>https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1872484452175343997
verified by local reports:
Felony shoplifting cases surge 154% under new state’s attorney
December 26, 2024
CHICAGO — Shoplifters in Chicago are more than 100% more likely to be slapped with felony charges under Cook County’s new state’s attorney than they were under Kim Foxx’s administration.
Retired justice Eileen O’Neill Burke took office on December 2 and immediately followed through on her campaign promise to adhere to state law by pursuing felonies against people who shoplift merchandise worth more than $300.'Foxx ordered prosecutors to withhold felony charges unless the value exceeded $1,000 or the accused shoplifter had ten or more previous convictions.
Three weeks into O’Neill Burke’s administration, the results of the rule change are already apparent.
We pulled Chicago Police Department shoplifting arrest records for this year and tallied the number of cases filed as felonies and misdemeanors:
From January 1 through November 30, we found 3,264 retail theft cases filed in the city. Only 11% of those were filed as felonies.
During November, Foxx’s last month in office, there were 333 cases, with 13% filed as felonies.
But the numbers are much different in the early days of O’Neill Burke’s administration. We found 248 shoplifting cases filed in Chicago between December 3 and December 22. Prosecutors filed 69 of those as felonies. That’s 28%, a 154% increase from the rate seen during the first eleven months of the year. It’s a 115% increase compared to November alone.
During her primary campaign against Clayton Harris, O’Neill Burke pushed back on Harris’ argument that people should not have to live with felony records because they shoplifted something worth a few hundred dollars.
“The felony retail theft statute says that the value of goods has to be $300 or above to be a felony,” O’Neill Burke said during a February town hall covered by Nadig Newspapers. “You can clear out several aisles at Walgreens before you get to $1,000. The ramification of this policy is that retail stores have closed all over the city because of theft.”
“They cannot do business when somebody comes in and clears out their store. So, that doesn’t mean that every person charged with retail theft should have a permanent record,” the retired justice continued. “If you’re charged with retail theft, and you don’t have a background, you can go to theft school. It does not permanently stain your record. It’s not appropriate for an officeholder just to say, ‘I don’t like that. I’m not going to enforce the law,’ especially not for a chief prosecutor.”
https://cwbchicago.com/2024/12/felony-shoplifting-cases-surge-154-under-new-states-attorney.html