“Accountability Monday” Press Conference on the Inaccuracies of CPD’s “Gun Offender Dashboard,” August 12, 2019.
On Monday, August 12, we stood with community advocates and fellow members of the Coalition to End Money Bond to speak out against CPD’s inaccurate and misleading use of data on the “Gun Offender Dashboard.”
In the attached video, Sarah Staudt, Senior Policy Analyst and Staff Attorney for Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers, addresses some of these issues:
99% of the people listed on that website are charged with offenses when they are not accused of hurting anyone. People, by-and-large, that are on the “Gun Offender” database are charged with an unlawful use of a weapon charge, which is what Illinois, somewhat misleadingly, calls mere gun possession. What that means is that none of these people have been accused of shooting a gun at someone. These people have not been accused of being involved in a murder or a shooting. They have been accused of having mere possession of a weapon.
In other words, there is no evidence that the overwhelming majority of the people included on the CPD’s “Gun Offender Dashboard” are the main cause of the violence in our communities. From October of 2017 through March of 2019, 37,233 of felony-accused people had bond hearings in Cook County and 30,466 of them were released from custody pretrial. Of those released, only 70 people – 0.2% or one-fifth of one-percent – were arrested and charged with a new violent offense that involved a gun. All people, including those listed on CPD’s “Gun Offender Dashboard,” are entitled to the presumption of innocence unless proven otherwise in a court of law. When the information involving their cases is misrepresented and improperly used on the “Dashboard,” that presumption is seriously at risk.
Regardless of the narrative being pushed forward by bond reform opponents, the evidence doesn’t lie. Bond reform in Cook County has been a tremendous success.
To learn more, watch the full press conference on the Chicago Community Bond Fund’s Facebook (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) or read more from Sarah, here: “CPD’s “Gun Offender Dashboard” contains Disturbing Inaccuracies that are Misleading the Public about the Causes of Violent Crime.”