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Chicago’s court system quietly admitted what every hardworking family has feared: roughly 244 people placed on electronic monitoring are currently unaccounted for out of about 3,048 participants in the program — a staggering failure of basic public safety. This isn’t a tech glitch to shrug off; it’s proof that our judicial apparatus is prioritizing process over protecting victims and neighborhoods.
Worse, the AWOL list includes defendants accused of serious, violent crimes — and one of those defendants, Alphanso Talley, was on electronic monitoring when he allegedly shot and killed Chicago Police Officer John Bartholomew inside a hospital. This tragic death ripped the bandaid off a system that treats repeat offenders like inconveniences rather than threats.
The Office of the Chief Judge released the monitoring data and promises more transparency and faster judicial review of major violations, but releasing numbers after the fact does nothing for a dead officer or for survivors of violent crime. If judges and administrators won’t act proactively to keep dangerous people off the streets, citizens are left to pick up the pieces.
Officials admit many so-called “AWOL” cases stem from dead batteries, lost connectivity, or device malfunctions — problems that are the predictable result of outsourcing public safety to unreliable technology without proper oversight. Charging defendants with the responsibility to keep devices charged while letting them roam neighborhoods is not public safety; it’s abdication.
State leaders and prosecutors are rightly furious, and public officials from across Illinois — including Comptroller Susana Mendoza — have publicly criticized policies that let violent suspects roam while victims pay the price. The outrage is bipartisan in spirit if not in practice, because when judges’ decisions translate into tragedy, voters demand answers.
Enough with platitudes about reform and dashboards; conservative Americans want real accountability. Judges who greenlight dangerous pretrial releases, prosecutors who don’t insist on detention where appropriate, and bureaucrats who rely on flaky tech must answer to the public they serve — and lawmakers should tighten rules so that electronic monitoring is never a backdoor to freedom for violent offenders.
This isn’t abstract policy debate — it’s about public safety and common sense. With tens of thousands of outstanding warrants clogging the system and criminals slipping through the cracks, Cook County must reverse course now: prioritize victims, restore real consequences, and stop turning our communities into testing grounds for failed criminal-justice experiments.
