Will County Gazette

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow is speaking out on the SAFE-T Act which is set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2023.

Glasgow argues the law will hurt the efforts of those enforcing criminal laws statewide.  

He noted that the SAFE-T Act will make law enforcement powerless.

“(Under) equal protection under the law,” Glasgow said on Chicago’s Morning Answer on AM 560. “The new statute says that bail is abolished. And if that were to take place over 600 prisoners in the Will County Jail – they also have victims and witnesses who feel secure because of that. If all those individuals are released and there'll be only maybe about a third of them where we could actually have a hearing for detention. The way the system works is, you know, we've got to rely on the ability to protect our witnesses and our victims. They're the lifeblood of our cases. And you can see in Chicago the reason that the they can't solve the crimes, the witnesses and the victims are terrified to come forward. They know that they probably won't make it to court if they come forward. That isn't the case in DuPage as well. And so if you want to an example of what'll happen if this law goes into effect, you've got a petri dish that's been showing you that in Chicago for years and the last thing we want is that to be statewide.”

Glasgow said not letting a judge determine bail limits judicial powers. He used the ineffectiveness of misdemeanor warrants as an example.

“Listen to the arrogance of this 'simple past non-appearance in court alone is not evidence of future intent to evade prosecution.' That's insulting. Judges do that every day. And I would argue that that's unconstitutional. It's a violation of separation of powers where the legislature is trying to tie the hands of the judge and prevent that judge from using their discretion,” Glasgow said.

Glasgow said most offenses will not allow police to detain them.

“This law is unclear. Let's say they placed him under arrest. We know that there's no known mechanism to put him in jail. They can't be detained. So I guess the officer puts handcuffs on them, drives two blocks away and then let them go. I mean, that's literally what we're going to be faced with. And when offenders find out that the police are powerless, they'll be 10 times more brazen in committing their offenses,” Glasgow said.

He said we no longer have the ability to get a warrant.

“We have to get a rule to show cause. And it's just basically civil process and try to get an officer to go serve that. And it has to be served 48 hours before the court date. So that puts another restriction on it. But we don't have enough police officers to be running around trying to serve rules to show cause on everyone. And quite literally, the way the law appears to read, even on these misdemeanors Bob was talking about, if they don't show up, record on their summons, we can't get a warrant for them either. We'd have to do the same ridiculous process. And then when you're talking about violent offenders, you can't ask police officers to go into a situation where they can't use force. They have to knock on the door and say, please open the door. I have a piece of paper for you. It's quite different when they have a warrant. They can get whatever force they need to execute that warrant. So it literally is going to shut the system down the way I see it,” Glasgow said.

If the SAFE-T Act were in place a violent criminal like Drew Peterson – who is being held on murder charges and was caught on tape planning the murder of Glasgow himself – would have been on the street.

“If you go back to his murder trial, he was in jail for three years on a $20 million bond,” Glasgow said. “That's the most difficult prosecution I've ever handled. And there's no way in the world that I would have weathered that storm had he been out of jail. In fact, on the overhear when he was captured by the FBI, when they were discussing my murder, he said if he was out on the street, he'd take care of it himself. And then he referenced back to '07 when it all started that he was going to take care of it then but he couldn't slip the media and the police. So there's real danger at all levels here when violent offenders cannot be held."

The SAFE-T Act, which would go into effect Chicago Jan. 1, 2023, was condemned by James Murphy III, a former office manager for Cook County State's Attorney Km Foxx, for eliminating cash bail from criminal cases in his widely known resignation letter.

If the prosecution feels that a person suspected of a crime should be detained in jail, they have the burden of proof under the SAFE-T Act. The law only permits detention if it is established that the defendant "poses a specific, real and present threat to a person or has a high likelihood of willful flight."

“I have been thinking about leaving for a while now. Really, the thoughts began back in January of 2021, when the 'SAFE-T Act' was passed,” Murphy said in the letter, according to CWB Chicago. “Seeing this administration’s involvement in that process was an eye-opening experience for me. To be clear, I am in support of eliminating cash bail – no person should sit in jail solely because they can’t afford to pay for bail. But I never understood the rush on an issue that was so important. I voiced my concerns at the time. And it was in that process that I began to realize that the administration’s ‘Mission Vision and Values’ was just a PR stunt, just words on a page. Fairness. Accountability. Integrity. Respect. Collaboration. Those words should mean something. They do to me. And I know that they do to you as well. Yet time after time after time this administration has shown that they don’t live the meaning of those words. Or they don’t care.”

Several are advocating the General Assembly take another swipe at the legislation.

"This January, if nothing is done, mayhem will ensue across Illinois as alleged perpetrators held in pre-trial confinement for crimes from petty theft all the way up to murder will be let out of jail everywhere," Mike Koolidge, a spokesman for the Political Action Committee People Who Play By the Rules, said, Prairie State Wire reported. "Any respectable legislator and state's attorneys who doesn't do something about this before then will have blood on their hands, the least of which being the man who signed this catastrophic bill into law, Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker.”

Glasgow recently claimed that the violence is likely to get worse with the imminent adoption of statewide cashless bail under the SAFE-T Act. 

Even those charged with the most serious crimes can be released on bail, according to the bill, without having to deposit a monetary bond.

“A murderer who was on an ankle bracelet in the city of Chicago killed the person that was the eyewitness against him in the first murder," Glasgow noted regarding a recent case of an alleged cashless bail case in Chicago, according to the Will County Gazette.