case. For more than a year after the shooting, Emanuel’s administration fought public information requests until a court order forced the release of the graphic dashcam video of the shooting, and also urged the City Council to approve a $5 million payout to McDonald’s mother before she had even filed a lawsuit against the city.
Pfannkuche said he wants a criminal probe of the Emanuel administration’s handling of the case. Foxx, who worked as a Cook County prosecutor for 12 years, said an investigation of criminal wrongdoing by the mayor’s office was “unwarranted.”
“A lot of people have problems with the way that case was handled,” Pfannkuche said Monday. “That was obviously … one of the major reasons Anita Alvarez did not survive her primary this spring.
“I think there’s something more there that needs to be looked at.”
Foxx said a prosecutor needs more evidence of a crime before starting an investigation.
“It was public that there was a shooting of Laquan McDonald. There were court motions that were filed … to have that tape not be released,” Foxx said. “So the allegation that somehow there was a criminal act that was done on behalf of the city of Chicago or on behalf of the mayor, given the publicity that was happening with this case, seems unwarranted.
“But more importantly to make that allegation without some substantial evidence to back that up is very concerning for the top prosecutor.”
