Months after her bodyguard detail was reduced, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot attended a brief hearing Thursday for a man accused of threatening to shoot her, saying it shows why she needs “the protection to which I am entitled.”
Lightfoot was trailed by reporters as she entered the Leighton Criminal Courthouse to attend a status hearing for William Kohles, 42, accused of posting a threat last fall on the mayor’s official webpage.
“I have a bullet with your name on it,” the message read, according to prosecutors. “If you don’t reduce the crime in our city ... I guarantee it will go straight through your mother------- head.”
Kohles lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was arrested there after police tracked down his IP address. He was charged with threatening a public official and released on $30,000 bail.
Lightfoot did not speak to reporters afterward, but later released a statement saying “what we must never accept are threats of death or bodily harm. On behalf of my family and myself, I have to take these threats seriously and ensure I have the protection to which I am entitled, given the seriousness of the current threat environment.”
In May, the Sun-Times reported Mayor Brandon Johnson had dramatically reduced the bodyguard detail assigned to Lightfoot’s home. A police spokesperson refused to reveal specifics, fearing it could invite more threats to a former mayor.
The level of security maintained by former mayors is almost always an issue during any transition of power.
In 2011, then newly elected Mayor Rahm Emanuel cut in half — from six active-duty Chicago police officers to three — the bodyguard detail of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Eight years later, Lightfoot decided to continue taxpayer-funded bodyguards for Daley and Emanuel after conducting a “security threat assessment” for both, but she stripped the detail and car from Emanuel’s wife, Amy, without notice to the former mayor.
Contributing: Fran Spielman
