Ex-Riverside Chief: Give Power To Override Prosecutors

RIVERSIDE, IL — Former Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel has been retired since the spring, but he has remained vocal on police issues.

This week, he told Patch that he supports a bill in the Legislature that would give police chiefs the power to override a state's attorney's decision not to file felony charges.

The bill, sponsored by House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, would apply to Cook County only. The bill is targeted at State's Attorney Kim Foxx, a Democrat.

In an interview, Weitzel, whose career in law enforcement lasted nearly four decades, criticized the state's attorney's office's felony review process. It was bad under former State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, but got a lot worse under Foxx, he said.

He said he was particularly frustrated that the state's attorney requires that an officer attacked by a suspect be admitted to the hospital before an aggravated battery charge is filed.

In Riverside, Weitzel said, a suspect punched an officer, who went to the emergency room but was not admitted to the hospital. Prosecutors declined to file an aggravated battery charge.

"An officer doesn't need to be hospitalized for it to be a felony," Weitzel said. "The statute says if you injure an officer in the line of duty, it's a Class 4 felony."

He said prosecutors in the state's attorney's office would hang up on him when he objected to their decisions.

"The state's attorney's office is arrogant. Not every employee," Weitzel said. "I have always been a proponent to override the state's attorney."

He said state's attorneys and police departments have a naturally adversarial relationship and that prosecutors should not be rubber stamps. But he said the current state's attorney's office acts as if it were the public defender.

"The relationship between the state's attorney and law enforcement is at an all-time low," Weitzel said. "This is about policy. I have respect for Kim Foxx. This is not personal."

In a recent WGN story, Durkin also criticized Foxx.

“Crime is increasing. It’s getting worse, and we have a state’s attorney that is looking in the other direction,” House Minority Leader Jim Durkin told the station.

In the WGN story, the state's attorney's office said it approves 85 percent of cases in suburban Cook County.

"(I)f there is an insufficient amount of evidence, we continue to work with law enforcement to bring new evidence. The current system allows for checks and balances in the criminal justice system where police investigate and the CCSAO prosecutes," the office said in a statement.

Follow former Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel's on Twitter at @chiefweitzel.