An overhaul of Illinois‘s criminal justice system will allow criminals to “run free” and create anarchy, a Chicago-area mayor has said.
“When I said that this is the most dangerous law I’ve ever seen, I believe that,” Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau told Fox News.
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A series of new laws will take effect Jan. 1 as part of the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act, also known as the SAFE-T Act. But there is nothing safe about it, as cash bail will be eliminated and violent crimes such as murder and kidnapping will have a higher standard for detaining a suspect, Pekau said.
“I don’t think we know what’s coming from this,” the mayor said. “I think we can project that if criminals are allowed to run free and police officers can’t protect citizens, citizens are going to start protecting themselves and take the law into their own hands.”
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Judges will determine whether defendants are a flight risk and need to be detained. For those who are required to wear electronic monitoring devices with home confinement, they will be allowed to leave the premises for up to 48 hours before being charged with escape.
If a suspect is trespassing, police cannot remove them from the property because the crime has been dropped to a low-level misdemeanor in which only a citation is issued.
The SAFE-T Act passed the legislature in 2021.
“I really hope that this thing gets repealed,” Pekau said, adding that voters should unseat the governor and lawmakers who created the legislation. “I hope the voters wake up and do the right thing. Their votes matter.”
But supporters such as Gov. J.B. Pritzker say the law will keep the public safe.
“This police reform and accountability and criminal justice legislation is a substantial step toward dismantling systemic racism by bringing us closer to true safety, true fairness and true justice,” he tweeted.
Pritzker added that the law benefits officers by creating training standards, protection from unjust lawsuits, and forming standards for crowd control and use of force.
State’s Attorney Kim Foxx defended the measure by tweeting, “Today we rejected the myth we can either have public safety or criminal justice reform. The reality is you can’t have public safety WITHOUT criminal justice reform.”
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Pekau disagrees, saying law enforcement was not part of the process in crafting the law.
“We create potential anarchy because law enforcement can’t do their job and then people feel that they have to do that job. People aren’t trained in the use of force. They’re not trained to de-escalate situations,” he said.
