Local Legislators Displeased w/Changes to SAFE-T Act Thursday

Local legislators are displeased with the changes made to the SAFE-T Act, which were approved by the General Assembly on Thursday.

The legislators say either more needed to be done, or that the Act needed to be repealed.

State Representative Blaine Wilhour of Beecher City said the changes represent little more than cosmetic changes to a deeply flawed bill. “There is a clear intent with the SAFE-T Act to create an entirely new criminal justice system,” Wilhour said. “The changes to the Act make that abundantly clear. Slightly tweaking the Act may make a bad bill less bad but it does not change the underlying intent of the bill, which is to put into law the woke policies far-left prosecutors such as Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx have been pushing.”

Wilhour said that under the new changes, police officers will still be subjected to potential termination based on anonymous complaints, lessens penalties for repeat offenders, and decreases the ability to penalize offenders for assaulting corrections officers. 

State Representative Adam Niemerg of Dieterich said the proposed changes in many ways makes the new legislation worse than the first version previously passed into law.

Niemerg noted some of the changes could force a sexual assault victim be called into a detainment hearing within 48 hours of the assault, which would force victims to confront their abusers within 48 hours of the incident – an obvious advantage for the accused. It also decreases sentences for repeat offenders. Other changes provide for permissive consecutive sentences as opposed to mandatory consecutive sentences.

“In other words, the intent here is to get rid of mandatory consecutive sentences,” Niemerg said. “So, if someone is awaiting trial and commits the same crime again, there is a strong chance that once the criminal is sentenced the two sentences would be served simultaneously. The obvious intent here is the dismantling of our criminal justice system.”

Niemerg noted additional changes include requiring non-detainable offense hearings to be within 7 days, willful flight hearings to be held within 60 days, and threat to safety hearings must be heard within 90 days. The new changes still require citations to be issued for trespassing, but it does allow police officers to detain trespassers if the person poses a threat, continues to commit the offense, or has obvious mental health issues.

“To call this a compromise is a misnomer as Republicans were completely shut out of the negotiations,” Niemerg said. “Yes, there are certain changes to the legislation including provisions to give prosecutors more time to demonstrate a suspect is a flight risk and/or a danger to the community but the underlying principles of the legislation remain the same.”

Niemerg said the intended purpose of the SAFE-T Act is to put into law a far-left approach to criminal justice and to completely transform how criminals are prosecuted in Illinois and that is exactly what this legislation does despite the changes approved Thursday.

State Senator Jason Plummer said of House Bill 1095, a trailer bill to the SAFE-T Act, "“There’s a reason that nearly every state’s attorney and police officer has strongly opposed the SAFE-T Act, because it will make our communities less safe. This bill contains some positive changes, but it does little to undo the most dangerous aspects of the original law. Prosecutors will still have a harder time keeping dangerous criminals behind bars and it still piles on millions in new costs for law enforcement. We can make our criminal justice system more fair, but we can’t make our communities less safe in the process.”

State Senator Darren Bailey said Thursday of the amendments, “The trailer bill passage today to the dangerous SAFE-T Act further solidifies the Democratic Party’s out-of-touch policies and politics. From the start, I have called for the repeal of this egregious legislation as it is a mere violation of our constitutional rights. This entire ‘SAFE-T’ Act package does nothing to hold violent criminals accountable, but instead promotes dangerous activity where victims and innocent people’s lives are at risk.”