A man who flashed a gun and threatened Sen. Elgie Sims of Chicago during a road rage incident gets released pending trial for just $1,500 cash — 10 percent of his $15,000 bail. Sen. Sims, promoter of ‘no cash bail’ legislation, expressed outrage because the accused is “free to do this again.”
Stephen Green, Scott Ott and Bill Whittle produce 20 new episodes of Right Angle each month, thanks to our Members. Join the team.
Video below hosted at Rumble.
9 replies on “‘No Cash Bail’ Promoter, Threatened with Gun, Angry That Assailant Gets Out on Cheap Bail”
So, once again the sound track is off. Is me or is it you?
Sen. Sims is saying that the law he passed would have kept his assailant behind bars based on an assessment of the danger he posed to the community. I’m guessing that his bill was supposed to deny bail to dangerous offenders while eliminating bail for low risk offenders.
“Sims, 50, a Democrat, told The State Journal-Register that he thinks the man who threatened him would have been detained and remained behind bars if the court system, as the new law will require, had to perform a more thorough analysis on whether releasing a suspect would pose a risk to public safety.
“I think it’s a perfect example of how cash bail doesn’t make people more safe,” Sims said in a phone interview as the Illinois Senate met in-person in Springfield.”
https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/2021/03/18/illinois-senator-threatened-man-gun-while-driving-springfield/4747730001/
Steve: Please don’t call it our “Justice System” — it’s our Legal System. Justice has no part of the entire thing.
For those of us who enjoy video games, this reminds me of what a character in Final Fantasy Tactics said… “If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that crime only exists for the poor.”
Exactly. Like traffic cameras that only impose fines and no points. They’re just revenue machines and rich people don’t flinch at a $40 fine.
The biggest argument for bail reform is looking at how many BLM / Antifa Brown Shirts are running free while the Jan 6 Political Prisoners are being denied bail because they might question the 2020 election results
One thought I had while listening to this was that making it easier for accused persons to avoid pre-trail jail time also reduced the taxpayer’s tax load to support jail facilities. In fact, if I understand it correctly (never having had to access their services), the bail bondsman system is a private sector activity and puts the onus on the bail bondsman for capturing bail skippers and brining them to court, so the bondsman can avoid financial loss. Clearly that can be abused and I believe bounty hunters have certain restrictions on what they can do, but they also have more “liberty” to do certain things while trying to recapture a skipper.
This legislator clearly did not think through his position from a Golden Rule perspective, which suggests he is not at all bright, logical, or worthy of representing anyone (as he can’t even really represent himself to himself).
Which raises a parallel set of questions:
1) has our system so denigrated civic virtue that no one of substance wants to take time away from their normal life to provide a period of public service?
2) Was it this way from the beginning and we were just fooling ourselves by thinking otherwise?
3) Is there some other incentive besides a feeling of virtue and social obligation that might now incentivize good people to undertake such public service?
One 1)
Given what kind of gauntlet many running for election have to pass, I don’t blame many for not running.
On 2)
I don’t think it was always this bad and people would gather at town meetings. In large cities however, you’re often one amongst so many that your voice is lost and the organized
crime unionsgrassroots that show up just shout down opposing voices.For 3) I am sure there are and one that comes to immediate mind is the attitude of some that ran under the TEA party banner, hoping to get enough like minded people into office to actually effect change. Going back to 1) though, the feeling that you’d be alone and ineffective probably stops the majority from creating a new majority.
Hypocrisy – from an elected official?