One year after a sweeping ‘criminal justice reform’ measure eliminating cash bail for a majority of cases was signed into law by far-left Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, police chiefs and sheriffs throughout the state have begun to describe it as “America’s most dangerous law” that has had “overwhelmingly negative” effects.
“These kinds of reforms and this kind of constant police-bashing rhetoric that we hear out of these – I’ll just say it – out of these Marxist folks, it’s having the intended result that they truly want,” Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Bullard told Fox News. “They’re wanting to damage the policing profession, and they’re having some success at it.”
“Policing leaders need to step up and stand against it,” he added. “Very loud, very vocal, very strongly.”
Fox added:
The Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act, which took effect on Jan. 1, 2023, overhauled Illinois’ justice system with provisions that granted more freedoms to defendants and reduced certain felonies to misdemeanors. It also lowered the severity of some misdemeanors, like trespassing, and eliminated cash bail across the state.
Before it was passed, nearly all prosecutors across the state voiced their disapproval and called on Pritzker not to sign it — which he ignored.
Bullard said some of the problems he and other law enforcement leaders opposed to the act predicted are being realized.
“You can see things in the law when you look at individual factors of it, that this law was generated out of a mistrust for law enforcement,” he told Fox News. “So any rhetoric that would say it was to benefit law enforcement, I believe, is disingenuous.”
The law features ‘reforms’ that make it easier to revoke an officer’s license as well as allowing investigations into anonymous complaints against police officers, and banning the destruction of police misconduct records.
Bullard said the “convoluted” changes have officers across the state feeling “uneasy” while doing their jobs.
“Even in your most secure agency, you’re still going to have officers that are going to be a little bit queasy about it,” he said.
He told Fox that thus far, his agency has met every statutory deadline contained in the nearly 765-page law, ” but with many more changes down the road, the southern county hired a law firm to help with policy procedure review in fiscal year 2024. The cost is a significant line item in the small, rural county’s budget,” Fox added.
Local officials hired the firm “to make sure that we can keep up with all the requirements that not only the SAFE-T Act has proposed, but other Illinois statutes and laws that have not been police friendly over the years,” he said.
He also said that 153 of 280 brought into his jail since September, when the Illinois Supreme Court ruled the bail provision was legal, were immediately released. He said 55 more were released within one week.
“It was some drug offenses, some violent offenses, and some DUI charges all released without having to post any kind of bond,” he said. “You see a significant amount of offenders being placed relatively quickly back out into society.”
“We’re hoping that somewhere along the way, good reason takes over, and they realize the problems that they’re causing,” Bullard said of Democratic lawmakers pushing these laws.
Also this fall, Pritzker signed a bill into law allowing non-citizens to become police officers, setting up the potential for a non-U.S. citizen to arrest and incarcerate a U.S. citizen.
For now, Bullard said police will have to try and ignore the politics and “put the public they serve first.”
“I can still go make traffic stops. I can still get in foot pursuits. If they run from me, I can still get in a vehicle pursuit. We give our people the ability to do their job,” Bullard said. “And even though there’s hurdles that this reform has put in the way… many honorable things about the profession are still there. Some of the things we just got to work harder at doing.”
“Try as they might, they can not take away the honor in what we do for a living,” he told Fox.
