When reality intrudes on those currently “re-imagining” the justice system as if it were a story to conform to an imaginary world they inhabit, they regrettably do not respond by acknowledging that reality. Rather, they legislate the weight of reality onto the shoulders of others.
State Rep. Will Guzzardi, a Democrat from Chicago, recently filed a bill that would prohibit as a conflict of interest a state’s attorney from making charging decisions or prosecuting a police officer involved in the shooting of a civilian in the county in which they serve. Instead, the case would get offloaded onto a special prosecutor, who would likely be a state’s attorney from another county or other government lawyer.
Here is the story Guzzardi and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office wish to tell with this bill: A special prosecutor is needed because the relationship between police and state’s attorneys is too intimate, which creates an inherent bias in favor of police exoneration.
It is certainly odd that the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, of all county prosecuting offices, would be telling this story. After all, Kim Foxx rose to her current station by capturing the narrative power of the Laquan McDonald story and then making the meaning of that single story the metanarrative of the entire justice system — corruption, racism, brutality.
The core proposition of Foxx’s campaign was that she would restore “humanity” to a heartless system so depraved that it had been inverted, murdering the very powerless it was meant to protect.
In Cook County, therefore, which happens to be where most police-involved shootings occur, who better to assess the legitimacy of this ultimate expression of state power than Foxx on behalf of the very constituents who gave her power to do precisely that?
Why would she want one of the other 101 state’s attorneys in Illinois, whose general outlook, I can assure you, tracks far more consistently with Foxx’s predecessor Anita Alvarez than Foxx, to be making these decisions on behalf of her constituents?
The reason is because the “realities” of officer-involved shootings, established factually after investigations, almost never align with the poetic truth or metanarrative of police oppression rooted in racism that is peddled by the “re-imaginers.”
Based on the Cook County state’s attorney’s Law Enforcement Accountability Division webpage, during Foxx’s tenure, the state’s attorney’s office has successfully prosecuted one — only one — police officer for shooting a civilian. That would be Lowell Houser, who was convicted in 2020 of a reduced charge.
Also according to that webpage, 51 memos explain why the state’s attorney’s office under Foxx had declined to charge nearly all other police officers involved in civilian shootings.
These memos, with few exceptions, constitute a tragic archive of stories exhibiting the unpleasant reality that the “re-imaginers” are loath to acknowledge. The reality is that the real oppression, cruelty and corruption are in the hearts of those whose crimes cause misery and destruction and who wildly lash out when inevitably confronted by police on their unwillingness to conform to the eminently reasonable restrictions imposed by the law.
Consider then the predicament of the “re-imaginers.” Their continued dominance at the top of the criminal justice hierarchy depends on maintaining the narrative of oppression and racism and fending off competing narratives wrestling for primacy, such as community safety or justice for victims. However, Foxx is continually undermining the narrative by exonerating police officer after police officer.
And it has not gone unnoticed by those whose opinion on these topics actually matter. Here is just one of many similar headlines from 2022: “Activists Protest State’s Attorney Kim Foxx Over Lack of Charges Against Police in Fatal Shootings.”
The bill, then, is the solution. In every officer-involved shooting, Foxx or the next progressive prosecutor can make a Washington-refuses-the-crown show, in accordance with this new legal directive, of handing these unwanted cases off to a “special prosecutor,” who can then be criticized or commended in whatever way furthers the narrative. Problem solved.
The ultimate reality of the bill, however, is one of disenfranchisement, sidelining the very person elected by the people to represent them in these cases of utmost importance.
Patrick Kenneally is the McHenry County state’s attorney.