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HomeMy WebLinkAbout96-3 Resolution No. 96-3 RESOLUTION OF ADVOCACY FOR MAXIMUM SENTENCES WHEREAS, the City of Elgin is a municipal corporation, organized and created to improve, aid and secure the general welfare, health, security and overall quality of life of its citizens; and WHEREAS, one of the primary purposes of a municipal corporation is to establish an environment in which its citizens can live without fear of crime or violence; and WHEREAS, contemporary society is plagued by individuals who perpetrate such crime and violence upon peaceful and law-abiding citizens without hesitation or remorse; and WHEREAS, the criminal actions of such individuals create a climate of fear, degrade the general qualify of life, and undermine the dedicated and cooperative efforts of the majority of citizens who attempt to peacefully coexist and maintain a civilized society; and WHEREAS, such violent crime is especially pernicious when it is sponsored, supported or induced through criminal gangs; and WHEREAS, it is clear that such criminals, and violent criminals in particular, cannot be permitted to continue to freely reside in general society, and that swift and certain punishment is essential as a deterrent to criminal acts; and WHEREAS, inadequate punishment for violent and gang-related criminal acts fails to accomplish either a sufficient removal of criminals from general society or act as a deterrent to such criminals; and WHEREAS, the need for such swift and certain punishment is especially acute in instances in which members of the police force are themselves the victims of violent and gang-related criminals. NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ELGIN, ILLINOIS, that the City Council of the City of Elgin feels that violent criminals, and violent criminal gang members in particular, must receive the maximum possible sentences for their heinous crimes . We call upon the members of the judiciary and prosecutorial officials to do their best to ensure that these menaces to society receive the maximum punishment possible. s/ Kevin Kelly Kevin Kelly, Mayor (2 Presented: January 10, 1996 Adopted: January 10, 1996 Vote: Yeas 6 Nays 0 Attest: s/ Dolonna Mecum Dolonna Mecum, City Clerk C C • - Resolution No. 96-3 RESOLUTION OF ADVOCACY FOR MAXIMUM SENTENCES WHEREAS, the City of Elgin is a municipal corporation, organized and created to improve, aid and secure the general welfare, health, security and overall quality of life of its citizens; and WHEREAS, one of the primary purposes of a municipal corporation is to establish an environment in which its citizens can live without fear of crime or violence; and WHEREAS, contemporary society is plagued by individuals who perpetrate such crime and violence upon peaceful and law-abiding citizens without hesitation or remorse; and WHEREAS, the criminal actions of such individuals create a climate of fear, degrade the general qualify of life, and undermine the dedicated and cooperative efforts of the majority of citizens who attempt to peacefully coexist and maintain a civilized society; and WHEREAS, such violent crime is especially pernicious when it is sponsored, supported or induced through criminal gangs; and WHEREAS, it is clear that such criminals, and violent criminals in particular, cannot be permitted to continue to freely reside in general society, and that swift and certain punishment is essential as a deterrent to criminal acts; and WHEREAS, inadequate punishment for violent and gang-related criminal acts fails to accomplish either a sufficient removal of criminals from general society or act as a deterrent to such criminals; and WHEREAS, the need for such swift and certain punishment is especially acute in instances in which members of the police force are themselves the victims of violent and gang-related criminals . NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF ELGIN, ILLINOIS, that the City Council of the City of Elgin feels that violent criminals, and violent criminal gang members in particular, must receive the maximum possible sentences for their heinous crimes . We call upon the members of the judiciary and prosecutorial officials to do their best to ensure that these menaces to society receive the maximum punishment possible. s/ Kevin Kelly Kevin Kelly, Mayor EXCERPT FROM TAPE OF JANUARY 10, 1996 COMMITTEE OF WHOLE MEETING Discussion Regarding Resolution of Advocacy for Maximum Sentences Kelly: Essentially the goal of this document is to send a message to the members of the judiciary and prosecutorial offices that Elgin is not going to stand for continued violence. We ' re not going to tolerate a record year of murders, and we would like to see maximum sentences, where at all possible, given to these gang criminals and these violent criminals . I believe Doug Johnson, who is Elgin Township Supervisor, representing their government, is here tonight and he had asked to address the Council on this issue. Mr. Johnson. Johnson: I am going to read just the cover letter. The resolution is there and it' s just about a page and one paragraph, and you have it there. And then I 'm going to make a very brief general comment. I 've addressed this letter January 10, 1996, to Mayor Kelly. The attached Elgin Township Resolution 96-1 was presented to the Board of Trustees January 9 , which was the normal board meeting for Elgin Township last night. In support of the above-referenced resolution, which is the City of Elgin Resolution 96-3, which is on your agenda this evening. Resolution 96-1 was passed by voice vote with 4 yeas, Supervisor Johnson, Trustees Richard Hamper, Jack Petersen, and Jim Schroeder, and one dissenting vote by Trustee Larry Wegman, which is not unusual in our board meetings . I 've attached the Kane County Sheriff ' s Crime Statistics for 1994 vs . 1995 for your information regarding calls made in unincorporated areas of Kane County. The majority of Elgin Township Board of Trustees submits its approved Resolution 96-1, approved at its board meeting last evening, in support of the Resolution of Advocacy for Maximum Sentences (Resolution 96-3) of the Elgin agenda this evening, being presented to the Elgin City Councilmembers on January 11 . I would like to make maybe a very brief statement. Elgin Township ranks Number 5 in the 16 townships of Kane County. And we' re not out to be Number 1 in this case. The City of Aurora this evening, if any of you have read the paper, had another police officer shot in a pursuit in downtown Aurora. He didn' t have to go to the hospital . It was a minor situation. But again, it ' s an assault on a police officer. There were 465 crime reports filed in Aurora Township in 1995 . These are outside the City of Aurora. The Courier editorial column tonight reported that 376 attempted murder charges were sentenced in 1994 in the State of Illinois . The medium sentence was 3 . 7 years of actual time served. I encourage the Council tonight to support the resolution on your agenda to send a message to criminals that the City of Elgin and Elgin Township will not accept an assault on citizens rights and police officers who serve to protect the citizens of Elgin. The voters should remember that sitting judges are asked to come to the voters ' ballot box every six years for retention, and I think the citizens should be concerned. I encourage you to vote tonight on behalf of the City of Elgin, and we ' re very willing to support this issue. Thank you. Kelly: Councilwoman Yearman, you had a comment? Yearman: Yes, I do. I joined in on this resolution not to e single out the State ' s Attorney nor to single g out any particular judge. I joined in it because I think we need a wake up call here--not just dealing with the Christ case but all of the other men that go out everyday and put their lives on the line for us living here in the City. Now, since the publicity on this resolution come out. I did not contact the State' s Attorney nor one of the sitting judges . They contacted me. They were not angry. They were not resentful . I pointed out to them that it was not our intent to question their integrity but simply to call attention to the fact that we had to have stronger rulings on plea bargains, especially where there was a life involved. In the Christ case, this man was not shot to be injured. He was shot--the amount of shots--they wanted to kill him. I 'm talking about future incidents down the line. Now this is what I was told. There are no hard feelings between Mr. Akemann, the State ' s Attorney, according to the way he spoke to me, nor the presiding judge. They said they do not have the proper tools to invoke a stronger sentence. They even faxed me a copy of the statutes . The statutes are behind the times . The laws written in there were before the gang problems we' re faced with today. As I said to the judge, if you don' t have the tools, compare it to a car. If you know the car is broken down, you don' t continue to run the car. You take it in for repair. If this is the problem with plea bargain or with sentencing people who commit a crime almost to take the life of anybody, then we need to do something about it. Get the tools in order. I 'm suggesting we send a copy of our resolution to our local legislators--telling them what we would like to have done--some relief here, so that the judges, the state' s attorney will have the proper tools at hand to do what we're asking of them. I also became involved with this because of the number of calls I received and also listening to the call in program on WRMN. And when you hear remarks--what are you doing down there--sitting on your hands? Why don' t you do something? So maybe you do get excited and you say, "I felt terrible about Officer Christ. " I think he' s one of the finest policemen we have. But it ' s not all revolved around one officer. It ' s the other 140 officers we have out there that we ' re asking to protect us . We need some protection for them. And that' s why I 'm involved with this resolution. Walters : Being a person who gets to be involved somewhat outside of the criminal justice situation--it ' s an intriguing situation that we're involved with. The other day the State' s Attorney' s Office, based upon the fact that we have a 120-day speedy trial rule from the time you ' re taken into custody and another rule that says that if you don' t go to trial within 90 days after being denied bond on a murder case you must go to trial . These cases are coming up, and all of a sudden the State ' s Attorney' s Office is being faced with a situation that they can' t get this number of trials in within the amount of time they have to do. And they are forced to go to a plea negotiation on one of those, and because of that, you see results that start coming about. I think what we see happening right now is the sheer number--we have two more judges appointed to serve in Kane County, but we don' t have funding for those judges . If we hold more people, we don' t have the jail space to put them in. If we convict more people, we don' t have statewide prisons to put them in. We've gone to systems now where you have day for day "good time" for every day you don't cause trouble in a state or county prison, you get one day off your sentence. We have early release that further keeps people out of jail . We 've gone to other systems--electronic monitoring because the money is not there to do the things we want to see happening. If cases are all taken to maximum sentence, you will see more trials . And I don' t mean that' s a bad thing to happen. We'd all like to see some of these people put away for a long time. But if you have more trials, you need more judges, more county courtrooms, more county jail space, more people to monitor the jail . You ' ll need more statewide prisons, more people to work within the prison system. You' ll need more police officers due to the fact that the officers you have will be in court testifying on more cases . The whole system is going to cost a lot more money, and right now it ' s frightening to see that we just don' t see the public support in the terms of the dollars to go towards these kinds of things . Because we ' re not talking about a couple dollars here, a couple dollars there. We ' re talking about big-time revamping of huge additions to all these different institutions in order to accomplish the safety goal, which is admittedly one of the highest goals we have as any elected body. Yearman: I meant to make this in my opening statement. I 'm not involved in this resolution because I have a political agenda . My political life will end right here. I 'm not looking for anything--publicity--down the road, and I 'd like that on the record. Gilliam: Is it possible that we could look into--if there are two positions not funded by the County--can the counties get together and fund that? Kelly: Well, they' re running for them now. Gilliam: But you said there ' s no funding for them. Walters : Statewide funding. Gilliam: Let me ask another question. Can the counties get together. . . Yearman: We can' t fund them. That ' s a county function. Gilliam: But I mean, can' t we. . . . Yearman: Hire a judge? Gilliam: I 'm trying to get around that so it wouldn' t sound that way. Yearman: But that ' s what you meant? Gilliam: Yes and no. We were going to give them funding to help build a youth facility. We talked about that. What ' s the difference in giving the money to the county to help them hire additional judges? That can' t be done? Yearman: Because we don't appoint the judges . Gilliam: No, they would hire them and they would appoint them, but we would fund them as a community. Kelly: The judgeships would have to be created, and I don't know if the General Assembly creates judgeships in terms of full circuit. . . . Walters : The Supreme Court. Kelly: And then do they also create associate judgeships? Walters : Associate judgeships are then created by virtue of the fact that you have sitting judges . Funding comes from the state through the legislature. Kelly: There are two new full circuit judges that have been created for 1996 into the future, which will help. Walters : But no money to pay them. Kelly: In the wording of this resolution, I think you see in a couple of situations the word "possible. " And the word "possible" is there for a reason. It ' s there to illustrate the fact that we understand the complexities they are working under. In our public news conference related to this, we spent a lot of time illustrating exactly what you illustrated--the capacity constraints on the system and the need for taxpayer and public support to improve the system. Because without their support, we ' re going to continue to have the capacity constraints . And that was clearly stated and clearly illustrated, although that part of the message didn' t get carried through as much as the impression that we were trying to create a controversy, which we really weren' t. And thirdly, in the future, if this is approved, there are always going to be more plea bargains . There are always going to be plea bargains . But when the prosecutors or the judges or our police officers or other officials within this government are consulted and are talking and are trying to make a very difficult decision on do we go for this charge and this sentence or this charge and this sentence or this charge and this sentence, and they have choices, they will know that our goal is to send them a message. Be as tough as you can. So if you have a choice between tough and not quite so tough, go for the tougher rather than the easy way out. So that message is part of this too. Gavin: I don't think any of us have a problem with the number of plea bargain cases that go on. I talked to the State' s Attorney quite a long time ago when he first took office, and he explained the process to me, so I understand it. What I think the problem is here is that there was a high profile case with an employed police officer of the City of Elgin. Even the Judge ' s comments in the transcript we go last night indicates that even the judge wasn' t in favor necessarily of this arrangement and the sentence that was passed down. When you take into account the fact he gets one day off his sentence for each day of good behavior for basically doing what he should be doing, we basically looking at 8 1/2 years, and I think that ' s kind of a slap in the face of the City, the citizens, and the community, and our police department. Yearman: As one judge told me today, when he handed down a maximum sentence, it was reversed because of the way the statute reads today. Again it points out that the tools are not there for the judges to do anything differently, or the State ' s Attorney, and this should go to the attention of the legislature so that the statutes are brought up to the needs of today. Kelly: And the timing of our action, because of the timing of the decision on the Christ case and the end of the year gives us the opportunity to illustrate this to the public . Are there any other comments , questions, or discussion? Johnson: I think the difference in this plea bargaining case, and I 'm not being critical of the State' s Attorney in this particular case, let ' s be realistic. The difference between attempted murder and murder of this police officer was the aim of the gang murder who shot Officer Christ. Had it been murder, we would have been sitting here saying, "Let ' s do something about this . " I think that is the issue we ' re talking about and getting the message across that anytime a police officer is assaulted by anyone, whether it ' s a gang member or not, these are people that were sworn in to protect the rights of the citizens of Elgin and Elgin Township, and that' s the reason I argued very strongly with our Board last night. We had lots of discussion about it, and we did not get a majority vote. The issue being that four of five of us said that the residents of Elgin Township, we now find that we ' re rated Number 5 and I didn't know that before I called the Sheriff ' s Department to get these statistics and numbers . I don' t want to be Number 1 . Aurora' s Number 1 . We're not racing to the top. We' re trying to go down to Number 16 . I think that ' s the issue we ' re trying to get across here tonight, and that is that the message is , and I hope you' ll refer all judges to me as well . I 've worked on many of their campaigns and I 've talked to them on many cases, and I know there ' s been many conversations . We have to get a message to these criminals that when you assault a police officer, sworn to protect the citizens of Elgin, that we 've got to ask for the maximum sentence. I was told by the State ' s Attorney representative last night that was at my meeting that 2 , 600 cases came before them last year, and one 100 went to trial . My personal opinion, not the township, Officer Christ ' s case should have been one of the 100 cases that was prosecuted. I ' ll leave it with that comment. Gilliam: You say we ' re Number 5 . Who' s Number 1? Kelly: Aurora. Gilliam: But there ' s four ahead of us . Johnson: St. Charles, I forget who the others are. Aurora ' s like 300 more than the City of Elgin. We' re talking about crime in unincorporated area--not within the city limits . Yearman: There' s one other thing with reference to overcrowding, and then I ' ll be quiet. You know when you have people sitting down in the county jail because of a misdemeanor, and their bond is maybe a $100-$250, and they can' t make the bond money and they' re sitting there at a cost of $36 a day until they can get before a judge. And they can sit there for 30-60 days before they can get before a judge. They' re taking up space where somebody that has really committed a crime could be sitting, and it ' s simply because we don't have enough judges to get these people up in front and whatever they' re going to be fined and back out. Walters : I think when we talk about the situation of what happens to a policeman--I think there ' s a simpler solution to this and that is a legislative solution that puts a minimum sentence high enough that ' s acceptable to the community that if you ever do this, there ' s no question that the minimum is very satisfactory to the public . The maximum could be out of sight. Yearman: And that they' re not going to be overturned. Walters : If it ' s created by the legislature and they do the right things, it will be sustained. Yearman: That ' s why I 'm suggesting we send a copy of this resolution to the legislators and let them get the statutes up-to-date with the times . Schock : I would second Mrs . Yearman' s comment that we send the resolution to the legislators, because I think the value of this resolution is that it has generated discussion and has highlighted the fact that getting tough on crime is more easily said than done and that it ' s a complex solution involving almost every branch of government. Real solutions aren' t going to be easy or inexpensive, but they' re going to be hard, complicated, and very expensive. I guess the issue is going to be before the collective communities, not only in Kane County, but the State of Illinois in terms of what they' re willing to pay to rid themselves of the problem so that it ' s at an acceptable level . I will support the resolution. However, I wouldn' t want anyone to infer, however, that my support is in any way a criticism of those who have handled this or any other case that may have lead to the authorship of the resolution. My guess is that the judges and the prosecutors office and all those involved in law enforcement are probably no less and probably even more frustrated by the constraints they have on the performance of their jobs, constraints they haven't put on themselves but that we have collectively put on them by doing, I think, superfluous and politically expedient types of activities such as vote for more judges but not vote for more funding. That ' s an old game that legislators play. It ' s easy to say we need more judges and we' ll allocate two more to Kane County, but then when the appropriation bill is before the legislature, they don' t pass it. It' s easy to talk about locking people up. It ' s harder to put forth the hundreds of millions of dollars for construction of new prisons . Those are the real issues I think everyone needs to take a look at and decide where they really are on this . I support the resolution but in no way criticize those who are laboring everyday in the criminal justice system trying to make the system work with, in my view, the haphazard support we 've given them. Yearman: Well, I certainly didn' t mean it as a criticism either. It ' s accomplished already what I was trying to do. I got their attention. I got an explanation. And a suggestion as to how to proceed to try to cure the problem.