This piece argues that Illinois lets dangerous suspects roam with legal protections while ordinary citizens faced strict pandemic controls, exposing a double standard and a broken system that needs legislative correction.
I remember the COVID era clearly, and I believe a lot of people have short memories about what was done in the name of public health. To paraphrase my favorite line from “Men in Black,” a person can remember. People can forget and you know it.
During those years many on the Left pushed for lockdowns that lasted far beyond a couple of weeks and for mandates that treated everyday life like a privilege. Refusing the recommended COVID shot came with real penalties: mandates, job threats, and vaccine passports in places like New York, California, and Cook County, Illinois.
I worked in healthcare in 2020 and saw how draconian some policies became: employees getting letters on company letterhead to prove they were essential, night-shift workers pulled over on their way to work, and rules that made daily errands feel like passing through checkpoints. Those memories matter because the same policymakers who insisted on strict control then now defend a system that gives suspects surprising freedom.
Illinois law currently allows people on electronic monitoring two unmonitored free-to-roam days, and that applies even to those charged with violent crimes. There are 87 defendants charged with murder or attempted murder on electronic monitoring in Cook County, and 181 defendants charged with sexual assault also on monitoring. Overall just over 3,200 people are supposedly on monitoring, and between 10 and 12 percent of them are currently unaccounted for.
That reality is startling: suspects accused of the most serious offenses can be out and unsupervised for chunks of time, and Cook County officials admit this leads to more crime. Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke has confirmed these unsupervised days result in additional offenses, and yet the system remains set up to tolerate that risk.
The contrast with how ordinary citizens were treated during COVID is hard to justify. At the height of the pandemic family courts used vaccination status in custody battles, and polls showed that 30 percent of Democrats wanted all unvaccinated parents to lose their children. Measures were floated that would have required unvaccinated people to pay COVID-related medical costs out of pocket.
https://x.com/bluelivesmtr/status/2087207418178515353
It is jarring to watch a political class that once insisted healthcare is a right turn around and propose punitive measures for people they deem noncompliant. If healthcare is truly a right, then the selective enforcement and moralizing we saw during the pandemic expose a lot about priorities and power.
Meanwhile, the system still provides taxpayer-funded services to many defendants: public defenders, court time, and access to healthcare paid for by taxpayers when needed. Those same resources serve victims of crime and a clogged judicial calendar when repeat offenders reoffend, yet the policy grants suspects two whole days where supervision lapses and the government effectively covers its eyes and says, “Pinky promise you’ll a good boy for the next 48 hours.”
The problem is structural and legal, and it needs lawmakers willing to fix it. State leaders can change statutes that create this loophole and tighten the criteria for who gets unsupervised time. The first step is acknowledging that a justice system that gives suspected killers and sexual assault defendants regular windows of freedom while ordinary citizens were forced into strict compliance during a crisis is not balanced or sensible.
This isn’t about punishing people indiscriminately; it’s about protecting communities and restoring common-sense rules that prioritize public safety. Illinois residents deserve a system that treats the public with respect and keeps dangerous people from taking advantage of policies designed for far less risky circumstances.
