East Central Reporter

Public safety is one of the foremost issues on the minds of people all across the nation.

Poll after poll backs up this assertion. The latest example is a USA TODAY/Suffolk University/Detroit Free Press Poll which found that one in five people in Detroit listed public safety as their chief concern second only to education. Police reform came in dead last in the poll at four percent and by a whopping 9-1, Detroit residents said they would feel safer with more cops on the streets.

 Obviously, this is one poll in one American city, but it does not require a whole lot of mental gymnastics to understand the sentiments expressed in this poll reflects public opinion across a broad spectrum.

 Public officials like Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot know how concerned people are about growing violence in our communities which begs the question – why do they continue to enact policies that will inevitably lead to more crime?

Since becoming Governor, JB Pritzker has gone out of his way to make it more difficult for police officers to do their jobs. He appointed a convicted felon to the Prisoner Review Board, the same Board that continues to release violent criminals in the name of COVID-19 concerns. 

He signed House Bill 3653, which was put together without any meaningful input from law enforcement and severely hampers the ability of police officers to do their jobs. 

And of course, just recently, the Governor signed Senate Bill 667 into law. This new law bans local jails from housing ICE detainees and prevents local law enforcement from working with ICE agents including prohibiting them from providing ICE with any information.

ICE conducted 103,603 administrative arrests in the 2020 Fiscal Year. About 90% of the people taken into custody had prior criminal convictions or charges at the time of their arrest and the average number of convictions and charges was four per person. 

Once again, Governor Pritzker is siding with criminals and making our communities less safe.

The reason more and more people are concerned about the safety of their communities is simple. Inept leaders like Governor Pritzker are implementing policies that are directly correlated to the rise in violence we are seeing in our communities. 

If we want safer communities, we need to implement better policies. 

Now some may look at this as just a Chicago problem or just a big city problem, but it is not just Chicago where we are seeing these problems. The family of Champaign Police Officer Chris Oberheim can attest to the rise in crime even in rural areas.

If JB Pritzker and his allies in the House and the Senate really wanted to solve the rise in violent crime, they could. They could repeal House Bill 3653 and Senate Bill 667. They could fund the police and hire more officers. They could create policies that help not hurt the ability of law enforcement to keep our communities safe. They could instruct communities to work with ICE agents to uphold our country’s laws instead of rewarding lawlessness. 

But they won’t. In fact, they won’t even allow alternatives to their woke agenda to even be discussed. Governor Pritzker is all too willing to use the power of state agencies to force schools to comply with his heavy-handed school mask mandate, but he flat out refuses to lean on Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx or Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to fix the problems in Chicago. Kids coming home from school can be victims of drive by shootings but hey at least they are wearing masks.

It is time for our woke overlords to pay a price for their inept policies. We must take a stand and let our voices be heard. The safety of our communities depends on it.