Foxx accused by opponent of ‘half-baked’ approach to releasing jail inmates

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx was accused Friday of applying a “half-baked” and unsafe approach to the release of inmates at a county jail hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

Attorney Pat O’Brien, the Republican nominee for state’s attorney, acknowledged the need to drastically reduce the population inside the lock-up to keep both jail personnel and inmates safe and to prevent the virus from spreading like wildfire within the jail.

But his problem is the treatment of the new arrests being made by Chicago Police officers putting their lives on the line during the pandemic. Already, 11 officers have tested positive for the coronavirus.

“How the state’s attorney is doing it is kind of half-baked. There’s no reason, if police are making contact with people who unknowingly may have the virus, to somehow make an arrest and just release without anything further being done,” he said.

“Give `em a two-month court date. ... Then two months down the road, at least those people are brought back into the system ... and we try to resolve, hopefully redirect them, from committing more low-level or higher-level crimes.”

To O’Brien, the go-easy approach to new arrests is no different than the way Foxx has approached all of the cases that come before her.

“She’s got a social agenda that sees people who commit crimes as people that, basically because of their circumstances, commit those crimes. And therefore, they really aren’t criminals,” O’Brien said.

“She has created a fear that the state’s attorney is not prosecuting criminals, that the state’s attorney sees criminals as victims and that the victims are ... no better off and deserve no more protection than the people who commit crimes against them. And that is just an upside-down way to see being a law enforcement officer.”

Alex Sims, a spokesperson for the Foxx campaign, said Foxx is busy “managing a global pandemic with other stakeholders while focusing on public health and public safety.”

“It’s disappointing that our opponent is playing politics at this time of a pandemic,” Sims said.

O’Brien is a former circuit court judge and assistant Illinois attorney general who spent two tours in the state’s attorney’s office, once as chief deputy of the criminal division.

He is now trying to become the first Republican elected state’s attorney in Cook County in more than a quarter of a century. Jack O’Malley was the last Republican state’s attorney at a time when Cook County was a lot less Democratic.

O’Brien acknowledged he faced an uphill battle getting elected before the coronavirus pandemic, and that it’s even steeper now.

Raising money is virtually impossible and almost unseemly at a time when thousands of people have lost their jobs, businesses have been forced to close, and food pantries and shelters are desperately trying to raise money.

And Foxx’s decision to denounce as “BS” Chicago’s year-long obsession with Jussie Smollett, the former “Empire” actor re-indicted for allegedly staging a hate crime against himself, no longer sounds like political damage control. Accusing her of mishandling the case can seem almost trivial when so many people are fighting for survival.

But a few months from now, O’Brien is hoping that life returns to a new normal and Cook County voters will focus once again on the need for a professional state’s attorney who will keep them safe.

He angrily rejected comparisons to Republican Bernard Epton’s 1983 mayoral campaign against Harold Washington using the racially inflammatory slogan, “Epton, before it’s too late.”

“I voted for Kim Foxx. I wanted her to succeed ... There were a lot of people who voted having the belief that she would do a good job. That belief has been dashed. It’s time to vote for somebody who’s actually a prosecutor and wants things to come to order, so that everyone in the county is safer. So that victims are safer,” O’Brien said.

“If people start to raise — on one side or the other — that this is a situation about race or about a white prosecutor [against a black state’s attorney] — that’s just an attempt to back away from the credentials and make it about something else. Because if you [make it about] policies, about experience, about programs, Kim Foxx loses this race.”