US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Andrew Bros announced the results of Operation New Dawn, a multi-jurisdictional initiative coordinated by federal prosecutors across eleven federal agencies targeting individuals suspected of murder, robbery, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and child exploitation. Since launching around May 1st, the operation has produced 179 people charged in 140 newly filed cases, 305 fugitives apprehended, and 24 abducted children located and reunited with their families. Bros called the operation badgeless because it required seamless cooperation among HSI, FBI, DEA, and ATF, and offered pointed public commentary about the Cook County judicial system, saying there is a problem with Cook County judges releasing repeat violent offenders on pretrial conditions and urging the press to start reporting on it.\
John Garrido, former Chicago police lieutenant in the 16th district, practicing attorney, and president of the Garrido Stray Rescue Foundation, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to assess what the operation reveals about the state of the criminal justice system and what Superintendent Snelling’s departure means for policing in Chicago.
Garrido said Operation New Dawn is confirmation that the Illinois justice system has been a systemic failure, and that the problem is far broader than the Safety Act alone, though that legislation is part of it. He said the Illinois legislature has spent decades doing everything except keeping communities safe, from concurrent sentencing policies that allow violent criminals to serve multiple sentences simultaneously rather than consecutively, to good time credit provisions that reduce actual time served to fifty percent of the sentence imposed. Layered on top of that are judges who are either incompetent, have no business on the bench, or are so weak-minded that they extend not just second chances but fifteenth and twentieth chances to repeat violent offenders.
He cited the case of Thomas Martell, who was charged with microwaving eight-week-old kittens and was offered a four-and-a-half-year sentence by Judge Sermersheim, which Judge Kainer honored. Because Martell had already spent three years on electronic monitoring, he walked in and out of jail in a single day after sentencing. He received two sentences served concurrently, pled to only one count, and is now back on the street. Garrido said the case illustrates how every layer of the system, from the legislature’s sentencing framework to individual judicial decisions, compounds to produce outcomes that leave dangerous individuals free with no meaningful consequence.
On State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, Garrido said he is glad she is in the position and that she has done some good work, but she needs to do significantly more and her public statement of support for the Safety Act does not inspire confidence that a paradigm shift is happening. He said the improvements over Kim Foxx are real but marginal, noting that Foxx set the bar so low that simply showing up to work and doing basic prosecution constitutes a dramatic improvement. He said the more fundamental problem remains the judges, who have tools available under existing law to detain individuals during pretrial proceedings and to impose consecutive rather than concurrent sentences but consistently decline to use them, sometimes incorrectly citing the Safety Act as requiring leniency when the statute does not actually mandate the outcomes they are producing.
On Superintendent Snelling’s retirement effective July 15th, before reaching his third anniversary in the position, Garrido said the superintendent’s job is inherently difficult because the mayor’s thumb is on you at all times, and the difficulty is entirely dependent on who the mayor is. He said working under Brandon Johnson must be almost impossible, and while many officers credit Snelling with improving morale, there are limits to what any superintendent can accomplish when the mayor is actively undermining the mission. He said the more important question is who comes next and whether the next superintendent will face the same impossible constraints.
On the broader pattern of violence and disrespect toward law enforcement, Garrido said the two officers shot over the weekend during a traffic stop of individuals in a makeshift go-kart and the mass shooting on the west side that occurred while police were already on scene are signs of the times. He said what is happening is a generational shift in which young people have literally never experienced accountability for criminal or antisocial behavior, and a generation that has never experienced consequences has no reason to fear them. He said you could deploy ten thousand police officers to teen takeover locations and it would not matter unless those officers are actually empowered to make arrests and enforce curfews, because the young people involved know from experience that nothing will happen to them. He cited similar incidents in North Charleston, where officers were physically attacked by groups of teenagers including punches and kicks that left a female officer significantly battered, and in New York where officers were doused with water during takeover events. He attributed the spread to the TikTok effect, with young people in different cities watching each other push the envelope and competing to see who can be most defiant toward police, enabled by mayors who will not allow their departments to respond with appropriate force.
On the upcoming mayoral race, Garrido expressed concern that the large number of candidates, including Quigley, Giannoulias, Janulis, Papas, and Mendoza, will split the vote and potentially produce a runoff that could yield someone worse than Johnson, since voter turnout drops dramatically in runoffs. He noted that approximately one million eligible voters stayed home during the last mayoral runoff. Of the current field, he said he likes Susana Mendoza, who comes from a police family and whose brother he worked with during his career. He said he believes she would step up and do the job on public safety if given the opportunity.