Top cop calls for special legislative session to toughen gun crime sentencing
by John Kass
Chicago TribuneEddie Johnson is police superintendent in a Chicago on fire, with 90 dead in August alone. He’s a decent man forced to turn to politicians for help.
Johnson wants tougher sentencing laws that target felons arrested with guns. And on Thursday he urged lawmakers to call a special session of the state legislature and take action before more lives are lost in the gang wars.
Why? Cook County prosecutors won’t even use the laws available to them now to aggressively prosecute violent offenders. We’ve detailed this numerous times.
The intoxicated woman without a carry license that pulled a gun out of her purse and fired off five rounds at people after leaving a bar. She was caught and charged with a misdemeanor.
The three young black gang bangers who did a drive-by shooting at a busy public park, wounding two. Caught after a brief police chase, they were each charged with a Class 4 felony punishable by one- to three-years in prison.
The gang banger who stabbed a good Samaritan, collapsing the victim’s lung and nearly causing him to bleed out, charged with misdemeanor battery.
Florida, on the other hand, until February of this year, had a 10-20-Life law that put bad guys using guns in prison for a LONG time, and that caused firearm violent crime to drop to historic lows. We can’t do that in Illinois! That might put Auntie Mae’s murderous, thug-lifer nephew in prison for the rest of his life!
“If we need to go to Springfield, I’m on the first thing smoking going down there, because the longer we wait, the more people we’ll see being shot and killed on our streets,” Johnson told me during a recording of my podcast, The Chicago Way, on WGN Plus.
Why not use the existing laws, Chief?
“Until repeat gun offenders recognize we’re serious about holding them accountable, we’re going to continue to see this gun violence,” Johnson said. “There’s a sense of urgency with me. And the sooner we can get this done, the better. I don’t know what we’re waiting for.”
I know what Chicago’s waiting for.
The people in the neighborhoods savaged by the gang wars are waiting on the legislative Black Caucus, a group of lawmakers who represent many of those neighborhoods, to get to work and do something.
Yet even as the bodies pile up, the Black Caucus doesn’t seem to feel any urgency. And their constituents should know this.
A few years ago, the caucus killed mandatory minimum sentencing legislation that could have kept gun violators in prison for many years, rather than let them walk to shoot again. That’s the bill that should have been passed. But it gave the judges little, if any, wiggle room, and went nowhere.
Johnson said the bill he’s now pushing is being worked on by two Democrats, state Sen. Kwame Raoul of Chicago and state Rep. Michael J. Zalewski of Riverside.
In theory, it would give judges new guidelines for sentencing felons convicted of unlawful use of weapons charges. Repeat offenders would get at least seven years.
But if a judge deviates downward from the guidelines, that judge would have to explain their decision in writing. That’s the kind of thing that judges hate. Why? Because then they’d wear the jacket if that defendant made headlines by killing someone.
Guidelines will mean NOTHING if prosecutors under-charge the cases!
Unfortunately, the Black Caucus takes its time. Members will have a meeting in a week or two. They’ll talk, then they might meet some more.
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