By John Kass

September 22, 2022

Billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker has the big bucks to send out his political hounds and call his critics racists, but he’s the one who signed the SAFE-T ACT that does away with cash bail on Jan.1. And now he’s scrambling because it’s terrible politics and bad politics.

 Most police in the state and 100 of 102 county prosecutors in Illinois strongly oppose the law. And not all are Republicans. Many are Democrats.

Our guest on this latest episode of the Chicago Way podcast is Republican State Sen. John Curran, R., Downers Grove.

Curran sees it the way most prosecutors and cops see it—as left-wing politicians removing deterrents from the criminal justice system—encouraging the violent to hunt down their prey.

“You cannot take deterrents out of the criminal system,” Curran said on this week’s podcast.  “They’ve been doing that for years and the SAFE-T act is the final straw. Crime is rampant because people don’t fear getting caught. They don’t stop. The police can’t pursue anymore because of insurance and other issues and when they do get caught, they’ll be processed booked and be back out that day.

“When there’s no fear of accountability in the system, what is going to stop someone who sees something someone else has and says, ‘I want to take that.’ And that’s what’s going on and it’s rampant.”

Here’s what’s also going on. Those of us who dare criticize the Safe-T Act are being pelted by Democrat operatives. Why? Because everything about Pritzker’s Safe-T Act illustrates Pritzker’s political problem.

Democrats know they’ve screwed up, but they can’t “fix” problems in the bill before the November 8 elections, otherwise Pritzker must admit to signing the bad bill.

But how many people will be victims of crime in the meantime?

 The end of no-cash bail was something of a peace offering to the hard left after the George Floyd riots destroyed the city.

And now the corrosive politics of the Democrat no-cash bail during a national crime wave is imploding. People of color stuck in rough low-income neighborhoods are the victims of urban violence.

Legitimate public safety expectations of urban racial minorities are sacrificed on the altar of Democratic power politics.

Who wears the jacket for this? Pritzker, Mayor Lightfoot, Boss Toni Preckwinkle, Judge Tim Evans and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

Pritzker and Democrat party leaders have plenty of angry Jacobin social media trolls—and stooges in the media working overtime—but it won’t change things.

Victims of rampant violent urban crime tend to be mostly minorities. Yes, most offenders who walk free on low or no bail (or electronic home monitoring) are for the most part minorities.

But so are the victims. And their rights to expect the governor and the mayor would try to protect them and their families are important too.

And they should not be broken on the altar of Democrat power, only to be ignored by the angry left and their virtue signalers who use race and their race cards to distract voters from what they’ve done to them.

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