Cook County will stop prosecuting some traffic offenses
By Megan Crepeau•Contact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
June 15, 2017, 11:39 AM Citing a lack of manpower, the Cook County State's Attorney's office plans to stop prosecuting certain traffic offenses, a top county official said.
Under a policy expected to take effect later this year, the state's attorney's office will not prosecute people accused of driving on licenses that have been suspended or revoked for financial reasons — such as failure to pay child support, tolls or parking tickets.
Instead, individual cities and towns will have the option to prosecute those violations.
"We are in a triage mode, and we can't continue to do what we were doing 10 years ago with 30 percent less resources," Eric Sussman, the first assistant state's attorney, told the Tribune on Wednesday.
The move comes as State's Attorney Kim Foxx, elected in November, has pushed in other ways to change how her office handles low-level, nonviolent cases. In December, she dramatically raised the bar for felony charges related to shoplifting. And this week, she said that prosecutors could recommend that judges to release non-violent defendants charged with low-level crimes without any cash bail, pending the resolution of their cases.
In the new policy on traffic cases, Cook County prosecutors will continue to handle cases in which a driver's license was invalidated because of more serious crimes, such as DUI, fleeing a police officer and reckless homicide.
In addition, the new traffic policy raises the bar for felony charges against people who cause serious car crashes while their licenses were revoked for financial reasons.
Under current law, a driver's license-related misdemeanor charge can be upgraded to a felony if the driver causes a serious car crash and has one prior conviction for driving on an invalidated license.
Under the new policy, the state's attorney's office would upgrade those charges only if the defendant has five or more convictions for driving on a revoked or suspended license, if the license was taken away for money-related reasons.
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