New Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke has continued her focus on retail theft crimes with her office’s lead role in a nationwide initiative that’s led to more than 500 arrests in 28 states.
AP
The renewed focus on retail theft from Cook County’s top prosecutor has gone national.
State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke announced this week that a nationwide campaign, spearheaded by her office to target organized retail theft crews, has led to more than 500 arrests since May 30.
A first-of-its-kind effort, the National Organized Retail Crime Blitz involved more than 100 law enforcement agencies in 28 states, as well as 60 retailers, including Walgreens, The Home Depot and Ulta Beauty, officials said.
O’Neill said her office’s new Multi-Jurisdiction Bureau organized the Blitz. The bureau, she said, is best equipped to lead such efforts because retail theft crews work across county and state lines.
In addition to the 500 arrests, law enforcement has recovered more than $130,000 in stolen goods since the campaign’s launch, officials said.
“Retail crime has become increasingly violent and sophisticated, and if left unchecked, will continue to wreak devastating economic consequences in our communities,” O’Neill Burke said in her announcement.
The campaign comes as O’Neill has stepped up retail theft prosecutions since taking office Dec. 1. Predecessor Kim Foxx was criticized for her policy of bringing felony charges only if a retail theft exceeded $1,000 — even though state law allows for it for thefts above $300.
O’Neill reinstated the $300 threshold and her office has brought felony charges in 1,450 retail theft cases since, officials said. In comparison, Foxx’s office approved felony charges in 7,742 retail theft cases during her eight years in office, reports show.
Another first
Speaking of first-time initiatives, the Department of Justice announced last week that it is expanding its Project Safe Neighborhoods to Chicago-area mass transit.
It’s the first time anywhere in the U.S. the program has been deployed on a mass transit system. The move comes amid growing concern about safety aboard public transportation, heightened by September’s killing of four people aboard a CTA Blue Line train in West suburban Forest Park.
Federal authorities plan to assist local law enforcement in keeping mass transit safe, after the killings of four people aboard a Blue Line train in Forest Park last year, and amid growing concerns about safety aboard public transportation.
AP
Project Safe Neighborhoods is a federally funded program that brings together federal, state and local law enforcement to combat violent crime in specific areas. In the Chicago region, it had previously operated only in seven neighborhoods on the West and South sides of the city.
Besides the entire CTA system, the program is expanding to downtown Chicago neighborhoods that have been the site of high-profile crimes in recent months, including “flash mobs” and the shooting of a tourist outside a Streeterville movie theater.
“By investing PSN resources in our urban economic centers and the public transit system that feeds into them, we will help foster a downtown that is both safe and friendly to economic vitality for everyone,” said Andrew S. Boutros, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
Kudos
Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart and the head of his Victim Witness Division, Jacqueline Herrera Giron, received the Champion of Victims’ Rights award Wednesday from Marsy’s Law for Illinois.
Marsy’s Law — which shares its name with the 2014 amendment that created the Illinois Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights — is a statewide organization that advocates for crime victims.
In an announcement of the award, the organization praised the work Rinehart’s office did for the victims of the 2022 mass shooting at Highland Park’s Independence Day parade.
Marsy’s Law for Illinois State Director Jennifer Bishop Jenkins, fourth from right, presents Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart and Victim Witness Head Jacqueline Herrera Giron with the “Champion of Victims’ Rights” Award on Wednesday.
Courtesy of the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office
“Eric Rinehart and Jackie Herrera-Giron embody everything a victim would want from a prosecutors office,” said Jennifer Bishop Jenkins, state director for Marsy’s Law for Illinois.
Getting out early
Sean Helgesen, who as a 17-year-old in 1993 killed a friend’s parents in their Bartlett home, was paroled from the Illinois Department of Corrections last week, years earlier than previously expected.
A IDOC spokeswoman told us this week that Helgesen’s release was the result of various credits he received while in prison, not any action by a court, parole board or the department.
It’s quite a turn of events for Helgesen, who after his 1995 murder conviction was told he would spend the rest of his life in prison. That sentence was thrown out and reset at 90 years — 45 years of actual time served — after a landmark 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring life sentences for minors unconstitutional.
Sean Helgesen
Then, a change in state law last year adjusted how credits toward early release — earned by taking classes and other programs behind bars — are calculated, further moving up Helgesen’s release date. Now out of prison, he must spend the next three years on “mandatory supervised release,” which used to be called parole.
Authorities said Helgesen and Elgin High School classmate Eric Robles, also 17, stabbed Peter and Diana Robles to death on April 17, 1993. Eric Robles had paid Helgesen to help him kill his parents, authorities said.
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