Veteran Chicago prosecutor bails as the city’s crime problem promises to get worse
Zachary Faria
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The crime situation in Chicago has deteriorated to the point where even prosecutors think it is too dangerous to remain in the city and do their job.
Jason Poje, a felony trial attorney with the Cook County State Attorney’s Office, told colleagues that he would be leaving Chicago (and Illinois altogether) because it was not safe to raise a family there.
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“The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster,” Poje wrote. “And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that has the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.”
A veteran of the office for 20 years, Poje said that “My son, who is only 5, hears gunfire while playing at our neighborhood park.” It is not quite St. Louis’s “lullaby of bullets,” but it is just as bad, as is the current state of Chicago and Illinois.
Chicago has seen 185 homicides in 131 days this year. That is actually considered progress for the Windy City, which saw 205 in the same time period last year. However, it is still more than the pre-pandemic numbers. Chicago may be mildly less deadly than it was last year, but it is still more deadly than it was four years ago.
The problem is not going to get much better, either. Illinois decided recently that the best way to address crime was to eliminate cash bail. Chicago ousted soft-on-crime mayor Lori Lightfoot, only to replace her with even-softer-on-crime Brandon Johnson, who supports defunding police departments and thinks roving mobs of violent juvenile criminals are just being “silly.”
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Voters made it clear in electing Lightfoot and then replacing her with Johnson that they simply do not care if Chicago is even more of a crime-ridden disaster than it had been a few years ago, when it already had a reputation for being a crime-ridden disaster.
For residents like Poje who can afford to pack up and leave, it seems to be the most prudent choice, at least until enough Chicago residents decide that crime is, in fact, something they don’t want to live with.