Dan Kirk: These Prosecutors Promised Us ‘Reform’ but Delivered Chaos Instead

Imagine, one day, you decide to get healthy and hire a fitness coach. The trainer promises “a new you” — great physique, lower blood pressure, a healthy weight, more energy, better sleep. 

You start the program, which seems a little unusual and odd. Instead of working out and eating new and nutritious meals, you’ve been recommended fast food and very little if any time in the gym. A full year later, you have gained 40 pounds, your blood pressure is through the roof, your sleep is horrible, and you have no energy. 

Eventually, you would come to realize you got sold a load of bull.

While this seems like a ridiculous scenario, a version of it is happening in cities across America, where voters have been deceived — not by a fictional trainer — but by a number of elected prosecutors. Technically these district attorneys are prosecutors, I suppose, but, in reality, they are really “PINOs” — Prosecutors In Name Only. These PINOs were propelled to victory on a wave of cash from George Soros-related PACs and other left-leaning organizations with seemingly wonderful and altruistic names such as the “Fair and Just Prosecution” and “Partnership for Safety & Justice.”

Most if not all of these elected prosecutors ran on a platform of “reform” as if calling something “reform” makes it magically good. 

And, after they got into office, the PINOs began to experiment on the American people by unleashing their social justice agendas.

The list of PINOs, although not exhaustive, is well known: Kim Foxx in Chicago, Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, George Gascón in LA, Kim Gardner in St. Louis, and many others.

I spent nearly 15 years as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago, working my way up to second in command, and I know first-hand that sensible reform does not have to sacrifice public safety. For crimes motivated by drug addiction, like prostitution, my team favored treatment over incarceration. Offenders were able to find an exit ramp from criminality without creating chaos on our streets.

A prosecutor’s duty — indeed their sworn oath — is to enforce the law and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Yet, the PINOs do anything but enforce the law or uphold the Constitution. With the main goal of “decarceration,” they enact new policies that arbitrarily nullify entire sections of law.

Take Cook County State’s Attorney Foxx in Chicago. When she took office in 2016, she decided she didn’t like Illinois’ retail theft laws, which made stealing more than $300 of merchandise a felony. So she issued a directive that only defendants who thieve over $1,000 of merchandise or those with 10 or more felony convictions will be prosecuted for the higher offense. 

Virtually all PINOs have eliminated bail for even violent criminals. Catch and release is now the rule; the revolving door of justice now common.

The common PINO excuse for a rise in crime is to dismiss or deny it and then blame it on something, really anything (like COVID), other than their own policies. However, in Foxx’s Chicago, murders are up 30%, carjackings nearly 300%. In Gascón’s Los Angeles, 397 people were killed in 2021, the most homicides since 2007, marking a 53% increase from 2019. In Bragg’s New York, violent crime has soared 40% since 2021. In Gardner’s St. Louis, per capita murder rates rose to a 50-year high. 

Meanwhile, criminals got the memo that compliance with the law is, for the first time ever, optional. You want to steal merchandise from a store? No problem — just keep it at around $999. You want to carjack someone? By all means, go ahead. You probably won’t get caught because a lack of meaningful prosecution has killed off proactive policing.

The PINOs enacted their policies, and the policies yielded terrible results. Now, the people are in a position to evaluate whether they got what they bargained for when they gave these new prosecutors a chance.

The question is simple: Do you feel safer now than before your prosecutor took office? Universally, the answer is no. In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner’s soft-on-crime policies were so extreme he was recently impeached by the Republican-led House. In historically liberal San Francisco, voters got so fed up, they recalled and tossed Boudin out of office and now have a new DA who far better understands the necessary role of the prosecutor. 

Like a client whose trainer has made them unhealthy, the voters knew they’d been duped.

Daniel A. Kirk was a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) from 1997-2002 & 2008-2016. In 2008 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the CCSAO and in 2012 he was appointed First Assistant State’s Attorney of Cook County.

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