During a late night in May, while most people were sound asleep; the Illinois State Police were on duty, and they made a traffic stop along Interstate 57 near Chicago. In that one traffic stop, the police seized half a million pills laced with fentanyl worth $5 million to $10 million. That one stop saved potentially thousands of lives.
At the news of this seizure, most rational people would wonder about all of the fentanyl-laced pills that go undiscovered and end up in the hands of young people. We applaud the fact that a half-million pills were taken off the streets, but don’t we also wish there was more being done to take this deadly poison off our streets?
Unfortunately, Democratic elected officials in Illinois see this situation much differently. They’ve spent the last several years implementing a legislative agenda across the state that is soft on crime, and now these officials are looking to reduce the number of traffic stops. A bill recently filed in the Illinois General Assembly would place new restrictions on traffic stops and possibly prevent the kind of traffic stop in Illinois that led to the recovery of 500,000 fentanyl pills.
House Bill 4603 would prevent Illinois police officers from pulling over drivers for a number of traffic offenses including, but not limited, to speeding and improper lane usage, unless the offenses warrant a misdemeanor or felony offense, such as going 26 mph or more above the speed limit. Additionally, no evidence from a traffic stop could be used at a trial even if the driver consented to a vehicle search.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Justin Slaughter, a Chicago Democrat, said the purpose of introducing the bill was to “start a conversation.” A conversation about what? Do we really need to have a conversation about how to ensure Illinois has more crime and more victims of crime? Is this really a conversation worth having?
The public outcry was so strong against this bill that the sponsor was forced to pull it back from consideration at the beginning of February. But don’t be fooled. It’s likely to reappear.
There is an effort to place concrete barricades at storefronts in Chicago because people are crashing cars into stores to steal items from inside. These smash-and-grab robberies are extremely dangerous, and while we certainly want to prevent them from happening, do we really want concrete barriers lining Chicago’s shopping centers?
Here is a better idea. Let’s enforce our laws. Let’s punish people who commit crimes, and let’s make sure we give our police officers the tools they need to keep our neighborhoods safe. We don’t need barricades. We need better leadership.
Cook County is run completely by Democrats. It is their bad leadership and their bad policies that are making our communities less safe.
Their soft-on-crime policies are destroying our communities, and the people most hurt by their bad leadership are the very people they supposedly are trying to help.
If stores shut down because of theft, what happens to the residents who rely on those stories, especially on the South Side?
Who is looking out for Chicagoans? Certainly not Cook County Democrats. They are more worried about the rights of criminals than the innocent victims of crime that their policies have enabled.
There is no conversation to be had about reckless policies to allow lawlessness in our communities. The answer is to defeat at the ballot box the people who have created this situation. Democratic elected officials have told us who they are and what their priorities are, and it is time we listened to them and, as importantly, defeat them and their dangerous agenda.
Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison represents the 17th District.