This week marked the anniversary of Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s first year in office. On Tuesday, the top Chicago prosecutor spoke at the City Club, reflecting on her accomplishments so far.
Not all of O’Neill Burke’s accomplishments sit well with grassroots organizers. On her first day in office, she implemented a new policy requiring prosecutors to seek pre-trial detention for any detainable felony offense where someone possesses or uses a gun with an automatic switch. Her new initiative, allowing Chicago Police officers to file felony gun possession charges without approval from a prosecutor, raised community concern in the spring; it was recently implemented citywide. And she’s instructing prosecutors to object “on the record” whenever a judge opts for electronic monitoring instead of pretrial detention. The policy shift raised warning bells among architects of the Pretrial Fairness Act.
Minutes into O’Neill Burke’s speech, about five demonstrators disrupted her. They stood up and yelled phrases like “Shame on you” and “[O’Neill] Burke and Trump are the same.”
Those five demonstrators, along with other criminal justice advocates in Chicago, say O’Neill Burke is intentionally rolling back progressive policies rolled out under her predecessor Kim Foxx. The new state’s attorney’s policies are sparking an increase in incarceration at Cook County Jail, organizers say, at a time when Chicago is seeing significant decreases in crime.
Jasmine Smith, an organizer with Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), was part of the group that disrupted O’Neill Burke’s speech. Smith said the room was full of supporters who likely weren’t aware of the impact O’Neill Burke’s policies have had on Black and brown communities. “They get up there, and they try to speak for us, but they be lying. So we have expose you and tell the truth,” Smith told The TRiiBE.
Since O’Neill Burke took office, the jail population in Cook County has increased by nearly 15%, according to the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice (INPJ).
“This trend is particularly alarming as it comes at a time when Cook County is continuing to experience a historic decrease in both violence and property crimes,” INPJ wrote in a press release. “By resurrecting the failed policies of mass incarceration, State’s Attorney Burke is making our communities less safe and rolling back progress toward making Cook County’s courts more equitable.”
Smith said it was the first time she directly participated in face-to-face disruption and that O’Neill Burke hasn’t sat down face-to-face with community-based organizations since she took office, despite repeated requests to do so. She said this confrontation was the only way to get O’Neill Burke’s attention.
“She has not sat and met with any grassroots organizations that’s got boots on the ground dealing with gun violence, violence intervention, police brutality, wrongful convictions,” Smith said.
Smith and the others were removed from the City Club of Chicago event by security. They weren’t arrested or detained, she said.
Within the last month, Smith and dozens of organizers from numerous community-based organizations have been participating in other direct actions to call attention to what’s happening within the State’s Attorney’s Office with O’Neill Burke at the helm.
Smith pointed to O’Neill Burke’s decision in her first two weeks in office to drop aggravated battery and official misconduct charges against Oak Lawn police officer Patrick O’Donnell, who was accused of beating then-17-year-old Palestinian American teen Hadi Abuatelah in 2022.
“He was going to have his day in trial, who knows what the outcome would have been,” Smith said, referring to O’Donnell. “But the thing is, he was being held accountable, and his actions were going to be addressed in court, if he had had his day in court.”
In addition, Smith and other criminal justice advocates are demanding that O’Neill Burke re-staff the CCSAO Conviction Integrity and Post-Conviction units, investigate and close the Broadview ICE Processing Center, and hold police and federal agents accused of misconduct accountable. Organizers are also asking the state’s attorney to release incarcerated people who were wrongfully convicted and survivors of police torture. They’re also asking that O’Neill Burke’s office not delay certificates of innocence petition cases.
“So now we’re pushing a campaign with the slogans of ‘bye-bye, Burke.’ Every time we get a heads-up on an event that she’s going to be at, we’re going to disrupt them,” Smith said. “We’re going to protest her, because she has to go. It’s the same way that organizations came together, community and family came together to raise awareness about [former Cook County State’s Attorney] Anita Alvarez.”
In 2016, young Black and queer organizers successfully rallied voters to knock out two-term incumbent Anita Alvarez through their #ByeAnita campaign. Alvarez undercharged former cop Dante Servin (who killed 22-year-old Rekia Boyd) and was complicit in a cover-up for former cop Jason Van Dyke (who murdered 17-year-old Laquan McDonald).
