Tag: illinois

Illinois parole board members resign after releasing man who stabbed 11-year-old to death in less than 24 hours

A board member and chair of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board resigned after freeing a man who went on to fatally stab his ex-girlfriend’s 11-year-old son less than 24 hours after he was released.

According to CBS 2, board chair Donald Shelton and board member LeAnn Miller resigned Monday following the March 13 murder of Jayden Perkins, who was stabbed in the chest allegedly by the recently released prisoner.

Crosetti Brand (37) allegedly ambushed Perkins and his pregnant mother, Laterria Smith, who was his ex-girlfriend, at their home after he was granted parole from the Stateville Correctional Center.

Smith (33) was stabbed in the neck during the attack but survived.

Brand had been serving 16 years for home invasion and aggravated assault.

Keep reading

Illinois Moves To Cut Thousands Of Non-Citizens From Taxpayer-Subsidized Health Care

Illinois officials are moving to stop providing taxpayer-subsidized health care to thousands of non-citizens, including many illegal immigrants, in a bid to rein in soaring costs.

The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services said in a recent statement it will start annually verifying the eligibility for two programs—Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults (HBIA) and Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors (HBIS)—after enrollment was paused due to budget concerns.

“This process will mirror the redetermination process used in the traditional Medicaid program to ensure those enrolled remain eligible,” the agency said.

The plans include closing cases for people who are enrolled who make over a certain amount or who otherwise are no longer eligible for the program in which they’re enrolled. Officials also plan on removing legal permanent residents who qualify for Medicaid, which is a federal program.

“The redetermination process ensures that those who are enrolled remain eligible for coverage,” Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services spokesperson Jamie Munks told WBEZ. “If an individual loses coverage through the redetermination process, it is because they no longer meet eligibility requirements, or they are required to respond or submit additional information to prove their continued eligibility, but they do not do so.”

The processes are estimated to reduce the number of enrollees in the state programs by about 6,000 people, state Sen. Don DeWitte, a Republican, told the Center Square after hearing from state health officials. Those removals would result in savings of $14 million.

HBIS, launched in 2020, provides taxpayer-funded health care for seniors who would receive Medicaid coverage but can’t get it due to their immigration status. HBIA, introduced in 2022, provides the same state benefits for people aged 42 to 64. Illegal immigrants are among the approximately 63,000 covered.

“Everyone, regardless of documentation status, deserves access to holistic healthcare coverage,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said in one of his statements in support of the programs.

Many Republicans have opposed the programs, noting that some citizens still lack health care.

The costs of the programs have increasingly sparked concern among lawmakers of both parties.

Keep reading

Illinois Supreme Court To Rule On Whether Smell Of Marijuana Alone Is Cause To Search A Vehicle

“Even the claim of smelling cannabis can be discretionary. Honestly, it can be made up sometimes when officers are being less than honest because there’s no way to challenge it.”

The Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday as to whether the smell of cannabis alone is grounds for police officers to search a vehicle, marking a test of the state’s 2020 recreational marijuana legalization law.

The court heard two consolidated cases of individuals who were in vehicles that were searched after an officer used the smell of cannabis as probable cause.

In People v. Redmond, defendant Ryan Redmond was pulled over by Illinois State Police for an unsecure license plate and driving three miles per hour over the speed limit, court records show. Upon smelling cannabis, the officer searched the vehicle and found about one gram of cannabis in the center console. He later charged Redmond with a misdemeanor for failure to transport cannabis in an odor-proof container, according to court documents.

The other case, People v. Molina, involved defendant Vincent Molina, who was a passenger in the vehicle when an Illinois State Police trooper smelled cannabis and searched the car, finding a small box of rolled joints, according to court records. Molina told the trooper he had a medical marijuana card prior to the search, the records state. Molina was charged with unlawful possession of cannabis by a passenger in a motor vehicle for not storing the cannabis in an odor-proof container.

Lawyers for Molina and Redmond argued the smell of cannabis alone should not be probable cause to search a vehicle given that the substance is no longer illegal in Illinois.

But Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office argued the law requires drivers to transport cannabis in an odor-proof container. Thus, the presence of cannabis odor is grounds for a search, even if the passenger is possessing an amount under the legal limit or has a medical marijuana card.

“It remains illegal to use cannabis in a vehicle and to transport cannabis in a vehicle in a container that is not odor-proof,” a November brief filed by Raoul reads. Thus, “the odor of cannabis—whether in raw or burnt form—continues to provide police with probable cause to search.”

Mitchell Ness, assistant attorney general, continued the argument before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

“Cannabis is no longer contraband in every circumstance, but that doesn’t absolve the person from following the laws that are in place,” he said.

Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis said the central matter of the cases was roadway safety.

“The concern here is the safety of the public driving down the highway and impaired drivers,” Theis said at the oral arguments. “We’re concerned about drunk drivers, and we’re concerned about high drivers.”

Nationwide and state-level chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed a brief in support of Molina and Redmond, writing that allowing the odor of cannabis as cause for searching a vehicle will lead to biased enforcement against Black and Latino Illinoisans.

“There is a decades-long pattern of police in this state using pretext like cannabis odor to disproportionately stop and search Black and Latino drivers,” the brief reads. Illinois’ stop and search policy “unfairly subjects (Black and Latino drivers) to at-will intrusions of their privacy and relegates them to second-class citizenry.”

The organizations argued the legalization of cannabis means its presence is not indicative of contraband or crime.

Keep reading

The High Costs Of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion At Illinois Universities

Several Ivy League schools have been put under a national microscope recently for applying the right to free speech inconsistently. These universities are giving some groups unwavering protection to protest, while shutting down other groups altogether. These inconsistencies have one common denominator: Higher education’s unwavering devotion to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

DEI’s focus on race, gender and is credited for much of the divisiveness on college campuses these days and Illinois’ university system is not immune. Look no further than the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where Communication 9 goes as far as to tie faculty performance evaluations to professors’ commitment to DEI. We outlined problems with the university’s initiative here.

But what also deserves attention are the growing DEI bureaucracies and the significant financial costs associated with them. Illinois’ universities are building out big teams led by executives with big pay, the highest among them Sean Garrick, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His total compensation in 2023 is reported at $352,000, according to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

But he’s just the tip of the DEIceberg.

Keep reading

Transgender Man Charged for Alleged Threats to Kill, Rape Children

A man who identifies as female has been indicted on 14 felony counts after reportedly threatening to rape girls in public restrooms over “transphobia,” as well as commit a school shooting and kill children “on behalf” of the transgender community.

Alexia Willie, previously named Jason Lee Willie, was arrested on August 14 in Perry County, Illinois, after the FBI intercepted a livestream on social media, in which the trans individual was making a number of threats, according to multiple reports.

“A person in Tennessee walked into one of your schools and shot up a bunch of your Christian daughters. That’s not the last of them if you don’t shut your fucking mouth. Shut the fuck up out here, you understand me?” Willie said, according to court records filed on November 7.

“There’s a lot of transgenders out here that are tired of being picked on and we’re going to go into the schools and we’re going to kill their fucking children out here, and that’s the end of it. We’re at war,” Willie added.

Police also reportedly said that Willie was inspired by the transgender school shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this year, which left six people dead.

“I’m in the bathroom feeling your little girls’ pussies. I love feeling on your little girls’ pussies,” Willie continued in the livestream. “You can’t do nothing about it. I don’t care. I’m openly a pedophile. You guys can’t do nothing about us. You can cry. Put me on national television, I don’t care.”

Keep reading

Signs of Civil Disobedience in Illinois Gun Registration Efforts

There’s just a little more than a month left before Illinois gun owners must register their so-called assault weapons with the state police or risk the possibility of criminal charges if they’re caught with their modern sporting rifle, and so far it looks like many gun owners are willing to run that risk. As of November 21st, fewer than 3,500 gun owners have registered some 6,600 newly banned firearms with the state police; about 0.001 percent of the state’s 2.4 million legal gun owners.

Advertisement

So far state officials are downplaying the lack of compliance, suggesting there’ll be a flood of new registrations as we get closer to the January 1 deadline.

On Oct. 31, when about 2,000 people had registered their grandfathered-in assault weapons about a month into the policy being in effect, Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said the registration process had been “slow but steady.”

“We’ll just see how the process continues to work and we’ll share the data as we continue on a daily basis to do so,” Kelly said during an unrelated event in Springfield.

Two days later in Lake Forest, Gov. J.B. Pritzker downplayed any suggestion that not enough people owning the prohibited guns were registering them, saying it was too early to make such an assessment and suggesting registration would pick up closer to Jan. 1.

“I can tell you, at least for me, that I think all of us take our time sometimes when we know the deadline is two-and-a-half months (away), that we’ll find the time eventually to go online, which is what they need to do and to register as they’re required to do,” Pritzker said.

Maybe Pritzker’s right, but if I were him I wouldn’t bet his billion-dollar fortune on his assumption that gun owners are just waiting for the last minute to comply with the state’s mandate. Sure, some folks may be holding off in the hopes that the federal courts will put a halt to the Illinois law before the reporting requirements kick in, but with scores of county sheriffs and even some prosecutors saying that they don’t plan on proactively enforcing the “assault weapons” ban my guess is that when the deadline rolls around there are still going to be an awful lot of gun owners who haven’t informed the state that they possess a now-banned rifle, pistol, or shotgun.

Advertisement

After Pritzker signed the gun ban into law, an estimated 90 of Illinois’ 102 county sheriffs issued letters stating they “believe that (the new gun law) is a clear violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” and that they wouldn’t enforce it.

At public hearings in Springfield and Chicago earlier this month, state police heard concerns about the ban and its registration requirement from several gun rights advocates. One Republican lawmaker predicted that “hundreds of thousands” people would “absolutely not comply” with registering their weapons.

“We know this public hearing is taking place because (of) the governor and his radical-left agenda,” state Rep. Brad Halbrook, a Shelbyville Republican who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group composed of his chamber’s most conservative legislators, testified before the state police. “He and his Democrat legislators passed this bill and then laid it at your feet to have to deal with it.”

So far Halbrook’s prediction looks to be pretty accurate. The number of registered guns will undoubtedly go up, of course, but I’d still be shocked if there was a big surge in the days before the mandate takes effect. When New York mandated a similar registration of “assault weapons” as part of the SAFE Act in 2013, we saw “massive noncompliance” on the part of gun owners more than two years after the deadline passed. Attorney Paloma Capanna had to sue the state police to get the numbers, and learned that just 44,000 guns out of an estimated 1 million “assault weapons” had been registered with the state police.

Keep reading

Illinois Family Files Lawsuit After Police Execute Wrong-Door Raid and Allegedly Detain Them for 6 Hours

A family in Joliet, Illinois, says they were terrorized by police, held at gunpoint, and detained for six hours after officers executed a search warrant on the wrong house.

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday by the law offices of Al Hofeld Jr. accuses the town of Joliet and nearly two dozen police officers of unlawful search, excessive force, false arrest, and conspiracy, among other rights violations.

On November 2, 2021, 62-year-old Adela Carrasco and her family were awakened by the sound of banging and shouting at their front door. Carrasco, whom her lawsuit says suffers from asthma and uses a cane due to a hip injury, hobbled toward the door to see what the commotion was.

Carrasco discovered 21 armed law enforcement officers from the Joliet Police Department, Will County Sheriff’s Office, and U.S. Marshals Service. The officers were investigating a deadly Halloween-night shooting two days prior and had decided to execute an outstanding warrant for 18-year-old Elian Raya, one of Carrasco’s grandsons.

“I asked them to show me a warrant; they didn’t show me nothing. They just pushed me aside and went in,” Carrasco said at a press conference Thursday announcing the lawsuit. “And I’m screaming at them the whole time to put down their guns because they’re going to shoot my grandkids.”

The lawsuit says the officers barged into the bedrooms of Carrasco’s grandchildren, who ranged in age from 12 to their early twenties, and pointed guns at them while shouting obscenities.

There was only one problem: The search warrant for Raya listed his address as 226 South Comstock. Carrasco lived at 228 South Comstock. The building is a duplex with two separate front entrances, both with addresses clearly marked.

The lawsuit alleges that although officers knew or quickly realized that they were not in the right unit, they continued to ransack Carrasco’s house, cutting open couch cushions, flipping mattresses, and dumping drawers. 

Keep reading

Illinois Man Killed Muslim Boy, 6, In Hate Crime Motivated By Israeli-Hamas War, Police Say

On 10/14/2023 at approximately 11:38 AM, deputies with the Will County Sheriff’s Office were sent to a residence located near the 16200 block of S. Lincoln Highway in Unincorporated Plainfield Township regarding a stabbing that occurred involving a landlord and renter. When police personnel arrived on scene they located the suspect, Joseph M. Czuba (age 71) of Plainfield sitting upright outside on the ground near the driveway of the residence. Joseph Czuba had a laceration to his forehead and was later transported to a local area hospital for treatment.

Deputies located two victims inside the residence in a bedroom. Both victims had multiple stab wounds to their chest, torso, and upper extremities. Both victims were transported to a local area hospital for treatment. The thirty-two (32) year-old female was transported in serious condition and had over a dozen stab wounds to her body. The female victim is recovering from her injuries at a local area hospital and is expected to survive this brutal attack.

It was initially reported to police personnel that the juvenile victim was eight-years-old. That initial information was incorrect, and juvenile victim is six (6) years-old. The six-year-old male was transported to the hospital in critical condition. The boy later succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced deceased by a doctor. On 10/15/2023, an autopsy was conducted on the six-year-old victim. The forensic pathologist conducting the autopsy removed the knife from the abdomen of the boy at that time. The six-year-old boy was stabbed twenty-six (26) times throughout his body. The knife used in this attack is a twelve-inch serrated military style knife that has a seven-inch blade.

Keep reading

Weed Is Legal in Illinois. Police Searched His Car Anyway.

In June 2022, police in Illinois pulled over Prentiss Jackson for driving without his lights on. An officer with the Urbana Police Department subsequently claimed he could smell “a little bit of weed” coming from the car, leveraging that to search Jackson’s vehicle and ultimately kicking off a legal odyssey that would result in an 84-month sentence in federal prison.

At the officer’s request, Jackson handed over two grams of unburnt cannabis he kept in a baggie in his glove box. Possessing up to 30 grams is permissible under Illinois law. 

But when the officer demanded Jackson exit the vehicle, he ran—dropping a gun in the process. Prentiss was charged with possessing a firearm as a felon. Although Jackson sought to suppress the evidence from that search—invoking Illinois’ legal cannabis threshold and alleging that the officer lacked probable cause—Judge James E. Shadid of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois came down in favor of police, ruling that Jackson had run afoul of the state requirement to keep marijuana in an odor-proof container.

Keep reading